These times... we are getting up close and personal with all the places in our lives that maybe don’t work. Forced to see them. To deal with them.
The good news? Our lives are the result of 1,000+ choices made over 1,000+ days. What it could look like 1,000 choices from now is completely up to us. Changing how we relate to life is the most courageous thing we can do. It takes *guts,* and it is not weakness to admit that things aren’t working. That they hurt. My rock bottom was 3 years ago. It put me on a completely different path than I ever could have imagined. My way. None of us have any idea what the next 3 weeks, 3 months, or 3 years will hold...but maybe that doesn’t matter. (We didn’t before, either.) Maybe the opportunity of creating a new way, of healing, can be found in the choice before us right now, or happening in the moment right in front of us. Because change doesn’t happen in the future, it is available right here, right now. Anyway, this thought is offered with love and tenderness and awareness for all that accompanies a life is transition. Blessings for the road. 💜
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This is the conservatory within the zoo where I grew up, it was posted on FB by former classmate Shannon Bierbaum. It is lovely, yes. Interestingly, the grounds and interior were not lovely to me then, quite taken for granted and much less exciting than the lions and bears living nearby. But, it was amazing what happened when I saw the image - I could literally smell and taste and feel this picture. I haven't been here in over 30 years, yet my body physically responded to it, I *felt* the image.
Science shows that our bodies respond to (some) information before our brains do. We *feel* our responses in the body before our brains figure things out. We make decisions with our guts and then our big, powerful brains rationalize, justify, or override the decisions. In the words of behavior economists, we are predictably irrational because of this process, and it's why we are also so hypocritical. This is the power of our bodies. It is only by listening deeply to the energy within the body that we can know our deepest truth. And, once we know this, our true power emerges: will we honor and live by this deeper truth, and claim it clearly and directly, or continue to override the truth in our bodies for an external rationalization? The choice is ours. The old paradigm was exploitation and abuse, the new is equilibrium and equality. Outer versus inner. Force versus power.
Where are you at on the transition curve? For those for whom the old ways no longer work, that have reached rock bottom, that must find a new way to relate to their lives.
For those that have used and abused all the old ways, all the coping techniques, all the way to the bloody end, that can no longer change anything on the outside and must, instead, change on the inside. That have hit rock bottom, that feel empty. I know this place. So please know: there is an enormous opportunity in this place. Not to heal and go back to all the diseased and broken ways of being that created sickness in the first place, but rather a path that heals the root cause that drove the participation of the diseased ways. A path that that leads all the way back to knowing one's True Nature, one's deepest truth. And living brilliantly, sparklingly, joyfully from that place. This is not a path of small changes, or tweaks, this is a path of radical revolution for those called to take complete responsibility for growing up, for owning their own freedom, for healing themselves. We know who we are. And we are ready. Small group teaching/learning/healing circles beginning in April. Curious? Inspired? Let's chat! Seems like there's a lot of coping techniques and stress responses that are activated right now. Are you feeling it? Me too! This is just a friendly reminder that:
- Everything is comprised of energy - including our physical bodies, our thoughts, our ideas. Social media. The news. Toilet paper. Everything. - We are constantly encountering the other energy all around us, which affects our equilibrium. - We (largely) unconsciously seek to maintain energetic equilibrium within ourselves, as we encounter all the other energy all around us. We do this through learned coping techniques, stress responses. These are nothing more than activated energy within our bodies. - While we may *believe* the activated energy is the result of something happening on the outside, it is actually the result of an unhealed energetic pattern held within our bodies. - This activated energy is a *symptom* that we hold a belief that goes against our wholeness. That's all it is - a symptom that we hold a belief that harms us. - We learned these beliefs that harm us from our families, in our culture, we inherit them from our ancestors, we learn them through trauma - but they are actually not real. Our wholeness is real, the beliefs are a barrier that covers our awareness of our wholeness. And, because these thoughts are learned, they can be unlearned. Healed. - As a culture, we don't have healthy models for understanding the energy that underlies everything, and especially how to take responsibility for *our* activated and unhealed energetic patterns...but that doesn't make them unreal. They are very real. - We are all responsible for, and capable of, healing ourselves. (In fact, no one can do it for us.) - Healing is an opportunity to change on the inside what we can't change on the outside. - When we feel activated stress responses, coping techniques, or the desire to "check out," - another option is to "check in," with ourselves, instead. See what energy is stirring and what it wants us to know. What it wants us to see that is ready to be healed. - The Peace Power Path is one way of healing untrue thoughts that go against our wholeness. Crisis is a call to change our relationship to life. If we choose to. That means we can heal and grow through the current events, not simply survive them and hope to resume life as it was before. The path is to take responsibility for what is stirring, as it is stirring. To make healing our top priority, and everything else is a second priority. Anyway, this is what works for me. Taking complete responsibility for what is mine to heal, as soon as I notice that a pattern is activated. Hour by hour, sometimes. Because! It is not a mark of emotional maturity to suppress and deny our feelings, to muscle through, to pretend. It harms the body, and it doesn't work anyway - our activated emotions squish out sideways and we end up barfing on the world - which works to remove the pain from our bodies, but harms the life around us. It is a mark of emotional maturity to take complete responsibility for the quality of our energy. For our peace. That means healing activated patterns when they are active, as a first priority - and not engaging with the world until we can do so from a place of equilibrium. So. If they old ways no longer work, and you feel inspired to try a new way, trust yourself to handle this. Whatever is happening - you can handle it. You are handling it. From my heart to yours: We have resources we never dreamed of, ready to emerge and support us, during this time, when we grow up and take responsibility for what is ours. Remember this feeling? Freedom in nature, in the sun, full of life. And then, ... remember when it was lost?
- From the youngest of ages we are taught to deny our True Nature, our deepest truth. - We are taught this by the most loving people in our lives, who only do so because this is how they were taught to be safe in the culture, to be socially acceptable to others. - Saying yes when we mean no, doing activities when we want to rest, believing we have to achieve things in order to be loved, learning rules for making other people feel happy at the expense of our own truth and wholeness and happiness. - We judge the worthiness of others by their ability to integrate and regurgitate and live by these same rules. - This distorts us from the inside, and this denial of our truth is the price of assimilation within the power structure. - This is called "domestication," by Don Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements). - Domestication disconnects us from our deepest truth, our True Nature. It teaches us to override our truth in order for others to be happy, that we cannot trust our truth. - This means that from the youngest of ages, we believe we have the power to harm those we love the most simply by being ourselves. - The fact that our True Nature, our truth, can harm those we love the most implies that there is something *wrong* with us. - This is an incredibly painful belief...and it is untrue. - But, our deepest truth makes us uncontrollable, and so we are taught to deny it. - Our deepest truth is actually the holiest thing about us (John the Evangelizer). - When we deny our deepest truth we cut ourselves off from our wholeness, our holiness, our connection with the Divine. - This separation, this split, gets reinforced and validated in every way throughout the culture. - It is dead wrong, and we know it in the pain we hold in our bodies, we just don't have healthy models for seeing it clearly and changing it. - Healing is a matter of seeing this clearly, and choosing to relate to our lives differently. Of listening to the truth in our bodies, trusting it, and living from that truth. - The path to wholeness is a path of choosing to reconnect with our True Nature, with our wholeness and holiness...and trusting everyone around us to handle it. - This is an act of growing up, of taking responsibility for our pain...and taking responsibility for our love. - When we are responsible for our own love, we no longer look to others to make us whole, to validate us. We no longer need anyone to change on the outside for us to be happy, we no longer need to control another thing. - This is an ongoing process. Everything in our culture tells us differently, and we do not currently have healthy models for embodying this truth. - That's ok. We are all capable of, and responsible for, healing ourselves. Doing so removes the hooks from our relationships, and frees the people in our lives to simply be themselves. And us, too. - And it is deeply healing. - Claiming freedom is an internal act of revolution. Nobody can give it to us, nobody can take it from us. - The truth shall set us free. (And, we can remove the energetic barriers that hold some of the pain in place. The Peace Power Path is one way. If this speaks to you, ask me how.) Blue skies! "I trust you to be free," was today's lesson from the woods. Whoa. Applying this concept to those we love most is serious detangling, deconditioning work. It goes like this: in every exchange, simply offer this short prayer to the other person during the conversation.
It instantly detangles and deconditions the other person, and ourselves, from the weight of taking emotional care of, and responsibility for, the other. In our culture, the price of assimilation within the power structure requires us to keep the peace, and manage other people's emotional experiences of us. It is diseased thinking to believe that we can take responsibility for that which is out of our control, but it is deeply ingrained. And so we smile when we feel like frowning. We do when we feel like resting. We pretend on the surface when we feel differently in the depths. And we pay the price - the internal separation that occurs within our bodies when we deny our truth. And this keeps us small and running in circles, and carrying something too heavy. When we are only meant to be free. Healing entails realizing how much we internalize and take responsibility for other people's emotional experience of us, and just how freaking heavy that weight is. How it feels like suffocating to take responsibility for it, and how *unnatural* it is to outsource our wellbeing to the fickle vagaries of another person. It is far cleaner, and more responsible, and more grown up, to take complete responsibility for our own truth, and for our freedom, and to trust another to be free. We do not owe anyone our emotional validation or availability, or to pretend we are anything we are not. And so, from me to you, "I trust you to be free." May your truth set you free. Blue skies! To everyone, everywhere, that has ever dinged my sh*t: Thank You.
You showed me where I was not yet free. Where I carried fear, large or small, about an outcome, a perception, approval. My spiritual path seeks to remove all barriers to knowing my True Nature, to embodying my freedom. Our collaboration was a valuable step on that path. I take complete responsibility for my pain. I wish you well. Other people do not have the ability to truly harm me, they have the ability to show me where I harm myself (by carrying beliefs that go against my wholeness, or tolerating something that goes against my integrity). Healing comes through taking responsibility for carrying the thoughts, and then releasing them, thereby restoring my connection to my True Nature. Freedom.
1. Clean your windshield first 2. Speak your truth 3. Repeat #peacepowerpath #rewildingthesoul #healyourself #itsoktobemisunderstood Sunlight! Did you know that our hemoglobins cells are comprised of the same chemical as chlorophyll in plants, we just have a different mineral at the center? We are both light receivers. And that we obtain 2/3 of our energy electrons from light and only 1/3 from food? We are all solar powered... there’s a reason it feels so good!!
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