This was last night’s dream. Although I have plenty of transport dreams, only once in a pink candy-floss moon will they feature aeroplanes – it’s usually trains, buses, cars and occasionally bicycles with me. I can’t see any relevance to current life circumstances, but my hunch is that it’s about this safetycomfort writing space.

I’m aware that I’m growing out of safetycomfort and that there’s some transition, an in-between space. I had referred to continuing to write in here as an ongoing training space, but I’m not entirely convinced about that. There’s been some nervousness about sharing certain types of writing and other . . . → Read More: safetycomfort transition, in-between place, expanding]]> A dream of being in an aeroplane and considerable air turbulence, flying through storm clouds with thunder and lightning, and the pilot giving reassurance. The plane dips and rocks violently from back to front. Once out of the storm clouds, it seems to be flying close to ground, and then I as a passenger cause the plane to drop to earth where it comes to rest on the grass. No crash landing as such, just that it stops flying, and there are no casualties. I can see the sea, or a large body of water.

This was last night’s dream. Although I have plenty of transport dreams, only once in a pink candy-floss moon will they feature aeroplanes – it’s usually trains, buses, cars and occasionally bicycles with me. I can’t see any relevance to current life circumstances, but my hunch is that it’s about this safetycomfort writing space.

I’m aware that I’m growing out of safetycomfort and that there’s some transition, an in-between space. I had referred to continuing to write in here as an ongoing training space, but I’m not entirely convinced about that. There’s been some nervousness about sharing certain types of writing and other material I draw on, and I’m beginning to resolve that one. But I don’t yet know the shape or feel of what may come next. It will emerge.

One of my keywords for 2011 is expanding, and that’s certainly happening.  Continuing to step out of old comfort zones to the point where I don’t need that particular thing any more. Yes, I feel the nervousness and wobble, but what I’m seeing more and more is that taking the courage to learn how to talk and write about the thing I’m nervous about, this is one of the key steps in resolving the thing.

so, my inclination after mulling over, talking with a friend and some more mulling, is to allow this in-between space, to take a break and feel / write my way through it on my own. I do know I want to continue writing and sharing. I’ve notched up 170 posts since I started safetycomfort on WordPress almost fifteen months ago, so I reckon that’s as good as saying I’ve learnt how to write in the open, which has included pulling a post here and there … hmmm ;-)

The therapy training is going well, so is my own personal therapy as part of this, and I’m in a good place.

(I can’t believe it’s only a year ago … it feels far longer).

***

Listen to her wisdom, if you will. Listen to those ancient and remembered tales of laughter in the night. Her ageless voice is singing in the cadence of the sea, crescent moon in winter and midsummer, russet fall and gently greening springtime. You were not born to be tame.

She is the joy that never lies down to die. You sit at water’s edge and build a cairn of pebbles, wet smooth coldness in your hands, balancing until they’re tumbled by the surf. And you begin again, just because you can. These cairns have marked your way along the spiral journeys through the many gates and thresholds of the soul, always winding deeper into mystery, the song of silence weaving notes that call you home.  These simple pebbles never once gave up, always bade you look beyond, spoken of the waiting peace, assured you . . . → Read More: Creative writing: Conversations from the sea]]> I wrote and posted this originally in April last year, and reading it again today, it feels apt to post it again. It holds so much of what I feel in my core and want to share of myself.

(I can’t believe it’s only a year ago … it feels far longer).

***

Listen to her wisdom, if you will. Listen to those ancient and remembered tales of laughter in the night. Her ageless voice is singing in the cadence of the sea, crescent moon in winter and midsummer, russet fall and gently greening springtime. You were not born to be tame.

She is the joy that never lies down to die. You sit at water’s edge and build a cairn of pebbles, wet smooth coldness in your hands, balancing until they’re tumbled by the surf. And you begin again, just because you can. These cairns have marked your way along the spiral journeys through the many gates and thresholds of the soul, always winding deeper into mystery, the song of silence weaving notes that call you home.  These simple pebbles never once gave up, always bade you look beyond, spoken of the waiting peace, assured you of its presence. It can’t be found in doctrine or the letter of the law, but listen you instead to purity of silence in your core. Trust. So many voices, but quietly you know which one is true. Follow you the way of kindness through the chaos.

Listen to her wisdom, feel her wash you clean in silence and the water. All thoughts of shame and fear are disappearing. Know you now that these were lies, a story you believed in, forgot your essence. Listen to her healing sacred song whose notes inspire remembering of timeless innocence, notes so deep and pure you lose all sense of self and merge with sound, all longings answered in the stillness. Here, my friends, my sisters, brothers, sacred family: Drink you from this holy chalice of acceptance and belonging. Drink deeply of the boundless cup, this love without condition, and know you that it never ceases.

In a wider context I also remember writing about how I want my posts here to be accessible, yet acknowledging how writing in here is another element of the current training. I seem to have dug myself into a conundrum of sorts. I do know there is a way through it … let’s see if writing this post can take me there.

This much I’m aware of:

a) I’m learning to write from the heart, be spiritually and emotionally naked in the open.

b) I’m using a wide range of material, and learning how to integrate it – counselling, psychotherapy, spirituality, therapeutic writing, poetry, a dip or two into science, some mischief :p

c) Some of this material is channelled – and I’m very careful what I pay attention to, in this particular domain. When I was seventeen I had a beautiful dream in which I came face to face with the one called Jeshua (aka . . . → Read More: Writing from the heart, learning how to share]]> I wrote yesterday about the crunch point of no longer seeking approval and permission, and later posted a channelled piece. That latter posting became a trip-point for me, because it showed me how much I do still rely on that approval from others.

In a wider context I also remember writing about how I want my posts here to be accessible, yet acknowledging how writing in here is another element of the current training. I seem to have dug myself into a conundrum of sorts. I do know there is a way through it … let’s see if writing this post can take me there.

This much I’m aware of:

a) I’m learning to write from the heart, be spiritually and emotionally naked in the open.

b) I’m using a wide range of material, and learning how to integrate it – counselling, psychotherapy, spirituality, therapeutic writing, poetry, a dip or two into science, some mischief :p

c) Some of this material is channelled – and I’m very careful what I pay attention to, in this particular domain. When I was seventeen I had a beautiful dream in which I came face to face with the one called Jeshua (aka Jesus) and we looked right into one another’s eyes. It was also my first ever flying dream, and I’ve had several of those over the years, too.

Years later I encountered material which suggested that during J’s time on earth, he underwent a far different personal journey that has been suggested by the Church – the enlightenment path (yes, it’s the E word again) – awareness, silence, pure beingness, the unconditional.  Since then, I’ve begun working with J material through three particular sources: Jayem (Way of Mastery), Paul Ferrini, and most recently, Pamela Kribbe.  My mind struggles with some of this. My heart tells me of the profound and transformational potential of these teachings, if I’ll only let myself immerse and go for it.  Oh resistance…

My main question is how to work with this material in the blog.

okay … my feeling is one of letting this space hold the writing that is ready to be shared … and that suggests being rather gentler with this whole process than I’ve let myself be until now. With this material in particular, I’ll work with it on my own first, let it percolate, then share the pieces when they’re ready. Simple really, especially as I’d already alluded to it in a previous post. I do like simple ;-)

* * *

“Your deepest motive for coming to earth was to come to terms with your own inner darkness, and you agreed to meet this darkness within yourself as human beings. Although you often think you are here to help others or to help mother earth, the most fundamental reason you are here is to heal yourself. This is your true lightwork. All else is secondary.

…However to take responsibility for your dark side is a solitary venture in principle. It does not involve others you need to help or cure. It involves only you. You will help others in the process, but this is a secondary effect. It is important to realize the right order of things here, you know, since you have a tendency to be too diligent in helping others. This enthusiasm to help others often becomes a pitfall, since your energy gets entangled with the other person and more often than not, you feel depleted and disappointed afterwards. Please remember: to give more than to receive is not noble or heart based, it is simply . . . → Read More: Notes for self: Overcoming pitfalls in healing self & helping others]]> Reading this: Another shift, another reminder, and the continuing sense of being on track. A macro view.

* * *

“Your deepest motive for coming to earth was to come to terms with your own inner darkness, and you agreed to meet this darkness within yourself as human beings. Although you often think you are here to help others or to help mother earth, the most fundamental reason you are here is to heal yourself. This is your true lightwork. All else is secondary.

…However to take responsibility for your dark side is a solitary venture in principle. It does not involve others you need to help or cure. It involves only you. You will help others in the process, but this is a secondary effect. It is important to realize the right order of things here, you know, since you have a tendency to be too diligent in helping others. This enthusiasm to help others often becomes a pitfall, since your energy gets entangled with the other person and more often than not, you feel depleted and disappointed afterwards. Please remember: to give more than to receive is not noble or heart based, it is simply a mistake. The mistake is that you think that you are in part responsible for someone else’s situation or state of mind. This is not true. Everyone is responsible for their own happiness or misfortune. And this is indeed a blessing, as it provides everyone with the power to create therefore to change their own reality.

You are not here to ‘fix’ other people or mother earth. You are here to heal the deep wounds within your own being. Please tend to this task and all else will fall into place without any effort on your part.”

via Pamela Kribbe
~ The Jeshua Channellings

and I wanted yesterday’s piece to be more about how yoga = union, and picking up on the idea of the undivided mind, union of the self, pure silence.  Something that steps outside the Judeo-Christian framework of understanding ‘god’ and into this inner spaciousness and beautiful silence. But, as I also said, the words to write more of this simply aren’t there yet – and, I’m learning how to not push the river.

Late last night, though, I came to one of those very clear crunch points – something that’s been an undercurrent for years and years, and for which I’ve spent the last couple of years, and the last three months in particular, . . . → Read More: On no longer seeking external validation]]> I was having quite a few second thoughts about that last post, Towards an atheist understanding of enlightenment – and this is why: Because it felt like it came more from thinky than feeling my way through writing a piece, and it rather felt like I lost my way a bit with that post.  It also gives me a clearer sense of how to tell when a post is coming from that ‘sweet spot’, and when it isn’t. So, it’s all grist to the mill.

and I wanted yesterday’s piece to be more about how yoga = union, and picking up on the idea of the undivided mind, union of the self, pure silence.  Something that steps outside the Judeo-Christian framework of understanding ‘god’ and into this inner spaciousness and beautiful silence. But, as I also said, the words to write more of this simply aren’t there yet – and, I’m learning how to not push the river.

Late last night, though, I came to one of those very clear crunch points – something that’s been an undercurrent for years and years, and for which I’ve spent the last couple of years, and the last three months in particular, gently but determinedly inching my way towards resolving.

It’s about no longer seeking for and relying on external validation of how I choose to live, how I use this lifetime; not waiting for approval or permission, but listening within and feeling my way towards the choices be made from that inner place of increasing awareness of truth.  The willingness to put myself out there, find ways to tune into what my heart feels and then allow the words to rise from the depths to express what’s there … to let what comes be shared out in the open. Crikey. Writing this is provoking the tears again, but they’re good ones because I can feel how true it is to write this.

And, writing here is also like a training space – letting it be a seed husk, enclosing the potential until it’s ready to step out of the safetycomfort space and into one carrying a name that more closely expresses this willingness to be increasingly emotionally and spiritually naked in the open. I can feel myself shifting towards this new writing space – and not convinced the timing’s right, just yet. The name will come when it’s ready, so … so I shall continue this training. All is well.

Having spent thirty years now engaging with a pile of spiritual stuff, including undergrad and postgrad theological work, I’ve been able to sit fairly comfortably with various forms of spiritual and religious language – even though they’ve also been a tripping point more times than I care to count.  I’d say this aspect of the exploring was mainly Christian and Western oriented, but gradually moving more towards the East.

Coming into contact with Barefoot Doctor’s material, some seven years ago, I began seeing another aspect – one that’s picking up on Eastern ideas and translating them to be more easily understandable to Western minds.  I saw myself gradually picking up on the possibility that this thing usually called ‘enlightenment’ is available to every single person. It was first introduced to me in distinctly spiritual-religious terms and that’s the context in which I’ve been most familiar with it.

The third leg of the stool, for me anyway, is the psychotherapeutic, which itself contains both the resonance and a bit of a ding-dong where spirituality is concerned. I’ve found myself playing musical chairs . . . → Read More: Towards an atheist understanding of enlightenment ;-)]]> A few things are clicking into place today as I engage with various things on my Friday List.

Having spent thirty years now engaging with a pile of spiritual stuff, including undergrad and postgrad theological work, I’ve been able to sit fairly comfortably with various forms of spiritual and religious language – even though they’ve also been a tripping point more times than I care to count.  I’d say this aspect of the exploring was mainly Christian and Western oriented, but gradually moving more towards the East.

Coming into contact with Barefoot Doctor’s material, some seven years ago, I began seeing another aspect – one that’s picking up on Eastern ideas and translating them to be more easily understandable to Western minds.  I saw myself gradually picking up on the possibility that this thing usually called ‘enlightenment’ is available to every single person. It was first introduced to me in distinctly spiritual-religious terms and that’s the context in which I’ve been most familiar with it.

The third leg of the stool, for me anyway, is the psychotherapeutic, which itself contains both the resonance and a bit of a ding-dong where spirituality is concerned. I’ve found myself playing musical chairs quite a lot of the time, but perhaps that’s just part of learning to get my head round all of these, discover ways to strip out the complicated and the inaccessible, find and focus on the simple.

The particular struggle I’ve found myself grappling with is being able to weave and integrate all these strands together. To be able to talk about the same thing using different language, and especially language that’s accessible. As recently as a couple of years ago (and perhaps even more recently than that), I thought I could only be accepted if I was using the same language as everyone else, especially in the A Course in Miracles / Way of Mastery communities. Oops – and I no longer worry about that one either.

The big lie – and, really, the big joke – is the one about there being an external God, à la theism, the Judeo-Christian God. The one who’s willing to condemn and punish as soon as forgive and bless. Hmmm.  Feuerbach, who if I remember my textbook correctly was a friend of Freud, suggested that this understanding of the divine is a projection of that part of the human mind that wants to externalize everything. To that, I’ll add the divided mind, the one that relapses into fear, judgement and resistance as soon as relaxing into simply being, laughter and mischief.

The thing about the Way of Mastery form of teaching is that the language is oriented towards the Judeo-Christian. I’ve been highly reluctant to use that form of language in safetycomfort, and I’ve also been through a fair few occasions of getting my knickers in a twist about it – the easy way through that is just to remove my knickers :p

… but, ’tis all part of the ride.  Over the last few months, while still holding the content of what I’m learning and becoming more relaxed about the language, I’ve also started being able to integrate ways of talking and writing about all this stuff in ways that are more akin to happiness, mystery, beingness, presence, innocence, grace, laughter, chocolate, trees, children, river, sky, flying …. life. Life life life life LIFE. Dancing, sensual, touch, peace, ridiculous, singing, cat, hammock, tears, kettle, fragrance, breathe, silence.

Today’s thing that started off this piece of writing came from Brian Piergrossi, The Big Glow ~ “Someone seeking enlightenment is like a grasshopper trying to understand what it is like to be a grasshopper.”

so … like a human, trying to understand what it is to be fully human. To be fully alive, without anything in the way. Awareness that is pure and clear, being able to simply be with what is, without needing to interpret it, give it a name even. To allow not-knowing. To feel joy, expanding, the unconditional.

This weasel-word enlightenment, there’s nothing to get, nothing to seek. There is increasing intimacy with true Self, and from that inner place of ever-deeper knowing, this is the source of authentic relating and offering service, of taking beingness into the world.

There is a dismantling of what is false. Those ideas I’ve grown up with, that appear to separate me from my beingness, stored in the psychological basement. Some days I’ll venture into that basement, and do a bit of clearing out of those things that stop me embracing fully, dissolve the false self, shift into truth.  There are times for that clearing, and there are times to say To hell with it, let’s play.

right in this moment, I feel it comes down to the simple willingness to be fully alive, to come out of the hiding place … and the name safetycomfort feels ever more redundant.  hmmm, barefoot suggestions, anyone?  The Naked Mystic? Barenakedmischief.com? I spot a theme … ;-)

This aspect of the shadow shows up as fear around communication, silence, absence, togetherness, apartness, uncertainty, over-thinking, independence, intimacy, false self … sensing the disconnect from authentic self.

I asked myself what I most crave, and the answer surprised me: As I was writing the word communication, it changed half-way through – from communication to communion. Constant inner communion with the deep self, of being able to trust that self … I’m guessing that if I haven’t been able to trust myself, then that comes down to having lost the experience of inner communion and knowing what is true for . . . → Read More: Intimacy sunrise: Finding ways through old relationship patterns]]> Today has been a ‘shadow day’, in which I’ve seen and felt some big ouches, linked to my previous post about (not) losing the self and staying authentic in relationship. They bubbled to the surface and built into tears and a resolution to do some process work this evening. I also felt the impulse to pick up and begin reading John Welwood’s book, Love & Awakening: Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while now, and tonight I did. I’ve read a couple of chapters and it’s already blown my mind.

This aspect of the shadow shows up as fear around communication, silence, absence, togetherness, apartness, uncertainty, over-thinking, independence, intimacy, false self … sensing the disconnect from authentic self.

I asked myself what I most crave, and the answer surprised me: As I was writing the word communication, it changed half-way through – from communication to communion. Constant inner communion with the deep self, of being able to trust that self … I’m guessing that if I haven’t been able to trust myself, then that comes down to having lost the experience of inner communion and knowing what is true for me.

I stayed with the realisations, this new sunrise, and began to see through this old pattern of losing myself in another, so detrimental to my own experience of being – and to see through the lines of thinking originating from the false self, especially around communication and fear.

Communication and union = communion, which is already there within, and intimate relating becomes a way to extend that communion, instead of seeking it outside.

By getting lost in the other, the felt-connection to deep self disappears. When that goes, it becomes impossible to truly connect with another, and I start relating from the false self, the one that contracts into fear.

so, the key to not getting lost is discovering first what is authentic to me, and then maintaining the felt-sense of connection-communion with that authenticity and inner truth. Learning to live in that communion – an ongoing living meditation, a dwelling in presence with self – means I no longer need to look outside myself to find it, and risk losing myself again.

The relating points back to my own inner journey, because of what unconditional love asks of me, to expand beyond the old psychological cage-bars. The purpose of relating changes, and instead of seeking happiness outside myself by merging with another, it becomes a path to deeper self-knowledge and liberation, especially when two people agree to share this purpose in relating. As Eckhart Tolle said, “Relationships aren’t there to make you happy. They’re there to wake you up.” (A New Earth).

I wrote yesterday about knowing and being known, seeing and being seen. There’s something here about the path into deeper awareness and intimacy, with both self and other, that I can feel – something to do with the balance between knowing self and knowing other, intimacy with each. Relationship with the purpose of increasing awareness and transformation, rather than relationship that gets stuck in a rut.  There’ll be more for me to write on this, hopefully more clearly, when I’ve given it chance to settle a bit ;-)

Yes, more dismantling has been done this evening. It fits seamlessly alongside work I’m already doing in therapy, and in the wider context of the work begun in January – beginning to find that inner core of truth, amid many trip-falls and downright fuck-ups.

and … breathe. In Fierce Wisdom, I wrote, I have forgotten how to breathe. And, I am remembering how to breathe …

This post is one step of many along the way. The understandings I’ve written about here will bear deeper settling, and feeling my way through into how to live them. I feel entirely different at the end of writing this than I did before starting tonight’s process and reading … let’s see how it settles, begins to permeate, continue to shift me.

***

“Like the sun’s rays that cause the seed to stir within its husk, love’s radiant energy penetrates the facade of the false self, calling forth resources hidden deep within us. Its warmth wakes up the life inside us, making us want to uncurl, to give birth, to grow and reach for the light. It calls on us to break out of our shell, the personality-husk surrounding the seed potential of all we could be.

The purpose of a seed husk is to protect the tender life within until the time and the conditions are right for it to burst forth. Our personality structure serves a similar function. It provides a semblance of security, as a kind of compensation for the loss of our larger being. But when love’s warming rays start to wake us up, our ego-shell becomes a barrier restricting our expansion. As the germ of life swells within us, we feel our imprisonment more acutely.

The urge to break out of our dark shell also activates our demons, the voices of our fear, which urge us to stay safely ensconced behind the walls of our habitual defences. In showing us the way out of our prison, love forces us to do battle with these demons, for they are our prison guards.

…Awareness born of love is the only force that can bring healing and renewal. Out of our love for another person, we become more willing to let our old identities wither and fall away, and enter a dark night of the soul, so that we may stand naked once more in the presence of the great mystery that lies at the core of our being. This is how love ripens us – by warming us from within, inspiring us to break out of our shell, and lighting our way through the dark passage to new birth.”

~ John Welwood, Love & Awakening: Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship

***

“To find the soul one must step back from the surface, [go] deep within, and enter, enter … and then there is something warm, tranquil, rich, very still, and very full, like a sweetness – this is the soul.”

~ Mirra Alfassa, in John Welwood, Love & Awakening

I have a long previous pattern of losing my sense of self in relating, of being completely subsumed in the other person. I forgot who I was and what I wanted, except that I wanted to drown in them (“drowning in the sea of love … where everyone would love to drown” – Fleetwood Mac).  It hurt to experience myself as being separate from them, to not have the complete unity, merging, apparent bliss of riding high on togetherness. Sex (when it wasn’t painful) was almost like an attempt to have the other person in me so completely that I was frustrated that the feeling of being filled could only go so far.  My sense of boundaries disappeared, and it was easy to say too much about myself, not respect myself enough to know there are some things that simply stay within my own personal experience.

Another way of putting it would be that I wanted the other to see into me so clearly and so deeply, to be . . . → Read More: On (not) losing myself in relating, & staying authentic]]> This is an exploratory piece I’m writing on the fly to see what comes, and a piece where I’ll let the process of writing itself shift my experience and understandings.

I have a long previous pattern of losing my sense of self in relating, of being completely subsumed in the other person. I forgot who I was and what I wanted, except that I wanted to drown in them (“drowning in the sea of love … where everyone would love to drown” – Fleetwood Mac).  It hurt to experience myself as being separate from them, to not have the complete unity, merging, apparent bliss of riding high on togetherness. Sex (when it wasn’t painful) was almost like an attempt to have the other person in me so completely that I was frustrated that the feeling of being filled could only go so far.  My sense of boundaries disappeared, and it was easy to say too much about myself, not respect myself enough to know there are some things that simply stay within my own personal experience.

Another way of putting it would be that I wanted the other to see into me so clearly and so deeply, to be utterly known … to be seen, to be told that I am OK.  The irony is that in the willingness to forget all my own interests, wants and enjoyments, I was declaring myself to be not-OK, that the other person was OK, and needing them to tell me that I was OK.  The second thing about that is I don’t think it’s possible to be entirely known. I can go as deeply into intimacy as it’s possible to go, but ultimately, I feel it’s simply not-knowing, the experience of mystery and presence at the heart of all things. And, being able to experience that presence in another person, and doing the work to clear out the psychological baggage in order to be able to step more and more into true intimacy, the unconditional.  I feel that’s what I was looking for via this experience of losing myself in another – I wanted to be able to merge with love itself, and looking outside myself for it. But it’s inside. I sit here typing this, and I close my eyes and breathe into this moment, this aliveness, aware feeling.

I think there’s a danger on some spiritual paths (especially the non-dual ones connected with spiritual awakening / enlightenment) that oneness and unity are interpreted as ‘merging into the whole’, that there’s no sense of self any more, that the idea of individuality is denigrated and rendered worthless. I haven’t yet understood enough about the path I’m on to be able to offer a more substantial comment right now. But I’ll say this: If it’s all meant to be sameness and merging, then why is there an abundance of individual creative expression, daffodils and tulips, thrushes and sparrows, you and me?

So, my quest, starting in about August 2007 was to begin extricating myself from this cat’s cradle of not-OK, to be able to have my own life even while relating intimately with another, though it felt very scary. I trace it back to that particular time (even beyond this particular phase of the process that I started three months ago) simply because that’s when I had a clearer understanding that I’d lost myself again in relating, with L, and I didn’t know the way back. I am aware I have also spent years seeking that validation, that sense of “I’m OK”, permission to be, terrified of criticism and getting it wrong, walking on eggshells for fear of causing offence.  I’ve had acute anxiety over this feeling of not-OK, that everyone else was doing their individual thing and I had somehow to imitate it – but, what a way for a soul to torment itself … so much uniqueness, but no ‘permission’ to embrace one’s own unique self. Sheesh.

I have mentioned before that the cycle of seven of ages 35-42 is one of individuation, where a person will start really looking at their life and working out what’s authentic to them, and what isn’t. At 37, I am right in the middle of this, and it feels like a transition time.  I’m very happy to be able to say that the acute anxiety of not-OK has dissipated to the extent that I worry far less about having to match what others are doing, although there’s still bits and pieces there around the edges. Now it’s a case of “Right, so what’s MY contribution to the world and how will I express it, be it?”  I’ve already mentioned that I’m in therapy, partly in connection with my training but my god, I’m so glad this is a requirement of the training. I am learning it is OK to have my own thoughts, my own feelings, my own ideas, my own life; that it’s OK to be an adult.

There’s a very recent photo of me, taken on Monday just gone, that almost shocked me when I first saw it because I’m so used to feeling like a girl rather than a woman. In this photo, the same one on my Facebook profile page, I realized there was a woman looking back at me and it was the first time ever I’d seen that in myself.  It says plenty about this process of the last couple of months, starting with my having facilitated myself through a pile of stuff about my dad; to be able to stop being “Daddy’s little girl” and to really begin inhabiting womanhood. And you know what? It feels brilliant – I have a big smile as I write this.

So then … not losing myself in relating, staying authentic.  By no means a linear, clear-cut path: having experienced more than three decades of feeling not-OK, and now shifting it, discovering what is true by feeling my way through something which can take weeks, and sometimes it’s a much quicker process to feel my way to the core of something; a few minutes, or seconds even.

Being able to stay true to myself means being able to trust myself, sometimes at the same time as learning to trust another (?) – right now I’m finding all those ways in which that ability to tune in and trust myself has simply been absent – as well as celebrating the many occasions where I have been able to feel that something is right, and to go with that. I remember well how a certain woman in the Baptist church was angry when I spoke of trusting my own experience, and her idea was that I should be obedient to God. Frankly, bollocks to that. I’d found something calling me, I found the courage to follow it and never went back to that church. My sense of connection to various spiritual things has taken a battering over recent weeks, especially those things I’ve trusted since about 21 or so, as part of this sifting process. I’m letting go of a load of books, yet again.

I have struggled a lot with communication and the understanding I arrived at a couple of days ago was that it’s linked to not  trusting myself … continually feeling around for the right thing to say, worried it’s always going to be the wrong thing even though I find it really difficult to intend harm towards another.  Seeing the feared anger and criticism sometimes reflected back to me, for not being good enough at communication or just ?%$£!*?!    Carrying this fear in the first place and somehow managing to let the fear screw things up so that I end up causing damage where none was ever meant, and this pattern coming up with some people but not others.  All of this used to show up as needing to keep asking, “have I offended you?” and compulsive apologizing. Thank the heavens I’ve been able to let go and move on from that.  There is still work to do – gently …  and the willingness to see all of this is part of clearing out the deadwood I have carried for decades around communication. It comes down to recognizing that this shadow-pattern has occurred again, and doing the work in myself in order to heal it. It starts with awareness and humility.

Through various hopes, dreams and feelings, all I can do is to keep listening. Listen to self, listen to other, stay open, let go of expectations, somehow find the way to the authentic shape of that relating. To step forward with courage (and now there are tears, dammit, but still with a smile).  To step out of the tendency to lose myself in another person, to wake up and discover what it means to be more and more true to oneself;  to experience simple beingness in the presence of another.

Over-eating is a defence against intimacy and being true to myself in the presence of another.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been doing quite a lot of work in myself regarding letting go of over-eating, dropping my barriers to intimacy, and letting myself be seen, in whichever ways these show up.

I’ve got one of those short dresses that are designed to be worn over jeans, leggings or other trousers, and I’ll be the first to admit that dress has been a very convenient cover-up for overweight, and by extension, hiding everything away underneath.

Anyway, last night I dreamt this dress had holes in it. It feels fairly obvious to me that this represents the barriers being dismantled. Darn good dream to have, and it demonstrates the effectiveness of the deep work I’m doing in various ways, and particularly with my therapist where even more barriers came down last week. Scary but utterly fantastic :-)

and I’ve now shifted enough of the excess weight that this particular dress makes me look way bigger than I am. Time to . . . → Read More: Dream: No longer needing to hide]]> A few posts ago, in Daring to be authentic and intimate, I wrote about an insight that came through:

Over-eating is a defence against intimacy and being true to myself in the presence of another.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been doing quite a lot of work in myself regarding letting go of over-eating, dropping my barriers to intimacy, and letting myself be seen, in whichever ways these show up.

I’ve got one of those short dresses that are designed to be worn over jeans, leggings or other trousers, and I’ll be the first to admit that dress has been a very convenient cover-up for overweight, and by extension, hiding everything away underneath.

Anyway, last night I dreamt this dress had holes in it. It feels fairly obvious to me that this represents the barriers being dismantled. Darn good dream to have, and it demonstrates the effectiveness of the deep work I’m doing in various ways, and particularly with my therapist where even more barriers came down last week. Scary but utterly fantastic :-)

and I’ve now shifted enough of the excess weight that this particular dress makes me look way bigger than I am. Time to let it go, both for itself and because I no longer need to hide away beneath it.

about four years ago, this thought came: listen to the silence

***

the ego-identified mind tells stories of criticism, punishment, panic it is afraid of silence and thinks it means absence instead of presence (this insight brings some tears … another strand becomes unpicked and liberated) all of it rising from the feeling of not-OK it experiences itself as not-OK, and its world is precarious

I have already done big work with this, and there is more for me to do … gently :-)

***

I return my attention to the breathing training myself to breathe from the belly instead of the chest

diving below the ego-identified mind, through the stories and into the infinite ocean of stillness

making my home in the breath this place of constant presence

***

just remembered that last night I dreamt I wrote a letter to Pema Chödrön thanking her for her grace and wisdom-kindness lovely dream :-)

Radical, because they go to the root of the issue, with the potential to save a lot of time when used skilfully.

and that it is possible to use same methods but without that particular language, as required.

and that the thing for me is to immerse in both, integrate them, and learn how to facilitate my own & others’ process using either or both as called upon.

Okay. I get it.

I’ve been doing a lot of inquiry work on my own, learning how to facilitate myself, together with learning to work with my therapist and letting her facilitate me too (I get far too independent, sometimes).  I’ve taken a back seat over the last couple of weeks, coasting after doing about six months’ worth of work in a short space of time. The other night, the word that came to mind was ‘slave driver’ – seeing how relentlessly I can push myself, in the (false) belief that this is the . . . → Read More: Integrating psychotherapy & spirituality]]> I have the distinct inkling that Way of Mastery and related teachings are a radical form of psychotherapy, either done on one’s own or in partnership, and dressed in a particular spiritual language (= framework of reference).

Radical, because they go to the root of the issue, with the potential to save a lot of time when used skilfully.

and that it is possible to use same methods but without that particular language, as required.

and that the thing for me is to immerse in both, integrate them, and learn how to facilitate my own & others’ process using either or both as called upon.

Okay. I get it.

I’ve been doing a lot of inquiry work on my own, learning how to facilitate myself, together with learning to work with my therapist and letting her facilitate me too (I get far too independent, sometimes).  I’ve taken a back seat over the last couple of weeks, coasting after doing about six months’ worth of work in a short space of time. The other night, the word that came to mind was ‘slave driver’ – seeing how relentlessly I can push myself, in the (false) belief that this is the only way to make progress. Nope, that’s just another disguise of fear.  It’s entirely possible to continue working, just more softly.  So, bye bye slave driver, out you go.

I wasn’t sure if I’d manage to fit a walk in today, and I’m glad I did.  Park, sunset, evening light, magnolias, birdsong, beautiful. Even if I was a little too tied up in knots to properly appreciate it, there were at least a few nanoseconds of seeing it :-)

Second full day of this training weekend tomorrow. In the meantime, the words are gentleness, hot water bottle and chocolate ;-)

This kind of eating has been slipping away over the last few weeks and my confidence is building; I don’t say ‘never again will this happen’, but I do hold the awareness that emotional eating is a tendency that may always lie under the surface, and it’s . . . → Read More: Transitions & barefoot scribblings]]> In sorting out my books I’ve just come across Jo Ind’s writing, Fat is a spiritual issue, that I first came across … oh, more years than I can really remember. Flipping through it to see if it’s one to keep or one to release, I read more, and began to see how far I’ve come. She writes about compulsive eating (been there, again more times I can even think to remember), all the inner arguments with myself over the years, all the emotional pressure from my parents … and how I have so frequently put my life on hold because of fear about judgment because of carrying excess weight because of emotional eating. The question is whether I have the courage to change even that, right now, or whether it’s simply continuing to be gentle with myself, not asking too much and letting these new things settle down and establish themselves.

This kind of eating has been slipping away over the last few weeks and my confidence is building; I don’t say ‘never again will this happen’, but I do hold the awareness that emotional eating is a tendency that may always lie under the surface, and it’s possible for me to learn to respond differently when I become aware of the inclination.  I see how I’m waiting to be physically hungry before I eat, and learning to stop eating when physically full.

The changes in eating patterns are being matched by visible weight loss, and letting myself be careful with that, keeping an eye on old tendencies to perhaps poke their head above the parapet and sneak up. Speaking of sneaking up, I was thwacked on the head by a seagull fly-past today (its wing – didn’t hurt, just surprised me, as it would). Perhaps it was Jonathan Livingston Seagull saying hello ;-)

Letting go of physical body-weight, I’m also noticing some other transitioning, which is showing up in this sorting out of books, questioning what to hold onto and what to release. It’s not a spur of the moment thing, I’ve noticed it arriving subtly over the last few weeks. Yesterday I was in what felt like a strange space, and today feels more level, but still very much in the place of not-knowing, unfamiliarity. A week ago, on Wednesday, it showed up as feeling disconnected from almost everything I’ve embraced previously (theology, feminist spirituality, paganism). Today’s walk reminded me of two recent-ish dreams. The first is Sunrise & open circle:

I’m moving into a beautiful, clear and open space. The view from the large windows is a radiant sunrise and some people are dancing and doing Tai Chi on the dawn grass. I decide not to sort out my remaining possessions but to give them away. Returning to the living areas after cleaning the bathroom in some detail, my flat is empty and spacious and there’s a feeling of purity.

and the second is another one that I know I remember, but have either written down and can’t find, or not written down. But I do remember it involved moving out from this flat and into another, by the sea and in Cornwall, and there was some mix-up in the removals, not being sure which of my possessions were coming and which weren’t, cluttered rooms and different flats. These two seem to symbolize various aspects of what I’m seeing right now – choosing to clear out in various ways, some more ‘external’, some more ‘internal’. And of course, the weight loss is its own clearout.

Cornwall seems to be a symbol of retreat and transformation – on the two occasions I’ve spent time there, it’s for time out and reflection, consolidating and making sense. I have thought of actually living there, but it doesn’t feel right.

I have made a tweak to the subtitle of this blog, changing it from soul scribblings to barefoot scribblings, as a way of stepping half-out of the safetycomfort space and towards an eventual barefoot space, however slowly or quickly that comes along (and it feels like this barefoot element is beautifully symbolised in the Sunrise dream).  Dreams have been sparse on the ground of late, perhaps because I’ve taken a step back from personal process work in the last two weeks … finding ways to continue the work, but more softly and eliminating the ‘relentless’.  Reading through my handwritten journal this afternoon, I was surprised by a lot of what I’ve written in the last three months.

In letting go of a lot of books in one way or another – again – I’m beginning to accept some moving on. I see how I have held onto theology, not for its intellectual philosophising but partly because my nine years of meanderings took me into the sphere of personal experiential writing; subjective academic, it could also be called.  New spiritual territory was full of rich potential, presented by mining the theology and religious studies section in the library and plenty of bookstores as well as reams of personal journal writing and various essays. I was about to write that I’ve never been one to stay in safe territory as far as exploring new spirituality goes, especially bearing in mind how I’m beginning to make steps beyond safetycomfort territory.

I notice, too, how my ways of talking and writing about the spiritual are changing. All through the theology years between 18 and 27, even having chosen to depart Christianity at 23, I probably still held onto a theistic idea of God as ‘out there’, and I couldn’t understand atheism at all.  I find it amusing to see how I’ve changed, no longer holding the theistic view – which, philosophically speaking, puts me into the atheist boat – while continuing to dive into the mystical. I don’t expect to be able to write about direct experience (aka mystical) in any words; to use a phrase from Buddhism, words can be like “the finger pointing at the moon.”  And I see no contradiction in saying, I don’t believe in God but I do have these experiences.  I suppose that’s another reason why I’m letting go of theology, allowing my focus on the psychospiritual and the therapeutic to be a portal into the mystical and the direct experience of being.

It has taken me five attempts to write this, and I had to start from left-field this time, but it’s flowed out … and that last sentence crystallized it for me. Yesterday I picked up one of my books, written by Nikki de Carteret, opening it at random and suddenly understanding something new (yes, keeping that one) and flipping through again now, I can feel the beginnings of a way forward that weave together with other current strands.

The other thing here is that I’ve wondered how much deafness has ‘cut me off’ from my perception of the norm, and perhaps I operate in some kind of bubble, where things perhaps feel normal to me but everyone else is going, “WTF is she on?!”

Writing that, and seeing a sudden wobble and tears come up, I realized I’ve just touched on something that’s been sitting under the surface for years. The thing that’s chipped away at the confidence, my ability to hold my own, know what it is I want without second-guessing or trying to fit in, either with what I think others expect (people-pleasing again), or what I perceive to be the norm, which could be utter rubbish anyway. So then, it just feels like being on the edge all the time, and perhaps my defence of hiding, waiting for approval, all the rest of it.

so it . . . → Read More: The feeling of being on the edge, & honouring oneself]]> In this culture there seems to be the assumption that if I follow my heart (as in, if one follows one’s heart), if I pay attention to what’s going on for me, set boundaries and learn to honour myself,  then this is selfish, narcissistic, navel-gazing and the rest.

The other thing here is that I’ve wondered how much deafness has ‘cut me off’ from my perception of the norm, and perhaps I operate in some kind of bubble, where things perhaps feel normal to me but everyone else is going, “WTF is she on?!”

Writing that, and seeing a sudden wobble and tears come up, I realized I’ve just touched on something that’s been sitting under the surface for years. The thing that’s chipped away at the confidence, my ability to hold my own, know what it is I want without second-guessing or trying to fit in, either with what I think others expect (people-pleasing again), or what I perceive to be the norm, which could be utter rubbish anyway. So then, it just feels like being on the edge all the time, and perhaps my defence of hiding, waiting for approval, all the rest of it.

so it almost feels second-nature to be on the edge, and yet, deliberately putting myself there, as in a choice to swim against the stream, honour my own choice to tread this path of remembering what I am … the path of the mystic, to drop down out of the ever-thinking mind into the pure silence of beingness, the unconditional  spaciousness that embraces all, yet is beyond the individual self … ‘the simple feeling of being‘, as Ken Wilber puts it.

… that deliberate choice to allow all of this, feels scary. Roller-coaster, Oblivion scary.

I am in an odd space today. It’s good, but it feels a tad strange – old things are slipping into the past, the V word (vulnerability) is showing up in all kinds of different ways … willingness to imagine, to be very open, to be intimate, to risk.

On Wednesday I felt completely disconnected from most of the past, and the future was irrelevant and all I have is right now. All the stuff about female oriented spirituality, paganism, theology, the whole lot, just felt … ??? I still feel like I’m walking a rope bridge across the Grand Canyon, but I also have the sense that it doesn’t really matter, because what no-one’s ever pointed out is that the Grand Canyon is lined with invisible cushions :p

A couple of years ago I had this dream: I jumped out of an aeroplane without a parachute, sky-diving through a vast expanse of blue, and I landed … on my bed :-)  It feels a bit like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, too – ah, I’m so glad that came to mind just then, because JLSeagull was also on the edge – he went out there and did his thing, endless practising of flying skills because that, in his heart, is what he wanted to do, even though the other seagulls looked at him and said, “WTF is he on?” But he carried on regardless.

and coming to FB to post this, the post immediately before mine in my Newsfeed is a quote via London College of Spirituality, and it’s so perfect – “You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself” ~ Alan Alda

Somehow I sense you and I are holding each other’s hands in this adventure of being-ness.

and with that, it’s time for a cuppa & some music, perhaps a walk by the river and more birdsong :-)

I was diagnosed with deafness when I was three. I have 30% of hearing in my left ear, and 70% in my right ear, but for whatever reason the situation with my right ear wasn’t picked up until I was eleven. Back in the 1970s, digital anything was probably science fiction, so it was an analogue aid for the time being. I was also a late talker, so there was a year of speech therapy school before mainstream school all the way from four to eighteen.

I consider myself fortunate in that my intelligence helped compensate for sensory deficiency, plunging myself into books from early on, and having a reading age of twelve by the time I was eight. I only wish it had helped on the social front, so my confidence has . . . → Read More: Peace, love & digital hearing aids]]> For a while now I’ve been looking at my experience of deafness and how I educate people around it, especially as my understanding of it continues to change and I have wondered whether I am being entirely consistent with it. I’ve concluded I’m probably not, but in a learning process, there’s not likely to be much consistency so that’s a cue to relax a bit more.

I was diagnosed with deafness when I was three. I have 30% of hearing in my left ear, and 70% in my right ear, but for whatever reason the situation with my right ear wasn’t picked up until I was eleven. Back in the 1970s, digital anything was probably science fiction, so it was an analogue aid for the time being. I was also a late talker, so there was a year of speech therapy school before mainstream school all the way from four to eighteen.

I consider myself fortunate in that my intelligence helped compensate for sensory deficiency, plunging myself into books from early on, and having a reading age of twelve by the time I was eight. I only wish it had helped on the social front, so my confidence has taken some bashing over the years, and it’s only now in my late thirties that I feel like I’m able to begin spreading my wings to have a go at flying.

Possibly due to the mainstream schooling, I’ve never felt part of the Deaf community. I can sign the alphabet and I know the signs for Manchester and fish, but that’s it. They’re not exactly compatible with each other, so I don’t expect to make any great headway in deaf communication any time soon ;-) I’ve noticed how it’s frequently assumed that because I wear hearing aids – as deliberately  distinct from saying, I am deaf, and this is a recent switch – I can sign. Nope. I did try to learn to sign at college, but it didn’t last very long, due to lack of interest and inclination on my part.

I wore analogue hearing aids in both ears from eleven till about twenty-four, then had a break for about eight years from wearing any at all, due to how stressful I found it to wear them because they increase the sound-volume of everything, and it felt like Too Much Input.

I’ve had digital hearing aids for nearly five years, and getting used to them has been a trip and a half. Until I was about eighteen, my parents took care of the various consultant and audiological appointments, equipment and suchlike. I suppose it might be an expression of how sheltered I was that it took me until my early thirties to realize I could start taking care of this sort of thing for myself. An appointment with an ENT consultant in my mid-thirties, to discover what kind of deafness I have, brought the information that it’s a mixture of nerve-deafness and conductive deafness (where the bones around the ear don’t grow properly in the womb).

The marvellous thing about digital aids is that each one is mapped to compensate for the particular pattern of hearing loss. I also have two different aids, a stronger one in my left ear than my right. I’ve sat and watched the various computer screens and how the audiologist plugs the aid into the computer to set the frequencies to match the audiogram (graph showing the pattern of hearing loss at various frequencies).  I can also have the hearing aid earpieces made out of a particular density material, so that when they’re switched off but I’m still wearing them, they double as earplugs – which I love to bits, especially as a way of managing Too Much Noise. I frequently walk around in town with them switched off … oh, the bliss of near-silence. I also wear them switched off while I’m working on the computer, to help with concentration.

I’ve been told that “I don’t come across as deaf”, which tends to make me think, well, how am I supposed to come across? although I realize too this probably just means the person saying it has had particular experience / perception of deaf people, and I don’t match that perception. If you listen carefully enough you might hear a slight speech impediment, and a couple of people who seem to have had a lot more experience with deaf people have also said that my speech patterns are similar to what they’ve heard from deaf people, but that I also do really well – and, I’m starting to get my head round that, to know I do well and feel far more confidence about it than I used to feel.  I lipread & listen.

Oh, and shouting doesn’t help. Ever. There’s this myth that deafness is about not hearing anything, therefore = silence, and in my experience that’s not true – but I can only speak for myself. I’ve realized there are a lot of different types of deafness, and I know nothing about any of them except my own. I can say I hear most things with my hearing aids – probably about 90-95%; I still need the subtitles on TV; most of the time I can get away with not having them in the cinema due to the surround-sound + hearing aid combination. The important thing is clarity. I reckon I hear at the same sound level = volume without hearing aids, but that this sense of loudness is artificially messed around with by the aids, so I probably have no true idea of how loud things are.

I have no idea how it is that, musically, I have perfect pitch and I can sing in tune, play piano by ear and a strong sense of rhythm, so bring on those dance classes – soon ;-)  I prefer lower registers, so I tend to veer away from sopranos, violins and flutes, and towards deeper voices, cello and bass.  In a parallel universe I’d play bass guitar in a rock band :-D

And, then there is the therapy training. I recently finished an essay on my preliminary thoughts about counselling, and there was no way I could have written that essay without also referring to deafness, bearing in mind that a central element of working in therapy is listening. Before I started training, I used to wonder how I’d manage, but over the last year or so, I’m seeing how it is that deafness can work to my advantage, due to the necessity of attention to create a particular quality of listening, especially cultivating whole-body listening. I tend not to take many notes in classes at the moment because I’m letting my learning-style change. I used to be very nervous – and sometimes this anxiety still surfaces – that I might miss out on what’s being said. I discovered recently that if I relax into simply listening, I’ll hear more via relaxing than if I tense up.

If I spend time with you I’ll walk and sit on your left because my right ear is better – or just sit opposite you. I’ll spend time with you on your own rather than in a group, because that helps with several things, not least managing attention and energy, listening, hearing, focus on you, the feeling of being attuned to you whilst learning to keep my own authenticity intact – an ongoing process, and I have no idea how much of my ‘stuff’ is related to deafness or not, but that’s by the by. In short, my deafness is a gift, and not a handicap, and if I had the opportunity to have full physical hearing right now, I’d rather stay as I am, thanks.

I felt a turning point and a remembering when I let myself go within and breathe deeply, feeling the invitation to step through some more of the resistance-defences my mind has been shouting about for however long. In that moment I felt I’d begun the online ashram I joined a couple of months ago, which I’ve been holding off from starting properly.

This morning, I posted my introduction on the ashram forum, and watched the first ashram video – they’re posted on YouTube as well. I managed to get through the hour – I’ll be watching it again, as there was another champion amount of resistance, but hey ;-)  I’m seeing the division in my mind – the part that loves and wants to follow this pathway, the part that kicks off in all directions and would rather stay just as it is, thank you.

I remember a . . . → Read More: Beginning again with the Way of the Heart]]> Yesterday afternoon I spent time with the local Way of Mastery group – we gather every few weeks for sharing conversation about our experiences on the pathway. Owing to discretion I won’t be sharing what anyone else has said, but I’ll share some of my own experience as I feel drawn.

I felt a turning point and a remembering when I let myself go within and breathe deeply, feeling the invitation to step through some more of the resistance-defences my mind has been shouting about for however long. In that moment I felt I’d begun the online ashram I joined a couple of months ago, which I’ve been holding off from starting properly.

This morning, I posted my introduction on the ashram forum, and watched the first ashram video – they’re posted on YouTube as well. I managed to get through the hour – I’ll be watching it again, as there was another champion amount of resistance, but hey ;-)  I’m seeing the division in my mind – the part that loves and wants to follow this pathway, the part that kicks off in all directions and would rather stay just as it is, thank you.

I remember a few months ago when I was so scared of writing about Way of Mastery stuff in here, allowing my fear of others’ opinions to hold me back. I seem to have moved through most of that now, enough for me to feel relatively calm posting this. About six weeks ago (?) I started the Ashram of the Heart blog in a separate space, then after a few posts, it felt like I was splitting off that writing because of fear, and then there was the choice to integrate into safetycomfort. So, that’s that then.

and there has also been the noticing how my mind was so entrenched in fear this weekend just gone, and that was another deciding factor in my choice to begin. A weaving together of psychotherapy and Way of Mastery work – and some giggles about “what the hell have I signed up for now?!”  … ’tis all part of the ride :-)

WoM has several elements – Way of the Heart, Way of Transformation, Way of Knowing, Way of the Servant, Jeshua Letters, Palpable Forgiveness, LovesBreath, Aramaic Lord’s Prayer, Radical Inquiry – those are the ones I can remember. Starting the ashram today is about beginning again with the Way of the Heart.

… this is connected to little-Josie, though I don’t know how old she is in this – younger than seven, possibly as young as three.  And so she began finding ways to defend, and it happened that one of these ways was food (especially sugary food) and over-eating.

I reckon the whole eating thing has carried many meanings for me, rather than being limited to one. But the insight that could even go to the root of it, and which follows hot on the heels of yesterday’s decision to let go of the weighing-scales is this:

Over-eating is a defence against intimacy and being true to myself in the presence of another.

I have never seen this before tonight.

It could also be why I’ve looked for validation all these years – ‘needing’ another person to say to me You’re OK, but never quite believing them deep-down. And then, a couple . . . → Read More: Daring to be authentic and intimate]]> Something that came up recently in my personal work was a pre-verbal sea of feeling that, when I asked inside myself for the felt-sense of words that could fit, these words were ‘not-OK, it is not safe to be here, and therefore I need to defend myself.’

… this is connected to little-Josie, though I don’t know how old she is in this – younger than seven, possibly as young as three.  And so she began finding ways to defend, and it happened that one of these ways was food (especially sugary food) and over-eating.

I reckon the whole eating thing has carried many meanings for me, rather than being limited to one. But the insight that could even go to the root of it, and which follows hot on the heels of yesterday’s decision to let go of the weighing-scales is this:

Over-eating is a defence against intimacy and being true to myself in the presence of another.

I have never seen this before tonight.

It could also be why I’ve looked for validation all these years – ‘needing’ another person to say to me You’re OK, but never quite believing them deep-down. And then, a couple of months ago, triggered by a particular set of events, the decision to dare begin stepping into and inhabiting my own life, and the various elements of personal work that have followed on from that.

I suspect that my beginning to take down these fences against intimacy – in my work by myself, in my ongoing work with my therapist, and in the demonstrations in training, along with everything I’ve just written about – could be strongly connected to why things are now slipping into place around food, eating, exercise and taking off the excess weight, perhaps for the last time.

and also, daring to write such personal stuff in here, in a boundaried open space, is also part of this process of letting go of the old defences. Letting myself see and be seen.

I am having a difficult time in therapy. I mentioned the other day that it’s one thing writing about deeply personal feelings, even online and in here, especially when they venture into the arena of sexuality. Talking about them in the physical presence of another person, well, that’s quite another thing altogether.  As I mentioned, I’ve started taking down these fences, with more than one person and especially with my therapist. The lid initially came off a few weeks ago – deeply scary. It came off again on Friday just gone, and I have no idea how tomorrow’s session will go. At least I have this particular insight to take with me.

‘Tis an odd thing, how there’s both the craving for and defending against intimacy and personal truth.

However, I do feel I have one particular cause for celebration in aforementioned feeling & sitting with this fear: I didn’t go running to food & overeating. My god, that’s such a major thing for me. I managed a weekend of anxiety coming in waves of various degrees of acute (and times when it disappeared entirely) and I didn’t want to run to that particular old pattern of stuffing it down. So, however much work there remains for me to do with the fear itself, I am so happy with that particular element.

I have decided to get rid of the weighing scales. I’ve let them dictate to me for thirty years – but, no more. I would rather see my progress in shifting this excess . . . → Read More: Happy progress amidst the ouch]]> I’m able to write this in a calm space, having needed to reach out and ask for help earlier, which I gratefully received when it was offered. It has been a long time since I was in that kind of anxiety space, which is good in its own way – and also shows me how deeply the fear is rooted, how my mind so easily gets tied up in its own mental spaghetti.

However, I do feel I have one particular cause for celebration in aforementioned feeling & sitting with this fear: I didn’t go running to food & overeating. My god, that’s such a major thing for me. I managed a weekend of anxiety coming in waves of various degrees of acute (and times when it disappeared entirely) and I didn’t want to run to that particular old pattern of stuffing it down. So, however much work there remains for me to do with the fear itself, I am so happy with that particular element.

I have decided to get rid of the weighing scales. I’ve let them dictate to me for thirty years – but, no more. I would rather see my progress in shifting this excess weight in terms of being able to wear this or that item of clothing I’m so looking forward to wearing. I enjoy quite a lot of Joe Brown’s clothing – especially the short-dress-over-jeans look, and  I have a couple of their catalogues which are good additional motivators.  And I don’t want to be thin. It doesn’t feel like fun, and I have a strong inkling my body won’t do thin anyway.  I simply aim to be comfortable and relaxed in what I wear and how I present myself.  I love appreciating clothes – I’ve never had much confidence where clothes are concerned, so I’m a bit of a late starter in terms of that, but still better to start late than not at all. I want a kurta (an Indian shirt) and I want to wear lots of white on top, with colourful scarves, and jewellery, and ankle bracelets. That’ll do for starters …  my black Doc Marten boots could do with a dusting off as well … oh, and I had a dream the other weekend about dyeing my hair dark red (I’ve done that before, & received compliments).

I am aiming to do two walks a day, one in the morning, one in the eve, for about an hour each. Big hills, good hard cardio workouts. I found some ‘new’ hills today – all welcome in terms of variety. Today’s long walk took me into parts of this city I hadn’t explored before … I came across a friend by surprise – lovely to see her, and the conversation – and the gorgeous magnolia trees, the quietness of the area, the birdsong, the signs of spring.

and yes, safetycomfort is in a slightly new home – safetycomfort.org.  I’ve had a few tech issues over the last 24 hours, and I think the RSS feeds are somehow looking for the previous site – but I think the main tech stuff has been sorted, so I’ll leave things as they are for now. I’m still inclined to think that I’m starting to outgrow safetycomfort in some ways, even given the rough ride with anxiety this weekend. I say this because of my increasing willingness to stop hiding away, come out into the open (even with new boundaries in place while I’m letting that happen) and share more nakedly, step out on that limb more readily … somehow learn to resolve the anxiety that currently comes with doing this.  I mentioned something about having a ‘barefoot’ site at some point – barefoot being connected with naked, natural state, barefoot on the earth, heart-sharing, that sort of thing. Anyway, I’ve come through this techno-kerfuffle so it can stay as is for now … and with that, I’m going to listen to some music to help relax me some more, & go to bed.

so then, when a walker feels lost, what do they do? Stop walking, find a handy rock to sit on perhaps, have a cuppa, get out the map and the compass, check navigation …

and the equivalents here … seeing how up on the surface of the ocean, the waves are busy, noisy, in perpetual motion … and diving down below, there is stillness. Focusing my attention on the heart chakra, breathing into the heart by intention, slowly and deeply … focusing on the solar plexus, breathing into the solar plexus … noticing how the attention slips back to the thinking, bringing my attention back to the breath … focusing on the belly chakra, feeling how breathing into the belly brings the sense of carrying wide open sky … I can . . . → Read More: Seeing past fear-thoughts into spaciousness]]> I’ve been watching myself dither, dither and dither some more about allowing myself to immerse in the Way of Mastery pathway. I know full well why: it’s that part of the mind that’s so fixated on fear, it can’t or won’t see past it.  hmmm … won’t is more accurate, I feel, because the deeper part of me knows it’s possible to see and feel past the fear.

so then, when a walker feels lost, what do they do? Stop walking, find a handy rock to sit on perhaps, have a cuppa, get out the map and the compass, check navigation …

and the equivalents here … seeing how up on the surface of the ocean, the waves are busy, noisy, in perpetual motion … and diving down below, there is stillness. Focusing my attention on the heart chakra, breathing into the heart by intention, slowly and deeply … focusing on the solar plexus, breathing into the solar plexus … noticing how the attention slips back to the thinking, bringing my attention back to the breath … focusing on the belly chakra, feeling how breathing into the belly brings the sense of carrying wide open sky … I can still see the thoughts on the surface, but I don’t have to pay attention to them … coming back to the spaciousness in the belly, suddenly feeling how my sense of self is expanding beyond the body … and now, breathing into the root chakra, and the words that come are stability, anchor, depth … okay.

and the feeling that comes is, don’t rely on my thinking, or my perception of what is happening, to give me the sense of things are okay – thoughts come and go, they tie themselves into various spaghetti-like patterns, perceptions are wonky and not necessarily rooted in truth – and before I know it I’m in a whole heap of ouch. But in the writing of this post, doing the breathing here and now to discover what happens when I allow it, I begin to see how it is far easier to drop into spaciousness and peace via breathing, especially descending into the lower energy-centres.

Yes, there is still the work of unravelling the stories I tell myself. This will come. This work with breath and attention teaches me how to sit with the vulnerability, the open space of groundlessness and nothing to cling onto. Fantastic training :-)

I was not anticipating such a difficult therapeutic session. It felt like the lid came off all over again, in this process of healing shame around sexuality. Using the TA lingo, I could feel myself flipping from Adult to Child to Adult and back again.  My therapist is a very safe woman and she holds the space well; I’ve had relatively few sessions with her, but I’ve already gone into deep stuff that usually comes along much later. Today touched on some of that, again.

I own some stunning artwork created by a beautiful friend of mine, that came along more or less as I was beginning this process of healing shame and which is making a significant contribution to this process.  I took it along to show my therapist, and she . . . → Read More: Healing shame around sexuality: the process continues]]> I’m eating a bowl of raspberries, blackberries, chopped banana and yoghurt. A small thing, perhaps, but given that I realized I wanted this instead of the sweet pancakes I’ve just made for my flatmate – originally for both of us, a small concessionary treat  – this is another personal triumph. Especially as today has felt like several rounds in the boxing ring in terms of emotional impact.

I was not anticipating such a difficult therapeutic session. It felt like the lid came off all over again, in this process of healing shame around sexuality. Using the TA lingo, I could feel myself flipping from Adult to Child to Adult and back again.  My therapist is a very safe woman and she holds the space well; I’ve had relatively few sessions with her, but I’ve already gone into deep stuff that usually comes along much later. Today touched on some of that, again.

I own some stunning artwork created by a beautiful friend of mine, that came along more or less as I was beginning this process of healing shame and which is making a significant contribution to this process.  I took it along to show my therapist, and she loved it. Being able to talk openly about sexuality on a blog is one thing; being able to talk about it in person is entirely another, and that’s the current ouch point, that sent me reeling into feeling like a very vulnerable little girl. I didn’t actually dissolve into tears, but I could have. There’s a way for me to go yet … but I am also celebrating success thus far :-)

Today, too, I have also been watching – and to some extent believing – old thought patterns rooted in anxiety. It’s taken most of the day to somehow find a way to go within, ground and centre, simply breathe and know that whatever transpires, all is well. There is still work for me to do on this, but I also realize that every time I choose to notice the pattern enacting itself, I have that choice to go within again, close my eyes and breathe, forgive myself for covering over the peaceful inner silence with mental clutter. Without the opportunities to practice, right here on the ground, I won’t get to improve, so I’m grateful for today, however hard it’s felt.  I know this in my head, but boy, actually letting myself go for it … phew.

And I finished my essay, and submitted it. I’m so used to Adobe InDesign for layout and formatting, that trying to use OpenOffice Writer felt almost insulting ;-) After a ten year gap in academically-oriented writing, I’ve forgotten some nuances of the Harvard Referencing System so I may have to correct a few details, but those are easily sorted. I’m just happy that I’ve finished the piece. This piece was “Preliminary Thoughts on Counselling”, almost three thousand words written in a single epic session on Monday night, and writing the conclusion, slightly editing it and listing the references today. Having got some momentum going, my inclination now is to continue and make a start on the next essay, or perhaps take another approach and start using my reading to write mini-essays; I’m realizing a central way of learning for me is by shaping my reading / reflections into words, blog posts, what-have-you.  My only slight regret is that this newly-finished piece wasn’t really an apt container for the Gary Larson therapy-related cartoons I wanted to include … so I’ll have to include them here instead, as and when it feels apt. Larson = Genius.

I watched the film The Piano recently. I’ve known of it for many years and I’ve always been in love with Michael Nyman’s soundtrack, but for various reasons, it’s taken me all that time to actually watch the film itself. It now sits alongside The Hours and A Single Man as one of those films that goes straight to my core.  There is so much in that film … quite apart from the smoulderingly erotic unfolding between Ada and Baines, there’s the piano itself, the way Ada does not use speech herself but uses the piano to speak from her soul instead; the images of the piano on the beach with the waves lapping around its legs, my personal longtime love affair with the sea, and even longer love affair with the piano. I remember there being a piano in the house from when I was very young, and I don’t think my mother quite realized at the time that I felt so strongly about it. I was only a little thing at the time… two years old? One day it was gone. Another piano came along when I was seventeen, and I gave it away to a . . . → Read More: heart song, sacred feminine, barefoot writing]]>

I watched the film The Piano recently. I’ve known of it for many years and I’ve always been in love with Michael Nyman’s soundtrack, but for various reasons, it’s taken me all that time to actually watch the film itself. It now sits alongside The Hours and A Single Man as one of those films that goes straight to my core.  There is so much in that film … quite apart from the smoulderingly erotic unfolding between Ada and Baines, there’s the piano itself, the way Ada does not use speech herself but uses the piano to speak from her soul instead; the images of the piano on the beach with the waves lapping around its legs, my personal longtime love affair with the sea, and even longer love affair with the piano. I remember there being a piano in the house from when I was very young, and I don’t think my mother quite realized at the time that I felt so strongly about it. I was only a little thing at the time… two years old? One day it was gone. Another piano came along when I was seventeen, and I gave it away to a friend when I got divorced five years ago. I couldn’t leave it in the house I’d just left. One day there shall be another piano.

hmmm … I am listening to Tubular Bells II (something else I’ve been listening to almost constantly since I was about nineteen) … noticing these long-time themes that keep coming to my attention. Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac) as a symbol of the female wild nature and the sacred feminine, this awareness emerging in me between fifteen and twenty-one;  counselling and psychotherapy, another thing that came along at seventeen, to be noted for future reference. That year carried a lot of significance, especially as it was also the year that I sat with Dave in his car and our intertwined fingers sent electric shocks through my body. There was the first ever of my ‘flying dreams’ in which I also dreamt of the Jews and the Holocaust – I’m pretty sure I was part of it in the dream – and then I transitioned into another dimension, coming face to face with Jeshua, direct eye gaze … and then the glorious flying. The Jewish elements have cropped up regularly through the years too, even though there’s no direct ethnic connection that I know of. I am going to Israel later this year, on pilgrimage.

In The Feminine Face of God: The Unfolding of the Sacred in Women, Sherry Ruth Anderson speaks of the dream she had at the beginning of the process of writing this book with Patricia Hopkins. Shekhinah: the Hebrew word for the sacred feminine … and then the Torah, the most sacred object in Judaism, which is shown to be empty. “The Torah is empty… because what you need to know now is not written in any book. You already contain that knowledge. It is to be unfolded from within you.” … And the dancing patriarchs, Moses, David, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Melchizedek … they are all singing and dancing in the dream, “… because you, a woman, have consented to accept full spiritual responsibility in your life. … And you are not the only one … You will be teachers for each other. You will come together in circles and speak your truth to each other. The time has come for women to accept their spiritual responsibility for our planet … We [the patriarchs] are your brothers.  We have initiated you and we give you our wholehearted blessings. But we no longer know the way. Our ways do not work any more. You women must find a new way.”

I found this book when I was 21, in Mushroom Books in Nottingham (it’s closed now) and it’s been a strong light for me ever since. I’ve just opened it at random to see “listening to the silence of one’s own heart” for inner guidance.

Last week I read this piece at The Barefoot Heart (thank you April) and it’s another thing that turned me inside out – quite a few things are doing this to me recently ;-)  I had a wobble about this blog because I want to write in a barefoot space myself – it wasn’t the first time I’ve felt that. I have a hunch that safetycomfort will one day outgrow itself. My original reason for creating it lay in seeking safety and comfort by hiding away from the world, as the original incarnation of this blog was a locked one over at Blogger. I feel this will disappear as I continue to grow and be increasingly naked in my writing (with boundaries, which I’m learning to put into place in this sharing; they are still required). This is my 150th post … and, for now, safetycomfort continues, as a growing space for gentle expanding, until I am ready to step into the writing equivalent of ‘ten thousand acres of sky.’

too much writing from the head lately, doesn’t feel like ‘soul scribblings’.

a time to write, and a time to be quiet. all shall be well.

:-)

“How far is it necessary to delve into the past and identify the source of what trouble or limits us today?”

I would like to go further with that question, which I’ll hope to do in the process of writing this. I have no idea where this will take me, I’m just going to write and see what comes.

A few years ago, before I started digging into the kind of material I read now, I took for granted the idea of a basic ‘brokenness’, but I didn’t really know much about where that feeling of broken was coming from, only that I didn’t seem to be alone in feeling it. I suppose, at least subconsciously, I must have set out on a road of discovering for myself what it is that helps mend, and ‘does what it says on the tin’.

Having become aware in my late teens that I eventually wanted to pursue work in counselling and therapy, I haven’t really questioned that aspiration either – it’s just been there, waiting in the background . . . → Read More: Exploring understandings of healing & psychotherapy]]> Yesterday a friend raised a question about healing difficult personal experiences, a question which so fascinated me that it set this post brewing.

“How far is it necessary to delve into the past and identify the source of what trouble or limits us today?”

I would like to go further with that question, which I’ll hope to do in the process of writing this. I have no idea where this will take me, I’m just going to write and see what comes.

A few years ago, before I started digging into the kind of material I read now, I took for granted the idea of a basic ‘brokenness’, but I didn’t really know much about where that feeling of broken was coming from, only that I didn’t seem to be alone in feeling it. I suppose, at least subconsciously, I must have set out on a road of discovering for myself what it is that helps mend, and ‘does what it says on the tin’.

Having become aware in my late teens that I eventually wanted to pursue work in counselling and therapy, I haven’t really questioned that aspiration either – it’s just been there, waiting in the background for the right time to begin. Now that I’ve begun, I’ve started taking a much closer look, especially in the wider context of the psychospiritual ideas I’ve come across over the last few years as well as having started therapy myself.

At the moment, it’s quite hard to tread the line of “I don’t know”, partly because I’m working with a particular set of ideas (Way of Mastery, WoM) that resonates strongly with me and every time I read it, I fall in love with it again – which might be one of the reasons I resist so strongly ;-) However, even in that pathway, I see the encouragement to not automatically believe something just because it’s there in the text, but to let myself test it – be my own inner scientist, see what works in my own experience. I can only respect that, and be grateful for it.

I’ll be honest too in admitting to some residue of people-pleasing, although a lot has already gone. I’ve done plenty of work with the decades-old anxieties about validation – effectively, waiting for permission to tread my own path – and they’ve shifted so much I hardly notice them any more. I still notice some wobble about appearing to digress from the path to which I’ve apparently committed myself, which could well be some left-over from the old days of being an evangelical Christian and facing some considerable censure every time I even dared to voice a question. I mention this here because I notice how some of my thoughts centre on,”I’m not allowed to question the understandings of healing that I see in WoM, because if I question them, I’ll be criticised.“  The thing is, this statement is actually zero to do with WoM itself, and everything to do with my perception, based on difficult past experience. And that is precisely the point.  (I’ll run that “I’m not allowed…” statement through the Byron Katie questions sometime soon!)

WoM goes for the jugular – kindly, with love, but uncompromisingly – in pinpointing how perception and projection play pivotal roles in how I experience something, and takes me through various sets of exercises, teachings, and suchlike as part of awakening – a process I’d personally describe as essentially psychotherapeutic, but others might use a different framework of reference, which is fine by me.

Anyway, the point of this post is not actually WoM, but more to do with aforesaid perception, projection and how using various tools to dismantle and shift these can help change experience and understandings – or, as I would call it, heal those things that have hitherto felt unhealed.

This brings me rather neatly to the question of digging about in the past in order to pinpoint what it is that’s bringing the feeling of Something Not Quite Right – a deliberate understatement, bearing in mind some of us are struggling with heavy burdens to various degrees of horrible and to which I wish to remain sensitive. In the past several weeks, I’ve been addressing personal issues in connection with shame around sexuality, in which I’ve examined various patterns of relating in my own family, in particular stuff to do with my father which I hadn’t even thought of looking at until two weeks ago. There are things here that happened in a wide time frame, starting more than thirty years ago and up until relatively recently. However, the common denominator is that it’s all in the past.

Although I have come across various ideas bearing the names of eminent scientists – Einstein is one of them – who, according to my current understanding, have hypothesized that the appearance of linear time is an illusion and that all events are happening simultaneously – this by itself is enough to risk the continuing function of my brain, so I ain’t going there ;-)  I would rather dwell on something I can manage more realistically: consider my own experience in working therapeutically with myself, even given that doing so might mean using various forensics involving past events, my perception of them, and the emotion involved.

Over time I’ve come to using a particular combination of tools to unlock the emotion – developing my understanding of transactional analysis (TA), therapeutic writing, and the four questions used by Byron Katie. I have used these to good effect in my recent process and they have given me powerful keys to create emotional shifts, which I’m watching play out in how changes are happening for me, seemingly without conscious effort on my part. For example, my most recent work brought me to uncovering the core belief, “I need to be vulnerable so that you will look after me,” which, after using the Byron Katie four questions, brought me the turnaround of “I am an adult woman and I look after myself.”

The ways this is currently showing up is in noticing how before I’d done this work, I was struggling with basic things many other people would take for granted. Things like making sure I had enough clean clothes before a counselling training weekend, enough (nutritious) food in the flat. Things I’d struggled with since leaving home… 18 years now? The day of starting my most recent training weekend, I amazed myself with how easily I accomplished things I used to wobble over. Laundry, washed and dried, check. Enough nutritious food, check. Obtained new supply of thyroxine, check (and I’m remembering to take it every day). Collected new hearing aid batteries, check. It wasn’t just that day. Food shopping is becoming considerably easier. I’m putting on my trainers and going out for good hard walks, up some big hills to improve my fitness, which also ties in with the recent shift from “Don’t exist” >> subconscious death wish on myself >> “Be alive!”

It is something I’m keeping a careful and gentle eye on – not taking anything for granted, yet sufficiently confident to write about here, already. I’ve also got a way to go yet – for example, my water intake could do with being boosted considerably, and I stay up later than is good for me – but all things in good time. It’s happening, and perhaps one of the most prominent things is that I’m not pushing myself, in the way that a critical parent might – not holding myself against impossible standards, not letting a set of weighing scales take on an inner scolding voice. This shift is barely two weeks old, after all, two weeks in the context of decades.

I’m also aware that I’m very much at the beginning of learning to inhabit my own life. Concurrently with that, I’m starting to get better with saying what I want. Learning to discover what I want, and listening to it, honouring it … even if it happens to be different from what someone else wants – and there, again, the elements of not-people-pleasing and not-rescuing show up.

In coming back to the original premise, “How far is it necessary to delve into the past and identify the source of what trouble or limits us today?”  then my current understanding focuses on how those things carry an emotional charge that fuels reaction or set of unexamined beliefs about how things are. They’re unexamined, because they’re likely out of awareness, and doing the digging helps bring them into awareness and up to the surface to be seen.

I didn’t consciously know before my recent work, focusing on stuff to do with my dad, that I was carrying the core belief, “I need to be vulnerable so that you will look after me,” and then both this and the Byron Katie turnaround was so powerful that I could really feel it – a shock of realization on both counts. I didn’t know, until I noticed a particular set of thoughts and reactions towards another person that there was even stuff to sort out around my dad. It was because I picked up on the thoughts and did some internal questioning of what that pattern of thought was reminding me of, and which then brought me to two hours on a Friday night with a set of coloured pens and a wad of large blank paper.

And there was a box of tissues, to deal with the emotion as it came up. To let myself feel it, here and now; to let the expressed emotion be the equivalent of letting the air out of a balloon, or letting the battery run flat, unplugging the machine – whichever metaphor works.

This brings me to a different but related point. I don’t see this work as ‘healing my relationship with my dad’, but more finding and working with the material that carries the emotional charge, to dispel the charge. I did other work over the weekend in connection with my sister, but I have no idea whether or how that will actually change the relationship between me and my sister, because she has her stuff too (and in that dream, I gave it back to her). But, as far as possible, I’ll do the work that may need to be done to sort out my stuff, however deeply I need to go. It may be that she never speaks to me again. It is as it is, and I can’t fix that. She might be freezing me out, but it will bother me less (“F**k it”) because I’ll have done my own work in connection with it.

A corollary of all of this is how dissolving the emotional charge helps my perception to shift, and I can stop projecting it onto another person if that’s what I’ve been doing. There is more I want to write here, but I feel it’s for another post and besides, it’s coming up to 1am and I’ve decided to start shifting that daft o’clock bedtime – as distinct from going to bed at 3am … ;-)

The age gaps in my family meant that one of my aunties felt like much more of a grandmother, and I always loved going to see her. I was fascinated by Tigger, her tabby cat, and that was another way in which Auntie N & I bonded, because of the cat; my mother can’t stand cats and I’ve always loved them, as well as enjoying various cat conspiracy jokes a la Eddie Izzard and Gary Larson.

The last time of closeness I had with Auntie N was at a cousin’s wedding some years ago, and I treasure this along with other memories of going walking in the Peak District and South Yorkshire, sharing coconut . . . → Read More: Grandmother, Crone, Healer, Sage]]> Out on a walk yesterday, in beautiful spring sunshine and blue skies, I was thinking about grandmothers. Three of my grandparents died before I was born, and the last, my paternal grandmother, died when I was six. She lived a long way away so there wasn’t much in the way of bonding. I have a photo of me as a baby being cradled by her, and then I remember my father’s outbreak of crying (which scared me) when the news came through she had died.

The age gaps in my family meant that one of my aunties felt like much more of a grandmother, and I always loved going to see her. I was fascinated by Tigger, her tabby cat, and that was another way in which Auntie N & I bonded, because of the cat; my mother can’t stand cats and I’ve always loved them, as well as enjoying various cat conspiracy jokes a la Eddie Izzard and Gary Larson.

The last time of closeness I had with Auntie N was at a cousin’s wedding some years ago, and I treasure this along with other memories of going walking in the Peak District and South Yorkshire, sharing coconut snowballs and just having a good giggle. She died in April 2006, during my preparations to leave my marriage and about three weeks before I actually left.  Sometimes she shows up in dreams.

There was one single time I went to a spiritualist church in August 2007, six months after I’d moved down here, and the lady hosting the event came to me – we’d never met or spoken – and she said, “There’s a lady here, your grandmother [guessing, but significant given what I've already said], closely connected with your mother [correct, mother's sister], there’s an anniversary in April and one in September [both correct - her birthday was in September] and she wants to say to you, ‘I’m so glad you’re here’ – I’m getting a feeling of her picking you up and giving you a big squishy hug, and she wants to say Hi to your mum” [all of which feel like quite the things she would say].  I’m quite happy to have the feeling of truth with this, even though I’m equally happy not to rely on it as any sense of proof, evidence etc.

so… grandmothers. Looking back over the last however many years, I notice how I’ve created friendships with much older women, all of them ‘spiritual’ in one way or another, and some of whom have held that feeling-sense of grandmother for me. I came across the Crone archetype when I was first exploring paganism, and I see how I immediately wanted it – I couldn’t have cared less about Maiden, I could hardly relate to Mother at the time, but Crone – ah, yes. The feeling of ancient earth wisdom, strongly rooted, truth-telling, guidance that points within to trusting my own heart and soul … the wise and compassionate Elder.

For the last couple of decades I’ve been so focused on the idea that problems around eating and sexuality are automatically connected with the relationship with the mother, that the wider context has largely escaped me, apart from knowing there was stuff to sort out around my sister.  It’s only been in the last two weeks that I’ve realized there’s been work for me to do in relation to fathers and daughters, and now grandmothers … one thing at a time.

Last night I dreamed that I was a little Black girl, and my mother had rejected me in early life; later in the dream there was reconciliation and my mother acknowledged my existence.  I can only think this is also related to my sister, somehow, because although she’s my sister, she still holds a Parent place in my emotional landscape. (Why am I suddenly thinking of the film Rabbit-Proof Fence?)

I notice too how I’ve always wanted to be much older than I am – subconsciously carrying the idea that if I can speed up aging (yes, yes, I know) it will somehow bring me the wisdom I’ve associated with physical age. Yep, the grandmother thing, held and projected differently.  Writing it like that does rather stop me in my tracks and say  Whoa, stop, hold on a minute. I’ll also risk saying that I now wonder if this has influenced (not caused, just influenced) a long pattern of being attracted to significantly older women – and this is disappearing too; I’m finding myself much more able to connect with and appreciate women my own age, while continuing to treasure the friendships I already have.

The Be Alive realization brings me into the space of wanting and choosing to immerse myself in life now, not hanging on for some day in the future when I’ll somehow embody the wisdom I’ve craved … aha, I’ve just seen this very subtle ego-defence – the investment in this idea about the future, rather than recognizing and being in what’s already here right now. Suddenly there is a sense of slowing down time, of wanting to appreciate every nuance of experience, to breathe fully, to love unconditionally.

Image from Waking the Wild Spirit, © Poppy Palin

A very significant dream to me, in which the old structures / belief systems that had looked so fearsomely intimidating are showing up as dismantling themselves. The cathedral-like building does not actually exist, nor does the cemetery, showing . . . → Read More: Transforming old burdens, and radiant aliveness]]> Dream: My sister is driving me to London. On the way, we pass a fascinating old cemetery which she says she would like to look at more closely, and then a large cathedral-like building that looks very imposing on the outside, but on the inside it is empty and crumbling. Later on, we pass a single railway track that ends by veering off to the right into a harbour filled with water. She stops the car and we both get out, and she bids goodbye to me with warm, affectionate acknowledgement and “have a good life.” She opens the boot [trunk] and I place some carefully swept-up broken glass in there, which she acknowledges, and then leaves. I am in London to meet a friend, but I’m a couple of days early, and right now I do actually need to be at home. Another friend, who feels like a brother to me, helps me sort out transport arrangements to get home.

A very significant dream to me, in which the old structures / belief systems that had looked so fearsomely intimidating are showing up as dismantling themselves. The cathedral-like building does not actually exist, nor does the cemetery, showing how ideas carried for so long can be shown to have no basis in reality and are already shifting.  The railway track disappears into water – I have a feeling for the meaning of this, but it hasn’t formed itself into words yet. My sister’s affectionate goodbye is one of the key moments, bearing in mind she hasn’t wanted me to be around – the message being, “Don’t exist.” In the dream she is acknowledging my existence, and sincerely wanting me to have a good life. In life, she has also fiercely criticised me for moving away from my parents, and in the dream, here she is actually helping me to reach London.  The broken glass symbolizes … her stuff? and I am collecting the pieces and giving her ownership of them, which she accepts, even though she may not want to look at them just yet. It is saying, I am not carrying your stuff for you any more and I give it back to you.

I don’t yet understand the elements of being in London a couple of days early, or needing to be elsewhere / having another friend help me, although it does mean something that this is very much about family, intimacy and creating a family of friends.

The theme of ‘whose stuff is this’ and what I’m carrying is very pertinent. I notice how easy it is for me to step into Rescuer mode on the Karpman drama triangle – “Here, let me help you carry this burden – or carry it for you.” So, carrying, but not putting down … and then, a more empowering way might be, “I hold the space for you to bring your stuff, but I’m not carrying it for you, and I won’t carry it after you’ve gone.” So, questions for me here about whose burdens I might be carrying unconsciously, empathy, creating appropriate boundaries and taking care of self, both in life and in the role of therapist.

Over the therapy training weekend just finished, and together with many other transforming things, the message of “Don’t exist” has been replaced. I explored ideas about my fear of dancing and yet very much wanting to dance, wondering what dancing represents to me and the sudden, transforming insight is,  “Be alive!”

This one is already having a colossal impact. It is tied in with seeing and letting go of my old stories about fear of terminal illness, which might well be the internalizing of “Don’t exist.” It is also connected with my current explorations in intimacy and daring to be emotionally and spiritually naked.

I love orange juice. Not just any old orange juice, but freshly squeezed orange juice. Today I went to the juice bar at lunchtime and bought a 500ml tumbler of it, the first freshly squeezed juice I’ve drunk in a long time. And it was intoxicatingly gorgeous.

There’s a piece of music I’ve been in love with for a few years now, that carries the feeling of this vibrance and radiant aliveness.  I’m sharing the Live version here – in some ways I prefer the ‘studio’ rendering but I love the energy and aliveness in, well, live music. And I want to be able to play it myself on the piano :-) Enjoy.

Image: Dancing with the Sun, copyright © New Moon Visions & Mara Berendt Friedman, with thanks.

Although Tarot contains a lot of metaphor, this card carries some very literal meanings for me today. She’s wearing a blindfold, she doesn’t want to see … and when that becomes internalized, carried and projected, she doesn’t want to be seen either.

And she’s crossing her arms over her heart – “Don’t come in.”

Today I ripped off the blindfold and laid down the swords. There is nothing for me to defend. It is safe for me to be seen.

I’m noticing how the background is one of seawater, and this morning’s process in therapy training triggered me because I saw something very pre-verbal from childhood: It was a feeling of being immersed in a sea of Not-OK. And that I needed to protect myself from this feeling-environment of threat, of non-expressed “Don’t exist… it’s not safe for you to be here.” . . . → Read More: Ripping off the blindfold]]> I use Tarot for its archetypes and symbols, in much the same way as astrology as mentioned in the post New phase: Expanding, intimacy, balance and fidelity to self.  The Two of Swords came up in the recent three-card reading which my friend Larry did for me, a reading which focused on dissolving my barriers in communication.

Although Tarot contains a lot of metaphor, this card carries some very literal meanings for me today. She’s wearing a blindfold, she doesn’t want to see … and when that becomes internalized, carried and projected, she doesn’t want to be seen either.

And she’s crossing her arms over her heart – “Don’t come in.”

Today I ripped off the blindfold and laid down the swords. There is nothing for me to defend. It is safe for me to be seen.

I’m noticing how the background is one of seawater, and this morning’s process in therapy training triggered me because I saw something very pre-verbal from childhood: It was a feeling of being immersed in a sea of Not-OK. And that I needed to protect myself from this feeling-environment of threat, of non-expressed “Don’t exist… it’s not safe for you to be here.” I felt very isolated until I was about eight, and the first person I felt really held and saw me was one of my primary school teachers, who was like another mother for me.

The sea represents emotion, and there’s the moon – also emotion. In the Two of Swords, the sea is beginning to flood the land – yet another reference to the “sea flooding Cornwall” dream.

so… I said that I want intimacy, deep connection and friendship. The blindfold has come off. I am letting myself see and be seen.  Hmm – see, sea, intimacy, ‘into-me-see.’  My ability to keep eye contact in saying what I feel has already made a profound shift.

Onwards :-)

and to simply say, I do not know. it is okay not to know. I can be entirely peaceful about not knowing.

this persona I wear, who is she, in the stillness of not-knowing? who is she when I let my awareness descend below the froth, allow myself to be emotionally and spiritually naked especially in the presence of another, witnessing, no longer hiding, or needing to hide.

who is she, when she allows herself to be fucked by god, penetrated from within by mystery?

I’m remembering Paul Ferrini’s offering that fidelity to self is the essence of congruence, and this congruence is also one of the ‘core conditions’ of person-centred therapy. Counselling and therapy are not just about being in presence with another as part of their process. Of course I step into and out of the counselling room, but this fidelity to self, this is about the whole of my life and not just one aspect of it. Saying it like that might sound like I’m stating something obvious, but I still feel it’s a valid reminder to myself.

I am witnessing myself open to two particular people in very different ways, and rebuilding with another, again differently. Understanding the individual expressions, keeping friendship at the core, building trust and intimacy, feeling for inner truth, listening to self and another at the same time, and dropping expectations.

Old barriers and defences are dropping away. I can’t help thinking if this could be another aspect of the recent dream of standing atop Glastonbury Tor merged with Iona Abbey, watching the sea sloshing over the whole of Cornwall.

I use . . . → Read More: New phase: Expanding, intimacy, balance and fidelity to self]]> I can only be faithful with another when I am faithful to myself first.

I’m remembering Paul Ferrini’s offering that fidelity to self is the essence of congruence, and this congruence is also one of the ‘core conditions’ of person-centred therapy. Counselling and therapy are not just about being in presence with another as part of their process. Of course I step into and out of the counselling room, but this fidelity to self, this is about the whole of my life and not just one aspect of it. Saying it like that might sound like I’m stating something obvious, but I still feel it’s a valid reminder to myself.

I am witnessing myself open to two particular people in very different ways, and rebuilding with another, again differently. Understanding the individual expressions, keeping friendship at the core, building trust and intimacy, feeling for inner truth, listening to self and another at the same time, and dropping expectations.

Old barriers and defences are dropping away. I can’t help thinking if this could be another aspect of the recent dream of standing atop Glastonbury Tor merged with Iona Abbey, watching the sea sloshing over the whole of Cornwall.

I use astrology for its archetypal value, not in connection with the ‘This will happen’ cereal-packet pseudo stuff; how astrological archetypes and individual charts give indications of a set of conditions to be mastered, rather than dictating this is how it’s going to be. So, with a Libra moon, especially in the eighth house of relating, intimacy and sexuality, as ever it’s about mastering balance.

Knowing my own tendencies to seek merging and give away my power to another, perhaps one of the aspects of balance here is one of allowing openness while also discovering how to create boundaries and where they might be (my boundaries have been shot to pieces due to, oh, three decades and more of people-pleasing). So, bringing this into the whole thing of ‘inhabiting my own life’, standing on my own two feet and being independent, and recently having done some major process-healing work regarding my father (of which more perhaps another time), I have the feeling of expanding, but carefully. Care for me, care about another, allowing that other to care for themselves.

And that merging … the wish to create deep and strong connections, to allow the relating to be, among many things, a catalyst for personal growth rather than ‘feeding off’ another, or fixating on someone and losing myself, yet still discovering how to experience that which is unconditional.

All of this in the context of an awakening path that holds the experiential paradox of utter connectedness, yet individuation (as distinct from separation).

Then, noticing how I used to be terrified that there wasn’t enough love. I’ve done plenty of work on that one, but I noticed recently there’s still some tidying up to do around the edges – seeing a few twangs of jealousy and insecurity here and there alerted me to this. As I wrote recently, I am increasingly discovering how I am my own source of love, so there’s no need for me to seek it in another. Shakespeare described it thus:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

~ Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II

… and discovering how to experience that source of unconditional love flowing freely from within; continuing to clear out my own basement, let all projections come into the light to be seen and released – projections which get in the way of experiencing that infinite source. The dissolving of old burdens, no longer required. Not needing anything from anyone – oh, how liberating. This is the process I have already begun: discovering how I have been telling myself those various stories of need, seeing the stories themselves, and letting them slip away.

There’s a feeling of moving to the next phase of learning how to relate unconditionally, in whichever forms that may take, keeping a careful watch so that previous mistakes, learnt in the crucible of experience, are not repeated.

The balance of embodiment and transcending.

Understanding the felt-sense of connection, and knowing how I have struggled to create energy-boundaries; how I am now being given the opportunities to learn far more about energy; how each person has their own energetic constellation.

The delicious and individual blend of masculine and feminine within each person, and how the masculine and feminine are embodied in male and female – again, balance.

And, for allowing my own truth-telling, and stepping out on a limb, this piece of insight which arrived yesterday: Forget about whether the limb will break, but trust instead my inner source of strength, deeply rooted in the infinite.

a moment of lightness … making myself a hot drink in the kitchen just now, I was thinking about “the rollercoaster of psycho bloody therapy” and, for all the reflection, tears and general Oh My God, there’s also seeing the sheer fiddlesticks and flapdoodle of the human experience  – thank you, Professor Yaffle for that most sublime and ridiculous phrase :-D

having done some powerful inquiry work last night and this morning that showed me a great deal I hadn’t  seen cottoning on to some of it this week when I realized the beginnings of it and then, giving in yesterday evening and actually doing the handwritten journal-inquiry

then another significant dream last night and working with it this morning even more realizations, connecting the various understandings

this afternoon’s conversations with the small Way of Mastery group in which I mentioned my resistance to beginning the ashram, and my nervousness about breathing my terror of breathing deeply and how that has shown up physically … underactive thyroid linked to shortness of breath, appearing to mimic borderline asthma can’t stand to have anything tight around my throat and how learning to breathe properly is essential in both yoga and the foundation practice in Way of Mastery just being able to speak it in the group, being heard, and then letting myself begin to breathe more deeply big breaths

right now I am breathing frankincense, temple-grade incense from Adi Guru I am breathing silence

and before beginning to write this, before even . . . → Read More: prism: radiance light clarity shimmering depth blazing fire]]> I am looking at the world with new eyes today

having done some powerful inquiry work last night and this morning that showed me a great deal I hadn’t  seen
cottoning on to some of it this week when I realized the beginnings of it
and then, giving in yesterday evening and actually doing the handwritten journal-inquiry

then another significant dream last night and working with it this morning
even more realizations, connecting the various understandings

this afternoon’s conversations with the small Way of Mastery group
in which I mentioned my resistance to beginning the ashram, and my nervousness about breathing
my terror of breathing deeply
and how that has shown up physically … underactive thyroid linked to shortness of breath, appearing to mimic borderline asthma
can’t stand to have anything tight around my throat
and how learning to breathe properly is essential in both yoga and the foundation practice in Way of Mastery
just being able to speak it in the group, being heard, and then letting myself begin to breathe more deeply
big breaths

right now I am breathing frankincense, temple-grade incense from Adi Guru
I am breathing silence

and before beginning to write this, before even switching on the computer
breathing
and an inner Yes and a silent joy
coming in through the root chakra
the feeling of Yes to allowing the divine to enter me
and the joy that reminds me of another dream I had while I was working with Diamond Way Buddhism
a ‘flying dream’ in which endless clarity and joy bubbled up from within and spilled over
diamond mind
inner prism

right here and now I am allowing LovesBreath to enter me
i am being fucked by god
she who Is.

I wrote in my earlier post about the willingness to not-know, with particular reference to the default position of the scientist, ‘I don’t know’ and how, for me, this ties in with elements of my current understandings of Way of Mastery. This time I want to begin weaving my way through a few related aspects, as well as widening the scope to include the therapeutic.

Although I’ve not really regarded myself as much of a scientist, I’m beginning to take a fresh look at this. Having just stopped to think about it, I’m not even sure which words I’d use to describe the purpose of science. My immediate association is one of acute anxiety in the belly chakra . . . → Read More: Considering the scientific, mystical and therapeutic]]> For a long time, I’ve found comfort in the maxim, “Go on, in any way that works”, and this idea of what works is sufficiently colossal as to encapsulate inquiry in different fields, especially as some of them frequently appear to be on a collision course with each other. So, without supposing that one little blog post could begin to contain any of this – ha! – I still appreciate the space in which to continue some of my own exploring.

I wrote in my earlier post about the willingness to not-know, with particular reference to the default position of the scientist, ‘I don’t know’ and how, for me, this ties in with elements of my current understandings of Way of Mastery. This time I want to begin weaving my way through a few related aspects, as well as widening the scope to include the therapeutic.

Although I’ve not really regarded myself as much of a scientist, I’m beginning to take a fresh look at this. Having just stopped to think about it, I’m not even sure which words I’d use to describe the purpose of science. My immediate association is one of acute anxiety in the belly chakra because of horrible chemistry lessons at around age 13/14 , and my personally-infamous 38% exam mark in that subject for the Christmas exams, followed by an even more inglorious 24% for end-of-year (and computer science got me 12% – I’m a late-blooming geek, right?).

But in childhood, I gravitated towards science reading – I remember revelling in books about satellite technology when I was six, and when I was seven and eight, there were what felt like timeless hours in the wonderful reading room, being able to read about the discovery of penicillin, the space explorations, the first heart transplants and the Industrial Revolution. My parents kindly indulged me with many books about how things work, and I also remember thoroughly enjoying maths, with a particular memory of sitting peacefully in a maths lesson doing simultaneous equations.

I think some of the difference was due to a big gap in approaches between the school at which I began my 11-18 education, and the one to which my parents sent me when I was 13.  For this new school, I needed a lot of maths coaching, which I received with thanks to my brother and which later enabled me to demonstrate success. Looking at it now, I wonder if I’d have flourished much more in science and maths had science coaching also been available to me. The combined sciences approach of the first school did not help me when I reached the second school, at which the pure sciences were now taught as separate subjects and I promptly began to flounder. It rather wrecked the appreciation of science that had come naturally to me not much longer before, but I’ll always chuckle about Mrs Hubbard’s “periodic table” jumper. Fabulous.

Without running to the dictionary, right now I’d say that scientific inquiry is based on curiosity, a “What if …?” with the attendant questions of How, Why, Who and When.  Then, what does it mean? Does it mean anything? What if it doesn’t have a meaning, but just … is?

Can I experience something in pure awareness without needing to turn open-spirited debate into conflict-driven argument?  When does evidence of a phenomenon turn into relentless demand for proof, leading to more argument and defending? What are the internal drivers of inquiry – by which I mean, what’s going on in the mind, body and soul of the researcher, what is influencing perception, what bias might be there, what is the investment in a particular result? How might scientific inquiry be influenced by subtleties of group psychology and to what extent might there be unconscious people-pleasing, for example? In these cases, how far is it possible to trust the results?

I guess I’m talking about the difference between scientific inquiry that might be primarily ego-identified and thereby driven by fear at root, and science in which the practitioner is transcending that identification with ego, returning to the childlike innocence of What if? and the non-attachment to results to which I alluded above. What if science could be led by intuition, where the intellect is taken off its pedestal and is somehow allowed to play second fiddle to what feels right?

I’m not sure if I’ve entirely managed to convey my intention here, but that’s okay, it could work as a starting point.

so, to continue: What if there were no longer the set of collision courses, created by inquiry driven by a need to be right and forming a basis for argumentative defending, and instead, perhaps, “This happened for me … what happened for you? That’s interesting, let’s share, collaborate and explore, continue to experiment and play. None of us needs to be right.” No longer a perceived division between intuition, heart, soul and mind, but allowed to work together as one.

and still, there are the many-layered processes of inquiry that continue. All of this is not about sitting back and not bothering  any more. There is still the curiosity, there remains the What if, the hunger for experience, the desire to explore, expand my awareness … hmmm … a lot of ex’s there!  Please do not extinguish my excitement :-p

I’m not talking here about diagnostics, or other specifics of identifying the presence of illness and disease. This is more my stepping out on yet another limb to ask quite a lot of questions about something I’ve not really tackled before, but which is also coming from various wonderings over the years. I suppose it’s also a stepping back and beginning to see and question my assumptions. I’m sure I’ve missed plenty. Yet, my very daring to write this post is related to feeling more able to write it now than perhaps I could write it even a week ago. (update: I’ve already managed to pull it once, albeit temporarily: so, am now unleashing it into the wilds again).

so then, there are the many claims about what works, the various complementary and alternative therapies, the medical treatments, the pharmaceutical industry: I wonder how much of this, too, is driven by (unconscious?) psychological and financial investment (one example being the suggestions that the pharmaecutical giants invent conditions for which drugs can be manufactured and sold). Would there be quite so many claims as to the efficacy for this or that therapy / treatment method if these kinds of investment were absent?  I don’t mean not making financial investment at all, I’m referring to psychological agendas that drive financial investment, in order to create a result that serves the investor but not necessarily the person receiving the treatment.

With reference to the host of alternative and complementary treatments, some of which are regarded as ‘new age flim-flam’ by the scientific establishment, I’m quite happy to disclose that I’m trained in Reiki, which could just as well be regarded as another example of said flim-flam and therefore not exempt by any means from my inquiry as to whether it works. My experience is that it does, although I lost the ability to use it for about 18 months from October 2007, and it returned after a series of powerful dreams. I’d be very interested in being a test subject for an MRI scanner, in which I start using Reiki on myself part-way through the scan, to see what happens in the brain.

Another element of the “this works, that doesn’t” conversation could encompass the scientific / therapeutic understanding of the uniqueness of every person, and I don’t just mean personality but specifically our individual energetic constellations. What unconscious emotional belief(s) might be being held, that could result in a particular set of symptoms showing up in the body, and which might override even the most advanced pharmaceutical treatment?  Where is the balance in establishing whether a treatment works the same way for one person as for another and being able to account for these differences?  What is the role of the placebo and how it might interact with individual psychological makeup and formation of belief? How do the range of body-based psychotherapies work with treating the causes, and not just the symptoms of individual conditions?

What I’ve so far written about science, be it ego-identified or liberated from ego / fear, could be similar to what I see as being a key difference between religion and spirituality. I tend to regard ‘religion’ as being primarily identified with fear, a key driver in oppression, war, dogma, exclusion, murder – and that the journey of transcending fear brings the one journeying into the realm of spirituality and then, deepening, into the mystical, the experience of union.

I’m wondering if one understanding of the mystical would be the union of the spiritual with the scientific? where one has journeyed so deeply that no separation is perceived and that the experience is one of purity of being, both embodied and transcendent, not needing to prove anything but holding and trusting the experience of This, the I Am, in the singular moment, as sufficient evidence?

and writing this just now, my awareness shifted. I can only say that it shifted and I have no evidence of this except to say this is my experience, and I am sitting here at this computer, my fingers tapping on a keyboard, thoughts flowing through … and … ? Ultimately, I cannot prove it.

I suppose, too, that what I’ve written so far contains a large element of guesswork about what it feels like to be awake, to go beyond the identification with ego. That guesswork still contains a fair amount of experience coming from the last two years of having let myself go about ankle/shin-deep so far into Way of Mastery as one expression of a particular awakening path, the latest point of a journey that had already taken fourteen years (two cycles of seven, and it was literally ages 21-35).  Having had those two years of initial exploring, my questions to myself are ones of true willingness and commitment, seeing what remains of the resistance, knowing too that Jayem resisted for several years in the early parts of his own transformation.

I feel it important to bring therapy into these explorations, because sometimes it’s helpful to have conversations with a therapist in finding ways to ‘go on, in any way that works.’  But bringing the therapeutic into a set of explorations that started with mysticism and science might also bring objections from therapy itself:

“Counselling and psychotherapy have a problem with spirituality: it does not easily fit in with the professional and secular image that many therapists seek to present to the world. Many follow Freud in being dismissive of religion and of spiritual experiences” (William West, 2000:1).

West also notes,

“… both clients and therapists continue, like the rest of the population, to have spiritual experiences, though many clients remain too inhibited to raise such matters with their therapists. The process of therapy itself can, at times, have an overtly spiritual dimension to it: indeed, it is possible to view therapy as a spiritual process” (West, 2000:1).

I experienced this myself recently in a therapy session – I was really nervous about talking about my experiences with Way of Mastery, especially the channelling of Jeshua by Jayem that, together with about sixty others, I witnessed first-hand in August last year. As it happens, I’ve started coming through this particular nervousness, and that particular therapy conversation-snippet was probably one of the things that laid the way to being able to write about all of this in here.

For me the mystical carries connotations of deep, unconditional relationship, oneness with another, that which is beyond as well as here now, and pure clear awareness that can see everything as it is, rather than through the perceptual lens that is usually clouded with emotional baggage, the shadow self and unconscious projection, “the stories we tell ourselves about each other.” I feel the mystical is intimately entwined with the erotic, and is both embodied and transcendent (again, drawing on the writings of April and particular passages in J’s novel, plus what I’ve seen of Marcelina Martin & Diane Mariechild in Lesbian Tantra).

For quite a while I had felt a gulf between the therapeutic and the mystic, but less of one between the mystic and the scientific. The gap between the therapeutic and the mystic began to close when I started reading person-centred therapy, specifically Brian Thorne, beginning with his autobiography Love’s Embrace and then moving onto The Mystical Power of Person-Centred Therapy: Hope Beyond Despair. Reading Thorne’s work also marked my personal inner shift into allowing myself to not-know. I don’t know how that shift happened :-p  The mystic, scientific and therapeutic are held as one in Thorne’s comment on a eulogy given for Mary Kilborn. He wrote:

“…person-centred therapy can claim to be not only an empirically-researched therapeutic approach but also a mystical path for therapist and client which requires no dogma, no guru and no spiritual exercises. All that is required is a preparedness for two people to meet at relational depth and for one to be thoroughly schooled in the practice of offering the core conditions to herself and to the other who seeks her help.” (Thorne, 2002:5).

Thorne also quotes Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:

“The ultimate lesson is learning how to love and be loved unconditionally” (Kübler-Ross 1997:287 in Thorne, 2002:5).

and I feel this is where person-centred therapy begins to meet the experiential path of Way of Mastery.

As ever, there is more to come. I’m just getting started ;-)

Judith Duerk, Circle of Stones: Woman’s  Journey to Herself, p.53

My post about Considering the scientific, mystical & therapeutic is temporarily on hold. I wrote & published it, but this morning, I’m wondering this, that & the other and I haven’t yet reached a place in myself where I can sit peacefully with that uncertainty. More major dreams last night. All shall be well.

:-)

Fear and shame, again. Fear of judgment and still not quite getting that the only one doing the judging is me. I have a dim memory of having learnt this intellectually sometime in the last three years or thereabouts, and it feels a long way off, that I haven’t yet owned that understanding in myself.

I know full well I’m holding back from immersing myself into the ashram material, though this evening I did come very close to the edge of the water. I nearly wrote a post titled “The terror and peace of inner stillness.” In edging closer to letting myself go for it with the living enlightenment journey – and even this edging is, I suppose, part of . . . → Read More: The only one holding me back is me]]> Dammit. I’ve just been reading April’s latest post, Feels Like More Love Than My Heart Can Bear, and at once there’s both open-mouthed admiration and inspiration for the sheer willingness to be that open – knowing too I’ve already laid my soul bare several times recently – yet, still the knowing of holding back on my part and wondering how to open. Because, even though this writing space is called safetycomfort, I find myself running away from so much.

Fear and shame, again. Fear of judgment and still not quite getting that the only one doing the judging is me. I have a dim memory of having learnt this intellectually sometime in the last three years or thereabouts, and it feels a long way off, that I haven’t yet owned that understanding in myself.

I know full well I’m holding back from immersing myself into the ashram material, though this evening I did come very close to the edge of the water. I nearly wrote a post titled “The terror and peace of inner stillness.” In edging closer to letting myself go for it with the living enlightenment journey – and even this edging is, I suppose, part of the journey because it’s seeing the sheer amount of resistance to beginning – I am becoming more able to sit for a few seconds quietly, allowing my awareness to simply rest as is. My mind is running the story that breathing properly is terrifying and I keep buying that story. But a deeper part of me knows it’s not true.

On the retreat in August I was able to let go fully into LovesBreath and suddenly got how I was not breathing, but that love was breathing me. I think I’ve tried LovesBreath perhaps once since then. Once. But there is also the growing sense that okay, yes, being on a retreat is somehow like being cocooned and then the real process is continued on home territory, the familiar ground of the washing up, doing the food shopping, the chop wood and carry water.

I’ve made quite a few running jumps; starting the public ashram blog was the latest of them in the hope that it would somehow provide the impetus to actually begin … and then realizing that splitting off the ashram writing could just be another resistance-based excuse. Because here and right now in safetycomfort I am already writing plenty of material related to soul process & enlightenment, so why make an artificial distinction? Healing shame around sexuality is, for example, part of that same process. I’m aware some of the fear has been about shrinking away from writing about the process using Judeo-Christian language where that gets used in Way of Mastery – there now, I found the words for it – but I wouldn’t shrink from using Buddhist language, so what’s this particular baggage about? I don’t know right now, but it looks like some inquiry work is coming up as I’d like to shift this one.

There is also the knowledge that the Judeo-Christian framework has carried so much oppression, war, dogma, exclusion, murder … these are just a few that come to mind – but somehow I sense it doesn’t have to end there. It doesn’t have to end with the Church taking hold of the message of Y’shua ben Yosef (anglicized to Jeshua ben Joseph / Jesus) and gradually twisting it into something utterly unrecognizable.

One of the reasons I say this is because my heart-feeling, when I let myself trust it, is that Way of Mastery was given by Jeshua via Jayem (aka Jon Marc Hammer – JM)  – ‘channelled’, to use the usual term. I have been very nervous of saying that in public, but there it is. Part of my nervousness has been in connection with wondering whether something is real or not. On Monday night this week I stayed up until daft o’clock, reading most of a novel in one sitting. One of the characters, John, is hearing in his mind the presence-voice of his lover, Sarah, who has recently been killed, and he’s wondering out loud whether to trust it or not. What really got to me in the novel was this:

“Forget for the moment whether the voice is real or not and just answer me this: do you feel better or worse for having this reminder of Sarah with you?”  … … “be grateful. No matter what this is, reality or delusion, it’s a positive thing for you at the moment. See it as a miraculous gift and stop worrying about it.”

which brought the following mini thought-stream which I noted on the page:

Forget whether it’s real or can be proven. Does it help to have it, do I feel better from using it, would I rather have it than not have it? and then, the default position of the scientist ‘I don’t know’, and how that ties in to the willingness to not-know which is right at the beginning of Way of Mastery itself:

“The Way of the Heart is not the way of the intellect. For indeed that aspect of the mind was never designed to be your master. It was designed to be the humble, and – if you will pardon the expression – very stupid servant of the awakened heart.

… It is a way in which you will come to cultivate – regardless of your inner experience or degree of awakening – the willingness and the art of returning to the simplicity of empty-headedness and not-knowingness with each and every breath.”

(Lesson 1, Way of the Heart)

Not-knowing. And, “the default position of the scientist is, I don’t know” – quoting, I think, from the as-yet unpublished novel I was reading – so much has come through my mind in the last few days that I hope my dear friend J will forgive me ;-)

so, these lines about whether it’s reality or delusion, can it be proven or not … can I trust my heart-feeling of what something is to me, can I trust my own experience, and let go of the burden of endlessly having to “Prove it”? which always felt to me like a very defensive position. It is okay to not-know, to allow the intellect to be the servant of the heart, and to follow the intuition and gut-sense of what feels true for me.

Those are the lines from J’s novel that brought me the tears of ‘getting it’, and tears again now in writing this post, placing it in this bigger context which came straight to mind when I originally read them. As it was just after 5am on Tuesday when I wrote of this to J and my energy levels were flagging slightly, I hadn’t yet gone into this detail. Heck, it’s just gone past 2am in writing this post. Do I care? Nope  :-p

so, from seeing “the only one holding me back is me”, and facing here and now some of the ideas I’ve been letting hold me back with the unwitting help of J and April (my thanks to you both)  … from knowing how the Church turned Jeshua’s message of inner liberation and peace into dogmatic, abusive religion and a fearful, punishing, God-figure who is anything except the inner experience of infinite and unconditional love (and I have experienced this several times, two of them very physical) … to the dream of last week in which I stood high up on what felt like the merging of Glastonbury Tor and Iona Abbey, though the sense was of being primarily in Somerset with that merging, and watching the sea slosh over the whole of Cornwall – straight down the St Michael ley line, as I discovered on Tuesday evening just gone … collapsing the defences, the same ones I suspect I’ve been letting hold me back from entering the inner ashram.

I could just adopt the Dewey Decimal System ;-) …  and as for the writing, I decided to use what I’m calling the “sheepdog approach” (rounding up and herding into some semblance of organized) to create some very broad categories that I’ll try on for size over the next few weeks or so.

As for anything more detailed, I think that’s where tagging comes in. I’ve extended my WordPress knowledge just enough to let me create a new widget area at the foot of the page, which now shows the tags.

Then there’s how safetycomfort has evolved over the last year and noticing how my willingness to write in public has gradually changed to allowing myself to be increasingly open … and discovering more about personal boundaries along the way. That continues.

Categories to play with

* soul writing (or, perhaps the title ’42′ . . . → Read More: “Now installing sheepdog…”]]> I find it difficult to create categories for posts here for probably similar reasons that I find it almost impossible to organize my books. Sexuality flows into spirit but could also sit with therapy which keeps good company with both art and writing … and then there’s my increasing integration of all of these. Arrrgh!

I could just adopt the Dewey Decimal System ;-) …  and as for the writing, I decided to use what I’m calling the “sheepdog approach” (rounding up and herding into some semblance of organized) to create some very broad categories that I’ll try on for size over the next few weeks or so.

As for anything more detailed, I think that’s where tagging comes in. I’ve extended my WordPress knowledge just enough to let me create a new widget area at the foot of the page, which now shows the tags.

Then there’s how safetycomfort has evolved over the last year and noticing how my willingness to write in public has gradually changed to allowing myself to be increasingly open … and discovering more about personal boundaries along the way. That continues.

Categories to play with

* soul writing (or, perhaps the title ’42′ that I thought of using last night, with thanks to the late, great Douglas Adams) … and there might be a case for both ‘soul writing’ and ’42′

* creative writing

* therapy training

* Way of Mastery

In a sense it is easier to create categories now, as the last year of writing has shown me what I tend to write – when I dare! – however, at the time of writing this, there’s now 138 posts, many of which don’t have any tags – or categories. At least the sheepdog has more sense than I do, and won’t be rounding them up all in one go.  The tags themselves have also had a damn good tidy-up, keeping half my original collection.

I was using the recently-created Ashram of the Heart blog for the Way of Mastery posts. For reasons similar to those I’ve already mentioned, I decided to let everything be integrated, bringing the posts here and laying aside that particular writing space for now.

Speaking of sheep, there’s a rather wonderful screensaver called Electric Sheep. Enjoy.

***

“Here comes a border collie!” cartoon copyright © Gary Larson / The Far Side, with thanks.

Age, experience, confidence, a heady mix. It helped shift me into a different space, one in which I felt more like saying a great big Fuck It, rather like the the times I’ve heard it from Jayem at the day workshop and then in Somerset.

With reference to my earlier post: No, I don’t get it. And: So what? I’ll get it if and when I’m supposed to, so for now, I’ll simply place it aside and come back to it when I’m ready.

In the meantime, ’tis fine. I’m downloading the fourth Ashram video darshan & accompanying notes, and who knows, I might even make a beginning shortly. I picked up the Way of the Heart text today, having accidentally on purpose not read any of it for a couple of months now, and saw with different eyes, and the feeling that all of it, all of This, is absolutely okay. I have the feeling of . . . → Read More: The wisdom of ‘Fuck it’]]> One thing my flatmate said earlier: He said he loves getting older because of the richness of experience, and to this, I added, “… and the confidence”. I’m rather looking forward to my forties – which isn’t to wish my life away.

Age, experience, confidence, a heady mix. It helped shift me into a different space, one in which I felt more like saying a great big Fuck It, rather like the the times I’ve heard it from Jayem at the day workshop and then in Somerset.

With reference to my earlier post: No, I don’t get it. And: So what? I’ll get it if and when I’m supposed to, so for now, I’ll simply place it aside and come back to it when I’m ready.

In the meantime, ’tis fine. I’m downloading the fourth Ashram video darshan & accompanying notes, and who knows, I might even make a beginning shortly. I picked up the Way of the Heart text today, having accidentally on purpose not read any of it for a couple of months now, and saw with different eyes, and the feeling that all of it, all of This, is absolutely okay. I have the feeling of lazing on a desert island beach. Nothing to do, nothing to ‘get’, just be.

b) the material about law of attraction from Abraham-Hicks. Stuff like, “what I focus on, increases”

and the reason I don’t get it is this:

If I embrace, trust & allow something, does that mean I’m focusing on it & thereby attracting more of it into my life?

It all feels like a multi-dimensional jigsaw. Not just the old style, flat board, put pieces together and there y’go, a straightforward picture. But that the Way of Mastery and Abraham Hicks material seem to be presenting different aspects, or maybe the same stuff but in different language.

And it’s raining, raining all day, or I’d have gone to the sea to get some Big Perspective and shake out the unnecessary.

Raining … I’m thinking of Chris Rea’s “Gone Fishing“.

And when my time has come I will look back and see Peace on the shoreline That could have been me

You . . . → Read More: I don’t get it, so … may as well Go Fishing]]> a) from Way of the Heart:
“The heart is that which feels all things, embraces all things, trusts all things, and allows all things … You will discover that the pathway of awakening is not a pathway of avoidance, but a pathway of truthfulness … ” (lesson one)

b) the material about law of attraction from Abraham-Hicks. Stuff like, “what I focus on, increases”

and the reason I don’t get it is this:

If I embrace, trust & allow something, does that mean I’m focusing on it & thereby attracting more of it into my life?

It all feels like a multi-dimensional jigsaw. Not just the old style, flat board, put pieces together and there y’go, a straightforward picture. But that the Way of Mastery and Abraham Hicks material seem to be presenting different aspects, or maybe the same stuff but in different language.

And it’s raining, raining all day, or I’d have gone to the sea to get some Big Perspective and shake out the unnecessary.

Raining … I’m thinking of Chris Rea’s “Gone Fishing“.

And when my time has come
I will look back and see
Peace on the shoreline
That could have been me

You can waste whole lifetime
Trying to be
What you think is expected of you
But you’ll never be free

May as well go fishing…

***

Right ... I’m putting the whole lot away, for now. If I can’t go to the sea, I’ll watch a film or listen to music. I’ve got plenty of DVDs to choose from, and Channel Dave has comedy and fast cars. Films etc are a useful perspective-shifter. And there is cottage pie in the fridge. But first, a cup of tea.

There is an article, Cycles of Seven, that is very resonant for me.  I am currently in the cycle of ages 35-42, and it is obvious to me that the changes being described here are well underway:

At thirty-five comes a solidity factor that gives you the opportunity to say, “Wait a minute. If I am going to do that, whom do I have to listen to?” If you are cutting and severing the influences of the past, you are probably, for the first time, deciding for yourself what you want to do. It is a freedom factor. Understand that when we talk about the cycles of growth, we are not saying that at the age of thirty-five you cut off everybody you know and hate your parents. We are saying you finally separate those concepts which are really yours from those which belong to somebody else.

~ Cycles of Seven

There’s a set of choices I haven’t resolved yet, and what feels like a big mud-pile of conflict. Mud! Time to make mischief pies!

a) sorting out the various elements as outlined . . . → Read More: Cycles of seven, my own two feet, plenty of patience]]> and again, my post Above all, to thine own self be true comes to the fore.

There is an article, Cycles of Seven, that is very resonant for me.  I am currently in the cycle of ages 35-42, and it is obvious to me that the changes being described here are well underway:

At thirty-five comes a solidity factor that gives you the opportunity to say, “Wait a minute. If I am going to do that, whom do I have to listen to?” If you are cutting and severing the influences of the past, you are probably, for the first time, deciding for yourself what you want to do. It is a freedom factor. Understand that when we talk about the cycles of growth, we are not saying that at the age of thirty-five you cut off everybody you know and hate your parents. We are saying you finally separate those concepts which are really yours from those which belong to somebody else.

~ Cycles of Seven

There’s a set of choices I haven’t resolved yet, and what feels like a big mud-pile of conflict. Mud! Time to make mischief pies!

a) sorting out the various elements as outlined in the Cycles of Seven excerpt above:  Discovering what’s authentic for me, and what belongs to another. Again from Dr E:

May the brooms of the wind sweep you clear and clean of whatever basura, trash and litter others have wrongfully left in you and with you … that is not yours.

May you see this, discern this, differentiate what is yours from what is not yours.

- and the understanding of ‘mine / not mine’ is being used in two senses here: That which is authentic to me, or not (the Cycles of Seven element) and the baggage I’ve absorbed along the way (the empath element).

b) allowing myself to do my own sorting out, in my own time, and in my own way, especially given this feeling of having a set of jigsaw pieces.

c) noticing how my patterns of empathy over the years have resulted in my hoovering up a whole lot of stuff that gives a deeper layer of meaning to mine/not mine: “I’m carrying this stuff, but it isn’t mine. I know I don’t have to carry it any more, but I’m still working out / discovering how to let go of it, with the corollary of finding how to stop picking up yet more.” Also known as, unplugging the damn hoover. I’ve just ordered Yvonne Perry’s book about being an empath and how to manage this.

d) it is very easy to absorb a certain set of ideas from a particular set of texts and assume them to be absolutely true, without questioning them within myself first to see whether they work for me. I took on A Course in Miracles in that way, and having chosen to let go of ACIM, I see the encouragement in Way of Mastery to adopt this inner testing process (good).  I think the Buddha said something similar: Don’t believe it just because I said it, test it within and see if it works. There are no absolutes (is that true? Byron Katie, I love you).

e) I’m likely still kicking very hard against a perceived idea that others are holding me up against a set of principles. When I notice this thought, I also notice a whole lot of Grrrr in the solar plexus area. Yep, stuff to be sorted out here.

f) I’ve effectively allowed myself to step into kindergarten as far as this whole process goes. Let go of everything I think I know. Zen mind, beginner’s mind.  Do not pass Go or collect £200, but have a Get Out Of Jail card instead. All shall be well. Shedloads of patience … ah, patience.

g) and then I listen to Christoffer de Graal’s beautiful piano music, Relaxing and Opening, and wonder, hold on … here is a glimpse of utter serenity and peace … and how is it I am not yet able to let this serenity come through? and I do know why.  It is because there’s a whole lot of stuff that’s being sorted and released, and it is necessary to have this clearing and purification first, and that requires the willingness to see, to bring into open awareness, to understand, to let go. Infinite patience, infinite love… and Christoffer’s music, Infinite Source (thank you).

h) feeling better for writing this. I rather wish there wasn’t a gap in therapy for these two and a half weeks, but I also note that I’ve come this far by learning to be my own therapist and I’ve developed a slew of personal inner resources and tools.  The process of learning to stand on my own two feet continues.

and yes, feeling better but needing a break … so I take that back about wishing there wasn’t a gap in therapy. Fluent rubbish. Thank god for a break. It’s time to “do nothing and rest afterwards.”

Never Let Me Go is a dystopian novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, focusing on the story of Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, three of many ‘clones’ created specifically for the harvesting of their vital organs. Regarded as sub-human by the rest of society, the best of their art, poetry and other creativity is chosen and taken away while they’re at school and held in a ‘gallery’, because their guardians want to speak out against the dominant culture of how avant-garde medical scientists, and the rest of society influenced by this view, regard the clones as less than human.

The art is proof of their having a soul: “…your art will reveal your inner selves! … Because your art will display your souls!”

This novel has thumped me pretty hard between the eyes. God only knows what the movie will do.

and then, this . . . → Read More: Connectedness, listening & not-disappearing]]> I’ve just finished reading Never Let Me Go, before going to see the film for which I saw the trailers when I went to see The King’s Speech. I don’t normally read the book first, but digital hearing aids, however good they are, don’t pick up all speech and I wanted to be able to follow the story.

Never Let Me Go is a dystopian novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, focusing on the story of Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, three of many ‘clones’ created specifically for the harvesting of their vital organs. Regarded as sub-human by the rest of society, the best of their art, poetry and other creativity is chosen and taken away while they’re at school and held in a ‘gallery’, because their guardians want to speak out against the dominant culture of how avant-garde medical scientists, and the rest of society influenced by this view, regard the clones as less than human.

The art is proof of their having a soul: “…your art will reveal your inner selves! … Because your art will display your souls!”

This novel has thumped me pretty hard between the eyes. God only knows what the movie will do.

and then, this morning I come to this Sunday’s PostSecret cards (Caveat: There is material here about suicide).

Among the many art cards each bearing the secret being carried by another, there is a voicemail recording made by a girl right before she took her own life, shared by a man to whom she made that call, in the hope that sharing it would help others feeling that depth of horribleness. And then there are the comments on the post.

***

and I remember those times I sank to my own depth, when the temptation was less towards finishing off things here and more towards simply disappearing. Upping sticks one day, leaving just about everything save a rucksack filled with random whatever, and just going somewhere, cutting all ties, merging into the crowd and not letting myself be found. There are times I’ve seen a PostSecret card about this very thing, about disappearing, and I’ve clicked Save As on the images and they’re still around somewhere. I won’t have been the first, and I’ll not be the last to have sat imagining how things might be if I acted on that thought, and it was one that stayed around a few years.

there is also my long-term (decades) disregard for myself, lack of self-esteem it might also be called, that has come from … ? the various shadow-thoughts knocking around, a kind of wishing I wasn’t here in the first place, and really desperately hoping for this to be my last lifetime because I sure as hell haven’t wanted to come back. And, I am working on this self-esteem.

all of this is why it’s been superbly easy to get extremely pissed off about all the new-agey-type ideas floating around like so many marshmallows, the ones that feel like they don’t listen to the soul that feels somehow disconnected, isolated, raw and that obliteration would be preferable to trying to find a way through. The ones that say airily, Just do this and this, because you’re not here anyway, the ones that preach – and I’m sure I’ve sunk deeply into that particular sugary quagmire a few times myself when I’ve let myself be temporarily seduced by the enthusiasm of the fluffy bunnies. Oh, the temptation to …..

I think it must be one reason I’ve learnt to get comfortable with silence.

***

One of the many comments that stand out for me on today’s PostSecret is this:

He LISTENED, I don’t even remember what he said, I just remember he LISTENED.

I’m nearly 52 now and if I had gone thru with it, I would’ve missed a thousand tomorrows – yeah, they weren’t all rainbows and butterflies, but I now have two beautiful teenage daughters myself. AND I LISTEN.

If no one answers, find someone else to LISTEN, we all need to get the horrible weight off our chest sometimes.

***

I wrote above, I think it must be one reason I’ve learnt to get comfortable with silence … and to that I shall add presence, being there, friendship, family of friends, connectedness. I can think of many reasons now for having changed my mind – and there’s a difference between choosing to not disappear, and choosing to stay around, and learn to be present in my own life, being able to be there alongside others if they wish.

Not-disappearing might just be about tolerating the horribleness because it’s not quite horrible enough … but getting myself to a point of wanting to be here.

at least some of this wanting to be here comes thanks to that specific one I think of now, who has reached out the hand of friendship very recently and listened, and for them there is my deep appreciation.

it’s also why I feel learning to be present in my own life means learning to listen to myself, to intuition, creating that safe space within, and then find ways to hold the space and share it with others, listen to them, be alongside.  I see the last few weeks in particular being a very necessary part of what I am training to do, to give.

Sometimes all of this might mean withdrawing for a while, solitude, recharging, listening inside amongst other things.  Letting there be changes.

Ah, I get it. It’s easy to think that transcending means distancing or denying. No. Going deeply into this awakening pathway doesn’t mean distancing myself from what I have felt and what others feel, but being able to embrace, to allow embodiment and going-beyond, compassion and wisdom, at one and the same time. I don’t know how to carry each of these in balance yet. I am learning.

Never Let Me Go. art & soul.  PostSecret. art & soul. Therapy. art & soul.

Silence & listening. art & soul.

Thank you.

These water metaphors crop up frequently in my dreams. Earlier this week I wrote of this:

Last night I dreamt of standing on top of Glastonbury Tor merged with Iona Abbey, watching the sea sloshing over the whole of Cornwall. I know this is significant, I haven’t worked all of it out yet – unless some of it is about letting go of my defences.

I have more understanding of this one now, especially as meanings are apt to let themselves be known as I sit with the dream over a few hours or days if need be.

and I remember too a particular dream, just before I moved to Devon four years ago this week, one of a huge shining river, with beautiful vibrantly-coloured skies and a big Welcome to Devon sign (haha). Recently there’s been an increasing sense of beginning to look beyond Devon, and that I . . . → Read More: A river of freedom and light]]> A river flows all by itself, and on Thursday morning I could feel it. Stepping out into the sunshine, getting on the Jurassic Coast bus to visit friends and there inside was the feeling of inner momentum, old defences beginning to come down, and the eventual merging into the sea.

These water metaphors crop up frequently in my dreams. Earlier this week I wrote of this:

Last night I dreamt of standing on top of Glastonbury Tor merged with Iona Abbey, watching the sea sloshing over the whole of Cornwall. I know this is significant, I haven’t worked all of it out yet – unless some of it is about letting go of my defences.

I have more understanding of this one now, especially as meanings are apt to let themselves be known as I sit with the dream over a few hours or days if need be.

and I remember too a particular dream, just before I moved to Devon four years ago this week, one of a huge shining river, with beautiful vibrantly-coloured skies and a big Welcome to Devon sign (haha). Recently there’s been an increasing sense of beginning to look beyond Devon, and that I could be moving on within the next couple of years or so. There’s this diploma, and then… ? Last night I decided to open the gate to all possibilities, including being anywhere in the world, though of course there is the down-to-earth understanding that this includes remaining in the UK, just a different part of it. It is important for me to remain grounded. Imagination is a wonderful thing, but so is the ability to attend to what this moment brings, whether that’s writing an essay, coffee with friends or catching up with message-replies (there are still some awaiting my attention).

then on Thursday too, I came across some beautiful writing from Clarissa Pinkola Estes – The Soul is a River, The River Has a Soul and Running the River, Imploding the Dams… these pieces fit perfectly with the dream of the sea sloshing over Cornwall, and this feeling of increasing freedom as I continue the process of inhabiting my own life, learning to listen more to intuition and finding ways to undo the resistance so that I actually follow that intuition and not just wave around the ideas like so many brightly-coloured flags.

There is also the set of changes I am creating at the moment, gently but persistently, putting various things in place to let me move out of old patterns into entirely new ones. I have attempted these particular ones many times before, with varying degrees of success but these attempts were always accompanied by a pressure, sense of criticism and punishment – and these have almost gone now. I am beginning to breathe freedom and light, silence and awareness and peace.

I want to write more in response to Estes’ posts, but for now I’ll content myself with quoting the piece that feels apt for here and now.

***

Thus, I only know there is no lottery for the right to go crashing and bashing through the rapids of the psyche and life, there we still make our own conveyance, we carve the means to direct ourselves, we hunt and fish for the ideas and endeavours that will sustain… in us the big river of imagination and creativity are still ours…

that with work, rather than time passing, tis true, all the dams we have ever built… will crumble and fall down, and all that is meant to flow through us, will flow through us.

for longing is like water that already knows the way … and water alone can wear through stone.

Sea near Bridport, Dorset, Thursday 17th February 2011

First off, I’m posting the exercise itself to give a clearer example of what I mean, and then I’ll write about the situation that comes to mind.

***

- Turn your awareness from what you think is causing the disturbance and remember the first axiom:

- “I am the source of my experience. I am feeling disturbed. What is it in me that needs to be healed?”

- Begin to breathe deeply and rhythmically. Let the body soften and relax, and ask:

- “What is it within this person’s energy that is really causing my reaction?”

- You will see it right away: “Oh, they are so critical. Criticism pushes my buttons.”

- Then ask yourself: “When have I done that to another? Where have I been critical of others?”

- And it might hit you right away: “Well, I’m being critical because they’re . . . → Read More: An exercise in shifting & resolving difficult stuff]]> I’ve previously posted about nervousness re. ‘permission to awaken’, and especially my own projected fear. While I was on the way home tonight, I remembered two things: a) an exercise from Way of Mastery to help out with things like this, and b) similar, previous situations in my life linked to this fear.

First off, I’m posting the exercise itself to give a clearer example of what I mean, and then I’ll write about the situation that comes to mind.

***

- Turn your awareness from what you think is causing the disturbance and remember the first axiom:

- “I am the source of my experience. I am feeling disturbed. What is it in me that needs to be healed?”

- Begin to breathe deeply and rhythmically. Let the body soften and relax, and ask:

- “What is it within this person’s energy that is really causing my reaction?”

- You will see it right away: “Oh, they are so critical. Criticism pushes my buttons.”

- Then ask yourself: “When have I done that to another? Where have I been critical of others?”

- And it might hit you right away: “Well, I’m being critical because they’re critical.”

- Or memories will come back, distasteful memories, if you are judging them. Let them come back. Continue to breathe and relax. Look upon that energy of being critical. Honour it. Love it. For it is a creation. It is your creations coming back to you, that you might embrace them and transform them. Just stay with it. Look at it:

- “Ah, being critical, yes, I can sure be critical. I’ve been that way in the past. I know that energy very well.”

- Look upon a scene in your memory in which you have been the one being critical. Look upon it with deep honesty and sincerity, and say to yourself:

- “I forgive me for being critical. I forgive my judgment of myself. I choose to teach only Love.”

- Watch that image dissolve and disappear from your mind. Bring your awareness back to the present moment and that person that just pushed your button. Again, you do not need to say anything to them at all, although you might. But within yourself, forgive them for allowing the energy of being critical to temporarily make a home in their mind. And merely ask for your perception to be replaced with truth. Ask to see the innocent light within them. As you cultivate this, you will become very, very good at it. You will be able to do it as fast as the time it takes to snap your fingers. And once you begin to see the light in them, you can ask within:

- “What is this critical energy in them masking? What are they really crying out for?”

- Then you will feel compassion. For it will be revealed to you why they are hurting inside.

- Your choice of words and your own behaviour might turn out to be different than you could ever have imagined. For through you will flow exactly what serves them.

***

so, the situation I’m thinking of:

When I was in my teens, I was involved with the Baptist church and quite evangelical in my outlook, and I cringe now to think of how I tended to evangelize others and criticised them if they wouldn’t take on what I thought it was my responsibility to make them believe. Saying that it was usually internal criticism rather than actually speaking it out loud doesn’t really help matters, it was still criticism … ooooooooh ouch, toe curling embarrassment!!

and it relates to current nervousness because:

a) I have zero interest in evangelizing anyone,

b) I’m projecting my nervousness about writing Way of Mastery stuff, because that projection makes it look like I’m nervous about other people’s reactions in case they think I’m trying to evangelize them. That’s the nub of the projection.

c) it’s probably also why I keep being at pains to emphasize I’m only speaking for myself, and this is my choice of path and it isn’t something I’m interested in imposing. So, stuff from twenty-plus years ago is still being carried around and now made to seem like it’s coming from others – my imagination, based on fear, plus projection. Not a very chilled-out way to be.

Not every step of the above exercise is relevant here, because I’m dealing with my own imagined fear rather than a conversation or situation between two people. But I can certainly pick up on the latter parts, about forgiving myself for imposing my views on others, and other elements that come to mind. I’ve just done some of this right now as I write this, and I’ll likely go away and do some writing-based inquiry as well as the rest of the exercise, and perhaps share more another day.

beautiful   sad   moving   erotic   tender   shocking

there’s something about watching a film that changes my perspective every time … and I was in a different headspace anyway, having read William’s blog -

“Look we create our own reality right? We each live in our own reality right? And if your reality and mine coincide that could be good, – or not. So in my reality you are singing.”

as one of the things I have long struggled with and recently made some big progress, being able to inhabit / live my own life – so, this understanding helps. Thank you.

Analysis and ‘yes, but…‘ not required. Statements about illusions, I toss them into the depths of the ocean. Until I understand more, on my own path, in my own time, in ways that work for me … I might even go toss my copy of A Course in Miracles into the sea.

Actually, that’s quite tempting. It could just be an expression of chucking a few toys out of the pram, but hey, there were probably too many toys in there anyway and it’d be good to de-clutter.

I . . . → Read More: ‘Above all, to thine own self be true…’]]> …just finished watching A Single Man (Colin Firth, Julianne Moore)

beautiful   sad   moving   erotic   tender   shocking

there’s something about watching a film that changes my perspective every time … and I was in a different headspace anyway, having read William’s blog -

“Look we create our own reality right? We each live in our own reality right? And if your reality and mine coincide that could be good, – or not. So in my reality you are singing.”

as one of the things I have long struggled with and recently made some big progress, being able to inhabit / live my own life – so, this understanding helps. Thank you.

Analysis and ‘yes, but…‘ not required. Statements about illusions, I toss them into the depths of the ocean. Until I understand more, on my own path, in my own time, in ways that work for me … I might even go toss my copy of A Course in Miracles into the sea.

Actually, that’s quite tempting. It could just be an expression of chucking a few toys out of the pram, but hey, there were probably too many toys in there anyway and it’d be good to de-clutter.

I have had so much sheer stuff coming in, telling me how it is, how the world is.  I am tired of that. I have let many people do this for my entire life, until about four weeks ago. Enough. I shall listen to whom I choose … ending the people-pleasing, again.  And if it all seems wildly inconsistent … Thirty-seven years of Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir ain’t going to disappear overnight.

John Welwood: “…The Eastern teachings assume that a person already has a healthy self-structure” (my italics).  Mine has not been healthy, and I am creating a new healthy one. And I shall do that in ways of mine own choosing.

That is all.

anyway, metaphorically speaking again, I have a box of jigsaw pieces. There’s a bunch of pieces that show therapist, and some pieces that show fully awake. There’s also being the presence of love - not sentimentality, but the unconditional; the vibrant, deeply-rooted and fully alive beingness that is the wise grandmother, the nurturing mother, the helping sister, the friend who is simply there, the playful free-spirited mischievous child.

and there’s all the things that feel like they could fit rather well into boxes that are then shoved into a dusty corner in a bat-filled attic, never to be looked at again (Do attics have bats in them? They do now).

some of my candidates for the batty attic are like this:

- the part of me that wants to shrink down, put out my own light and sit in the darkness … being scared of the light

- stomping my . . . → Read More: ‘It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most’]]> Last night I dreamt of standing on top of Glastonbury Tor merged with Iona Abbey, watching the sea sloshing over the whole of Cornwall. I know this is significant, I haven’t worked all of it out yet – unless some of it is about letting go of my defences.

anyway, metaphorically speaking again, I have a box of jigsaw pieces. There’s a bunch of pieces that show therapist, and some pieces that show fully awake. There’s also being the presence of love - not sentimentality, but the unconditional; the vibrant, deeply-rooted and fully alive beingness that is the wise grandmother, the nurturing mother, the helping sister, the friend who is simply there, the playful free-spirited mischievous child.

and there’s all the things that feel like they could fit rather well into boxes that are then shoved into a dusty corner in a bat-filled attic, never to be looked at again (Do attics have bats in them? They do now).

some of my candidates for the batty attic are like this:

- the part of me that wants to shrink down, put out my own light and sit in the darkness … being scared of the light

- stomping my feet around and not using time wisely, again because of fear of this awakening process and still because there are the remnants of my (projected) fear that it will not be acceptable to others. Bollocks to that. I know full well it’s nothing to do with anyone else. This is my fear and judgment of myself, pure and simple.

I’ve just re-read the Empowerment Tarot reading that Larry did for me (his site isn’t ready yet so I’m linking to his Twitter feed for now, but he’s been doing proper, non-spooky, intuitive powerful Tarot for 30 years and his readings are spot-on). Amongst other things, the reading includes this:

“…a choice, a decision that can be made which liberates rather than keeping to the so-called ‘safety’ of lighting no candle, of offering nothing for fear of the anger and the punishment from the reversed King of Cups, which is an abstraction, a cipher for your own projected judgement and condemnation. After all, isn’t the fear of condemnation punishment enough? This is about standing in the light and not being frightened by what you think, say or do.”

Hmmm. safetycomfort, something that becomes very tempting to hide behind if I so choose. But I’m sensing there is now this process that could get messy and uncomfortable, of letting the old deadwood (fear of standing in my own light) – letting it be cut away. The more I resist, the harder it will be.

So why not just stop? Simply stop. Simply listen within.

Again, from the reading:

Present Adjustment, The Star & King of Wands
An excellent pairing. There is a lot of relinquishment of the old, stagnant ideas that gave rise to your belief in and fear of judgement and retribution. Seeing God as the King of Cups reversed, a force of anger and retribution is being dissolved and in its place, being manifests, a stepping aside and an allowing of transformation is the entire function of The Star. This happens by opening up to love and learning of it by being a channel for its Being. There is a sense of playfulness here, of trusting in the process. The need for security and control can fade in the simple pleasure of letting go and letting Love.

The arrival of the King of Wands shows a growing mastery and a willingness to trust your voice and your experience. You are being helped by the Spiritual Elder, and this is as much about Yeshua* and St Germain as it is about your own growth into trusting your thoughts, your opinions and your viewpoint. Fear has no place in love and in Being, as you move through the transformation so your trust in your self and what you wish / need to say will grow. The King of Wands doesn’t suffer fools gladly – what this means in the context of the Star is discriminating on the basis of Love rather than ego. What helps Love can be increased and experienced. What doesn’t can be relinquished in that same Love. Use your experience, don’t be frightened that the ego cannot accomplish the impossibility of a perfect life where no pain or difficulty occurs.

* Yeshua = Jeshua, sometimes translated Jesus & also the awakened one showing the way (one way among many) to full awakening

hmmm … perhaps too, this fear-based procrastination of starting my therapy-training essay is as much to do with holding back the light as it’s to do with holding back from fully beginning the online ashram. Writing this post is essentially a message to myself, Stop. Let go. It’s okay.

***

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

~ Marianne Williamson

and I looked at my life, and wondered.

on returning home, I was reading some material and I realized, I am my own source of love.

then, I was considering my resistance to awakening, and it occurred to me that allowing myself to truly follow this path could be the most loving thing I ever let happen

because, it would mean embodying love. Literally, embodying it in every single cell, and being the presence of love, and letting it flow through me in whichever way to whoever would like to receive it. I cannot give what I have not already received.

Love is that which heals.

and, seeing my resistance, it is essentially resisting because at some level there is self-hatred >> no (or little) self esteem

and opening my heart to myself, means I can recognize what I already am, and experience unconditional love within, that I am my own source of this.

so, I begin.

It’s easy to follow the crowd ‘because that’s what everyone else does’. It feels safe, there’s no especial risks except the ones of not living an authentic life, and I’m not saying much that’s new in this. But, the thing that’s felt scary to the point of anxiety attacks is the courage to give myself permission to go on that inner journey of awakening / enlightenment. From reading back a few months’ worth of entries, I know I was still feeling that wobble in autumn 2010, though I was also keeping on with the little baby steps to move more and more into inhabiting my own life.

The last four weeks in particular have brought the series of catharses that have shifted me properly into this new groove.

So, the feelings of serenity and stability in this moment, the ability to come here and write this and know that the fear has diminished enough to make an authentic choice whatever my perception . . . → Read More: Permission to awaken]]> I’ve recently written about following my own north star and the experience of being at home within. Following on from that, in line with allowing myself to make my own choices, is giving myself permission to awaken.

It’s easy to follow the crowd ‘because that’s what everyone else does’. It feels safe, there’s no especial risks except the ones of not living an authentic life, and I’m not saying much that’s new in this. But, the thing that’s felt scary to the point of anxiety attacks is the courage to give myself permission to go on that inner journey of awakening / enlightenment. From reading back a few months’ worth of entries, I know I was still feeling that wobble in autumn 2010, though I was also keeping on with the little baby steps to move more and more into inhabiting my own life.

The last four weeks in particular have brought the series of catharses that have shifted me properly into this new groove.

So, the feelings of serenity and stability in this moment, the ability to come here and write this and know that the fear has diminished enough to make an authentic choice whatever my perception of what anyone else says, to follow my own inner calling … wow. And it is my perception that’s been getting in the way, and not the actuality of anyone’s comments – it’s been my own projected fear. It’s that same projected fear that got in the way of my being able to write blog posts on this subject.

***

I’ve been making some beginnings with the actual online-ashram material – downloaded three video-sessions and the accompanying notes. Yesterday I listened to the audio of of Lesson 1 from Way of the Heart – letting myself begin again with material I started reading for the first time two years ago now.

I’ve also just had a look on YouTube and seen that the video darshans are being made available there on the Way of Mastery official channel, so I’ll feel free to link to YouTube where appropriate, as I go along :-)

The feeling of being at home inside myself is … liberating. There is a strengthening sense of emotional adulthood, of confidence in my own choices. And it feels undefended. There’s a difference between putting up fences because of fear of attack, and allowing there to be peaceful boundaries. In this moment, I feel serene.

Now it’s about keeping on practising with all of this, letting it build. Not effort, exactly; more using my awareness to keep following my own north star, as I wrote about yesterday. And it’s all very well feeling the serenity when I’m sitting here in silence in my own room; it’s another thing to be able to manage it when out and about.  But then, that’s what practising is for.

I’ve known of this poem Going over for a few years now, and this evening it speaks to me quite strongly.

***

Going over

You have burned your bridges.

You have passed through the gate marked ‘no return’ and for you . . . → Read More: Building stability and serenity]]> This experience of learning to inhabit my own life is still very new, and each day I live it, each time I check in with myself, there’s a little bit more stability.

The feeling of being at home inside myself is … liberating. There is a strengthening sense of emotional adulthood, of confidence in my own choices. And it feels undefended. There’s a difference between putting up fences because of fear of attack, and allowing there to be peaceful boundaries. In this moment, I feel serene.

Now it’s about keeping on practising with all of this, letting it build. Not effort, exactly; more using my awareness to keep following my own north star, as I wrote about yesterday. And it’s all very well feeling the serenity when I’m sitting here in silence in my own room; it’s another thing to be able to manage it when out and about.  But then, that’s what practising is for.

I’ve known of this poem Going over for a few years now, and this evening it speaks to me quite strongly.

***

Going over

You have burned your bridges.

You have passed through the gate marked ‘no return’
and for you there is no going back.
No going back to the security of the known, familiar house,
to the well-worn dispensations and the threadbare coverings.

Now you are out there in uncharted territory
heavy with threat and shadows not yet entered.
The risks are high, and yet you strike out boldly,
guided only by unwavering conviction
and the longing for the true centre of the land.
This is what it means to do a new thing.

So, you travel lightly.
You are abandoned, given up in all things
to the task that lies ahead.
Therefore, you may be exactly who you are.
You have inhabited yourself,
you are at home,
and home is where you are,
even if it is the desert.
No one can dispossess you of your own in-dwelling.
This is what it means to be free.

We stand, one foot upon the bridge,
wondering if we too have the courage to go over
and strike the match behind us.

~ Kathy Galloway
from The Dream of Learning Our True Name

Choices, recognition, shifting, follow, listen.

Stop, consult the inner map, am I still on track? Probably… got navigation, ’tis OK. Learning how to follow my own north star even when that following asks me to do something that feels conspicuously different.

Someone recently made an astute comment that I don’t like being observed, and it’s an odd paradox. I’m allowing myself to write about some very personal things, putting myself ‘out there’, and this is an aspect of allowing myself to be observed – possibly, I suspect, to let that fear of observation melt away. I know I’ve had years of baggage around hiding, covering up, not trusting myself and these fears are being undone.

I also reckon the fear about being observed is tied in with being an HSP (sensitivity) which in turn is tied in with the empathy. Realizing that I have these traits is a relatively recent thing, and I’m starting to understand much more about them, which is becoming more necessary not just on a personal level, but specifically in relation to the therapy training. It would be highly useful for me to find ways of managing the empathy much . . . → Read More: Following my own north star]]> Catharsis, integration, gentleness, passion, soul.

Choices, recognition, shifting, follow, listen.

Stop, consult the inner map, am I still on track? Probably… got navigation, ’tis OK. Learning how to follow my own north star even when that following asks me to do something that feels conspicuously different.

Someone recently made an astute comment that I don’t like being observed, and it’s an odd paradox. I’m allowing myself to write about some very personal things, putting myself ‘out there’, and this is an aspect of allowing myself to be observed – possibly, I suspect, to let that fear of observation melt away. I know I’ve had years of baggage around hiding, covering up, not trusting myself and these fears are being undone.

I also reckon the fear about being observed is tied in with being an HSP (sensitivity) which in turn is tied in with the empathy. Realizing that I have these traits is a relatively recent thing, and I’m starting to understand much more about them, which is becoming more necessary not just on a personal level, but specifically in relation to the therapy training. It would be highly useful for me to find ways of managing the empathy much more effectively, or I’ll end up unconsciously absorbing a lot of client energies and that won’t do any good for either me or them. So, I’m onto it.

and there is allowing myself to be supported in all of this. I used to have this ‘go it alone’ mentality, refusing support – Doh!! but now I am relaxing and learning to trust, give and receive, graciously and with appreciation. Thank you.

… following my own north star, which says amongst other things, This Way Home – so, with that in mind, I’ve  created a sister blog for safetycomfort. I tried before, and it didn’t work very well because my focus wasn’t very clear. But the intervening months have helped to clarify and direct. The new blog is called Ashram of the Heart, it’s up and running and it’s about sharing my experience of Way of Mastery (WoM) in my own awakening pathway (there now, I managed to crystallize it into one sentence).

I have a feeling of how safetycomfort and Ashram of the Heart will work together. Ashram is more focused on WoM itself; safetycomfort zooms out a bit, integrates with experience of therapy training  and general personal process. I hope to keep the chocolate and mischief flowing in both, because awakening (enlightenment) is not meant to be oh-so-serious. When I was on the Croydon Hall retreat in August last year, there was laughter yoga, dancing, LovesBreath, Biodanza, lots of sharing, plenty of hugs, chocolate … it helped put all of it into a wider context of understanding for me. So there’s being able to step out of my comfort zones on a retreat … and then there’s bringing it home into the everyday, and discovering how to live it, make it my own. Living in a bubble can be tempting, but it’d pop easily. I’ve written before about being grounded, and I find that much more useful and authentic.

That church played its role in my path to where I am now … eventually treading a path out of that church and away from Christianity altogether. Whatever my choices have been regarding the church and biblical texts, I’ve always felt a strong personal heart-kinship with Jeshua ben Joseph (aka Jesus, but I usually refer to him as J) and this has somehow managed to remain constant beyond all the creeds, doctrine and suchlike that the church has managed to conjure over the last couple of thousand years. That connection remains as is, and I’ve never doubted it.

So, it’s not that much of a surprise to me that out of the thousands of paths of awakening, the one . . . → Read More: A different kind of immersion]]> My memory for dates tells me that on February 11, 1990 (twenty-one years, three cycles of seven) I went through baptism by immersion at the local Baptist church. I also happen to remember the Biblical verse that was chosen for me by the pastor of that church: “… for God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline” (2 Tim 1:7, NIV) and there was some mention of being bold.

That church played its role in my path to where I am now … eventually treading a path out of that church and away from Christianity altogether. Whatever my choices have been regarding the church and biblical texts, I’ve always felt a strong personal heart-kinship with Jeshua ben Joseph (aka Jesus, but I usually refer to him as J) and this has somehow managed to remain constant beyond all the creeds, doctrine and suchlike that the church has managed to conjure over the last couple of thousand years. That connection remains as is, and I’ve never doubted it.

So, it’s not that much of a surprise to me that out of the thousands of paths of awakening, the one which feels most natural to me is one that’s also intimately connected with J. I’ve also realized there’s no need to put J on any kind of pedestal; perhaps more on that another time.

One of the things that feels really scary to me at the moment is being able to write about this choice to immerse myself in this awakening and still use language that looks and sounds Judeo-Christian on the surface … but then, I’ve also referenced the thousands of paths of awakening, and I could be using Buddhist language, or Hindu and its mystical expression in Advaita Vedanta, and each of these would carry their own cultural whatever-it-is. I know I stepped away from Diamond Way Buddhism at least in part because I struggled with the language. I am also aware that ‘the wise teacher uses the language of the student’, but then I’m not setting out to be a teacher. This is my journey, that I’m choosing to share, and I know I’ve still got some ‘stuff’ to deal with around language. So it goes. I might write a post or two about language.

Mameen

Be infinitesimal under that sky, a creature even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith among the rocks where the mist parts slowly. Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed by circumstance, how great reputations dissolve with infirmity and how you, in particular, live a hairsbreadth from losing everyone you hold dear.

Then, look back down the path as if seeing your past and then south over the hazy blue coast as if present to a wide future. Remember the way you are all possibilities you can see and how you live best as an appreciator of horizons, whether you reach them or not. Admit that once you have got up from your chair and opened the door, once you have walked out into the clean air toward that edge and taken the path up high beyond the ordinary, you have become the privileged and the pilgrim, the one who will tell the story and the one, coming back from the mountain, who helped to make it.

~ David Whyte from River Flow ©2007 Many Rivers Press

In my explorations over the years, I have seen much about the transcendence of self, hailing from Eastern wisdom … I feel the likes of A Course in Miracles and Way of Mastery and various elements of ‘Westernized’ Buddhism are all expressions of that Eastern approach brought to the West.  What I’m still working out, because of where I’m at, is how it all fits together.

and in the comments to that post, April said,

I believe that an enlightened life is both transcendent (masculine) and immanent (feminine). I love Andrew Harvey’s views on this and reclaiming equal honor for the female embodiment of life and spirit. Transcendence is an intellectual and spiritual experience, a stilling of the mind. Immanence honors the heart and body, the places where we feel.

Thank you, April – on reading that, I had the feeling of ‘Oh, of course, I knew that but I’d forgotten,’ and this part of my questioning just settled down and was – is – okay.

I have written before about letting myself move into an inner place of not-knowing, which happened over . . . → Read More: I have nothing left to prove in this lifetime]]> In my previous post, the courage to be present in my own life, I wrote:

In my explorations over the years, I have seen much about the transcendence of self, hailing from Eastern wisdom … I feel the likes of A Course in Miracles and Way of Mastery and various elements of ‘Westernized’ Buddhism are all expressions of that Eastern approach brought to the West.  What I’m still working out, because of where I’m at, is how it all fits together.

and in the comments to that post, April said,

I believe that an enlightened life is both transcendent (masculine) and immanent (feminine). I love Andrew Harvey’s views on this and reclaiming equal honor for the female embodiment of life and spirit. Transcendence is an intellectual and spiritual experience, a stilling of the mind. Immanence honors the heart and body, the places where we feel.

Thank you, April – on reading that, I had the feeling of ‘Oh, of course, I knew that but I’d forgotten,’ and this part of my questioning just settled down and was – is – okay.

I have written before about letting myself move into an inner place of not-knowing, which happened over Christmas 2010 as I read Brian Thorne’s autobiography Love’s Embrace. Although my odyssey through various kinds of theology – which, fortunately, emphasised the centrality of experience – gave me a wide range of understandings, it was nevertheless academic, which isn’t so useful when approaching the mystical.

Again, I am weaving new ways through my own terrain. It would be tempting to cling to the safe and the known, and having spent the last twenty years being fascinated by the mystical but running away from it, this resistance is beginning to dissolve. In this new weaving, I could spend many words in an attempt to justify and explain various things to anyone who reads this, but what comes to mind instead is, I have nothing left to prove in this lifetime.

So, the place of not-knowing lets me increasingly relax with myself as I discover what it means to be authentic, to be present in my own life. It means I may choose to use different words for the same thing as I explore more deeply: presence, beingness, the unconditional, God, mystical experience. It feels like a space of increasing vulnerability – as in, not putting up defences, and noticing where there are still some defences, looking at them and letting them fall, somehow. Will I allow myself to live more and more in the unconditional? What does that mean, anyway? Will I come to conversations openly, without an agenda, letting the conversation flow as it will, not flinching from difficult questions … allowing silence?

I recently joined an online ashram and for the last two weeks, I’ve held off taking part. Tonight in the bath, I mulled over various things, fell asleep, woke up and mulled some more … pilgrimage to Israel? (sent off an email enquiry this evening) and … actually beginning the ashram? and … writing an ashram blog? oooooh ‘eck, feckity feck, and in the immortal words of Nike, woman, just do it :-P

I tried writing that second Way of the Heart blog back in October-ish, and I still had all kinds of ideas about how it was supposed to be – there was a sticky veneer of people-pleasing that thought I had to use certain language in order to be accepted (ha ha ha!!) I’m pretty sure most of that’s gone now and my confidence in writing has increased a lot over the last month or so.  My general feeling is that the ashram blog is very specifically just that – and safetycomfort continues as is, and the two can draw on each other, be messy, make it up as it goes along, no need to get tangled up. I’m feeling a bit more of a wobble as I contemplate actually following this, but, this is also the year of warm, clear, simple, grounded, expanding – with a particular nod there to the expanding.

“This world is not an illusion, and the philosophies that say it is are half-baked half-truths. In an authentic mystical experience, the world does disappear and reveal itself as the dance of the divine consciousness. But then it reappears, and you see that everything you are looking at is God, and everything you’re touching is God. This vision completely shatters you.”

~ Andrew Harvey

~ Hildegard Von Bingen

I’ve written a few times about the frequently-crippling anxiety about being able to live my own life, the fear of criticism if I have my own thoughts, aspirations, feelings, wants, desires. I’ve been making baby steps forward for years, sometimes feeling the anxiety more acutely.

Last week’s decisions to begin the root-level work on healing shame around sexuality, and the conversations in connection with that … these things have unlocked another door, and in opening it there is newly-born awareness of being present in my own life, and how this currently feels like walking a rope bridge across the Grand Canyon. There are several significant dreams, quite a lot of writing, stepping out of my comfort zones again and again … but being gentle. Above all, gentle. And sometimes declaring, That’s enough for one day, as I did a few hours ago, going to bed with a book and then falling asleep with . . . → Read More: the courage to be present in my own life]]> “Dare to declare who you are. It is not far from the shores of silence to the boundaries of speech. The path is not long, but the way is deep. You must not only walk there, you must be prepared to leap.”

~ Hildegard Von Bingen

I’ve written a few times about the frequently-crippling anxiety about being able to live my own life, the fear of criticism if I have my own thoughts, aspirations, feelings, wants, desires. I’ve been making baby steps forward for years, sometimes feeling the anxiety more acutely.

Last week’s decisions to begin the root-level work on healing shame around sexuality, and the conversations in connection with that … these things have unlocked another door, and in opening it there is newly-born awareness of being present in my own life, and how this currently feels like walking a rope bridge across the Grand Canyon. There are several significant dreams, quite a lot of writing, stepping out of my comfort zones again and again … but being gentle. Above all, gentle. And sometimes declaring, That’s enough for one day, as I did a few hours ago, going to bed with a book and then falling asleep with the book and having yet another of those dreams.

Drawing on what I’m learning via the therapy training, particularly transactional analysis (inner Parent, Adult, Child and how each of those ways of being are present within the self) I’m picking up the threads of a scared little girl, an older sister holding her hand, an earth-mother able to help and guide, a grandmother with her ancient wisdom and kindness. I need to draw on the different strong female archetypes for now.  These are spiral journeys; each time I come full circle and go deeper again. I am rebuilding from the ground up.

In my explorations over the years, I have seen much about the transcendence of self, hailing from Eastern wisdom. I wonder if sometimes these attempts to transcend are premature? John Welwood writes, “Western psychology is concerned with the self, Eastern psychology focuses on transcendence of self … The Eastern teachings assume that a person already has a healthy self-structure. However, in modern society it may be dangerous to make such an assumption.”  There’s also a warning from Harvey Cox regarding Western psychologists and scientists appropriating Eastern ideas they may not fully understand. (See John Welwood (ed). Awakening the Heart: East/West Approaches to Psychotherapy and the Healing Relationship).

There is a curious integration: I am engaged in both this foundational work for myself, and exploring / drawing on those elements that go beyond this.   I feel the likes of A Course in Miracles and Way of Mastery and various elements of ‘Westernized’ Buddhism are all expressions of that Eastern approach brought to the West.  What I’m still working out, because of where I’m at, is how it all fits together. This is okay. I’m not necessarily asking to be told; I want to continue tuning into  / following my own intuition. There is still a part of me that will kick off strongly against being told except when I ask for that information, and choose whom I shall ask. I’ll continue to draw on what works for me :-)

“Honouring your own process is essential to a life lived authentically. Others will always have ideas, suggestions, plans for you. Thank them for their concern, but be clear that you, not they, are making the decisions in your life … You need your freedom if you are to learn to be yourself fully. A genuine spiritual guide celebrates your freedom and encourages you to follow your own heart. A true teacher points you within, where you receive your guidance, and not without. For guidance is never found through the concepts and opinions of others … Solitude is necessary for your emotional health, whether you are living alone or living with another. Solitude gives you the time and space to integrate your experience. And all growth depends on integration.”

~ Paul Ferrini, The Silence of the Heart, p. 202-203 and 210

This was last night’s dream, and I understood the main elements immediately and I was able to record the dream in my paper journal on waking.

I feel this fits with my recent post, On owning my experience, & laying down the bundle of wood. I wrote here about how I’ve been thinking along the lines that all of these ideas about sexuality are my mother’s, and that I’ve inherited them somehow. Aha – re-reading that post, I see this: It . . . → Read More: A dream: Goodbye to shame?]]> I am at the funeral of a nun. The funeral is well attended with quite a few other nuns, and some priests are around the coffin. The nun is being buried above ground, and there are several other coffin-shaped tombs nearby. I am watching the funeral, then I am invited up to the coffin as part of the goodbye, to help with a gentle caretaking. It is like being inside the tomb, and there is a duvet covering the person and there is silence and nothingness. I am aware of a shift in the dream, and it stops being a nun’s funeral and it is my mother’s funeral instead. She has gone and there is nothing left.

This was last night’s dream, and I understood the main elements immediately and I was able to record the dream in my paper journal on waking.

I feel this fits with my recent post, On owning my experience, & laying down the bundle of wood. I wrote here about how I’ve been thinking along the lines that all of these ideas about sexuality are my mother’s, and that I’ve inherited them somehow. Aha – re-reading that post, I see this: It also means I absolve my mother of blame. She did her best. She’s got her own stuff. I can’t sort that out for her, but I can let her go. Hence, the dream of a funeral.

What I didn’t get at first was the above-ground burial. It feels like it should be obvious, but it isn’t. Underground = unconscious, above ground = conscious? Is it to do with bringing shame out of the unconscious into full awareness? and, having done some resolving and made new decisions, I can now begin to say goodbye to this repression?

It feels fairly obvious that the nuns and priests are symbolic of repressed sexuality in one form or another, especially when it comes to sexuality and religion, and I’m certain that my mother had the stronger hand in deciding to send me to a convent school, especially after that incident with the strip poker.

I’m sure there are layers and nuances to this I’ve not fully caught yet, but the general understanding is there and having this is enough for now.  I am encouraged by this dream, especially after Friday’s therapy session in which I took several risks – probably the biggest ever therapy session I’ve had to date.

I’m reminded of a dream I had late last year in which I was back in the house where I lived from age 11-18 (which usually features when there’s Big Stuff being sorted out) and I had a laptop computer on which a very sexually-intimate blog was open – it was my blog in the dream. My mother was sitting to my left and she tried to read it, and I pulled the laptop away from her, letting her know it wasn’t OK for her to read it. I felt OK to pull back and I knew that it was OK for me to have my own stuff that was nothing to do with my mother. At that point it started becoming a mini-therapy session, with one of the tutors from the course in the role of therapist. This is only part of a much bigger dream that took nearly seven pages of journal in which to record and comment. This dream is also significant because my mother read my diary behind my back when I was twelve, the diary in which I was just beginning to explore sexuality.

Together with the recent dream that featured Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who writes powerful Jungian soul-work on the female wild nature, and how this training weekend has been very focused on the work of Carl Jung, the shadow, the unconscious … I’m not at all surprised that I had this dream last night. It all fits. Onwards I go :-)