‘Noticing’ as a path to true living

When my child says something is beautiful be it a scenery, painting, a person’s face or an experience it goes right to my heart. It is a felt experience for me to hear and know that he’s noticed something that truly touched him. I learn from my son the art of appreciating what is in the moment and banking those moments into a bundle that is a life truly lived.

When we notice, we are present, we are in a felt experience of what is going through us and touching us as a living being energy. The more detail we notice in something or someone the deeper we go into the moment of being present with what is now, what is alive and speaking to us.

To me hearing my son express his delight in what he observes represents a true living rather than a passing energy of existing in a chain of life events, day to day, week to week. It tells me something is always worth noticing, examining, learning no matter how small. It speaks to me of a quality of always wondering what the next day, trip, touch and experience might bring. It is remaining curious and fully in life at all times. It is, to me, is beautiful, and who is better to connect us to that way of being than children, whose light shines through unapologetically and if it’s expression is allowed to be authentic at all times then we benefit from that more so through connecting not just to a real experience of knowing our children, but also re-connecting to our own inner child, which often gets forgotten as we get old.

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The ‘shadow’ Fire of summer

I am exploring the wounded, sensitive point in my psyche that comes up in June, before Summer Equinox. It produced feelings of depression last year, which lasted all the way to Samhain – a long time. This year I am determined to un-tangled and look at what is going on with an aim to acknowledge, heal and integrate. It is the 3^rd June and I have been feeling the now familiar energy rising within already. This feels very hard and resistance is overbearing. The defence is always distorted Fire, which is cruel, ugly, merciless, the kind that burns everything to ash without any hope of new growth or so it seems at the time. This Fire is very different to a healthy Fire, which I would normally tap into during winter, post Yule and that energizes me to a degree of high productivity, enthusiasm, high energy and success.

Fire element in its distorted state prevents life from flowing, yet a healthy manifestation offers a chance for a re-birth. Fire is a glorious element, as it is transformative. We often have to burn, be in pain in order for something else to manifest through it. Calcinatio operation in the alchemical process.

This Fire stops a part of me being seen, it blocks any possibility of reconciliation within the psyche and ‘burns’ everything in my physical reality. Yet, we do come back from it every year and every time I look back on it with bewilderment and gratitude for having survived the ‘war’. It often feels like it. Sometimes it goes on for a month or two, other times it lasts longer and it can be exhausting.

I am writing this in hope that it might resonate with many and to explore/explain what happens when we reject, suppress parts of ourselves we are not willing to bring back, integrate and look at. One might refer to it as the material, which resides deep within our psyche and now and again pops out to say hello and we are in no way thrilled to welcome them back. Then a battle commences to avoid, resist, push it back and not having to deal with whatever it is that is asking to come back.

In my case this is my inner child – an extremely sensitive, delicate, vulnerable self that to the rest of me is so overwhelming I get thrown off-balance every time I feel her approaching. In order to defend I tap into my anger self and take a position of a distorted Fire, which is the only way I know how to send my ‘vulnerable self’ back to where it came from. My desire to project becomes almost unbearable, which tells us how difficult it feels for me to contain feelings of that inner child that comes into full view. When previously attempting to heal this I always resorted to giving it away to someone else, who is better equipped to look after it. It had worked for some time, but this time it seems that it wants me to take her in. It wants to come back from exile.

In dreams this part of me comes as one particular person, which I have come to recognise. It always appears a gentle, good part of me that everyone loves, apart from myself. In dreams as it wants to get close to me (not others even though they are more than happy to take her in) I begin my process of avoiding and running away from it. Last night I had such a dream and reflecting back I do recognise having been doing the ‘rejecting’, but on another level wanting to get close to it also and that’s where the clue lies towards integration. Not all is lost. In the dream last night the soft part of me also decided to reject me and that really hurt. It jumped on a ‘runaway’ train seeking separation from me and expressing its disappointment. That hurt. It is not that I don’t want to, but more I can’t bring myself, don’t know how to deal with it. I reject before it rejects. This plays out in my physical reality in a way of projecting exactly that. What I am projecting is the anger with myself and seeming inability to deal with the vulnerable self. Anger is also laced in disappointment, shame, self-punishment, etc., which also manifests in real life and is projected outwards when the angry self becomes shaming of others, expressing disappointment openly and emotional eating, e.g.

These insights are the first steps towards the ultimate goal of integration. My dreams and being aware of my emotions as I awake every day have been invaluable to me in reaching a position of clarity of what is happening within my psyche and physical body, a key to my conscious and unconscious material. Post-insight comes an even clearer awareness and links are made with the day-to-day manifestation of wounds and conditions, i.e. what one does in their physical reality, relationships, work, etc. that manifests that behaviour. Once awareness is established then come choices, processes we put in place to attempt to heal, trial an error, if you like, but nevertheless there are choices. There are opportunities to put things in place in order to move forward. Healing comes from acceptance and a successful implementation of all of the above and integrating day by day, learning a new way of relating to yourself first and foremost before it becomes harmonious on outside with relationships with others.

Insight – Awareness – Choices – Acceptance – Healing – Integration

I am going on a journey with this part of my process actively this month. It is a challenging time, as we build up towards the ultimate Fire festival and Sun in its full power in nature. My aim is not to get hooked and blow it out to a point of losing control completely. This year it is going to be different and what is not present as much I feel, which is a blessing and new, is fear to engage with difficult stuff. This time I know deep down that if we fear ourselves we fear our potential at the same time and fearing potential is a limiting outlook, which simply doesn’t help us progress. The aim is to put things into a healthy flow, into an energy of progressing with purpose without resistance.

Have a good week.

 

Back to yourself. The journey of 2016 so far

This year many are digging deep into wounds that had lied buried in the unconscious for many years. Some are so deep that when asked our only response is ‘I don’t remember much of my childhood’. This is very common and no wonder. Pain we endured emotionally left many of us numb, avoiding, in a state of shock or dissociation and generally just coping. Humans are good at coping. However, it transpires that underneath all those layers of grief, pain, loneliness, dependency, addiction and pain lies a light, a divine light of our Divine child. What happened to it? Why have we given up on it? Were we ever aware of our own inner beauty, purity and joy?

If you cast your memory back do you remember being carefree, super creative and inquisitive with no sense of time?

All I remember is being alone, in what seems to be constant emotional pain, fear. Controlled, punished, blamed, shamed, criticised, undervalued, a nuisance, not good enough, silenced and ignored. Does any of those come to mind? What are we to do about it?

We must become aware and be completely honest about all our feelings. What we feel in the present when we react, get upset or feel panicked is a mirror to that original primal wound of our childhood. All we feel now we began to feel long ago, we learnt long ago to be a certain way. Waste. Souls shattered and fragmented into parts missing, split and lost. Spirit dimmed to a degree we have no concept of trust, what it’s like to feel joy or be in a relationship where there is unconditional love and acceptance. We cope.
This year we are faced with the universe making the way for us to begin our journey back to ourselves if we haven’t yet started and if we have the rhythm and speed is increased in a way of clearing our blocks towards our own light.

My year began with grief, my primary emotional wound of separation and loss. My childhood ended at five and I remember the moment in my body when I knew this was the end. There was no one to see me or hear me, no point asking for help no one would come. I became invisible and turned into a defended, frozen mute being stripped of joy and playfulness. Grief turned into a physical condition which scared the hell out of me and made me really look at how things manifest when left unattended. Self-love was needed, attention needed to be turned towards my emotions, not away from them. My inner child threw in the towel as continual denial of love and attention persisted with every attempt to reconnect. Hopeless and alone.

When on a spiritual pilgrimage this summer I failed to connect with spirit instead fear and anger was present with mood swings and desperation for freedom. It was a hard lesson in staying present with myself first and foremost instead of seeking to escape. One of my coping mechanisms abandoned me and it was brutal. I was required to stay firmly on earth sorting out the mess created many years ago by people who meant to caretake me. I understood well. I heard it loud and clear and embraced my state of brokenness knowing there was no other way than to dive deep into the dark cave of my primary wounding.

It has been a journey and I continue on a rollercoaster presented to me this year, but there’s now hope, light and more awareness that I know will guide me to places I need to visit within myself. I was allowed to practice my earth based spirituality, work with the land, engage in cooking and creativity. I was allowed to keep that practice having been told it would indeed keep me grounded and present. That came as a relief and a confirmation of my path being truly beneficial to my emotional healing. I feel blessed and hopeful and less fearful in the world that promises many challenges and struggles. I can do it though and we all can. Whatever it takes we will dig the light from within ourselves and meet our Divine child once again keeping it close this time forever safe and present.

Blessings!

Growing up in a straight jacket

In a straight jacket, gagged and tied to a chair. This memory of how I felt came up several times in the last few days, in fact, many emotional memories are beginning to surface one after another in the hope of being integrated. I have to be careful not to get overwhelmed by it. My awareness became acutely sharp to any feeling coming up in my body when I easily and quickly and directly associate it with a particular emotion or attitude, which I had felt before or learnt to do before. This is equally scary and liberating at the same time, just hope I can handle it at this fast pace.

Straight jacket restricts my movements completely. Not able to speak, cry, scream produces an effect of hopelessness and a frozen state in the body. I am gagged. When you are tied up to something while already in a straight jacket you know you are not going anywhere and that’s where fear comes in because of feeling completely defenceless and not knowing what will be coming next. This feels about right in terms of how I felt throughout my childhood. Granted I would never have imagined it being so traumatic if I didn’t take a path towards integration and healing five or six years ago now. It has been a process of unfolding, but I feel so far it has been circling on the surface and only now I am realising the depth of my despair and effects of traumatic emotions, events and experiences.

Many people say they don’t remember their childhood. Many of my clients brought that ‘not remembering’ state into the therapy room. It is an empty energy like a screen wiped clean, yet it is still dirty somehow. When this vibration of not remembering comes into a room there is a sense of fear and suspension in the air, ungrounded, not solidified, unpleasant. It is not surprising that this happens due to past trauma and forgetting is one way of coping with difficult emotions and events that had occurred in early childhood. It doesn’t mean a person doesn’t remember, it means they chose to forget in order to survive, but they do remember, their body remembers. It doesn’t go away, just gets supressed deep in our unconscious. Hence, working with the body often unveils a trauma and it can be a way into connecting emotions with experiences and memories of the past.

What has been coming to me in the last day or so, due to an overwhelming number of memories flooding in, is to sit down and do a timeline. It is an therapeutic tool where an individual maps out any important events in their life beginning from birth up until present moment. This brings awareness to any ‘stuck’ or suppressed feelings and awakens associations with certain events,  building up links with the present moment. This work should be done with careful guidance and unconditional presence of a professional, as feelings that come up are often powerful and must be carefully held and contained, so a person feels safe and comfortable being around difficult material.

I am going to do this myself and see how it transpires. So far I have delved into memories to do with my father primarily, but my mother also came up a couple of times. Different feelings are associated with one or the other parent usually, e.g. supressed anger – my mother, abandonment and fear – my father, grief is an overall feeling that seems to taint all of my traumas throughout my life and today I discovered that my grief is of yellow colour, which would explain my attachment to yellow flowers and subsequently my attachment to pain and suffering. The process is unfolding fast and I felt it would be useful for me to write parts of it down on my blog in the hope it might help others as well as myself to be able to keep an order or a storyline to it in one way or another. Breaking it down into manageable chunks, i.e. small blog posts also clears it out of my head, so I can continue getting on with my daily life. Writing is a powerful tool I have always used in my life and I highly recommend it to all my clients and people I know.

Much love

Teal Swan’s Completion Process

This morning I went through a Completion Process by Teal Swan. She has been featuring in my life for a couple of years now. I resonate with her energy and adore her signature of vulnerability, intellect, compassion, pain and authenticity. I also like her writing style, which is always clear and methodical. Her latest book The Completion Process is very well written and I am delving into it at the moment.

Teal has been particularly present for me in the last month or so when my Inner child came forth needing attention, work and integration I showed resistance, made excuses, rejected the possibility of doing the work and wanting to hand over responsibility to someone else. Teal’s presence during this time synchronously guided me towards what needed to be done and signals only got stronger and stronger as days went by, more insistent with each day, which was clear to me that I simply could not avoid this and I must participate in my own healing to do with inner child in particular. Soul’s desire was and remains for that aspect of myself to be looked at. It is time, no more excuses, no more dragging this heavy load with me everywhere I go.

I woke up this morning earlier than planned and came across a video in my Inbox with a demonstration of the Completion process. I immediately went with it. HERE is the link. There was a lady in the video working on herself with Teal. I started listening to the process and found myself being able to go into my own process easily, sort of in parallel with the lady on screen. The fact that she was going through her process didn’t hinder me participating in mine fully. The fact that I was able to focus and work on myself while listening and watching someone else do their process told me loud and clear just how ready I was to go with this. It was the most intense emotional experience I had ever done and this is the truth. With Teal’s guidance I was able to stay with myself fully and on another level all together. I really went into the traumatic memories and feelings with my body shaking with tears and images coming through readily. It was such a wonderful opportunity I thought on reflection to be able to do something with Teal even when she was working with someone else.

There are no coincidences there are only pointers and alignments within environment, which lead to a solution or a possibility. Synchronicities. I have experienced this process in my life now for several years and I can say that for me it is impossible not to trust it and in many ways that is how I live my life now, with full awareness of what goes on around me and checking it against my emotional body every time. One might say it has become a practice, which now happens effortlessly.

I came out of the session with a sense of hope more than anything. A sense of knowing that whatever just occurred made perfect sense and that it hugely benefited me in this morning hour. Work will continue, but I feel somewhat braver, less resistant and more prepared to go places and be with it. What stood out for me in the process I had gone through this morning were the following words. See if any of those resonate with you:

• Surrender
• Unconditional presence
• Calm
• Softness
• Joy
• Flow
• Freedom
• Fragrance
• Luxury and comfort
• Sacred

It is like putting together pieces of a jigsaw when something begins to stand out for you in your life more, e.g. you notice you get triggered more often than usual or you feel in one particular way, e.g. angry, more frequently with seemingly no reason. Notice, I’d say, it all begins with awareness, follow that thread, because it is often a thread of feelings or events or interactions, which will lead to what most needs attention and integration. If you are called to something, follow that path, allow yourself to be curious especially if there is a feeling present of ‘this is right even though scary’. This is what happened to me and Teal’s presence in my world this past month. I am going to follow it further and witness it unfolding. There is a hope vibration and an opening that invites me in and there is something in this that says ‘there is only a way forward’.