tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29456609865800026542024-03-08T15:36:04.439-08:00Walking through TransitionsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-58777761879535952212015-11-21T10:12:00.000-08:002015-11-21T10:12:01.799-08:00A Quote from Fraser Boa <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was once told that it wasn't important if I understood my dreams. What was important was that the dreams understood me. My attitude toward my dreams would determine their attitude toward me. It's a living dialogue. When we listen to dreams, we change, and when dreams are heard, they change. </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I came across this quote from Fraser Boa's book <i>The Way of the Dream </i>and it resonates with me deeply. Dreams can be hard to interpret, and they all have multiple meanings. But just like listening to a person deeply shows our interest in them, listening to our dreams, exploring what they <i>might</i> mean shows our dreams that we are interested in them. We change because we are paying attention to the subtle. They change because we are paying attention to them and they are being heard. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-73024219919945251872015-11-08T13:30:00.002-08:002015-11-08T13:31:19.397-08:00Living on the Star-trails of Fantasy <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">In her wonderfully evocative and imaginative book, <i>What It Is</i>, the multi-talented Lynda Barry maps her own journey as a creative person using drawings and words. She tells us things about her own explorations. She asks us questions about our own journey.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">On a page brimming with her drawings -- a little girl crying near the fire with a mouse looking at her, a bear scratching its way out of the page and patterns of birds on branches -- she tells us about the child that she once was.</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together, you get a fairy tale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it." </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A kind of story with hopelessness. A story that points to where you are in its unfolding. A story that has been played out before and that is spreading its wings in your own life right now. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Barry tells us how immensely helpful this can be, how recognizing the myths we are living can help us transform our feelings. </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">"They can't transform your actual situation, but they can transform your experience of it. We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable." </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay. I love that she says this, that imagination can be used not as an escape, but as a way to engage with reality, a way to be in reality without going mad. When we give up our connection to a larger story, when we give up our imagination and just bow down to the clunky reality and rationality, we are crumbling our soul. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">We forget that we bring our own way of looking to the experience. We can think of ourselves as bobbing away helplessly in a sea of experiences or we can bring our own meaning, our own imagination into them and make them liveable. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Without the essence of the meaning, without the spark that our imagination gives them, our experiences are meaningless, random things happening to us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course, sometimes we can use our imagination to our detriment. We can become ungrounded. But what Barry is telling us is the positive use of imagination. It gives the golden thread to our life. We don't throw ourselves on the rocks of so-called reality that can sometimes be hard and cold. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">We have this instinct to spin stories and meanings right from the time we are little. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Think about a child reading books that makes them cry, Barry tells us. Think about what these stories mean. They tell the little child about who he or she is. They hold up a mirror. Something in them connects to their essence. They provide a shelter for their growing self. Remember how as children we curled inside our stories for comfort? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">What would happen to this child if they couldn't imagine, couldn't find their place in the story? </span><br />
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<i>"It seems that human beings everywhere understand that a child who is never allowed to play will eventually go mad. But how do we know this? And why do we know this? And what happens when we forget?" </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">What happens when we forget? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">We do forget as we grow up. Maybe, we give up our playing, our pretending, our imagining ourselves into our stories because we think that that is what grown ups do. But maybe we need to make up our own stories, look for stories that seem like our own and settle down in them to be really comfortable with reality. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">We need this to connect to something bigger when things are hard. We need this to steer clear of the harsh edges of things that don't make sense. Our stories lead our way forward through dangerous terrains. They tell us that our answers are made inside of us. We can't find them outside. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">What would happen if you again became friends with your imagination? That is what I am trying to imagine. Maybe things will again seem softer, more fluid. Maybe things again will have a shine in them, a reason for their happening, a reason for our going through them. Maybe, the wild imagination that looks "unreasonable" to others is exactly what clears the way for walking on solid ground. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-37262809329409074872015-10-30T15:01:00.000-07:002015-10-30T15:01:04.330-07:00Negative Imagination <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Julia Cameron's lovely book <i>Walking in This World</i>, I recently re-read something about worry and negative imagination that stood out to me. If you are a sensitive person who worries a lot and finds themselves tripping over unruly fears, then this might resonate with you too. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Julia begins by telling us that we need working definitions for the mishmash of fears, anxieties and doubts that ail us. Only when we know what exactly we are dealing with can we start to work through it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is what Julia says about worry: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large; font-style: italic;">"Worry has an anxious and unfocused quality. It skitters subject to subject, fixating first on one thing, then on another. Like a noisy vacuum cleaner, its chief function is to distract us from what we really are afraid of. " </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Its chief function is to distract us from what we are really afraid of. Even though it leaches all the fluidity and joy out of our lives, worry serves as a distraction. It leads our eyes away from our spaces of deep discomfort. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">How is worry different from fear?</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Fear is not obsessive like worry and not escalating like panic. Fear is more reality based. It asks us to check something out. Unpleasant as it is, fear is our ally. Ignore it and the fear escalates. A sense of loneliness joins its clamor. At its root, fear is based in a sense of isolation. We feel like David facing Goliath with no help from his cronies and a concern that this time, his trusty slingshot might not work." </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Fear is healthy when it points to something that needs to be turned over, needs to be double-checked. But fear is also amorphous. We add to the drama when we let the fear fester. We don't pay attention to the kernel of true concern, and our fear becomes the monster that scares us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Unlike fear, worry is obsessive. It's a thought we pick up and smoke at. Today, we are worried about this one thing. Tomorrow, it is something else. We are hooked into this way of behaving. We might have little trust in the world around us. Maybe, we suffered from trauma at an earlier time and now worrying is our way of projecting into the future, trying to control it from hurting us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When we worry, what are are effectively doing is channel our creative energies into something that is not constructive. This is what Julia has to stay about an imagination that has gone haywire. </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"The more active--and even more negative--your imagination is, the more it is a sign of creative energy. Think of yourself as a racehorse--all that agitated animation as you prance from paddock to track bodes well for your ability to actually run.</span></i><br />
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<i>In both my teaching and collaborative experience, I have often found that the most "fearful" and "neurotic" people are actually those with the best imaginations. They have simply channeled their imaginations down the routes of their cultural conditioning." </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Culturally, we are trained to worry about certain things. We are trained to prepare for any negative possibility. And we might have had experiences that cause us to always be on the defensive, that cause us to worry. But worrying about what can't be controlled obviously doesn't help us. It just casts a film on our experience. It muddies our world today. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As someone who is prone to worrying, I know how insidious worry is, how it curls and hisses around you. It comes cloaked in reasonableness. It takes our energy and warps it into something that doesn't serve us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We could take that energy and start doing something with it actively. We could start channeling it by moving it from our bodies. We could distract ourselves by gardening or going for a walk or making something. We can see that the same imagination that brings us our gloom and doom predictions can be channeled so it becomes full and free. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We can start seeing that worry really is, as Julia calls it, "imagination's negative stepsister." If that is the case, we are just a few steps away from dealing with it. We can have our arsenal of tools ready - our paints or our walking shoes or our camera. We can choose what we do with our attention and our imagination.</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What do you think? What are your tools for dealing with negative imagination? How can you step away from worry and into the expansive possibilities on the other side? </span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-18746652169548576662015-10-25T21:45:00.001-07:002015-10-25T21:45:31.892-07:00Making Unpredictable Decisions <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a recovering perfectionist and also as an HSP, I don't like making mistakes. Deciding is a long-winded, arduous process. Like everyone, I have my share of regrets about paths not taken, about all the times when I made decisions that caused my life to contract. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And so, decision-making feels like a process fraught with challenges. It feels heavy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There are so many options that I often spend my frenetic energy trying to make the "<i>best</i>" decision. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Today, while driving to the library, I heard a conversation that puts this dilemma into perspective. The program that was on talked about whether parents should send their child to a private school that was expensive or whether they should opt for public school. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The private school might or might not contribute to the child's future. Should the parents try to get the best that money can buy for their child? Should they stretch and go for the private school? Should they consider the cost and opt for the public school?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is the kind of decision that involves many factors. There are no simple answers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">How do we make such decisions?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The financial adviser said something that struck me as approaching decision-making from a different psychological space. Don't decide based on what might happen in the future, he said. Decide based on what the situation is right now. Then, you will have the assurance that you made the best decision that you could.</span><br />
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<i>Don't decide based on what might happen in the future</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What an interesting way of approaching this process. As someone who splits hair while making decisions, trying to factor in each and every thing that might happen (which in reality might or might not), this approach seemed so honoring of the present truth to me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The future is unpredictable. If we try to reach too far into the future, and try to factor in what really is ambiguous right now, we can paralyze ourselves. Accepting that the future is unpredictable and deciding based on our situation now means that we make the best decision that we can <i>right now</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is the best thing to do based on the situation right now. This idea struck me as so different from what I normally do, and it gives me a different way of deciding. I want to experiment with this.</span><br />
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<i>What do you think? Is this something that makes sense to you? </i> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-11352735960680159042015-10-21T13:20:00.001-07:002015-10-23T14:15:22.052-07:00Into the Well of our Dreams <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At the beginning of this year, I slipped through the fissures of my changing life and into my dream world. I have always had vivid dreams, especially at times of major changes. When I shifted from India to the States a few years back, my dreams were filled with symbolic images. One of them was of weddings taking place. While I was newly-married myself, these images continued to appear over the next three years. This was a time of change for me, a time when different parts of my psyche were coming together and something new was coming into being.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then, in the course of the last year and a half, I stumbled upon Dream Work, the process of paying attention to our dreams and working to understand their deeper meaning. An essay that I was writing at that time led me deeper into Carl Jung's work. There they were again -- dreams and their meanings. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Dreams are extremely important in Jungian psychology. They are the gateway to the unconscious, a space that contains not just our repressed aspects but also the underlying matrix of what it means to be human. It is from this space that sparks of creativity shoot up. The image that comes to my mind is of a deep, dark well. You can't see what's down below. But when you draw the rope and send a bucket down its depths, you can hear the splash of water. When you pull the bucket up, you have something that nourishes you. You still can't map out the depths that lie below, but you have an idea of what they contain. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One of the dream images that has appeared in my dreams are houses. They look like they are either breaking down or are in the process of being constructed. We could all hazard a guess at what this means. The metaphor is clear. Something new is being built in the psyche. Some new change is afoot. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Recently, I came across an article by Thomas Moore in the July/Aug issue of <i>Spirituality & Health</i> magazine that instantly </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">interested me because Moore was talking about houses in dreams. Moore is a psychotherapist who is best know for his wonderful book <i>Care of the Soul</i>, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">and he practices depth psychotherapy that is largely centered on dreams. This means that he knows a lot about them! </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Moore talks of the symbolic meaning of houses under construction in both his own dreams and those of his clients. </span><br />
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</span></i> <i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"I remember a dream I had in my late thirties. I was walking through a house in the early stages of construction. I had to be careful because it was so unfinished and fragile. I remember walking on a bouncy two-by-four and knew I could easily fall and get hurt. This was an intense period in my life. I had just been denied tenure at the university where I had hoped to spend my life teaching. I wasn't sure where to go from there and was trying to become a good psychotherapist. I had had considerable training for this work, but it's the kind of profession where the necessary skills are personal. You may have to go through several emotional trials and deep changes to be good at it. It was at this point that I had my house-under-construction dream." </span></i><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He tells us that it is helpful to know when something in us is being built. </span><br />
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</span> <i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"You can then better understand the unusual feelings of being incomplete and going through unintended changes. You may feel your world shifting and not yet ready for projects and developments in your life. You may need to prepare for the arrival of a relatively new self." </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He talks of the specific meaning inherent in images of houses as compared to other images that depict change. </span><br />
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</span> <i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"In similar situations you may have dreams that have general feeling of change: waiting for a train to depart or a plane to take off. But these images are quite different. Construction is the specific condition of something being built. You're not on a journey; you're being remodeled or fabricated." </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Moore talks of how writers on the soul often quote John Keats who said: "Call the world, if you please, "the vale of soul-making." </span><br />
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</span></i> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>"The word is "make," rather than "journey" or "discover." It's in the spirit of Keats to say that our souls are constructed, like a house being built. Piece by piece, nail by nail, the structure of our being goes up and makes a space in which our lives can play out and find meaning." </i> </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We need to have patience during this process. We are under construction. We have to wait to see what's being built. In Moore's dream of the two-by-four, that construction was ongoing. Some things were ending, while a new structure was being created from the ground up. He says that naturally, like any other person, he was more aware of the endings than the beginnings. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What getting intimate with the inner recesses of our psyches gives us is an understanding of where we are in the process. We realize that these are tender times. These are times when we have to let the forces that are working in us build us. We can be idle for a while "so the crew can do its work." The creative force is moving through us and creating a shape and a form. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We might feel fragile during these times, but as Moore tells us, this is also a period full of promise and hope. The new is opening up like petals. We are alive, humming with life. We might feel incomplete, but our full possibilities are being drawn out. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Engaging with our dreams can give us this awareness of our psyches. We are starting to listen to the language of symbols and images, and in turn, it is giving us signs and guideposts to tell us where we are and where we are headed. </span><br />
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</span></i> <i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Does working with dreams interest you? You can start engaging with your dreams by keeping a diary beside your bedside and writing down the dreams as soon as you wake up. Even minutes after waking up, dreams tend to disappear into thin air, so writing them down as soon as possible is essential. </span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-37179009667202193622015-10-09T18:30:00.000-07:002015-10-09T18:30:55.842-07:00Originality Versus Authenticity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I read Elizabeth Gilbert's book on the creative process, <i>Big Magic</i>, yesterday. She writes simply and directly, but sparks shoot up at certain points. There is a lightning-quick energy in the book, the energy that belongs to the author and that magically dissolves in the gooey innards of the book. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The book is like a shaking-up of all the used, rusted beliefs that we might be carrying as creative people. It asks us to lighten up. It talks about how "creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred." It tells us that "what we make matters enormously, and it doesn't matter at all." It tells us to lighten up and to ride the magical steed of creativity, to surrender to its will, to understand that starting a conversation with our creativity has no guarantees except the full aliveness it brings to our lives. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Gilbert tells us her own unique perspective on that age-old struggle of the artiste: feeling that he or she is just making the same things that have always been made. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Maybe you fear that you are not original enough. Maybe that's the problem--you're worried that your ideas are commonplace and pedestrian, and therefore unworthy of creation. Aspiring writers will often tell me, "I have an idea, but I'm afraid it's already been done." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">She goes on to say: "<i>Well, yes, it probably has already been done. Most things have already been done--but they have not yet been done by <b>you</b>.</i></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">By the time Shakespeare was finished with his run on life, he'd pretty much covered every story line there is, but that hasn't stopped nearly five centuries of writers from exploring the same story lines all over again. (And remember, many of those stories were already cliches long before even Shakespeare got his hands on them.) When Picasso saw the ancient cave paintings at Lascaux, he reportedly said, "We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years"--which is probably true, but so what?" </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I remember reading this quote by Picasso a long time back, and at that time it had struck me as sad and as if there was nothing left in the world to do. I was a child then who had barely started a conversation with her creativity, and something in the quote had shut me down. Over the years, I think I have often made this excuse to stop myself from wading in the mud to get to the lotus. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yes, everything has been done before. Most things, in countless fields, have been done already. But what does that mean if you are a creative person? Elizabeth gives us her answer: </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"So what if we repeat the same themes? So what if we circle around the same ideas, again and again, generation after generation? So what if every new generation feels the same urges and asks the same questions that human beings have been feeling and asking for years? We're all related, after all, so there's going to be some repetition of creative instinct. Everything reminds us of something. But once you put your own expression and passion behind an idea, that idea becomes <b>yours</b>." </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">She goes on to say that authenticity impresses her much more than originality as she gets older. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me. Just say what you want to say, then, and say it with all your heart. Share whatever you are driven to share. If it's authentic enough, believe me--it will <i>feel</i> original." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So, if you want to make something, make it. If you want to try your hand at something new, whether it is creative with a capital C or a creative expression that feeds the rest of your life, do it. Maybe you want to do something silly or something that others might consider silly. A silly thing I did some months ago was buy an adult coloring book and color away. Someone made an off-hand comment about it when I shared it. Well actually it was more like an off-hand, non-understanding "I don't get this" look and complete non-interest. Although I continued coloring after that for some time, something in me seemed to curl around this look and loosened its grip on this creative, playful activity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I dropped it. I abandoned it. It looked silly, but it was far from silly. It was one of the most heart-nourishing activities I have ever done. In the months previously, my heart had felt curdled. I think it was the creative child in me that was out of sorts. It had checked out. But with the coloring book, I had tools that this little child could play in. It delighted in the choosing of the colors. It knew there was nothing to achieve, just an engagement with the colors blooming on the page. My mind slowed down. In fact, it retreated to the back and stopped its incessant chatter almost as soon as I started coloring. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For those few weeks, I had a tool to quiet my automatic mind, to drop down from it into my heart. I felt like I was pouring the colors back into my own heart. And yet, I gave it up because of a look. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We give up such important things because someone else doesn't understand. But I will pick up my coloring book again and color in my lovely mandalas. I have found something, however small, that nourishes my being. It bypasses my mind and goes to my essence, the artiste who loves to play with colors, who likes making lines on the page, who feels like this little task is stringing up the pieces of disjointed time and making it flow smoothly again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>Why would I give up something that makes me feel alive? Why would you? </i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-63675537856288352122015-10-01T15:22:00.002-07:002015-10-01T15:23:02.231-07:00The Alpha State <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6qcKJwdsx7w/Vg2xz7XKb2I/AAAAAAAAA2k/7hNxOlTYsOA/s1600/night-839807_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="282" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6qcKJwdsx7w/Vg2xz7XKb2I/AAAAAAAAA2k/7hNxOlTYsOA/s400/night-839807_1280.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sometime last year, I was lucky enough to attend a concert by Steven Halpern, a Grammy-nominated musician who is considered to be one of the founding fathers of New Age music. It was the first time that I was introduced to brainwave entrainment music - music that alters brainwave frequencies, which results in an altered state of consciousness.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The state of consciousness that this music induced was the Alpha State.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So, what exactly is this state, and why is it helpful? Specific brain waves occur for specific states of consciousness and specific activities. For example: Beta brain waves are associated with normal waking consciousness and a state of high alertness, logic and critical reasoning. Beta brainwaves are associated with processes that help us function in our day-to-day lives. But on the flip side, always being in the Beta state means stress and anxiety.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Alpha brain waves are the waves associated with a state of deep relaxation. Think back to a time when you were daydreaming. How did you feel then? When we are in the Alpha state, we are in a state of deep relaxation. Our imagination, creative abilities and ability to visualize are heightened. This is the state in which intuition becomes accessible. Instead of the constant churning of the mind, we have access to a deeper state of being. We feel connected to ourselves. We feel connected to a well of deep wisdom that is inaccessible to our automatic mind. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The wonderful news is that just listening to certain sounds and music can put you in the Alpha state. You have an escape hatch from your overactive mind, into a space that you probably remember from an earlier time in your life when daydreaming and the imagination were your friends. Now, you might be caught in the Beta state, like many of us. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Beta, we are cut off from our intuition. We are cut off from the flow that gives us a sense of connection to something that is bigger than us. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have started listening to brainwave entrainment music again. It is the best part of my week. I feel images swirling, coming up. I feel like my tightfisted mind relaxing its grip. There is imagination in Alpha. There is a space that feels part of the whole, connected and not fragmented. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you would like to try this, and I hope you do, then Steven Halpern's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Alpha-Brainwave-Synchronization-Meditation/dp/B0087OUL9Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443738106&sr=8-1&keywords=Steven+Halpern+Deep+Alpha">Deep Alpha </a> is a lovely album to start with. I hope it connects you to the stars and the moon and the many colors that live beneath the rubble of our conscious minds. </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-8009101855737510102015-09-24T17:26:00.001-07:002015-09-24T17:26:34.415-07:00Remembering Things<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">An interesting thing has happened from the time I started using the word empath in my writing. It's a word that I had resisted identifying with, and yet, it describes some core aspects of my sensitivity. Or rather, <i>the</i> core aspect, the ability to experience other people's feelings as if they were my own. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Almost instantly, as I claimed the word empath, it felt like numb spaces in my life awoke. Watching T.V., I felt pain shoot up as someone fell off a building. It was as if the debris that had fallen on my sensitivity or maybe the clutter I had buried it under was again free to roam around. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">While reading other people's posts on empath forums some months back, I had congratulated myself that I didn't feel like that any longer. I didn't feel so drowned in other people's feelings. I didn't feel the physical sensations of someone else's pain. But as I am wiping the dirt off my own perception, I am feeling like I was congratulating myself for the wrong thing, for numbing out and becoming denser. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I do want to have strong boundaries. I also want to have more sensitivity, instead of pushing it aside.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have an image of plaster cracking come up. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have also been remembering things from long ago. When I was a child, in the lane leading up to my grandparents' house in a village in India, there used to lie a drunk man on the kind of wooden cart that is used to cart groceries around in that part of the world. He was never scary. I was never afraid of him. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It seemed like he was so washed over with all the things around him that the only way he could live was by numbing himself out. I don't know whether he was an empath or not. But I had a feeling that he was a good man, someone who felt the world around him. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And that feeling of the world toppling on top of you - of drowning in its pain and sorrows -- that might be the terrible space in which you can fall if you feel so much. So, sometimes, we construct our dams and numb ourselves so at least we wouldn't dissolve in this too much feeling. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We cope in so many ways. I have coped in so many ways. Being less me, being more like others, being overwhelmed and not doing even the little that I could do. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But on this tricky path of empathy - of feeling too much or adopting numbness - there must be a bend in the road that we are all walking towards. Will I fall? Will you fall? Will we find new ways? Will we get lost for a long time? Will we find the harmony and balance we are looking for? </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-9023003689715193292015-09-22T17:54:00.000-07:002015-09-22T17:54:13.250-07:00An Overthinking Mind and a Perceptive Body<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Penney Peirce's' book <i>The Intuitive Way</i>, th</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">ere is a section called "The Language of the Body." The body is constantly talking to us, but we've been so schooled in the language of the mind that we don't know how to listen to it. We ride rough-shod over what our body is trying to tell us, and instead vote in favor of our mind. Or at least, I do. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But the body's wisdom has always been there for me, even though I have often chosen to ignore it. It's been there for you too, even though you might not have recognized it as wisdom. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Penney talks about the unfailing messages that our body gives us: "<i>The body's language is a binary one -- yes and no. You will recognize these messages through feelings of expansion and contraction in your body. When a choice or action is appropriate, safe, and on-target for you, you will experience expanding energy: you may sense energy rising and become active or bouncy. Perhaps you'll warm to an idea, get lightheaded, or feel flushed with enthusiasm. Have you ever had the hots for someone, or had butterflies of anticipation, or been up for a new adventure? Have you ever said, "I'm leaning toward this option? The body's yes often feels like health and vitality, even good luck: "I'm rarin' to go; let me at it!" </i> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Most often, Penney says, we recognize our personal truth by a feeling of deep comfort. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But what happens when something is not right for you? The body's No is as distinct and recognizable as its Yes. "In fact, most people are more aware of their anxiety signal than their truth signal. When an option or action is unsafe, inappropriate, or off-target for you, you will experience contracting energy: you may feel energy drop, recoil, darken, or tighten. Maybe you'll act coolly, even coldly, to someone or feel a sinking in the pit of your stomach." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Learning to tune in to whether the body constricts or expands is a direct way to know whether something is right for us. The mind takes us around in circles but the body focuses in on our only choice. Is it a Yes or a No? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Penney talks about the different ways in which our Truth and Anxiety signals can show up. When something is right for you, you may feel a warm, spreading sensation across your chest. You may feel tears of happiness. You might sense that things are falling in place - a series of "clicks and clunks" as if something is coming together. Another common truth signal is the sudden movement of energy up the spine or along the arms and shoulders, giving the sensation of chills or goose-flesh.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What are the common Anxiety signals? It might be that your energy level drops. You may feel pain in a certain part of your body. Common anxiety signals are a stomachache or nausea, a "pain in the neck," chest pain, or headaches. You might feel the hair rising along your upper spine and neck. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Listening to your body's signals is a way to discover what is on-purpose, right and true for you. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For me, I think listening to Truth signals is as important as listening to Anxiety signals. While anxiety signals are valuable, sometimes they can be tricky because our fear might be creating them. We have to dig a little deeper to see what they are all about. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But Truth signals are unadulterated in the sense that they point directly to what feels right, expansive and authentic. Whether it is something big or small, it would be worthwhile following our Truth signals. Like a lotus opening, we are becoming larger and unfolding what has till now remained dormant within us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>What are your Truth and Anxiety signals? Have you noticed them recently? </i> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-33730341045351822442015-09-18T14:54:00.001-07:002015-09-18T14:55:12.908-07:00Who am I? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When we think about big questions like <i>Who am I?</i> or <i>What is my purpose, </i>something from our innermost recesses is calling out. We can start figuring out the answers to these questions by exploring our archetypes, those patterns of thoughts and images that are universally present in our individual psyches. I resonate with The Artiste/Creative archetype apart from some others. What's interesting is that there was a time when the word artiste felt like something I did not want to identify with. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There were too many myths about bohemian artistes or starving artistes that made me feel uncomfortable with the idea of calling myself an artiste. But as I have grown older, I have seen that I was rejecting myself because I did not have a real idea of what my own artistic self would look like. There were no real models, and I did not have enough faith in my then brittle self to go and find my real self. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have been dipping through the book <i>Archetypes</i> by Caroline Myss in which she talks about the different archetypes that are rising in us. She talks about their gifts, their challenges, the myths that hold us back from realizing our true selves, the traps we can fall into, and the true nature of our individual power. We could be The Intellectual, The Rebel, The Spiritual Seeker, The Caregiver or The Athlete, but if we don't confront our own specific questions, we won't make our way forward. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For the Artiste, the unique challenge is to overcome the fear of not being original. This is something I find myself struggling with again and again, how to let myself practice enough so that I can become truly original, how to not feel dejected because I can only see the things that need to be corrected and not the level of skill I already have. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Being aware of our main challenge, the question that comes up for us again and again can help us understand who we are, what we value and what we are really aspiring to. It can help us see that the patterns in our being resonates with a universal, yet specific pattern. Not all of us are The Athlete. Not all of us are The Caregiver. We all have unique questions and challenges that people like us - other athletes, other caregivers, other seekers - have grappled with. Just understanding where we belong can help us understand and frame our own experiences. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you a Creative/Artiste like me, this story that Myss tells will resonate with you, like it resonated with me: </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"A woman once told me, "I need to go away and find my Self." I knew when she said it that she didn't mean "find myself ," but "my Self," with a capital S. She had awakened to her inner nature, to that part of her that was more than her personality, more than her daily routines. She had discovered the inner voice that is separate from the ordinary self that organized her life by rules and expectations." </span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I asked her, "What do you think you'll find on this quest for your inner Self?" </span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"I have always wanted to be an artist," she said. "I know I am an artist. I have never given my Self a chance to do my art because I told "myself" that no one took me seriously, so how could I take me seriously? But I feel as if I am living a false life, a lie. I can't stand it anymore. I don't care if I starve. I would rather live a hungry authentic life than an abundant lie."</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In meeting her Self, this woman had encountered her Artist archetype. She could no longer continue to live a life blaming others for her choice not to fulfill her archetypal destiny." </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I can understand this woman's hunger for her true life. I can also understand why it might have taken her so long to find her Self. There are so many injunctions against being an artist that it is understandable that many of us don't want to claim who we are. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But just as this woman recognized who she was at last, we come to a place where we recognize that the soul-starvation we were feeling was because we had denied ourselves something essential to our very natures. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What is it that you need? Which universal pattern reverberates inside you? Are you The Advocate looking for a cause that engages your strength? You might find getting trapped in causes that lock into your anger or personal agenda. Are you <i>The Caregiver </i>whose challenge is to become discerning when giving instead of burning out by giving indiscriminately? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Which image leads you home to yourself? </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-47259917957714047022015-09-14T15:04:00.002-07:002015-09-14T15:05:25.225-07:00Some thoughts on Sensitive - The Untold Story.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Like countless other people, I tuned in last week to see the premiere of <i>Sensitive - The Untold Story </i>on Livestream. The trailer for the documentary had felt loud, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But overall, I liked the content. In fact, I got very emotional at certain points. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">While there are many vibrant online communities for HSPs, being able to see and hear other HSPs talk is not something I get to do often. That felt very affirming, and I am so happy that the next generation of sensitive people will have this resource to turn to. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I especially liked that they covered a wide range of HSP stories. They talked about HSP relationships, including interviews with some wonderful non-HSP parents working to understand their HSP children. They talked about extroverted HSPs. They featured an HSP basketball player, an HSP entrepreneur, an HSP working with sensitive dogs (every species has both sensitive and non-sensitive members in roughly the same percentages). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They covered different HSP voices in different places in the world. And of course, they talked about Dr Elaine Aron's seminal work. Her work was the main thread binding it all together. Her perspective and the stories shared by different HSPs helped present a balanced view of the HSP trait. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On one hand, the documentary talked about the wonderful responsiveness that HSPs have. On the other, they also talked about differential susceptibility - the idea that different people vary in their responsiveness to qualities of the environment. So, while HSPs benefit even more than non-HSPs from a wonderful environment, the opposite is also true. Bad experiences seep deeper into sensitive people. If you are an HSP who has had a traumatic experience, you will have to fight harder to get out of it. It will leave an indelible impression on you. And yet, the good news about being highly responsive is that once you get help to deal with what has been holding you back, that good energy and effort will also go deep inside. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Both good and bad affects HSPs, and to me that is the balanced perspective on being a sensitive person. Depending on the situation and so many different things, being an HSP can be many different things. I think this is also a reminder for us to pull the right things towards us, the things that nourish us deeply, the things that we often don't give ourselves because other non-HSPs don't seem to need it or give it importance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another thing that stood out for me was the discussion that parts of the brain associated with fear are <i>not </i>triggered when sensitive people enter a new environment. We are approaching the new situation with caution, not fear. At some point, for many of us, the caution gets overlaid with the label of fear that other people give it. Sometimes, a real fear gets added in to the mix. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But it is important to remember that pausing before acting is a way of approaching the world. It is not fear. It is consideration. But many of us may have gotten such mixed messages about our style that we might have started discounting it ourselves. For me, there have been a lot of times when I have tried to make myself act before I have considered things. That seemed to be the respected, proactive way. But that meant that I did not consider and then fell flat because that was just not my style, just not my way of being. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Are there ways in which you try to act like non-HSPs? How would owning your trait help you? How could it help you nourish yourself? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This caution also reminded me of some sensitive children I know who are cautious when they interact with strangers and people they don't know. Once they have determined that the place or the person is safe, they are not shy about interacting. But that reminds me of how easily the label of "shy" can be applied to a child who is simply considering, observing and looking before opening up or joining in. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For parents, I think it is so important to see that their HSP children often don't start off "shy." They might become shy if their way of being is not understood or appreciated. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There were other things that came to my mind when I watched <i>Sensitive</i>. Maybe, I will write about it in some other posts. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There were some stylistic things that I didn't like about the documentary. For example, the way the logo appeared or the camera-work that felt frantic at certain times. I hope the dissonance with the aesthetic elements does not discourage HSPs from seeing or appreciating the documentary. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It has a lot of good stuff. It wipes the mirror and helps us connect with other people, somewhere out there, that see and experience the world as we do. It takes us home to a space we often don't find in the environment around us, a space that "gets" us, a space where we don't have to explain who we are or feel misunderstood. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It gives us a sense of connection and community, and for that and many other reasons, I think this pioneering documentary is a wonderful leap forward for all of us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Did you see the documentary? What did you think of <i>Sensitive - The Untold Story</i>? </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-79140637984115571022015-08-26T12:37:00.000-07:002015-08-26T12:47:49.409-07:00Sonia Choquette on Observing, Not Absorbing Energy. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you are an empath, there are times when you might feel caught up in an emotional maelstrom. People's energy seems to come rushing towards you, and you lose your footing and are swept off by the current. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For me, I have started noticing how and when this happens because this doesn't happen <i>all</i> the time. There are times when I am centred in myself and when I don't absorb the rush of energy as much. There are also those times when I am overstimulated and one additional thing pushes me over the edge. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have also been finding new ideas and perspectives that point out all the little things I had been doing for years and that were making me more susceptible to other people's energies. One of them was a habit I had developed where I almost never crossed my arms in front of me. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I remember reading as a teenager that crossing your arms was body language that indicated that you were on the defensive. I didn't want to be defensive at all. I wanted to be open, and I got into the habit of always keeping an open posture. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Recently, I read something in Sonia Choquette's book <i>Trust Your Vibes </i>that really stood out to me because what she said is almost the opposite of what I had practiced many years back. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sonia talks about how, when we are sensitive and tuned in, we can absorb energy that we don't really want. We have to learn to observe, and not absorb as much. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This is what she says about protecting ourselves in an emotionally charged situation when we can feel the onslaught of someone else's energy coming at us: </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"One of the best ways to remain grounded in your own energy whenever exposed to an intense emotional outburst is to cover your solar plexus (the area around your belly button) with your arms folded, which is something we tend to do anyway. Notice how natural it is to cross your arms over your stomach whenever you feel defensive. I was reminded of this instinctive protective maneuver in an airport recently while I waited for my flight. I saw a child of about two being reprimanded by his overwrought mother, and as she scolded him, he looked directly at her with his arms folded defiantly across his chest, unfazed by her outburst. He was so effective in blocking her tirade that I had to laugh.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>As that child demonstrated, folding your arms across your chest or belly button blocks negative energy from entering your body and protects you from its debilitating effects. Breathing as you do this also keeps foreign energy from invading your aura, and the more slowly you breathe, the more grounded and protected you are." </i> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sometimes, simple things like these, which are also significant things because they help us own our space, can help us feel protected and centred. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Always being open to anything, like I used to be when I was younger, doesn't help because we want to be open to the right thing and closed off to what is intrusive or overwhelming. In fact, being indiscriminately open does us harm, especially for people like us who absorb energy so readily. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Does this make you think about where and how you are open? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If this resonated with you and you know someone who would relate, do share this with them. Thank you! </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-53376018878864269872015-08-25T13:18:00.000-07:002015-08-25T13:18:41.181-07:00This is radical acceptance. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I came across this quote by the British novelist A.S.Byatt recently. It is so honest and true, and it says what is so often unspoken. I haven't read anything by Byatt, but this quote makes me feel like I want to know her better: </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"I think of writing simply in terms of pleasure. It's the most important thing in my life, making things. Much as I love my husband and my children, I can love them only because I am the person who makes these things. I, who I am, is the person who has the project of making a thing. And because that person does that, all the time, that person is able to love all these people." </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For me, this quote gets to the heart of things, the heart of all conversations about the conflict women feel when they spend time nurturing their creativity when they are also wives and mothers. I am a wife, and I am not a mother, and I feel that <i>this</i> is the truth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Who is the person doing the loving if they are not also nurturing and affirming their own being? </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-29890097509192443602015-08-24T15:25:00.002-07:002015-08-24T15:37:55.047-07:00How physical touch connects us to subtle knowings. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Lately, I have been coming across ideas that are telling me a little more about myself, and wiping down the mirror so I can see more of my true self. Something I read recently might resonate with you as well. It's about what some people call clairsentience, or the ability to know something through our sense of touch. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In her book <i>Aura Reading, </i>Rose Rosetree talks about clairsentience using this example: </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"With clairsentience, information comes along with touch. Rosa, for instance, is a massage therapist. When starting a session, Rosa holds the client by the ankles. Information comes to her about what needs work. It's as though the whole body reveals its secrets to her hands." </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rosetree goes on to say that while some people who are clairsentient are very tuned in to their physicality but might not realize how much <i>subtle</i> information comes in through <i>physical </i>touching, there are other clairsentients who are subtle touchers and unconcerned with their own physicality. To them, "<i>subtle perception is so much more interesting than staying in touch with reality</i>." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And then, Rosetree goes on to say something that really struck me and might put clairsentience in perspective for you too: </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Here's another paradox. Clairsentient people work especially well with their hands, for example, in writing, cooking, or gardening. But ask them if they would like to work with their hands and they may well say "No." How come? </span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's one of those mind-stopping Zen trains of thought, like explaining the sound of one hand clapping. Why don't some clairsentients notice their hands? The process of creating through the hands is so charming it totally absorbs their attention. Therefore, what part of the mind is left to notice the hands?" </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have always thought of myself as someone who <i>does not </i>like to work with their hands. I hate doing repetitive things, and I love the world of ideas and possibilities as compared to what I sometimes think of as purely sensory and physical things. And yet, physical touch is important to me. I, too, can often sense where pain in someone's body is going to be when I touch them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Recently, I have started writing more by hand instead of working on the laptop. The visceral connection to the paper feels stronger, and things seem to come out in a different way. Like Rose Rosetree says, at these moments, I am in the flow and the thought that I am making something with my hands does not even cross my mind. And yet, my hands feel alive and I sense things in a way that seems organic. It's as if my hands are pulling out something that some part of me has always known. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Just like writing, when I cook, I am so absorbed in the process that my attention never goes to my hands. Till </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I read what Rosetree says, I hadn't considered how much I sense things through touch. What a thing to learn after so many years of knowing (not knowing?) myself. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Maybe, what Rosetree says connected with you as well, regardless of whether you believe in auras or not. Our bodies are the means through which we make our way through the world, so it feels logical that they are equipped with ways of knowing that go beyond thinking and the intellect. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Here's something that Rosetree says that might resonate with you as well: </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"As a clairsentient, whether you come across as grounded or more of an absent-minded professor, you know the value of hugging and touching. That's how you feel you have made genuine contact with people. And if your clairsentience goes along with a gift for physical healing, your hands may radiate a special spiritual beauty." </span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Does what Rosetree say about clairsentience resonate with you? Does it make you think differently about the different ways in which you know and sense things? Is there some way in which you can apply this in your life? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For me, it feels like this is another way in which intuition and knowing works in and through me. While sometimes, intuition is the little voice that I hear in my center, at other times, what I know comes to me as a result of physical contact and touch. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My body can sense and know things in a way that I am not often aware of, and starting to become aware of this feels enlarging. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-52321090530755549422015-08-17T14:35:00.000-07:002015-08-17T14:38:39.243-07:00A New Empath Resource <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Xo9Ocio5OOU/VdJSi0CegII/AAAAAAAAAyg/jVvl30eC_Xk/s1600/symbol-704076_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="331" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Xo9Ocio5OOU/VdJSi0CegII/AAAAAAAAAyg/jVvl30eC_Xk/s400/symbol-704076_640.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the past several months, I have been learning more about what it means to be an empath. It's the part of my sensitivity that is most troublesome for me. Unlike crowded places and loud noises, things that I can often avoid, I am still learning about this aspect of my sensitivity - how to not get thrown off constantly by other people's energy. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There was a time when I used to be constantly absorbing emotional energy -- feeling curiosity, anger, or anxiety jumping out at me and wrestling me down to the ground. It was exhausting and enervating. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now that I am in a space where I am more consciously aware of being an empath, I have started to discover people and ideas that might help you, if you are an empath too. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One of them is Anna Sayce, whose <a href="http://annasayce.com/">blog</a> I recently stumbled upon. She reads Akashic records and does intuitive work, and even if you don't believe in "alternative stuff," what she says <a href="http://annasayce.com/the-link-between-your-struggles-and-your-gifts">in this post</a> about the connection between our struggles and our soul gifts will likely resonate with you. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It gave me food for thought and shifted things a little for me. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Anna says that "our biggest soul gift and biggest struggle in life will usually spring from the same source." She talks about how she often sees this with her clients, this idea that our struggles and our gifts are two sides of the same coin. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For people who have the empath gift, this is how it often plays out: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"On the upside, these people were born with the ability to experience what life is like for another person. They make great mediators because they can see two sides of a story and can switch their point of view easily. They are the ones who are good at caring for and looking out for others. But they can sometimes have so much compassion and understanding that they might not always look out for their own interests sufficiently. Or they might be easy to exploit. They may fail to take care of themselves while taking care of everyone around them. Most often, they may feel like their sensitivity is a burden."</span></i><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You might feel this acutely. The same thing that makes up your essence also creates problems and difficulties. It is as if we can't have the gift without also being handed its shadow side. The challenge is to fight the monsters before you can really enjoy and utilize the gift. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you have been struggling with your empathic abilities, this connection might give you some relief. The reason that being empathic feels like a double-edged sword is because it <i>is</i> double-sided and tricky. Like me, you might deeply value being empathic when you can mediate in a stressful situation and contribute something of value. And yet, the blurring of boundaries, the taking on of other people's stuff might leave you feeling as if you are caught between a rock and a hard place. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I want to explore this dynamic and what being empathic means in more posts. In the meanwhile, do <a href="http://annasayce.com/">check out Anna's blog</a>. She has some great stuff there, and it could help answer some of the questions you might be struggling with. </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-75546340076049409282015-08-10T16:48:00.000-07:002015-08-10T16:48:03.288-07:00The Music of being an Empath <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XRrR4HR716s/Vck3vgjxP9I/AAAAAAAAAx0/-QfTKlmUWnc/s1600/1.%2BMeet%2BRitu%2B-%2BA%2BWriter%2Bin%2Bthe%2BSan%2BFrancisco%2BBay%2BArea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XRrR4HR716s/Vck3vgjxP9I/AAAAAAAAAx0/-QfTKlmUWnc/s400/1.%2BMeet%2BRitu%2B-%2BA%2BWriter%2Bin%2Bthe%2BSan%2BFrancisco%2BBay%2BArea.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When I hear music, I dive down into its depths. It curls around my being like wisps of sweet-smelling smoke. Sometimes, I lie down under it, and it falls over me like a waterfall. I feel its enchantment, and I become a part of it. Like colors being dissolved in water, who I am becomes brighter when it dissolves in something bigger. It is carried onwards on waves of notes and extends out into the universe. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's one of the wonderful things about being an empath, of being able to feel so much. My valleys have been deep and dark, and now the mountains I am climbing are majestic. There is no dearth of drama, no shortage of adventures of the soul. Maybe this is what I signed up for. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sometimes, when I look at other people, people whose lives go forth in a more stable, straight line, I envy them that stability, that straightness. It would be so much easier to live like that. And yet, that hasn't been my life, and it probably won't be. It's a different movement, a different wave that I am calling forth from inside me. It's something I don't have a model for, and like you, I am picking up pieces as I go along. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What does it mean to be an empath? Sometimes, people's energy jumps out at me with such force that I want to hold up my hand and shield myself from it. When I travel in the train, I can sometimes feel curiosity jumping out at me. Many times, I can say exactly what someone is going to say to me, even before they have said it. There have been many heavy years where the cloak of all the sadness I could feel made me want to barricade myself in my room. And that's exactly what I did. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And yet, it is this same sensitivity that attunes to all that is beautiful, and chimes in with it. In a room full of people waiting to attend a lecture by an energy worker, I absorb all the wonderful energy just as quickly. I am swaying in it like a bell. At times like these, I think to myself: These are the kind of places I need to be.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I pick up everything, although I am often confused as well. How do I separate my "real knowings" from projections about the other person that we all make? And yet, as I trust some of my knowings, some of the things that I am sensing, my faith in my ability to know deepens. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One thing I have been learning is that what I give my attention to does become bigger. It grows in size and density and so, now, I have turned my attention away from the overwhelm that I often find lurking just outside my field, and instead am looking at all the gifts that I haven't yet mined. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now is the time to go down the shaft of the cave, and look at all the sparkling, beautiful things that have been growing inside the cave. They have been becoming larger as the pressure outside grew, and it's time for them to come to light. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Maybe, you are here too, in this space between light and dark, finding your way to your own treasure. Maybe, we can listen to each other and learn something before we go even deeper. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-106726332518631732015-06-05T09:43:00.000-07:002015-06-05T09:43:00.644-07:00Who are you giving to? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Today, I read something on Jeff Goins' lovely blog that stood out for me. In <a href="http://goinswriter.com/reward-givers/">his post</a>, he talks about how after the release of his new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Work-Proven-Discovering/dp/0718022076">The Art of Work</a>, he has spent a lot of time and attention replying to the negative comments, engaging with people who "want to argue, fight, or call me names" and not enough time replying to those who have positively reviewed his book. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We all can relate to this on some level. We all pay attention to the naysayer or a single negative remark instead of focusing on the positive. That's part of human nature.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Goins talks about how this process has been for him and how he is shifting his attention away from detractors. He mentions one interaction in particular that gave him some insight into why people criticize so harshly. He says: "Not too long ago, I replied to a one-star review of my book and offered a refund to that person (as is my practice), and he sent me an email saying something that surprised me."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He said: "I had no idea authors read their reviews...If I knew you were listening, I would have been nicer."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Goins continues: "Wow. I appreciate the honesty, but isn't that indictment of society today? <i>I would have been nicer to you, if I knew you'd hear what I was saying</i>. This is not the kind of world that I want to be a part of." So, what is the solution? "Reward the givers, ignore the haters. Don't feed the trolls. You've heard this stuff before. So have I. So why do we ignore it? Because it's easier to argue than it is to appreciate."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's easier to argue than it is to appreciate.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Goins continues: "Give your best stuff, including your attention, to the people who appreciate it." This does not mean that you are not open to constructive feedback. It does mean that you are not trying to convince everyone of the validity of your opinions. You are not trying to win everyone over. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There are people who simply don't connect with what we are doing. There are those that are actively discounting our work or our intentions. There are also those who, like Goins' detractor, might be expressing a casual, not-very-considered opinion. When we focus on these people, we magnify their effects on our lives.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Shifting our attention away is something we all need to learn. If you are a sensitive person, the criticism will, of course, sting for you. It might leave you reeling for some time. You might also feel like you have made a mistake and your conscientiousness can work against you in this case. You want to do things correctly, and someone is now effectively saying that you haven't.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Goins' experience also made me think of something else, how we often pay attention to the people who scream the loudest, overlooking people who don't shout out for attention. Again, we are directing our attention by default. Just like we get hooked by criticism, we get hooked by the loudest voice. In both cases, we need to become more discerning.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Who is it that we are spending our energy on? Who are we engaging with? Who are we rewarding?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Are we maybe reinforcing behaviors that we shouldn't support? If we discount the givers, the people who give to us, what are we saying to them? What are we saying to ourselves? Are we saying that the giving behavior does not deserve acknowledgement? Are we, in effect, taking the givers for granted because we have some unexamined beliefs about our own giving? Do we give without discernment, without seeing the cost involved? Do we give to the detriment of our own self?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">These are all questions we need to ask. I don't think it works, giving indiscriminately. Everyone does not have the same intentions or will honor your boundaries. I don't think it works, to focus so much attention on people who are not getting what you are trying to do. We need to focus our attention on achieving a balance between giving and receiving, and pulling in the gifts of giving that are being offered to us, instead of getting hooked into negativity. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-24542279804442195462015-05-10T14:07:00.000-07:002015-05-10T14:07:01.116-07:00The Receiving Project <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mNx4WpLgf5Q/VU_Gs4sixBI/AAAAAAAAAuY/Ve667be6lO0/s1600/tulip-341677_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mNx4WpLgf5Q/VU_Gs4sixBI/AAAAAAAAAuY/Ve667be6lO0/s400/tulip-341677_1280.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A week or so back, my sister forwarded me a link for <a href="http://beyondmeds.com/2015/05/01/the-receiving-project/">The Receiving Project</a>, a 32-day commitment where you set an intention every day to receive gifts of loving from the universe, and then acknowledge what you get. It seemed just like the thing I wanted to do, just like the thing I needed to do. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Even when I have things and get things, they seem to pass right out of me. I don't quite take them in. I am scared of pulling them towards me. I am scared of needing them or being touched by them. It feels like I can't quite take in the very air that is available to me, that it is there but my capacity to pull it in isn't. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am learning about my heart. It needs to receive as much as give, that there is a delicate balance and that for it to be open, there need to be both movements - of giving as well as receiving. Without receiving, I work against the very nature of my heart, against its yearnings. I want it to be wholly self-sufficient for myself, and yet be able to give to others, and that leaves it depleted. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If it doesn't get from somewhere, where is its pool to give from? What store can it dip into? It walks hobbled. It wishes it were like it was once a long time ago, when it felt like it was connected to an infinite source, when it could give without falling over itself. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So, this project, this intention is to look at the way I relate to the world, to trust again in it. It is to take in things fully, to look at what I am already receiving. There are things that are coming to me, but that I am not integrating, am not giving thanks for. On some level, I feel that I am rejecting the gifts that I get because I am angry with God, and you don't take things from someone you are angry with. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There's that, and there are other things. I am scratching through many beliefs. Another one seems to be that receiving makes you weaker. You start needing something, and it is more self-sufficient to just not want or need a whole lot. It makes you invulnerable. But it also makes you gasp for breath. It makes you treat yourself as someone who shouldn't have any needs. That seems to be another pattern. You shouldn't want too much, some voice tells me. You should just make do. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But receiving is not making do. It's about becoming more expansive. It's about listening to the stars dancing inside you, listening to the nudges that come from deep withing and from outside, engaging in the magical reality of the world, <a href="http://www.walkingthroughtransitions.com/2015/04/if-you-are-so-sensitive-how-can-you-say.html">taking up more and more space</a> and not shrinking to fit some imaginary space you think has been marked for you or that you are allowed. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is about drinking the water slowly, instead of gulping it down. It is okay to trust in this moment. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's okay to give things importance. It is okay to need things. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am just beginning to step into this space where receiving is as good as giving. In fact, it is what I need more of right now. Maybe, you are a bit like me, struggling in this space between receiving and giving, feeling like you need to or should always be on the giving side. Maybe it is time for both of us to shift, to move over to receiving, to fill in and get nourished. Maybe, giving and receiving are cycles in our own beings, and each brings something that we need. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We need this rain. We need this thing we are thirsting for. How can we allow it to soak inside of us, instead of putting up obstructions so it can't reach us? What is the cost of remaining impervious, of pretending to never need anything? There are cracks that need to go through our exterior so we can stop being so nice, and both authentically receive and authentically give. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I wonder what that would look like. </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-70186730195072406002015-05-08T11:27:00.001-07:002015-05-08T11:27:15.714-07:00A quote by Nathaniel Branden <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This morning, here's something by Nathaniel Branden on writing. It seems to talk about how to make something artful, so I think it goes beyond writing, into anything that we are trying to infuse with spirit, but yet want to keep empty enough so someone else can enter into it:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>"If you want to obtain the strongest emotional response, then you write between the lines, never on the line; you write around the feeling, you don't spell it out explicitly. Because -- if you tell the reader everything, if you don't leave spaces for the mind to fill in, if you don't engage the consciousness by giving the reader something to do -- if, in effect, you try to do it all -- then you leave the reader passive, the consciousness is not engaged as it could be, and so the reader is not that involved emotionally." </i></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-5083575853591309742015-04-29T01:30:00.000-07:002015-05-12T23:52:33.458-07:00Searching for Kindred Spirits <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k4p4lTkQe6g/VTmYlK4GhpI/AAAAAAAAAsw/SJtjyy3RaGI/s1600/friends-536896_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k4p4lTkQe6g/VTmYlK4GhpI/AAAAAAAAAsw/SJtjyy3RaGI/s1600/friends-536896_1280.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What's one challenge you face when interacting with people? Sometimes, the biggest dissonance for me is when I can see what is motivating the other person, but they themselves can't see it. It seems like they are not even aware of what's driving them. Sometimes though, I felt doubtful about my own perceptions because I had the belief that everybody is equally aware of what is happening inside them. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They aren't. The blank space we can feel as sensitive people is because we are much more in touch with the unconscious aspects of our own selves, and as a result, of other people's selves. We know emotions in the most nuanced way. The downside of that is that we can get overwhelmed by this knowing, by wanting to process things deeply. But the upside is that we can take the emotional temperature of a room without even thinking about it. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Because it comes naturally to us, we sometimes feel at a loss when it doesn't come naturally to other people. That's why we can be left feeling that we looked after someone else's needs, but very few people look after our own. This is why we can start getting resentful.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We need people who can see the world like us. We need kindred spirits, people who truly get us. On one hand, interacting with people who are different from you can stretch your horizons, expose you to new ways of being. But deep friendships are built on commonalities, on a similar world-view. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If we have to convince others that the world we see is as real and they can't see it, our needs to be heard and understood go unmet. Our need to connect in a real, authentic way go unmet. We might be continuing with looking for meaning in such connections, connections where we can't seem to only barely touch the being of the other person, because we might have a belief that truly loving people accept everyone into their lives. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But maybe part of loving is about realizing that people find their own people, and everyone has different needs. Maybe part of our love can be directed toward nourishing our own selves as well. Maybe when we accept that not everyone is a good fit for us, we can let go of the need to force things where they are not working. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Maybe we can also examine other beliefs about friendship. Maybe a friend is not just someone who matches us in outer specifics, like age, life stage, or gender, but can be anybody whose heart resonates to the same things ours does. As Anne Shirley, the heroine of one of my favorite children's book series did, maybe we also need to be on the look out for our kindred spirits and when we find them, to realize that they are indeed precious, that they are they ones who feel right, who seem to understand who we are. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-91209916231529660682015-04-27T00:30:00.000-07:002015-04-30T15:25:49.774-07:00A Trail of Breadcrumbs <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have made the best decisions when I have followed my intuition. I have made the worst when I have willed my way through situations that didn't feel right. This feeling, that was so easy to rationalize away, was first a nudge and then an insistent hammering. But I was used to discounting my feelings, and so I pushed against them mightily, instead of heeding them and changing direction.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Our feelings provide intuitive hints. But sometimes, they arrive in such a flock that it is hard to sift through them and see which feeling talks about which thing. As I am learning to tune in, I feel that following intuitive hunches might be like following a trail of breadcrumbs. We don't know where they will lead. Maybe they will lead nowhere. Maybe they will get us to the next point.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What's important is that we are open to following them in the first place. Experimenting seems to be important. And reality checking. Intuition seems to be linked to trusting our curiosities, turning over rocks, looking underneath things. Maybe the magic is that we stayed open to clues and asked questions about them, and in the asking, moved several steps forward. </span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What we ultimately did was either prove or disprove these hunches. But we first gave ourselves permission to follow them.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I <a href="http://www.walkingthroughtransitions.com/2015/04/an-exercise-for-increasing-intuition.html">wrote earlier</a> about this exercise that I have been doing to allow intuition into my life. Some of it seems to be working, as little shifts happen. I am more aware, more observant, more responsive. Just the willingness to explore and the shift in attention seems to be greasing some wheels, opening some doors. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-7116343873743068822015-04-23T14:33:00.000-07:002015-04-23T14:38:39.145-07:00If you are not competitive, can you still succeed?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We all have certain beliefs about our sensitivity. Some of them have dripped down to our very core and color everything we look at. Lately, I have been thinking about self-acceptance and feeling that in many ways, I have just gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick. Many things that I think are wrong with me are just faulty beliefs that keep on living because I haven't pulled them right out of the ground. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One of my unspoken beliefs is about competition, about the fact that you need to be competitive to be successful. I am not competitive and that has always felt like a disadvantage. Maybe you have this belief too. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Maybe you, like me, come from a culture and were raised in an environment that placed a high value on competition. Maybe, like me, you have felt marginalized because of something else that you are (such as <a href="http://www.walkingthroughtransitions.com/2015/01/on-being-creative-and-cracking-egg.html">being a creative person</a>), and so it all built up and you thought that everything that you were added up to something less than what was required to succeed. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you have felt at a disadvantage because you are not competitive, or thought: Why am I not motivated by competition like other people?, then something that has been crystallizing for me might help you. Maybe what's been holding you back is not some quality you lack, but the inner resistance you feel when you push against your own truth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Recently, I read <ahref dp="" etter-than-before-mastering-everyday="" http:="" ref="sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429824145&sr=8-1&keywords=better+than+before" www.amazon.com="">Better than Before, </ahref></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">New York Times Bestselling Author Gretchen Rubin's latest book (which is another New York Times bestseller), and something she said underlined what I have been feeling. The book is about habit change, and she tells us that successful habits are built on the foundation of our fundamental nature. What works for one person does not work for the other. There is no one-size-fits-all. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">She also says that she is not a competitive person, and so, that cannot be the motivating drive for her. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As far as success goes, she has made it. She is both successful and non-competitive. I think what that points to is that we sometimes forget that passion and competition are not always sitting on the same side of the fence. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You can love something so much that it can be intrinsically satisfying. And what we love to do, we also keep on practicing. It's something we are deeply interested in, something we think about in a nuanced way, something we keep adding layers to. It's also something we can get very good at.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's something important for me to remember as a sensitive person. Just because competitiveness is the ideal in society today does not mean that a different value, <a href="http://www.walkingthroughtransitions.com/2015/03/on-honoring-our-own-style.html">a different perspective</a> cannot work. Sometimes, I have internalized the weight given to this outer value and found myself lacking, but the truth is that it is comparisons that drain us of our strengths.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you are not competitive, bottom line is that it won't motivate you. It is a substitute for what really works with you, and by accepting it, you are laying a false structure on which to build things. Maybe that's what's wrong. Maybe that's what's not working. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One way of accepting ourselves as sensitive people is accepting that our qualities are a constellation that moves in rhythm. We need to re-examine what we have been telling ourselves and re-frame our trait in the light of what we know now, instead of letting the past echo through our lives.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course, the problem of succeeding and even what it means is much larger than correcting this one belief. But this could be a good starting point. When we can honor our own way of being and live from that place, that's already success.</span><br />
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</span> <i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you were to drop this belief, what would you gain? Where could you see yourself going? How would you feel?</span></i><br />
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</b> <i>If this resonated with you, please pass this on and share this post with anyone who might enjoy it. </i><b> </b> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-46129918248783030002015-04-22T12:06:00.000-07:002015-04-22T12:26:34.860-07:00The Knife of Perfectionism <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vcDeM-4WW_w/VTfwxKcQ3nI/AAAAAAAAAr8/VHGBCmIJc-0/s1600/wisdom-92901_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vcDeM-4WW_w/VTfwxKcQ3nI/AAAAAAAAAr8/VHGBCmIJc-0/s1600/wisdom-92901_1280.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This morning, I read something on </span><a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/19/pema-chodron-the-wisdom-of-no-escape/?utm_content=bufferb3d83&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">the lovely Brainpickings website</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> by the fierce and kind Pema Chodron. This is what she says: "The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself. The other problem is that our hangups, unfortunately or fortunately, contain our wealth. Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This feels true, although I don't understand it completely. It resonates with this growing part of me that is learning to accept her first tries and is not so hung up on making things perfect. This is also that part of me that is learning to trust herself and her own perceptions. It is learning that my first feelings, my first thoughts and my </span><a href="http://www.walkingthroughtransitions.com/2015/04/an-exercise-for-increasing-intuition.html"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">first hunches</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> are often true. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is second-guessing that gets me into trouble. It is overthinking that stops me in my tracks. There are times that we need to consider, need to think. But there are also times when our feelings and thoughts swirl up in a cloud and block our view of what it is that we need to do next. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They cause us to doubt whether we are moving in the right direction or what we are doing is indeed enough. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This morning, I read </span><a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/24/picasso-brassai-ideas-creativity/"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">another piece on Brainpickings</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> that talks about Picasso and his thoughts on intuition and how creativity works. Something in it stuck out for me. In the piece, he is quoted talking about Matisse whose work he admired professionally and who was also a personal friend. Matisse followed a painfully methodical creative process, and this is what Picasso thought about it: </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Matisse does a drawing, then he recopies it. He recopies it five times, ten times, each time with cleaner lines. He is persuaded that the last one, the most spare, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and yet, usually it’s the first. When it comes to drawing, nothing is better than the first sketch." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Picasso thinks of the first creative intuition as the best. What we are alighting upon is the work of instinct, of our purest senses. When we re-do it to fit some convention, we might be draining the juice right out of it. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's what I am learning about intuition, that the purest intuition is about learning to trust your own perceptions. My research is showing me that just like prolific artistes, successful entrepreneurs and business-people are ones that are most in touch with their original thoughts, with their own nuances of feelings. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What perfectionism does is take a knife to many of our most original, most intuitive ideas. It tells us that we are not enough, that we'll never be enough, that we have to do things over and over again to get to something of value. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It tells us that we have little or no talent, that we have to search desperately for answers, that these answers will always remain out of our reach. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My favorite teacher and kindred spirit Julia Cameron tells us that perfectionism is not the pursuit of the best in us, it is the pursuit of the worst. Perfectionism is different from striving for excellence.We can become excellent at what we do only if we are <a href="http://www.walkingthroughtransitions.com/2015/04/an-exercise-for-authenticity.html">willing to make mistakes</a>, if we are willing to keep trying and learning. But perfectionism blocks this process. It brings everything to a grinding halt. We are stuck when we </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">belabor over something we think needs to be just right before we are allowed to move ahead. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Nothing needs to be perfect. Nothing needs to be won. We need to keep doing, keep moving ahead. The movement does not need to follow some pre-set routine. We are allowed to take two steps forward, one step back. We are allowed to make good things and not-so-good ones. We are allowed to do things because we love them, and not because we need to please anybody by shaping it into some accepted form. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We can choose to live with Julia's heartening motto: "Progress, not perfection." We can choose that we want to grow, and not be tied with a noose to this idea of never feeling good enough. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you are on the same path as me, think about how letting go of perfectionism would help you. Would it allow you to move ahead in your work, so you can actually find a new perspective instead of getting stuck at an earlier point? Or maybe it would free up your energy so that you can spend it on things that matter instead of frittering it away? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You and I, we both need to come to this place, so we can release our hesitation and step inside our work and our lives. We need to stop boxing ourselves in and making ourselves small. We are seeing the rents the knife of perfectionism has made in our lives and we are taking it out now, once and for all. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-4925616693149118762015-04-17T17:41:00.000-07:002015-04-17T17:41:35.731-07:00If you are so sensitive, how can you say No? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have been experimenting with saying No a lot more. Although it's becoming easier, it takes some energy and makes me irritable. Why did the person ask? It's as if my anger at the cost it takes to say No comes lashing out at the terribleness of this poor person. Why are they making me feel so bad? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It's almost like I am having a mini-existential crisis. If I am not this nice, accommodating person, who am I? Maybe when you say No, that's what you feel as well. Feelings of having done something bad wash over you. Like me, maybe, you have a lot of your identity tied in being "nice." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What does it mean exactly, being nice? I think the reason I could start saying No was because I realized that one of the reasons I was reluctant to say No was because I was projecting myself onto the other person. I have been said No to in some big ways in the past. I felt that the other person would feel the same way, and so I avoided No at all costs. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Part of what I was avoiding was reactivating my own feelings, my own memories of being said No to. And so, with that clarity, I realized that playing nice was a little bit about burying my own pain, and not as much about the other person, so it wasn't very giving ultimately. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was not looking at the real need of the person, which sometimes wasn't as acute. I was seeing myself in them and in some twisted way, trying to help that part of me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This was, of course, just one part of my problems with saying No. The other part was this. I had the belief that if you are a good person, you say Yes. You say Yes to what other people ask of you. You say Yes as a default response, without considering what it costs you. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In fact, mostly, I never thought of the cost. I thought that if I am good and thoughtful and nice, good things would automatically happen to me. That was the magical thinking of the child. But in reality, what happened was that while some good things did happen, giving away my energy and time in a thousand little ways, without any direction, depleted my own self. It left me resentful and angry. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What we have been told about our hearts is wrong, I think. It is not always giving that keeps them alive. I think what keeps them alive is maintaining the right flow of energy -- giving unconditionally on the one hand and receiving the nourishment you need on the other. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You need to receive. And you need to receive what you need, not just what someone offers you. You have your own unique needs. And you need some different lessons in giving. You might need to remind yourself to give discerningly, so that you don't give "on demand." That usually happens when someone else is happy doing the taking.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You might have to sacrifice the belief that we should always give without calculation. Our time and energy is limited. A Yes to one thing or person is often a default No to another person or thing that is not as loud, not as demanding. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Maybe the people and things in your life that are important but that don't speak up as insistently can be your motivation. When we say Yes without thinking, they suffer. It is up to us, as sensitive people, to become more discerning about who really needs our energy, and how we can really contribute in the world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Giving pieces of yourself away does not help anyone. You have something valuable to give, and saying No is part of what will help both you and me to make a whole offering, and not give pieces of ourselves away for nothing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am telling myself. I am a sensitive person. I can say No. This will help build a better structure in my life. It will help me feel more safe and secure. Claiming my own piece of land will help me cultivate what's really important to me. When that grows, that will be the thing that can most help other people. That will be the thing that is mine to give. </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2945660986580002654.post-9026253349399779592015-04-16T22:39:00.000-07:002015-04-17T11:00:04.366-07:00A Field Report: Intuition Exercise <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AG6X6Tv6nlE/VTCcB0VHu_I/AAAAAAAAAq8/bey0ptoRMNM/s1600/foggy-545838_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AG6X6Tv6nlE/VTCcB0VHu_I/AAAAAAAAAq8/bey0ptoRMNM/s1600/foggy-545838_1280.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I wrote recently about <a href="http://www.walkingthroughtransitions.com/2015/04/an-exercise-for-increasing-intuition.html">an exercise that allowed for intuitive insights to occur</a>. <br />
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The theory goes like this. Although we can't <i>make</i> intuition happen, we can get into a space where intuitive insights are more likely to happen. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The exercise that I wrote about tells us that the ideal conditions for intuition are paved by relaxation and a state of flexible attention, giving us access to a place in which we can loosely spread our attention over a larger area, instead of just directing it at one point. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The way we do it is by imagining different distances in our bodies, the point between the elbow and the wrist or the knee and the ankle for example. Then, we imagine our attention spreading across these spaces. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have done this exercise a few times now, and here's what's happened so far. There's no right way to do the exercise, so I just went with what felt right. In places where I didn't quite even sense my body, I tried to feel the tense places. Where I felt some energy, the image of shifting sand popped up in my head. I visualized my way through that area, the sand moving and taking form in that space. The image helped me move my attention, and it seemed like it came out of the unconscious as a metaphor for what was happening in my body. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the same way, I visualized my spine filling with air, and I had some felt sense of it. At one point, I combined this exercise with deep pelvic breathing. It was amazing how the two seemed to work together with wonderful synergy. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I relaxed within minutes, and it was empowering to feel that I could do that at will. When I was focusing on my lower body at one point, my back, which was tense and scrunched up, loosened and relaxed. I touched on the fact that my body was one system, and working on one part affected the other. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Did I get more intuitive hunches? I am not sure. I felt a difference in my intention to follow whispers of feeling. I felt like my mind had quieted down a bit, and as if I could access my body, even its numbed out parts just a little. I felt my energy collecting a little, and not getting scattered by things that go on outside. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My sense is that something in the exercise is working and will work. I will do it more, and see where it takes me. Often, I have stopped myself in exploring and my first goal has been safety, even when dealing with myself. But digging inside my own caves is probably the most illuminating and rewarding thing I can think of doing right now. </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2