It Is Up To Me: Cultivating Self-Love

From Self-Betrayal To Self-Love: Steadiness and Gratitude On The Path

Part 3: It Is Up To Me

Over the last few weeks, I have been sharing here what I learned when I recently found that I was being unkind to myself. My last post was during the first period of Lent, as Christians prepare for Easter. Today I post this blog entry as we enter into the week of Passover, a Jewish festival that celebrates the miraculous release from slavery.

To some extent, we all have parts of ourselves that feel enslaved, whether we are conscious of them or not. It is also a tendency for most of us to want others to free us from these painful places.

But as I was reminded in my recent experience, when I saw that I was turning myself black and blue, it is not for anyone else to “save” me, take away my pain or fix my perceived broken bits. I need to face my inner demons just as you do, just as the next person does – on my own, in my own time, in my own way.

It is a kind of miracle to realize that we have the ability to free ourselves in this way. By turning on our inner light, we invite grace, transformation and spiritual expansion into our lives.

Just as I don’t like to be judged for the pace of my own growth, I cannot judge the way another chooses to evolve. My shadow, after all, is exactly that: my own. It hurts me when my shadow’s energy squeaks through my body, as it would for anyone. Perhaps the shadow is backlogged emotions, or painful thoughts that are trying to move through my system. But they are moving through my system, no one else’s. So it is totally up to me to cultivate an unconditional self-love relationship at a pace and in a way that is true to myself.

More than ever, I see how this process begins by accepting where I am, right now. It does not come from wishing my life were different, or struggling against what is. By embracing this moment as it is, we inspire growth.

Maybe I don’t like what is. That is ok. All of it is a reflection of my choices and my karma. So to not like what is, is actually to not like myself. To not like myself is to cause harm to someone: myself. To turn negatively towards myself is like turning negatively towards anything in nature or the divine. The real pain lies there.

It would be easy to see this kind of pain if I were to act out against a flower. I would be able to see the petals wilt under the onslaught of my recriminations. Yet, I do this to myself! So I need to stop it, because it hurts me.

It does not matter how I ended up with the shadow stuff. I could spend a lot of time trying to figure it all out, finding it’s source, wanting to pin point blame, all of which would defer me making, in this moment, the sober choice to let painful thoughts go.

What matters most is to fully understand that my shadow is a conglomerate of my belief systems that works against the force of life, which is love. Feeding the shadow, and beating myself up through it, is like putting the brakes on feeling the love I ultimately desire.

Each one of us is a receptacle for universal love. Some receptacles are full of cracks, maybe even holes, so the love comes, goes and does not stay in. Others’ receptacles are strong vessels for the divine. These people can bathe in a mutually loving relationship, warmed by the loving rays of the sun, nurtured by the rain. Through them, I can see a wholeness, a humility and a state of gratitude for all that is. No resistance. Just love.

So this is my prayer for myself from now on:

May I stand rooted in this moment and feel at peace.
May I be in non-resistance to what is.
May I feel a divine, loving embrace in this moment, and feel supported and nurtured.
May I open to receive love and let go of that which does not serve love.
May I know that I am love, that I am loved.

So please, my friends, go to a mirror and say a few loving words to yourself. Or try my new personal prayer out for yourself. Treat yourself with the love you deserve and see how love begins to grow up in and around you. Begin a new life today, a life that is rooted in self-love. Why? For the very simply reason that you are absolutely worth it.

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 

Success, Joy and Abundance

Everyone has his own personal definition of success. Culturally, we tend to consider success when we receive accolade and praise from external accomplishments, like fame and fortune. For the most part, our measures of success are external. 

 

Some people measure their success based on an internal compass, attempting to meet their own personal best. However, often, even these seemingly internal measures are driven by attachments to external ideas of success. 

 

I met someone recently who asked me, puzzled: “If I don’t want to be better, how will I ever become better?” Success for her was out there, and she was tired running after it. She felt there must be another way, but was unclear what it could be. She had lived a life driven by what she felt others wanted for her rather than fueled by her own personal joy. 

 

Joy often seems elusive, something we will get to eventually, once we complete this task or that one, or once we have achieved this goal or that one. To me, living like this is being the proverbial donkey that chases the carrot held out on a stick in front of him. It is an impossible chase. In that situation, our impulse to move arises from what we think will make us happy ‘over there’ and from feelings of scarcity in this moment, rather than tapping into the reality of eternal abundance.

 

Abundance is a bit of a popular catchphrase that seems to, in itself, contain external measures of success. For many, it often relates to financial wealth, whereas for me, it expresses a life of possibility and energetic opulence that is available to all and is not conditional upon the external. When we live by abundance, we feel we have enough, no matter what the circumstances may be. The notion of ‘more’ is a possibility, an organic arising, rather than a reaching or a wanting. We don’t need more to be happy. We are open to more, should this be the expression of life and of our highest good. In a state of abundance, there is no push/pull struggle, but a dance with life, in this moment, as it is.

 

Joy has a lot to do with abundance. Perhaps it is why the phrase “follow your bliss and doors will open where before there were none” became so popular, thanks to the late professor Joseph Campbell. When we follow our joy, we feel an impulse to participate in life. We feel an impulse to share, because we feel connected to our inner wealth. 

 

We can find temporal motivation through fear, feeling “if we don’t” do a certain thing, “then we won’t” get a certain reward (such as approval). Yet joy is also a tremendous motivator. But unlike fear, joy taps into a wealth of energy that far outshines the capacity of fear. By following our joy, our impulse to act comes from a deeper, more rooted and expansive place, and brings to our lives a vital force unlike any other.

 

As I travel across the continent to get to my next destination on the US tour of my show YIN: Yoga In the Nightclub and my yoga workshop YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine, I am thinking a lot about joy, abundance, vitality and success. I realize that for myself, my sense of success comes from the courage to travel inward to places I could easily avoid. And in this case, traveling inward has led to me traveling outward.

 

To me, success is about the courage to say yes to life, to joy, to all of who I am, to all that this moment brings. I do this work because it is what my joy calls of me. It is an impulse that arises from the voice of my soul and connects me to an energy far greater than my limited sense of “me”. 

 

As I evolve, there are aspects of my shadow that I must see in order to grow. I could choose to hide from and mask them by becoming distracted with passing pleasures. Yet it is my joy to go deeper, to go beyond the fear that says, “I can’t”. There I find the acronym for fear to be true: they are “False Expectations Appearing Real”. So I remind myself, “Be here. Be now. I have all I need. All is well. All is unfolding as it should.” This redirection of consciousness brings me to inner places that connect me to something so much greater than my ego, and my perception of the world shifts.

 

I don’t know what this tour will bring, but no matter what happens, I feel at some level I already have success because I am on the road to newness, I welcome possibility and I am open to the fullness of myself and of life.

 

May you touch your deepest expression of your version of success and may you live by it. May you follow your joy and share that light with the world.

 

Until next time, be well.

Parvati

Ask Parvati 40: Distractions - Keeping Your Eye On The Prize - Part 1: Focus, Discipline and Courage

Dear Parvati,

Thank you for your posts. I found last week's particularly useful as it spoke to the way I want to make changes in my life this year. Though I love pursuing my life as a creative writer, I find I too often get pulled into listening to other people's problems. I can literally spend hours a day helping people. I am happy to help, but then I feel drained, with little energy left after my day job to pour into my creative pursuits. Any words of wisdom?

 

Thank you for this question. I understand the situation and often find myself needing to be quite ruthless with my time and how I spend it. Distractions always present themselves throughout the day. We must consciously choose how to spend our time and where to place our energy.

 

Whether you are pursuing the life of an artist, are making life changes or wish to start a creative venture, you must have focus, discipline and courage. If you have not yet read Amma's New Year's message, she addresses this to some extent by reminding us that our most valuable asset we have is time, which we too often squander. Keeping focused on the purpose of our life is paramount, especially as we move through the day and encounter seemingly small things that become large obstacles and that take us off path.

 

If you are not familiar with Julia Cameron's book "The Artist's Way", check it out. Her work helps keep artists on path and stay true to their calling. Her practical and straightforward exercises help bring people's life into authentic alignment with their soul's creative voice.

 

Last year, I had a long chat with a friend of mine about this very issue, how to remain focused as you follow your dreams. At this point, this friend of mine has become quite famous and is now a mentor to many about how to make it on your own terms. She told me how she focuses on her goals like she is shooting a water pistol at a ballon. It requires focused aim. She also noted that as soon as she loses her focus, she immediately sees it reflected in her success rate, her popularity and her income. To counter this, she has a personal policy that she calls "knife for life", not being afraid to 'say it like she sees it', fiercely choosing where she places her energy and with whom she spends her time.

 

This is her way to keep her eye on the prize. Because of her focus, clarity and determination, she now does not easily get entangled with people with needy energy, but has, nonetheless, created a life where she helps those in need. Her books, public appearances and media presence touch many more people and inspire them to find their way, far more effectively than if she got lost in in daily distractions that pull her from her path.

 

That is the wonderful thing about life. When we say yes to our highest purpose, ultimately, everyone wins. The person with whom you get entangled on the phone for hours that you allow to pull you away from what you love, could perhaps be better helped by someone else, or perhaps by reading the book you really want to write. Getting entangled in situations that make us less than we are and pull us off path, are a lose-lose dynamic. It is like jumping into the water to save a drowning person. When we allow ourselves to stay on path and stand our solid ground, we can be of far greater service to ourselves and therefore to others. From that solid footing, we can extend an helping hand to those in need without losing ourselves.

 

Today, ask yourself, the following questions:

1) What in your life drains your energy?

2) Why do you feel you are attached to it?

3) What do you feel your ego gains from being attached to it?

4) What would your life look like and how would you feel without it?

5) Are you totally open, ready and willing to get it go?

6) What do you need to realign within yourself to let it go?

7) What practical steps do you need to take in order to do so?

 

Now, get going to make those changes. If you want it, you got it. But do you really want it? We need to regularly ask ourselves this sobering question. We often stay stuck playing it small because it feels easier and safer to let life slip by. But at what cost? The cost of your deepest joy and true heart desire? Are you really willing to let that go in exchange for fear and temporary comforts? Think long and hard about that. What is the cost of not following your dreams? When we bring our full selves into what we are doing and free ourselves from limiting beliefs and hindering habits, we find the life we had been hoping to find.

 

Continues tomorrow with "Is It An Opportunity Or A Distraction?"

Ask Parvati 39: Overcoming Stage Fright and Performance Anxiety - Part 4: The Inner Critique and Self-Love

(Continued from To Risk Speaking Up And Saying What You Feel)

I have a saying that gets me through every show. If there are three people in a room, one person will hate what I do; another will love it; while another will not care. I find this very helpful. Everyone will have their own, personal experience and opinion of what I do. My job is not to worry about what others think, but to do the best job I feel I can do and have fun while I do it.

People may not like what we say, and react to it. But that is their stuff and is no reflection of who we are. Our job is not to try to fix or change anyone, but get on and do what we are each here to do. We do not need to try to convince someone we are worthy of love, because we already are worthy, simply by being.

If we look deeply into the root of stage fright, we will find that we may need to cultivate a bit more self-love. Self-love is different from self-confidence. Self-confidence can get us to the stage. Self-love will help us enjoy delivering the show. If we don't have self-love, our self-confidence becomes bravado - thick on the outside and hollow within. Once the test comes, we crack.

When we face the risk to give voice and overcome stage fright, we must face our inner critique. It is my understanding that the inner critique is a summary of our limiting beliefs that were sealed into our psyche as children. The louder the inner critique, the lower the self-esteem, the more afraid we feel of being who we are. Self-love is closely linked to self-esteem. Self-esteem comes when we have a strong
sense of self-love. I looked at how to cultivate self-esteem and self-love in more depth than I will do here, in my previous blog entry I Suck, Please Love Me. It is important to understand how to cultivate self-love when we wish to overcome performance anxiety and stage fright. So please take a look at it.

It is often the case that those with low self-esteem project their inner critique onto the world. Those with a strong inner critique tend to have a tougher time with stage fright and performance anxiety. The inner critique is an extension of our childhood patterns that kept us ducking how we really felt in an effort to placate our caregivers. We began to overwrite our natural impulses, which soon felt wrong. When the inner critique is in overdrive, we can become compulsively afraid that we will displease, even simply by being. The inner critique is an inner voice that repeatedly lets us know what we "should" and "should not" do in order to measure up, and ultimately, be loved. But listening to this voice will not bring us happiness. We cannot find the love we truly seek through self-effacing acts. We must be naturally ourselves and cultivate a rich life in a world we feel welcomes us wholly to blossom into our fullest being.

We all have a voice. We all are called to speak up and say how we feel daily. It takes a certain self-confidence, and healthy self-esteem to do so. These come from understanding our own inherent worth. We all likely have had some experience of stage fright, from the more obvious situations like office presentations and public speaking, to the subtler, when we are asked how we feel and clam up. When we don't show up for ourselves and our lives, we rob life of the richness of who we are. We need to be rooted in our own inherent personal value to live life fully.

There is no doubt that there are mean-spirited and negative people out there who are toxic to be around. It is best to move on should we find ourself engaging with such people. But at a more psychological level, the criticisms we feel from others hurt because we are good at criticizing ourselves. If we really stop and think about it, if we were truly rooted in LOVE, and I mean self-love, love for others - love, not wanting - then would we not just see the person criticizing us as doing just that - criticizing? It would not feel like a personal attack, because we would see them in their own pain, their own suffering. Is a person who criticizes feeling loved and fulfilled themselves? No. Remember that when you next feel criticized.

Criticizing is not okay. I am not condoning it. I am simply saying that when you feel criticized, remember that it comes from someone who is distorted, and not rooted in love.

Feedback is different from criticism. Feedback gives us a clear idea where we excel and where we can grow. It provides information about a specific task with specific details. Criticism directly attacks a person's nature, not a specific task. When we criticize, we indicate that a person is bad or is not worthy. When we give feedback, we indicate how a specific tasks does not work for us and suggest possible ways a person may improve that specific task, if they so choose. Criticism is toxic and erodes our self-esteem, whereas feedback supports our growth.

As you learn to overcome stage fright and performance anxiety, focus on developing a loving relationship with your own self, and letting go of the voice of your inner critique. Understand that the inner critique comes from a wounded place that does not see the world in wholeness or balance, but from a place of fear and disconnect. When we understand that the inner critique really is a wounded place looking to create more wounded experiences, it no longer has power over us and loses its grip over our mind. Once we let go of attachment to our inner critique, the criticisms we may experience from others will roll off our back. We will be rooted in self-love, where distorted perceptions like criticism will have no meaning and will not be able to take root. We can get on with enjoying and sharing the light we are in a fertile world that fully receives our whole self.

(Continued tomorrow with "Taking Up Space: The Co-Creative Flow")

PS: Tomorrow is the last day to send your questions to be answered next
week. Please send yours to ask@parvatidevi.com

Ask Parvati 33: When Are We Being Too Rational?

Dear Parvati,

I'm still having a really hard time thinking outside of the box and thinking about possible experiences. I am not happy in my current work situation but fear taking risks. I know the kind of person I am. I need to feel financially stable before I make a move. I won't throw all my money to the wind and say, "let's travel the world". But I want to travel and take courses but I need to feel like I have an interest in the travel and there is a reason why I'm there (besides just the experience). Am I being too rational about all this? Do I just need to take a plunge? That scares me to no end. Please advise.

ALONG THE SPIRITUAL PATH, WHEN ARE WE BEING TOO RATIONAL?

Being rational is an impediment to the spiritual path when it squelches joy and stops us from expanding and evolving. Joy is expansive. Joy amplifies evolution, as evolution in its very nature is in alignment with the fundamental vibration of the universe, which is love. Joy is one of the things we bring when we pass from this Earth. When our body disintegrates and all matter that we thought was who we were is no longer, our spirit soars and our soul moves on to its next evolutionary phase. What is rooted in the soul are the experiences that have led us to expand. The soul is enriched by how well we have loved, how fully we have lived.

We do not take the contents of our bank account. I love the image of Alexander the Great who realized this at his deathbed and ordered a casket built for him where his hands were left open and visible. That way, during the funeral processional through the village, everyone could see that he did not bring with him any material riches. But experiences, love, laughter, travel, adventure, sharing, caring, openness, joy....  we take all those things with us. Perhaps you have noticed that with painful times, once they have passed, we often look back at them and laugh at what craziness that was. Hindsight is 20/20.

Being rational is important when we need to make practical decisions, like whether we by that new piece of clothing or pay our bills. This is very useful. Yet it sounds to me like the word "rational" may be a way you justify living in fear. Fear comes in many forms. Here it may be the fear of not getting "it right", measuring our life by an external yardstick that acts like a judge that squelches our impulses, joy and soul voice.

When we look more deeply at the "gotta get it right" voice that so many of us have in varying degrees, we can ask, get it "right" according to what? "Right" for whom? Usually this stems back to figures of authority from our childhood, teachers, parents, priests, people whose approval we wanted at the expense of our soul voice. These are the voices that keep up bound to the past and keep us living small and unhappy. We must challenge these voices to live fully.

To me, getting life right is to live it! Yes, of course, if you are 5'6" and wanted to be 6'5", no matter how much you wanted it, it is good to be rational and see that it will not be so. Or if you were to strap wings to your back and jump off a cliff, it would be good to have done all the research to see if those wings will work.

Taking courses and traveling are experiences that add value and riches to our life. They may not pay the bills right away, but they add riches to our life at a soul level which helps us live with greater joy and fulfilment. This may also contribute to bill paying down the road. Experiences help us grow, live, find out who we are. They are the things that make us expand. Hanging back and not trying things out is living in fear. It is not being rational. I have never regretted any course I  have taken. I studied architecture at university. Look at my life now. I have no regrets. Those studies made my life much richer. I feel I use those skills every day in the most creative ways. It is in part those skills that make me a good music producer and producer of shows. It is partly those skills that support me being a good healer, seeing things multidimensionally. Experience makes us richer. In that richness we see opportunities we would not otherwise see.

As an independent artist, I get the money thing. Each day I seek a balance between the rational and the intuitive. My bank account is not yet brimming full. There are months I squeak by. But I am ok with this for now, because I know I am building things that mean the world to me, that add value to my life and to the world. Pursing my music, singing, writing, producing, serving others, bring me infinite amounts of joy that a Prada purse could never in a million years. Or even a regular haircut. I let some of those "normal" priorities go because I have other priorities that to me are way more valuable.

Money does come when we follow our joy. The universe is governed by love, not fear. If you believe in God, God is love! God loves us. God wants us to be happy, fulfilled, full of joy. Or if you don't like the word God - then use the word pure consciousness or the universe or life itself. There is an intelligence that runs through everything. That intelligence is pure compassion. We are loved and supported beyond what we can imagine.

I cannot tell you if a course or traveling is right for you or not. You need to decide that. Just make sure that you do not block yourself with a limited vision of what you can offer life and what life can offer you. There is infinite possibility. What makes life fun is you can choose what you like and life will support you. We are part of a huge infrastructure of loving intelligence that is saying "Go for it! You can do it!" -- what ever it is that brings you joy.

Hope that helps in some way. Keep opening and exploring! Life is so very rich. There is a true abundance of love everywhere always.

Big hug,

Parvati

 

PS: My next blog entry will be next Sunday with a new Ask Parvati question. Please send me your questions (ask@parvatidevi.com) by Thursday, October 27 to have them included in the draw. In the meantime, if you haven't yet checked out the latest issue of Parvati Magazine, please do so!

PPS: My show "Natamba" at the St. Pete Yoga Festival went great!

 

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 23: The Voice - To Speak Or Be Silent? Part 5: When To Voice, When To Be Silent

PART 5: WHEN TO VOICE, WHEN TO BE SILENT

(Continued from Part 4: Gauge The Stage)

Every day of our lives, we are faced with many choices, whether to flee or to face, whether to voice or to remain silent. There is no quick and easy answer as to how to find our right voice. We learn that to voice is an unfolding process.

Giving voice is central to my spiritual path and a root reason for my personal being. So my life feels like one big experiment in voicing. As with all experiments, we find great teachers, we go through the ups and downs of trial and error where hindsight becomes a powerful ally.

Finding our vocal power is connected to finding our authentic expression and our place in the world. As such, it is part of growing, maturing, becoming wise. There have been times that I have given voice when in hindsight, it would have been wiser for me to remain quiet. And the opposite has also been true, when silence weakened me and I allowed it to hold me imprisoned.

But there are few times that I regret what I have chosen to do, whether I chose to speak up or to remain quiet. I don’t believe regret brings us anything other than backward thinking. Rather than looking at life in the here and now, by living with regret we miss the present. Eclipsed by our past, we gaze at life through a rear-view mirror. Sincere remorse is different from regret. If remorse helps us to humbly learn and grow, regret keeps us stuck in the past.

In the process or learning to give voice, we will stumble and fall. We risk appearing silly and feeling hurt when we "put our self out there" in any way. The greater the perceived risk, the greater the perceived fall. But when challenging the fear of falling, I have found that there never was anything to fall from in the first place.

What other people think of us does not matter. At the end of our life, when our bodies turn to dust, it will be our own choices that we will have to face. We will be left with questions like, “Did I love well? Did I live fully?” My sense is, when we are standing at death’s door, the times we held ourselves back in fear will seem as though we allowed a cloud to convince us that the sun does not exist.

As we learn to find the courage to speak our truth or be silent when we feel inwardly called to be, we need to learn to manage the part of us that does not want to grow. The part of us that wants status quo is going to create all sorts of reasons why not to be true to who we are. It will say, “Stay small. Hide. Don't do it. I may get hurt.”

Someone whose approval we wanted may laugh and ridicule us. We may feel embarrassed. We may judge ourselves as being stupid for what we feel and the desire to express. But I can guarantee that it hurts way more to not do what we need to do and say what we need to say, and remain frozen in fear. (I enjoy John Mayer’s song about this, "Say What You Need To Say".)

When we feel we must, we must. In hindsight, we may regret it, but we will not know until we try. And if we are humble and wiling to learn, there is no better teaching than life itself. By trying, we will know for next time what works best for us and we will learn to better attune ourselves to our inner voice and our natural, authentic expression of it.

So when is it the right time to speak up and when is it the right time to be silent? Ultimately, only you will know. But there are keys signs from our body/being when we are authentically aligned with our highest good.

When you feel rooted, vital and expansive speaking, speak. When you feel rooted, vital and expansive being silent, be silent. But then, you may ask, how do I know if I feel rooted, vital and expansive? This will only come after practice.

I sometimes imagine myself in the future after either having spoken up or remained quiet. How would I feel? Would I regret not speaking, if I chose to remain silent, or would I feel peaceful and warmly joyful? Would I feel remorse if I did speak up or would I feel free, vibrant and relaxed? Then go with the choice that brings you the greatest amount of rooted, vital expansion.

You can do this imagined testing when you are undecided in the moment. Rooting comes from the contact your feet have with the ground, how your energy travels down your spine. Vitality comes from an arising, once you are rooted, feeling an uplifting movement travel through your spine. Expansion happens when rooted and vital, so that there is a feeling of openness, surrender, receptivity to this moment. When feeling rooted, vital and expansive, there is a feeling of balanced rightness, neither too high and light, nor too heavy and stuck; neither too quiet nor too loud, but just right, perfectly you, in balance with who you are.

Enjoy being you. You are unique and the only expression of you in all of time. Ultimately, I believe there is no real right or wrong, only an honouring and aligning yourself with your truest self, or living in fear and for other people’s dreams of who they feel you should be. The choice of your voice is totally up to you.

Jai Ma!

Parvati

 

Ask Parvati 23: The Voice - To Speak Or Be Silent? Part 1: Soul Confusion, Vocal Tension

THE VOICE: TO SPEAK OR BE SILENT?

Dear Parvati,

I am having difficulty knowing when to speak up or remain silent about what I feel. I experience this confusion with things that make me feel uncomfortable and with things that I like. I thought that perhaps you, as a singer, may have some insight about the voice and how to know when it is a good time to use it, or when it is best to keep quiet. Thanks.

PART 1: SOUL CONFUSION, VOCAL TENSION

"That" person is coming into the room! Your heart suddenly races. You feel pressure in your head. Your cheeks flush. Your mouth dries and your throat automatically tightens. You feel panicky, sweaty, weak-kneed. With your heart speeding, you feel short of breath. There is something you want to say. It is stuck, like a lump in your throat. You try to speak. Your mouth is wide open, but there is no sound. Suddenly, you wake up. This is just a nightmare.

Or is it? Some dreams reflect back to us aspects of ourselves that we dare not yet see. Many people dream of trying to speak only to find themselves feeling trapped and  unable to find the words or the means to express how they feel. Some people experience that kind of vocal constriction and hesitation more regularly, even when supposedly awake while moving through the day.

Finding our authentic voice can be challenging. Many of us were scolded when we were young and have lost touch with our natural impulses. Growing up, we perhaps heard phrases like “hold your tongue!” or “shut your mouth!” or “tighten your lip!” No wonder we develop vocal tension.

We perhaps were told to either be quiet when we were enjoying giving voice, or speak up when we were enjoying silence. Listening to conflicting signals, we end up unsure when to express or when to listen. If not careful, we end up out of touch with our internal compass and can feel trapped in indecision and fear of disapproval.

Whether or not you experience vocal confusion consciously, because of our cultural tendencies, most of us carry old-story tensions in our bodies. These tensions, incubated when we were children, we hold with us as adults until we pause to question their validity, place and source.

Withheld vocal expression and stress regarding speech and sound are commonly held in and around the mouth, lips, jaw, tongue, throat, chest, lungs, and shoulder area, though they can be held deeply in any place in the body and be the result of any emotional withholding, ranging from rage to bliss.

In order to unwind the tension, we must be willing to explore it. There is no better way to explore vocal tension than through the willingness to make sounds. When we were infants, our sounds were free and primal. As adults, we can become overly hung up on “nice”, “pretty”, “powerful”, “strong” and “correct”. A powerful way to release vocal tension is to be wiling to dive within to where we remember sound as being raw and real.

EXERCISE 1:

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

Gently massage your jaw muscles that run from the ear, to under the cheek bone to the jaw bone. Then begin to yawn, and sigh. Allow your whole throat to open up. Feel your neck expand. Feel your spine lengthen. Feel your muscles release, not just in your face, head and neck, but through your whole body/being. Keep yawning and sighing.

Now stand. Do the same exercise standing. Allow yourself to relax, yawn and sigh.Then shake out your feet, shoulders, arms, hands. Rub your hands over your face.

Open and close your mouth so that you give the muscles of your face a good stretch. Then take a deep breath and exhale so that you sputter your lips, like you were playing the trumpet, or like you were making a motorboat sound with your mouth. Let your lips relax and your tongue soften.

Stick out your tongue and roar like a lion. Open your mouth wide and exhale. Let it out. Do this a few times until you have had enough. Shake it out and let it go.

(Continued tomorrow with Part 2: Sounding It Raw and Real)

 

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