A Light Goes Home: Thank You, Debbie Ford

Years ago, I was beginning to notice a pattern in my life: I was attracting people who often left me feeling depleted. I knew it was a pattern, but I did not know what the pattern was trying to teach me about myself.

During my quest to find insights into this pattern, I went to a local bookstore where I came across Debbie Ford’s book The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. I instantly bought it, went home, tucked myself in and started to read. What followed was an opening of an inner window that had long been forgotten. Debbie’s kindness and care leapt off the pages and gave me the courage to enter into a new realm of self-understanding.

As a child I was taught, perhaps like many, to break up my world into “good” and “bad”. I wanted the world to only see my “good”, and learned to shove, like we tend to do, those things I judged as “bad” somewhere into the recesses of my being. Yet from the power they gained stored away in the dark, those severed places continued to wreak havoc in my life. The disowned parts of me needed attention and integration in order for me to learn to become whole. It was not until I began, with self-love and humility, to welcome these forgotten places into my heart, that I began to truly grow.

Following my first encounter with Debbie Ford, I have found comfort and guidance in her subsequent offerings. Always honest, wise and compassionate in the way that can only come from someone who is walking their talk, Debbie has been a partner to many of my personal inner adventures. If you have been reading along on my blog, you may remember that I referred to Debbie Ford's book "The Right Questions" in a 2012 blog entry about fulfilling your heart's desires.

I grew even more fond of Debbie Ford when I noticed in "The Right Questions" that she thanks my guru, Amma, and speaks of her as "an amazing teacher and a living example of service".

As one who is devoted to consciousness through art, I also appreciated knowing that Debbie’s work has spread to support others with a powerful, international voice, such as Alanis Morissette, who openly refers to their friendship and whose name comes up in Debbie’s books.

On February 17, 2013, Debbie Ford passed away due to cancer. She will be greatly missed by the thousands of people she has touched and inspired to live their best life with her groundbreaking work on the human shadow. I will miss her wisdom and compassionate offerings. Yet I take comfort in the legacy that she leaves behind, work that in essence is never really done, because we are constantly growing, until our inner light, like hers, returns home to rest in lasting peace.

In addition to her body of work, she leaves behind The Collective Heart Foundation in partnership with the Just Like My Child Foundation, offering important programs to help women and children.
If you feel so moved, there is a beautiful page to post your personal memories and stories about Debbie at RememberingDebbieFord.com. 



And if you have never yet had the joy of meeting Debbie, here is a great video introducing you to her, from her website:

With love and gratitude to you, Debbie.
May your light shine on.

Lokah samastha sukhino bhavantu.

Jai Ma,
Parvati 

Sacred Sexuality: Beyond Wanting - Part 4: The Body Channel - The Art of Love

(Continued from Wanting Fulfillment or Open to Divine Love)

What channel are we choosing to tune into and amplify when we mate? Whatever our state of consciousness at the time of sexual interaction, that consciousness is amplified by the act of sex. If we are wanting, seeking fulfillment and brimming with desire, we will feel satisfied temporarily from our climax, then ultimately feel empty once again and want more. The cycle of wanting then continues.

 

But if we approach sex from the point of view of the sacred, from a place of mindfulness and a practice of the release of wanting, most guys will say at first that they can’t get it up, and women will not know how to be sexy because they are so used to seducing or playing hard to get. Once the cat and mouse games or prey/predator games fall away, we are left with our naked self, our inner being, raw, vulnerable and real. Ok, you may ask, so what is so sexy about that!? That is when real lovemaking begins.

 

When we allow ourselves to let go of wanting the other to fill us up, when we let ourselves be real, as we are, another energy comes through our body and being. It will charge our entire being with a presence, a force that is absolutely free of wanting. We feel open, grounded, free, humble and powerful – zero and everything. It is as through our body, heart and soul simultaneously flower in reverential awe of the moment. This force is an exquisite expression of the flower of life itself.

 

Sacred sexuality is not about “me” wanting “you”, or “you” wanting “me”, or two people pleasuring themselves and each other. These temporary wants will come and go and will leave each person with the same sense of emptiness they were consciously or unconsciously trying to fill up through the other. Sacred sexuality is about the body being a vehicle for the divine. Beyond the grip of personality, the partners are open, present, and willing portals of the divine in human form. In this state, there is no desire to climax, in fact, perhaps a moving away from such. Should this force begin to arise, those who are keen practitioners of sacred sexuality will know that this is a sign that wanting is also rising, and interference has come. Practitioners must wait for that wanting to pass in order to proceed.

 

In sacred sexuality, there is the absence of desire, and the fullness of life itself. The whole body-being begins to feel like a sex organ, alive and pulsing with life. Spiritual bliss replaces orgasm and it is not limited to physical contact or genital stimulation. It is a spiritual lasting state that is not conditional upon action. The spine is a conduit for life force energy that pulses energy through every cell. There are no wild multiple orgasms that make you fabulously funky, and proud of your spiritual prowess. In sacred sexuality there is a genuine merging with the One. The mind is calm, clear and fully alert, yet relaxed. The body is present, open, gentle and very strong. This is a yogic state. This is a path to the divine.

 

Sacred sexuality is the expression of sexual energy without wanting. This is the embodiment of life force. It is a co-creation with the Cosmic Intelligence and Nature. It can be expressed with the self through the fulfillment of one’s destiny. It is when the Divine is incarnate. It can also be expressed through self with self-sex. But this may lead to trickiness because the physical body, being the heaviest vibration of our entire being, also houses and triggers our deepest attachments and our most profound wants.

The same is true with sex with others, be it same sex or heterosexual. Sex is to be free of wanting if we are to touch the divine. When wanting is absent, one has the experience of true presence, and this alone, with or without touch, can be soulfully orgasmic. It is a question of openness, readiness and willingness to be seen wholly, as we are without façade, fears and ego. A simple, connected gaze can lead our entire being into a different, expanded realm, one more real than what our limited perceptions and habitual personality would want us to see and believe. Sacred sexuality is not about or limited to genitalia. Sacred sex is about the force of life that flowers through the soul, meeting spirit through the body. It electrifies this moment into the fullness of being. It is living our fullest potential, realizing our magnificence and being divine incarnate. Sacred sexuality is not about the act of sex, but about reverential acknowledgement and humble awe at the spiritual force that flows through life, that we only know when we are willing to become quietly, lovingly spacious, unbound and free of all sense of disconnection.

 

Ask Parvati 31: Relationship Complications - Part 4, Letting Go Of Wounds

PART FOUR: LETTING GO OF WOUNDS

(Continued from Transcending Anger and Low Self-Esteem)

Question: How can I heal past relationships wounds and let go to start living my life? 

My answer: Everything in life has a cycle. There are seasons for flowers and season for snow. Everything plays a part of the greater whole. There is a time in our healing process for anger and a time for grief. Then there is a time for forgiveness. Only when you have had the humility to be honest with your feelings and see your part in the situation, only when you can see yourself in the other person and cultivate understanding, will you be able to let go. Letting go happens when you feel ready. When you become tired of holding on to the anger and hurt, you will let go. The other person, the situation, nothing but yourself is holding on to the hurt and anger. No one is choosing that, other than you. You cannot blame anyone. There are no victims here. When you feel you have had enough of ultimately hurting yourself and creating the feeling of hurt, will you let go. There is no judgement in what I say. It is totally natural to feel dark, painful emotions. Everything has its place and season. You will let it go, when you choose to love yourself enough to treat yourself with the love and kindness you deseve.

You may find the blog I wrote that explores childhood wounds very helpful. It is called Be A Mother to Yourself.

(Continued tomorrow with Moving through Depression and Attracting the Love You Want)

Ask Parvati 26: Follow Your Bliss - Part 2, Name It To Claim It

PART 2: NAME IT TO CLAIM IT

(Continued from Whose Life Are You Living?)

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
 - Eleanor Roosevelt

I have shared in these blog entries the need for us to challenge our core beliefs, because there we find the voices of external authority that we have internalized, which are not the voice of our soul. We need to ask ourselves, who is really in the driver’s seat of our lives? Is it our soul joy? Or are we trying to please our mother, our father, our schoolteacher or our religious leader? We need to look at what is writing the story of our life and reclaim authorship over it. Our unconscious patterns are part of creating our reality until we have the courage to look within and find out what is really going on.

In my case, the depression and ill health I experienced when I was in architecture was a gift from my soul that helped me wake up to live the life that expresses my joy. Living the life of an artist is not an easy one. I understand why my parents, though they encouraged my artistic skills, discouraged it as a career path. There is tremendous financial uncertainty and stress and there is a transparency that happens when we put our expression out into the world. For me the uncertainty has provided the most powerful spiritual seedbed for the cultivation of faith. It has fueled my spiritual growth in ways I could not have imagined. Then need for transparency helps me every day to face my shadows and purify my ego so that my personality and consciousness may be rooted in service and humility.

When I am asked today for guidance on a career as an artist, I always say, you must really love it, because it is not easy. But because what I do feels connected to why I am here on the planet, I feel connected to my soul voice and so very alive when I engage in artistic work. It is not like I am doing a job when I work on music. I am engaged with life and evolving spiritually. My artistic career feels like my spiritual path. I feel aligned with my purpose.

Part of letting go of living for other people’s dreams is being able to articulate our own dreams. We may judge the idea of dreaming as a waste of time and not even allow ourselves to go there. Before we have begun to connect to our soul voice and our purpose, we have already sabotaged ourselves by judging it as useless.

Once we determine whose life we are living and what voices we are listening to that silence our own, we begin to find the space to express even to ourselves who we are. “I love painting! My dream is to be a full time artist!” Or perhaps “I love flying airplanes. My dream is to fly jumbo jets!” Once we are honest with ourselves, we can be honest with the world and begin to take the necessary steps to make our dreams a reality.

In this clear, inner honesty, we can hear the call of our soul adventure. We can hear our soul speak, because we are now open and listening. We may feel some fear, but we are starting to realize that to resist our soul voice is to live in unhappiness. Though the fear of newness is great, we open to possibility. We welcome the new. We know that if we don’t, our life will remain the same and we will be unhappy. When we say yes to ourselves, doors begin to open and we see things that before were blind to us.

Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer. He had a lifelong passion for the study of the cohesive threads in mythology that seemed to run through disparate human cultures. He spoke actively about the Hero’s Journey, something that we all must face if we are to follow our bliss. It was he who coined the phrase, "follow your bliss". Campbell said: “If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.” What inspiration!

Here is a quote Campbell interestingly said he derived from the Upanishads, inspired by the word Sat-chit-ananda (Truth-Consciousness-Bliss), the high yogic state of bliss. He said, “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.”

To me that is a perfect summation of what it means to live in the positive possibilities versus impossibilities. When we live in the positive possibilities, we embrace the notion of support and interconnection and doors do open that were closed to us before. If we remain in the impossibilities, we remain closed and disconnected from who we truly are.

When we name it to claim it, we align ourselves with our soul voice and our life begins to move in support of our highest purpose. Though we will be tested, though we still face fear and doubt, we have begun our own hero’s journey, our soul path. And so it begins…

(Continues tomorrow with Managing Fear And Doubt)

Ask Parvati 26: Follow Your Bliss - Part 1, Whose Life Are You Living?

FOLLOW YOUR BLISS

Dear Parvati,
I really don’t like my job, not because I am not good at it, but because I know it is not what I really want to do. I love art, fine art, painting, not houses, but canvases. Colours, textures… they inspire me. I know that you have an active career as a musical artist. I want to know, how did you find the courage to follow your dreams and not get pulled into the rat race?

PART 1: WHOSE LIFE ARE YOU LIVING?

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”
- Henry David Thoreau

Oh! How I found the courage to follow my dreams… a question very close to my heart! I feel that my life of an artist is an organic one. As such, it is evolving and ongoing. It is not about arriving, but about being. It is very much an unfolding process, which reveals layers of my psyche that are to be celebrated as an authentic expression of my soul or purified and released as distraction. For me the life of an artist is one deeply connected to spirituality, rooted in the cultivation of both interconnection and humility. So the immediate answer to this question is, I am in an ongoing, day-to-day process, learning and discovering a deepening courage to live my dreams.

However, I can offer what I have learned so far in finding courage to follow my bliss. Through the recording of my first record when I was in a co-founded band, prior to my solo career, I would literally go into the vocal booth repeating: “I choose courage, confidence and commitment.” This helped me greatly overcome the self-deprecating thoughts that would hold me back. The process of finding courage is one that I have been working on, and one that continues to grow.

I have shared in these blogs that singing, music, performing is my “way in”, the way I feel closest to Source, most connected to the divine, most alive. As such, it is also where I feel the most raw and vulnerable. But I need to go there, because it keeps me real, honest and true. I feel connected through music. It gives my life meaning.

I think that is the way it is with our joy. We can get caught up in things that seem easy, but in fact they end up being harder, because they squelch the voice of our soul. When we align with our soul, life starts to flow with lightness and possibility.
Probably like you, I have several skills and could have had a solid career in a variety of paths other than music. I studied architecture and was part of the co-op program at the University of Waterloo. I was good at it, too. I excelled at school and in the workplace. People thought I would have a great career as an architect.

But morning would come and I was expected to be at my desk at the office. I needed to get up, get dressed and get to work, except a weight that felt like a million-pound truck was lying on top of me. It took immeasurable effort to even simply get out of bed. I was depressed. I was listless. I was unhappy. I could not go on this way. So I had to change.

My yoga and meditation practice was my sanity lifeline during university. So rather than doing a Masters in Architecture, which I was generally expected to do, I told my family and friends that I was going to India and to not expect me back for five years. A year later (not five, providing my family with much relief), I returned. But I had changed. I had begun the process of letting go of living for other people’s dreams and listening to my own soul voice, which continues to flower and guide my way.

So I ask you, whose voices are driving your life? Take a moment today to ask yourself sincerely, what drives your life? If you feel it is not the voice of your soul, perhaps it is time to do some inner housecleaning and start living the life you were born to live.

(Continues tomorrow with Name It To Claim It)

 

Ask Parvati 23: The Voice - To Speak Or Be Silent? Part 2: Sounding It Raw And Real

PART 2: SOUNDING IT RAW AND REAL

(Continued from Part 1: Soul Confusion, Vocal Tension)

Think about how much our mouth alone moves during the day. Then think of all that is involved in making vocalized sounds: our pumping lungs and all that is involved in breathing; the opening and closing of our throat and all the mechanics in the mouth and through the vocal cords; the way we hear through the incredible world of the ear; and the way we feel and respond, our sense organs being like an immense woodwind instrument, responding to the winds of life that blow through us.

Singing for me is part of my spiritual path. I have said, since I was a child, that I felt most alive and connected when I sing. Through sound, I feel I touch something huge, beyond my active mind, beyond cerebral words.

I continue to explore, on my vocal journey, the extraordinary power of the voice that ranges from non-verbal expressions to melodic singing. For me, the process of giving voice is both humbling and powerful. But giving voice is by no means limited to singing, and making pretty sounds. The voice is capable of an extraordinary range of sounds from the guttural to the angelic.

As a therapeutic tool, the use of raw, unedited sound as a means of expression is a process that brings us quickly into the world of primal power and pre-verbal impulses. We tend to think verbally, yet sonic information does not only exist as words. Dancers know this experience when they feel an electrical impulse to express through their body.

In the same way, sound comes as a wave through our being that expresses the primordial. Sounding and freeform vocalizations can be a very powerful therapeutic tool to unlock experiences that get trapped by the desire to intellectually understand. Many people have had experience with years of psychotherapy, only to find that after a few sessions sounding, that they finally touch areas in their psyche they could not verbally access.

EXERCISE 2:

Find a quiet place where you can lie on your back with your knees bent, feet flat on the ground. Begin to breathe naturally, deeply, but without forcing. Allow your body to relax and your awareness to deepen.

Sense or visualize that your body is a tube that runs from the crown of your head to your feet. Then begin to yawn, and sigh. Allow your self opening up, letting go. Keep yawning and sighing.

Then gently start to make subtle sounds, like you do at the end of a yawn. Nothing dramatic. Nothing big. Just easy does it. Allow the sounds to flow out of you, effortlessly. The less effort, the better.

Keep following those sounds without trying to make something of them. You are not singing, or even trying to make sounds. Sometimes, there may be no sound with the exhale. There may be just be breath. Focus your awareness inward and allow sound to arise. See what comes. Make room for the inner sounds to emerge, without judgment. Follow this exploration for some time. Keep your mouth, jaw and face easy and relaxed. When you have had enough, simply return to your normal breathing pattern and release the exercise. Take a few minutes to notice how you feel.

(Continued tomorrow with Part 3: Authentic Communication: From Goo to Grammar)

 

Ask Parvati 15: Listen To Your Body Talk

Listen To Your Body Talk

Dear Parvati,

I have been experiencing repeated physical symptoms that the doctors are having a tough time diagnosing. Part of me thinks it is all in my head. The other part of me feels there must be something my body is trying to tell me, but I don’t know what it is. What do you have to say about the way our body talks to us through illness, whether that is true or if it is all in my head?

LET ME HEAR YOUR BODY TALK

Thank you for the question. It means a lot to me because my body has been and continues to be a great teacher.

The term ‘body talk’ was likely brought to the spotlight with Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical” hit single in the 80’s, and has recently experienced a revival through electro-pop diva Robyn’s new album by that name. (If you don’t know Robyn, check her out.) For me, the term has come about organically through learning to listen to what my body communicates, be it through impulses to move, sing, dance, express; or impulses to move away from, set boundaries and cut ties. Whether I am feeling healthy or poorly, signals from my body help me to stay true to who I am and to reach my fullest potential.

Several years ago, at the end of teaching a yoga class in my Montreal studio, a student came up to me and asked, “Who is your yoga guru?” My immediate answer arose spontaneously. “My body,” I replied. I went on to explain that by listening to the wisdom within my body, I was able to go deeply into my yoga practice by allowing knowledge from within to rise into consciousness. I found learning by respecting my body’s innate voice much more potent than externally imposed, cerebral or textbook learning.

As a practicing yogini and meditator, I know that the body is intelligent. If we try to move into a yoga pose “from the outside in”, thinking of what it looks like and trying to replicate “over here” what we see “out there”, we can experience inner resistance in the form of tension, discomfort or even pain. But when we allow a yoga pose to flower from the inside out, we learn to honour an already present, natural intelligence.

The same is true for meditation. When practicing, we learn to quietly and lovingly witness where our body holds tension, which becomes our humble teacher showing us where we store unconscious thoughts and energies that no longer serve. When we give our body intelligence the respectful space it needs to be heard, we let go of the illusion that our egos are in control. We become guided by a most potent, natural, divine force, which then has the room to express itself through us.

If we are willing to listen, we will see that our bodies talk. We hold memories within our cells of past experiences, unfulfilled desires, painful events, wishful hopes and soul-directed dreams. Our bodies are like archeological sites that reveal the stories of our lives. When we listen, we can see that our bodies are full of hidden treasures, stories that are held from the past or yet to be born in the future.

ILLNESS IS SOUL TALK

We live in a society that to me seems quite disconnected from the physical. Despite a general cultural focus on the material, we treat matter like a disposable commodity, rather than a partnership to be respected. We converse electronically though portable devices, able to go days without tactile, personal, human contact. Yet, through the noise created by a society that races time and fights to control nature, our bodies cry out with inescapable reminders of its importance in our lives. When we face illness, we are often abruptly reminded of our fallibility and mortality.

Times that our body brings us to our knees and we come to a grinding halt are usually seen as a nuisance, as an inconvenient interruption to our busy life plans – as though it were happening “to” us. But I have learned to understand that the voice of the soul speaks to us through the body. We must learn to welcome it as a lost part of ourselves. It reminds us of what we have forgotten, that is, our intricate connection with nature and the need to develop humility and awe at its power. As such, illness is a gift, not an obstacle, helping us along our path.

Our body is the very same stuff of which nature is made. Organic, imperfect yet completely wise, it exists within an intelligent whole, constantly seeking homeostasis and balance. In my song Sanctified Skin, which is all about the body sacred, I sing:

My body is my temple.

I play inside.

It is so peaceful and even quite sublime.

I am an earthly traveler making peace with my tribe.

I wear this human spacesuit where spirit can find

The light that shines within

Sanctified skin.

My body is no sin,

Sanctified skin.

I celebrate my sanctified skin.

Love emanates through my sanctified skin.

Life gyrates behind sanctified skin.

I breathe it all in.

And life begins!

To me, the body is a place where we can grow quiet and celebrate the divine. The body is a reflection of the divine. Like a “human space suit”, we borrow it briefly while we are here so it may house our soul’s voice and reminds us of our evolutionary path.

Illness comes as a knock at our consciousness door from the voice of our soul. It may be saying that we simply need more rest. Or perhaps, we need to be more honest with our self or with others, and need to make some life changes. Or perhaps our body has us in a total headlock and is showing us with no uncertain terms that we need to live a radically different life. Whatever the message may be, when we take the time to listen, our body will let us know in which way we are out of balance with nature and what steps we need to take to regain total health and happiness.

THE SEEN EXPRESSES THE UNSEEN

All that we see in physical form exists in a subtler form. But not all that has subtle form has physical form. The physical provides us with an amazing tool to tangibly see, feel, taste, touch, and sense the unseen. We tend to think of the physical as the root, the cause, but in fact, it is the effect of spiritual laws and our energy tendencies. The thoughts we think affect the feelings we have, which affect how events take shape and how we experience them. The subtle shapes the physical. As such, illnesses and body messages help us tap right into the divine.

Let us take, for example, the common cold. Stuffy, runny nose, fever, and scratchy throat – we have all been there. Some tend to feel defeated by it, as though it were happening “to me”, feeling sorry for oneself, numbing oneself out, switching oneself off until it passes, disinterested in any soul call. Others prefer to plow on through their work, still feeling at some level that the illness is happening “to me”, but feeling stronger and more feisty than nature itself so choosing to ignore the voice of their soul coming through their body as best they can until all symptoms leave.

Others will see illness as an opportunity to listen more closely. Those people will ask, feeling sincerely receptive to an answer, “What is my body saying? What is my soul trying to communicate?” When I have paused in that way, I have found that the common cold, for example, is usually an expression of unshed tears. The body needs to move excess energy somehow. A cold is one way to shed stored water energy and inner dampness. Should I feel like I am about to come down with a cold, I find that when I tune into what I am feeling in my heart and soul, soon tears start to flow. When I allow myself to release this stored energy in the manner it needs, the looming cold quickly disappears.

Illness is a means to reconnect with the voice of your soul. It comes as a message from your soul, designed to catch your attention. Dis-ease is to be ill-at-ease. It signals a way in which we are not at ease within ourselves; we are not in alignment with our truest selves. It signals a dis-balance in our relationship between our body, our soul, our spirit, our personality and the planet. In this way, illness is not some form of cosmic punishment, something happening “to me”. It is no sign of failure, but a sign of grace, the divine offering us an opportunity to reconnect more deeply and honestly to who we are.

THINKING AND BEING

A story that the famous channel Edgar Cayce recounts illustrates the connection between mind and body. Each day, a friend of his was asked how he was. Each day, his friend replied, “Never better!” One day, a series of people decided to let this man know on his way to work that he was looking pale and ill, to see what would happen to his feeling “never better”. As the man came across each one of those people that morning, he gave his usual, “Never better” reply when asked how he was. But this time, the people that questioned him retorted, “Really? You are looking very unwell.” By lunchtime, the poor fellow had to go home, having suddenly come down with the flu.

What we say to ourselves and how we speak to others affects health and well-being. It is too simple, however, to suggest that physical symptoms are psychosomatic. Nor am I saying that all illnesses exist in our mind or that they are simply the results of our thoughts. What we think and feel plays a huge role in our health, just as our body reflects our thoughts and feelings back to us. If we are willing to hear what our body is saying, we have a powerful ally in our health and spiritual growth.

I do know from experience that there is nothing purely ‘physical’. Even things that seem just like physical accidents were part of a greater metaphysical picture. All things physical are an expression of the unseen. For example, why did you trip down the stairs? Were you feeling really in the flow, connected, alert? Or were you feeling down, doubtful, discouraged? What were you thinking when that car accident happened? Had you just received a raise, but at some level felt this was all just too good to be true? I feel we owe it to ourselves and to nature to listen, to tune into our body and let it talk to us.

PHYSICAL, EMOTIONAL, INTELLECTUAL, SPIRITUAL BODIES

Layers of subtle energies surround our bodies, moving away from our skin from the densest to the lightest frequencies, sounds and colours. Our physical bodies are the grossest expression of subtle energies. Subtler than the physical body is a sheath called the emotional body. Subtler still is the intellectual body followed by the spiritual body. As we listen to our physical body, following its cues given to us through discomfort, stresses and pain, we come into contact with messages from these subtler realms.

A woman came to me once for healing work. She had pelvic pain, and wanted relief. When I opened to her, I intuitively saw a rape that she had survived. I saw too the inflamed rage she still felt because of it. Her pain was letting her know she still had deep, unprocessed emotions. She had not moved through the horror of the incident, nor had she seen any possibility for forgiveness. Full of rage, blame, resentment and shame, she did not know how to deal with these emotions, so she packed them away and tried to move on. But her body pain was keeping her honest, letting her know she still had not healed, nor had she learned what she needed to learn through the incident.

Once she was willing to listen to messages within her body as the voice of her soul, she saw that she needed to confront her violator and the family members that were silently witness to the crime. Her soul was speaking through her body letting her clearly know that she had unfinished business on her personal healing and spiritual journey. Once she followed through what she needed to do to heal, her symptoms ceased. She also was free from the entangled, emotional grip of those who were involved, and was able to pursue with confidence a much happier life.

There are several wonderful authors and healers that offer guidance in understanding messages from the body, such as Louise Hay’s classic “You Can Heal Your Life” or her “Heal Your Body” or Caroline Myss’s “Anatomy of the Spirit”. Though I highly respect the guidance these teachers offer, I found for myself that they offered a point of view, rather than law written in stone. As I deepened my relationship with my body and learned to understand my body language, I developed and still am learning skills to understand a very rich, multidimensional language that has roots right to my soul, including everything I know and everything I could want to know. I encourage you to tune in and learn your own unique body language, the one only you know.

TUNING IN: YOUR SEVEN BODY TALK STATIONS

The body tends to work as an intelligent, multidimensional energy system that draws upon and stores information of similar nature within similar regions of the body. For example, earlier I spoke of violation memories in the pelvis. Why pelvis for violation? The pelvis tends to be the area of the body where we learn to have trusting relationship with others. If that developmental process is compromised in some way, we may recreate, attract and relive similar life patterns over and over until we learn new ways of being. So listening to our body talk is one of the most direct and powerful ways to spiritually grow. That was why I said to my yoga student that my body is my guru. Guru means one who leads you from the darkness of ignorance to the light of truth. By learning to listen to and honour what we carry in the dark recesses of our body, we learn to live in greater light and with greater freedom and ease.

The following are some common energy tendencies that I have found in listening to my body talk over the years. Perhaps they offer some starting points that may help your unique, archeological, body talk explorations.

ROOT: The root energy center is located at the base of the spine around the perineum. Illnesses that affect everything from the soles of feet to the base of the spine are governed by this energy center. This energy center tends to be about the self, one’s rooting in this world, how we are anchored, the foundations we stand on. It tends to relate to our feelings and our experiences with our tribe, our primary family, and issues of survival. The earth rules this energy center. An invocation we can embody for healthy root center is “I am”.

SACRUM: The sacrum energy center is located in the pelvis, just below the navel. It predominantly governs the sexual organs, the low back and the lower abdominal area. This energy center tends to be about our relationship between our self and another, how we relate to another person. This energy center is governed by our emotional fluidity and how we flow within life as a whole. It is ruled by water. An invocation we can embody for a healthy sacrum is “I am beauty”, not as in being physically beautiful, but that our essence is beauty, just as nature is beauty. We are called here to trust in the flow of life of which we are an integral part.

SOLAR PLEXUS: The solar plexus is located just above the navel. It governs the upper abdomen and the organs of digestion. As such it is governed by fire. This energy center relates to how we maintain our sense of self within a group and our ability to act in ways that honour who we are. Because of this, boundary issues are reflected here. An invocation we can embody for a healthy solar plexus center is “I can”.

HEART: The heart center is located in the front of the chest. Illnesses that are governed here are those of the heart, lungs, all organs, vertebrae and tissues that are in the chest area. This energy center is about learning to transcend our personal needs, already expressed in the first three energy centers, and tap into the transpersonal and unconditional. It is governed by ether. An invocation we can embody for a healthy heart is “I am joy”.

THROAT: The throat center is located at the base of the neck in the soft tissue above the clavicle. It is governed by sound. It is responsible for diseases in the area of the body that relates to sound through the neck and mouth area. This energy center relates to our speech, what we vocalize, our ability to be truthful and honest, and the actualization of our soul’s voice, our trust in divine guidance. An invocation we can embody for a healthy throat is “I am sound”.

THIRD EYE: The third eye is located just above the space between the eyebrows at the center of the forehead. It governs the organs of the head. The energy center relates to our ability to see clearly, to see through illusion to what is real. As such, it relates to our ability to see beyond our tendency to see the physical as finite and experience ourselves as beings of light. An invocation we can embody for a healthy third eye is “I am light”.

CROWN: The crown energy center is located at the top of our head, in the center of the crown. It oversees the way we flow between the cosmos and physical. As such, it affects our overall blueprint and architecture and how spirit manifests into form. The relationship between the physical and the metaphysical is expressed as the interplay between the bioelectrical field, the bio-chemical field and the tissue field as a biodynamic whole, within the whole. An invocation we can embody for a healthy crown energy center is “Isness”.

Happy exploring, listening to and honouring your own, unique body-talk!

May you feel rooted, vital and expansive as you enjoy the moment to moment unfolding and the eternal dance between spirit and matter.

Parvati

Ask Parvati 14: The Death of Niceties and Feisties

DEATH OF NICETIES AND FEISTIES

THE BIRTH OF FIERCE COMPASSION

Dear Parvati,

I notice that when I am around other people I tend to go into people pleasing at the expense of myself. I wonder what you have to say about that.

DIALING “THEM” DOWN, DIALING ME UP

BECOMING AUTHENTIC

One of the pivotal quotes that shaped my life growing up was from one of my favorite musical icons, David Bowie. He said something like the worst trick God could play is to make you mediocre. Internalizing my version of his message, my motto became through high school and university that I would rather be an A or an F student than a C student.

Living by that belief, I developed two distinct personality traits, a tendency to edit myself to people please with niceties or plow through things with a fiery feistiness. Both extremes were fueled by a drive for what I understood to be “perfection”. The tension that lay between these and the fervour I put into trying to be “perfectly A” or “perfectly F” eventually consumed my health and wellbeing.

By the end of high school and into my first year of university, I was exhausted and stressed because I was not being authentically myself. Though it took me completing university and facing the rest of my life to figure it out, I eventually realized that I had allowed other people’s voices, wishes and dreams to unconsciously run my life. My feistily polite drive for “perfection” was based on the fear that if I were myself, I would not be loved.

I share this because I believe the fear that to be oneself would lead to a lack of love is not unique to me, but is surprisingly very common, even rampant in the human psyche. In the process of trying to come to terms with which inner voices were mine and which were not, I discovered that my extreme personality traits were like healthy qualities on steroids. Through various illnesses and harsh life lessons, I learned to dial down the intensity of my attachment to an idea of perfection and redirect the root energy that was driving it into more life affirming expressions.

I discovered that within my drive for perfection were many strong qualities. From this, immense creativity, powerful zeal and an ability to harness raw momentum out of almost any situation soon became my allies. Drawing upon these qualities, I learned to redirect my drive for perfection towards protecting my inner voice rather than the voice of others.

(I am very fond of the approach of self-help author Debbie Ford, whose shadow work helps people profoundly transform their lives, not by trying to get rid of “bad” qualities, but by finding the gems, the hidden teachings, in all we have within.)

Learning to be true to myself has meant letting go of a lot of excess. I have had to look at letting go of a tendency to become entangled in what others think. I needed to look at my defensiveness, learning to let go of a general, ongoing feeling of being judged or attacked. I have had to watch the death of my niceties and my feisties so that I could find the courage to go within and fiercely honour my own unique rhythm and voice.

As I began to live a more soul-directed life, I realized that doing so was not really the norm. Looking back at the construct I had started to leave behind, I saw that though on the surface it seemed that society supported excellence, the pull to live in the status quo was stronger in the collective consciousness. It seemed most people were complacently satisfied with fitting in and being “normal”.

WHY BE NORMAL?

Midway through university, I started to wear a pin on my coat that asked the question: “Why be normal?” I meant it as a provocative and sincere question as to what normality really meant to the world at large and to anyone who noticed me wearing it.

What I came to realize is that there is nothing wrong with being an A, B, C, D or F student, if that is who you truly are. We each are unique expressions of a divine force and it is our job to discover what that is and express it in our life. The problem is, most of us go through life on autopilot, as though we are asleep, wondering why life feels like a bad dream, tending to react to our unconscious thoughts and desires rather than learning to live fully and authentically.

When we begin to wake up, we wake up to, as the mindfulness teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “the full catastrophe” of our lives. We learn to see the depth of our reactivity, the ways we give our power away to people and things and how we place happiness in some elusive place or person outside ourselves. Deeper still, we learn to touch and be present for the silent voices that rage through our actions, like feeling fundamentally “I can’t” or “I am not loved”.

When we come upon these old, hidden places within us, we must learn to pause and befriend them, rather than run from them pretending they do not hurt. When we welcome our full self into our self, we access our fullest power. We learn to see that our dreams are completely feasible, and that we have all we need to realize them. We begin to see that our main obstacle has been our self (no one else) and the antagonistic way we have seen the world.

As I began to find my own answers as to “why be normal?”, I started to follow an impulse, a powerful yet quiet force that lay waiting behind my conscious thoughts. It was within me and made no logical sense. But did it matter? I felt alive. I felt open. I felt connected. And in so doing, I was a better, fuller, more inspired, helpful and loving person.

In learning to find our unique rhythms, we need to try things out. I went through a phase of sporting short, electric purple hair with fluorescent blue eyebrows. My regular dress was multi-coloured body paint hidden mysteriously under a wardrobe of solid black. Only after a phase of leopard skin, tutus and combat boots, followed by a love affair with haute couture, did I reveal my joy of full colour. That was when I got rid of everything black.

When I was living in New York City, I went through a phase where everywhere I went, I carried a rubber goldfish in the palm of my hand, that I called “Fishy”. There was no sense in it. It was my own whimsical performance-art piece. The jelly-like goldfish was my friend, so it went where I went. People got use to it and accepted it. It was funny. It made people pause, do a double take and laugh. I loved that pause. I loved the space it gave because it allowed for more authentic connections as we stepped out of “normal”.

A friend of mine from New York, Kelly Cutrone, has a recent book called Normal Gets You Nowhere that shares her own brand of self-love. She believes normalcy inhibits the unique gifts everyone can offer the world and doesn't necessarily bring happiness. I agree with Kelly that when we are true to who we are, it's easier to be honest, it's easier to be compassionate, and the world is a much better place.

FIERCE COURAGE AND COMPASSION

Being true to who we are is an ongoing process as we meet each moment of our lives. It is not a final destination point but a ripening as we get to know ourselves more fully. We all are works in progress, letting go of excess, reclaiming what we lost, discovering the new and rediscovering the forgotten.

It requires a fierce courage to be oneself. “Fierce courage” to me does not mean acting like a bully or railroading people. (If that is naturally who you are, then ok - but I would doubt it to be so. Most bullies are people who are deeply afraid.) We need fierce courage because there is momentum to normalcy, there is social momentum to staying asleep and not awakening one’s true nature. In effect, there is no “normal”. There is either “asleep” or “awake”, to varying degrees.

When we begin to honour our true nature, we shed light for others to do the same. But not everyone is ready for such honesty, nor does everyone want it. Connecting to our inner fierceness keeps us honest, instinctual, and in alignment with nature. Tapping into courage helps us move towards greater expansion. Developing compassion helps us understand the tendency to want to remain asleep. Because that tendency exists within us all, we can see ourselves in others. However, in this moment, we choose to live awake.

When we are naturally who we are, we align our energies with the force of nature, a most potent force. It does not apologize for who it is. It does not sheepishly try to be something else. It does not look for approval. It simply is.

The flower does not question that it is a flower, nor does the lion question its nature. The flower quietly reflects beauty. The lion will tear off your head if you get too close. The flower does not question if it is too beautiful, nor does the lion struggle with guilt, doubt and self-reproach due to the force of its claws. If the lion pretended to be a mouse, the lion would be unhappy. If the flower were crushed by concrete, it could not grow. We must be who we are.

Driven by the ego that knows only fear and disconnect, our minds tend to seek control and manipulate reality to suit our core beliefs. In turn, we create complexity in the moment, in which we become entangled. By becoming mentally convoluted, we lose touch with the force of our innate intelligence that arises from deep within through our connection with nature.

If your joy is singing, then sing. If your joy is being a lawyer, then love it. If you want to sit and read a book, then lap it up. If you need to tell someone how you feel, then let that person know. And do it completely, with every ounce of your being. Whatever it is, if you crush that connection with nature, your connection to who you are, everyone loses. When you honour it, everyone wins.

If there is truth in my desire to be either an A or an F student, it is that neither being driven by wanting to be “nice” nor by being overly “feisty” was right for me. Both were a form of pushing or pulling at life, rather than riding the river I am. Each one of us has to find that flow, our own unique expression of the life force that moves within us. Groundbreaking modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham provides an inspiring quote to illustrate this: “There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. Because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.”

We often mistake compassion for sentimentality and love for sweetness. Love to me is fierce, an unbridled force that defies reason. It is the force that says, “I am that I am.” Compassion is an expression of that force through action. It calls us to serve through love for being here, for being part of it all.

When we don’t say what we need or share who we are, we are living in fear and, in effect, we waste our lives and everyone else’s time. This life is short. The perils are many. We need to sharpen our inner clarity to see who we are and connect to our unique inner light so that we may shine as beacons in the world.

Many people won’t get it. Many people will. Either way, it doesn’t matter. What matters most is that you feel alive, plugged in and real. In tapping into such rooted, vital expansiveness, you send a message to the universe of possibility, of interconnection, of “yes” to life. Without any aggression or warrior rage, you have created a radical revolution – by being exactly who you are. 

Today, and every day, I celebrate you.

Parvati

Ask Parvati 13: I Suck. Please Love Me.

I SUCK. PLEASE LOVE ME.

Self-Love and All That Fun Stuff

May 22, 2011

Dear Parvati,

I really want a life partner but just can’t seem to find the right person. I have been told I need to work on my self before I can find my life partner, but I must admit I don’t totally get why. Are we not supposed to grow with our partner? I feel like I need to be somehow perfect to attract the right person into my life. I find all this stressful so I thought you could shed some light on this. Thanks.

Thank you for the question. Most of us grow up with the idea that someone ‘out there’ will come along some day to fill us up. Mesmerized by fairy tale myths of a perfect prince or princess who will transform our lives into magic, we look (and perhaps are looking) for the one person who would make our lives perfect and bring us the happiness we feel we have been deeply missing.

Just like with all fairy tales, “real life” is something different. For the most part, what we commonly call love is some form of unspoken contractual relationships, where “if I act in a certain way, I will get this and that from you, and vice versa”. Contracts are not love but arrangements.

Getting real about love means learning to face our own lives and look at our values, our hopes, our dreams, our tender places, our relationships with friends, family and peers and most importantly, our relationship with ourselves.

THE CATCH

Trying to find a lasting relationship feeling lousy about oneself is like trying to catch rain with a sieve. We simply don’t have the containment to attract the nectar we seek to quench our hungry and lonely hearts. If we look within, we may feel a hunger that is deeply insatiable. This is a feeling that only we can satisfy. It would be impossible for anyone to do that for us.

Until we feel we are worthy of love, we are unable to sustain the true love we ultimately seek. When we feel incomplete within ourselves, our sense of partiality tends to attract partial relationships that last for some time and then dissolve. It is only when we feel whole within ourselves that we attract the wholesome love that provides the meaty sustenance to accompany and enhance our lives.

When we learn to love our self, we become like an open cup ready to receive the bounty of life. Perhaps, to some, that seems like bitter irony. You may ask, “If I feel whole, why would I want to find love?” Love is organic and infinite. It is not an end point, but an ongoing, alive, evolving force. Love does not arise though “wanting”. When we are “wanting”, we are identified as separate from that which we want. How can we attract something from which we feel disconnected? When we we feel that we are not separate from, but exist within, love, we are able to receive and sustain it.

Love flourishes as an ever-present force to be witnessed. For most, love is to be found, to be had or to be lost. But for the wise, love is to witness an unfolding. As we love ourself or as we love another, we learn not to grasp or to control, but to appreciate with inner spaciousness the blossoming, the evolution of this moment as it is.

It is not someone else’s job to make you feel loved, but up to you to tap into the love within yourself. Friends, family, lovers, spouses can amplify that connection within you, but they are not the source. To put that job on someone else would be to sidestep your own spiritual responsibility.

Feeling disconnected from love can be a deeply unconscious thing, due to wounds we carry from childhood and/or from past lives. There may be a very young place within us that still feels unmet by our mother, our father or both. From this place, we tend to express a wanting for love. We may be feeling unconsciously, “I want daddy to make it all ok,” or “I want mommy to love me in the way I need”, which then gets projected onto any potential partner we may attract. How could a partner fill that void?

A mature, lasting love relationship is not two halves making a whole, but two wholes dancing in the infinite. We must do our own inner work on our deeper issues before we can have a lasting and meaningful relationship with another person.

WE ARE LOVE, WE ARE LOVED

It is up to each one of us to realize that within us exists an unbroken tie to the universe, an unending tap that flows with love. The problem is, most of us are standing on the ‘cosmic hose’ that is pumping love our way, while we scratch our heads bewildered, wondering where all the love has gone. When we are developing self-love, we need to look within at the ways in which we are blocking the flow to feel love, to feel loved.

Love is all around, within, always. The very fabric of the universe pulsates at the frequency of love, of joy, of abundance. In each moment we are loved beyond what we could ever imagine. It is our own distorted thoughts, wounds and attachments that make us believe otherwise. So why do we hold on to feeling disconnected, searching for love ‘to fill me up’ from ‘out there’, rather than within?

Perhaps it is habit, socialized patterns, a sort of cosmic amnesia that keeps us asleep rather than truly empowered. Perhaps it is easier to blame than take responsibility. There is a subtle power we get from feeling powerless, from feeling like a victim. It is scary to let go of blame and take responsibility for our happiness, because we have to look within and change things that hold us back from growing. Stepping into the new, the unknown, is scary, when we are attached to things being as they are. That involves being accountable for our life and letting go of blaming everyone, even our parents, or the universe, for our wounds. We each chose our parents and every aspect of our lives. Everything that exists in our lives is a reflection of our thoughts and beliefs and provides perfect support for our growth. There are no mistakes, only opportunities.

In order to embrace change, we need courage. Self-love takes courage to develop. It is only when we have the courage to welcome ourselves into our hearts that we find the love we seek. In welcoming our full self into our self, that is, in opening ourself up to the totality of who we are, we learn to welcome the love from the universe, and then from others, into our lives. When we love ourself, we discover how to co-create with the love from another. Our life then becomes like a house built on a solid foundation.

Without self-love, we tend to graft ourselves onto another person’s energy, because we are not rooted in who we are. Our rootedness comes from our personal relationship with the cosmos, the divine and the reality (not the myth) of love. One’s relationship to the divine is a deeply personal thing, something no one but oneself can truly understand.

WHAT IS SELF-LOVE ANYWAY?

Self-love is different from self-confidence or having a good self-esteem, though they can be related. Self-confidence is when one feels certitude in their ability to discern or act, whereas self-esteem involves a quiet assurance in one’s place within the whole, a feeling of being a valuable and welcome part of the universe. Self-love involves the ability to treat oneself with understanding, kindness, patience and gentle perseverance. Deeper still, self-love involves one’s ability to know that one’s true nature is love and that our human destiny is to embody that love and express it in all we do.

The notion of self-love conjures images for many of being overly indulgent, narcissistic, egotistical, vain or selfish. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. It is only when we love our self that we learn to truly love others.

When we love ourself, we begin to look at life not as something happening ‘to me’, but as a reflection of who we are. We don’t feel separate from people, places and things, but we see our self in our surroundings. We feel closer to, even a part of, everything. There is a gentle sense of containment, or embrace, that surrounds us at all times, no matter what. In this, we feel rooted, vital and expansive, able to participate in life and follow our true joy with openness and courage.

Self-love is not about being overly attached and fascinated with the notion of “mine”. Self-love is a sacred thing. It brings us close to the divine. It allows us to see our Self as a reflection of the sacred, a part of a much greater whole. Self-love requires a paradigm shift. It involves being able to feel connected at some level to something greater than our ego.

When we allow ourselves to be wholly who we are, we embody the Divine. Our deepest joy is our way into the realm of possibility, a guiding light into our true, infinite nature. I have often contemplated on the meaning of the phrase “It is God’s Will”. Does that mean that some force outside of me could potentially disapprove of my choices? What I have come to realize is that there is no force ‘out there’ that is separate from my true self. The will of the universe dances to the rhythm of love and is supported by joy. In essence, my true joy is the universe’s joy. I know without a shadow of doubt that so it is for you too. We are all beings of love. Let us remember our true nature and set ourselves free. Love, love, love. It is all about love.

May we each remember our true nature, embody love and set the world’s heart ablaze.

Love,

Parvati

Ask Parvati 2 - Family Relationships - Breaking Free of Feeling Judged

Family Relationships – Breaking Free of Feeling Judged

March 6, 2011

Thank you very much for your comments to my past post and for your submissions this round.

If you would like your question to be in a draw to be answered next Sunday, please send it to me by Thursday March 10^th at ask@parvatidevi.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Have a super week and enjoy the week’s read.

Parvati

QUESTION:

Dear Parvati, I have been brought up in a very controlling family, with very dogmatic religious beliefs. Even though I am an adult now and have been living on my own for a long time, I still feel this fear of being controlled and judged by them, to the point where I don't even want to talk to them or visit them anymore. How can I move past that and have a healthy, balanced relationship with them?

REPLY:

Dear Friend,

Thank you for your sincere question. Many, I am sure, can relate. No matter what kind of family we are born into, good, loving, kind, abusive, indifferent, we have an opportunity to grow. At a soul level, deeper then the personality, our family members are very powerful teachers that I believe are perfectly matched for what we need to learn in this life. Whether or not you have a postcard happy relationship with your family, whether you speak to them every day or once in ten years, all that is in your life is there to support you learning and evolving.

Learning to see a situation as it is, beyond hurt and the grip of emotional reactivity, is to me the first step to finding healing. When you look deeper, you see that a judgmental person is a fearful person. We can all relate to being afraid. We all share deep, primal fear of not being loved.

Being able to see a person as they are helps us to understand what really is, and in so doing, we to learn to love. A judgmental person likely does not feel loved. Knowing that behind a judgmental person is a fearful one helps us to feel more connected to them at a soul level. Maybe our personalities don’t jive, but somehow, we can relate to another’s human experience. We too can feel afraid. We too can judge. Rather than falling into the trap of judging those who are judging us, which just perpetuates the cycle of suffering, we learn to be present for their fear of not being loved, which mirrors our own fear of not being loved. So in essence, you really are not dealing with judgment at all. You are learning to let go of identifying with the fear of not feeling loved and not taking someone else’s fear of the same personally.

Once we know what is really going on, we can find much greater inner peace. We can be more honest within ourselves about how we are afraid of not being loved by the people who were our primary caregivers. Biologically, our very life depended on these people when we were children. So we wanted and needed to feel loved – for survival. But as adults, our life no longer depends on them the same way. Instead, we learn to connect inwardly to the true source of love, which is not our parents, but the universal flow of pure consciousness that is in all things, all the time. We learn to see ourselves as a reflection of that love, and our family also.

So, you may ask, if my judgmental family is a reflection of that pure consciousness, why do they act in a way that I find hurtful? A judgmental person is not plugged into the reality that he/she is a reflection of pure consciousness. Nor is that person seeing you as such. The key is, it does not matter if they see you that way or not. You find freedom by seeing it yourself. You cannot control when they wake up to seeing things as they are. But you can control when you can. They may never see you as you are. But you can learn to see them as they are right now. In seeing them as they are, you are actually seeing yourself more clearly, because you are tapping into unconditional love. And your true nature is Love.

When you plug into the reality that you are love, that you are loved, when you choose to live in the positive possibilities, you can see that their fear is a reminder, a teacher that guides your choices. Their judgment shows you that acting in disconnect causes pain for everyone. So you learn not to do the same. Their pain teaches you to let go of the hurtful cycle of judgment so that you love yourself and others, something they, at this time, are not able to do, likely not because they are mean, but because they don’t yet know how.

We are geared to see our biological family as our safe place, as our source of love. As children, we needed our families to be that for us. But now, we learn to see ourselves as part of a much bigger family, the human family, and find our source of love from the timeless universal rather than from the limited personal. As we grow older, we must leave the nest to find our own expression of I AM. We can fear that we will surpass our parents, and that then we will not get the love we had hoped we would as children. But being able to see our parents and siblings as they are is essential in becoming who we are. As we see them for who they are, as they are, rather than as we want them to be, we learn to accept them as they are, and love who we are. Our source of love no longer is held captive within them, limited mortals that they are, but found beyond all things temporal. Life then becomes a co-creative dance with the timeless source of love, through the temporal expression of it. We learn to see that what is before us in our lives is teaching us to love better, but is not the source of love.

All that happens, happens for a reason. We are part of a much greater, intelligent infrastructure than what our little ego can perceive. As such, what happens in our life, offers us an opportunity to grow beyond the grasp of our ego. I believe that our family members provide us with the perfect setting to learn to truly love and realize who we are.

EXERCISE

1) The essential questions

No matter what happens in life, we can choose to grow. We can choose for life to break our heart closed or break it open. So as a starting point, I would be asking myself some key questions:

•  What am I learning here?
•  What is this situation gifting me with that only this situation could offer?

2) Seeing things as they are

We are distracted from the present by being attracted to what we like (thinking that will bring us happiness, however fleeting) and repulsed by what we don’t like (running from what we fear). Both attraction and repulsion are based on running: running to, and running from the fullness of life. When we allow ourselves to see things – as they are – without a story attached to it, we begin to experience that which is.

All relationships provide us with a very powerful mirror. If we like what we see, we tend to say: “I like that.” If we don’t like what we see, we say: “I don’t like that.” We tend to attract again and again similar people, who at some point we don’t like, because we have not learned to accept that part inside ourselves.

Perhaps, having grown up in a judgmental family, you may find yourself prone to being judgmental. Even when we tend to not like things in our family, sooner or later, we find they exist in us. Being judgmental about judgmental people is a quick and easy trap to fall into. Practice finding a neutral point of view, to the best of your ability. Practice seeing your family members as they are with no story attached.

For example, when you hear one of your family members being judgmental, do you immediately think, “Oh! There he/she goes again, being so judgmental!”? By reacting to another’s judgmental nature, in effect, you are judging. Instead, see if you can develop a point of view to see things as they are. So he/she judges and you say to yourself, with neutrality, “Ok. There is judgment.” As though you were saying, “The sky is blue.”

3) The power of raw and real

By learning to pause when you tend to react to feeling judged, you can begin to truly feel what you are feeling. Beyond the discomfort of feeling judged, you may feel disconnected from the person who you feel is judging you. And in that disconnection, you may realize that you feel sad and alone. In that aloneness, you may notice that you feel afraid. In that fear, you may doubt that that you will ever feel love or loved. In that feeling of disconnection you are left raw, real and honest in that moment. The reactivity of being judgmental was masking that vulnerability of your naked, open honesty.

The question you may be asking is, why would I want to feel naked, raw and vulnerable, any time especially around people who I feel judge me? True power comes from honesty, not from masks. We can say nothing to someone who hurts us, and pretend it does not matter, but all the while, our stomach is churning and inner pain builds within. Our masks grow heavy and are tiresome to carry. We think we are protecting ourselves, but in effect, we are hiding ourselves from ourselves and the world. How can we feel love in that state of hiding?

We hide because we are afraid that who we really are is not good enough. And that feeling of not good enough is easy to feel when we are around judgmental people. But the cycle stops cold when we stop giving it energy. In being honest, raw, vulnerable and real with ourselves and with others, we stop the cycle of disconnect. We have taken the leap into connecting with ourselves. And once we do, we can tune in, powerfully, to find out if it is right for us to share that feeling with others.

4) Share what feels expansive and witness the rest

It is not always right to share with another person all and everything that you are feeling. But it is always right to share whatever feels expansive to share of what you are feeling, from a place of personal connection and honesty with who you are. Whatever you say from that vantage point, everyone has the opportunity to gain, whether they decide to open to that opportunity or wish to continue to judge. What they do, you cannot control. But what you see and say, you totally can.

5) Manage your relationship

Define the relationship as it suits you. You are in charge of all relationships in your life. You never need to feel, in any relationship, that you are powerless. All relationships in your life need to work for you. So ask yourself, with regard to your family,

• What kind of relationship do I need in order to feel healthy?
• What changes do I need to make in my behaviour with them to honour my needs?
• In what way am I still looking for their approval?
• How do I give them power?
• In which way do I still see them as the source of my love?
• At what point do I start to feel like I am losing my energy when I am around them?
• Do I feel this way with all my family members or just a few in particular?

If you are learning new self-management techniques, let your family know that you are changing things in your life so they can expect changes. They may not understand. They may even react. That does not matter. If you need to, you can let them know that you need some space to figure things out and that it is not personal.

Take care of yourself first. Unless you have a positive possibilities relationship with yourself, you cannot have a healthy relationship with others. And just because you have a positive possibilities relationship with yourself, that doesn’t mean you will ever have a positive possibilities relationship with certain people. Those people just may not want to go there.

I do believe it is not possible or even healthy to have relationships with certain people. It is always healthy to wish people well, to sincerely wish them happiness. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is not interact. No one benefits when two drowning people cling to each other and pull each other down.

TIPS:

Next time you know you are going to interact with people who tend to judge you, see if you can set up boundaries that support you having space to keep tuned into how you feel. Also make sure you have the space you need to leave, if you need to.

1. Before you engage with any of your family members, prepare yourself to practice seeing their behaviour as a reflection of their own state of consciousness and not as a reflection of you.
2. When you feel people judge you, take a deep breath and go within to shift your perspective. It is not “happening” to you. Their judging reflects their own state of fear and subsequent desire to control.
3.  Ask for clarification. “You said [this]. Is that what you mean?”
4. Should you feel judged, take a deep breath and shift your perspective into seeing that the judgment is a reflection of their own disconnect and fear and has nothing to do with you. Then you can choose to voice, if it feels expansive to do so, that you feel judged by what was said. Not because you want their approval, but out of self-love; it is healthy for you to be honest with who you are. Being honest ultimately mirrors back to them how their behaviour makes you feel and provides them with an opportunity to see you better and to learn to love.
5.  If you do choose to voice how you feel, practice being not attached to what they say in response. Remember, you are doing it for yourself, not for approval.If you choose not to voice how you feel, continue to practice witnessing how the other is behaving. If you feel like you are losing energy by being in that environment, leave. Doing what feels expansive for you is best for everyone.

SACRED LAWS

• Everyone in your life is a teacher.
• Everything in life provides an opportunity for you to embody wisdom-compassion and realize your true nature as Love.
• Set healthy boundaries. You don’t need to hang out with anyone that does not make you feel expansive. Sometimes people come into your life to teach you to say no.
• Being real, honest and raw is powerful. The more honest you are with yourself, the more honest you can be with others. The more you live by honesty in all you do, the less burdens you carry and the freer you will feel. The freer you feel, the more love you will feel, and therefore, the more able you will be to share and enjoy living.