The Deepest Insecurity
The deepest insecurity stems from not having a sense of Self* established. A sense of Self is established (in utero) when the spirit chooses our body with which to incarnate. This is our first embodiment experience. It is solely a bodily experience, as ego has not yet developed. So, Self cannot be “thought, “read” or “talked” into being…ever. It must be felt. The biological structures associated with the felt sense are subcortical: limbic and reptilian.
In the human-animal kingdom, the task of facilitating this process lies with the mother. Her job is to reflect back to you, your Self (soul) and it’s bespoke purpose. If your mother is karmically living an insecure existence, she is only able to reflect back to you that insecurity. Self, therefore, is not developed. In its place, a visceral feeling of not being accepted into this world is landed somatically. Clients in my private practice often describe this as feeling “homeless.”
Indeed, if your mother did not facilitate your first embodiment experience, then she probably facilitated an experience of annihilation. I describe annihilation as an existential experience of feeling both dead and alive. In essence, not only was your divinity not reflected to you, it was stolen from you before you had developed the faculties enabling consent.
Due to this, you will then live a life attempting to find acceptance in this world, as well as your aliveness. This is what I call “splitting.” The “split” stems from the ego/mind: a created sense of self that has little or no connection with the Soul. Splitting gives us temporary relief from the pain of abandonment. It is, therefore, not sustainable. The only sustainable sense of peace comes from having one’s sense of Self firmly established - it was spiritually intended to be our first “home.”
Like a spiritual pilgrim walking along the “homeless” path, you will put yourself out there in the external world excruciatingly attempting to fill the hole in your body. You will try to find your Self through alcohol, drugs, sex, porn, food, merging with others, multiple partners, etc. As these behaviors cause great suffering when they leave, we know they are attachments, oftentimes advancing to full-on addictions.
In yogic practices, divine mother energy is caked Prana Shakti. It is the energy that brings spirit and soul into relationship at the inception of our life. It is the energy so many of us are craving. In the spiritual realm, many of us are calling out for some version of Mother Mary to come to us as she is an avatar of Prana Shakti.
Most of us will only extinct the behavior of reaching out into the external world (the addictive state path) through exhaustion by way of pain, not by insight. In the throes of being confronted with this new illusion of being nothingness and left completely alone to fend for our Self, we can then choose a new path with which to begin a relationship with our True Self. This is the path of the Warrior. It is a lonely path as it’s only ever achieved by being and feeling the depths of aloneness. This is the state so many people unconsciously avoid by way of distraction and excuses.
In my chosen path (yoga), a critical piece of this process is to create a sadhana (daily practice). I believe it must be non-negotiable that we carve out a part of our day - even if it’s 10 minutes - so we can be in relationship with our blocks, and eventually have access to our True Self. Accompanied by a teacher/mentor/therapist and a healthy community, Sadhana can be a means with which we lessen the time and energy of suffering in these karmic cycles (samsaras). And, the biggest piece: it is where we put an end to hurting ourselves, others and the world.
There are many paths with which to choose from. What is critical is that your path includes embodiment practices. The body - as opposed to the mind - is where the rupture was created in the first place, i.e., when you were conceived, so that’s where it must be healed.
The Architecture of Humanity curriculum, Understanding Us, is a path of psycho-bio-spiritual practices, tools and protocols that has the capacity to meet an individual on many points on the path. It begins with identifying one’s being as feeling “lost” from Self and being in crisis (Level 1), and moves the individual up the path to integration, coherence and self-actualization (Level 3).
*Soul , big-S-self, True Self, The Core and Atman can be used interchangeably with “Self” within this context.
AoH Learning Lab, Psychology Definition: Addiction
Industry accepted definition of addiction: Any repeated behavior, substance-related or not, in which a person feels compelled to persist, regardless of its negative impact on his/her life and the lives of others.
Addiction involves: 1. Compulsive engagement with the behavior, a preoccupation with it; 2. Impaired control over the behavior; 3. Persistence or relapse evidence of harm; and 4. Dissatisfaction, irritability, or intense craving when the object – be it a drug, activity or other goal – is not immediately available. (G. Mate, 2008).
AoH Learning Lab: A psychobiological definition of confidence
Confidence is positively correlated with coherence: high confidence equals high coherence, low confidence equals low coherence.
Coherence is the ability to hold complexity: of one’s self, others and the world. It uses a lens of compassion, understanding and empathy in all of life’s experiences. It allows for a widened aperture via increased nervous system capacity. Within this widened aperture (of seeing, hearing, and feeling), one is able to discern, discriminate and differentiate.
It allows us to be forgiving of our mistakes and, therefore, others. Holding a lens of complexity allows us to stand up for, protect, and speak to the hurt parts of us.
From a spiritual perspective, it is the ability to use the witness observer. The mantra is, “I can differentiate my soul from my behavior. I understand (somatically not intellectually) that I am not my emotions nor my changing states.”
The opposite of confidence is shame. A nervous system that interfaces from a shame space polarizes and becomes stuck. It polarizes into emotions and their accompanying states: anger, rage, blame, projection, depression, disassociation, victim consciousness, getting hurt by others, etc.
Within shame, there is little to no differentiation; a person full of unprocessed shame cannot separate behavior from the soul. So, any negative feedback from the world is interpreted as, “I am inherently a bad person.” Shame is one of the lowest vibrating states as it acts from a place of need…a need to be saved and accepted. Shame blames the world for its state and expects the world to fix it through co-dependent relationships, entitlement, manipulation, taking from others and/or operating from a victim stance.
Confidence says, “The world is working in my favor and has my back. I am a human who makes mistakes and I will be forgiven and still loved.”
Shame says, “The world is working against me. It has hurt me and now it owes me. I am too broken to be able to ever receive forgiveness and love.”
Working through shame is one of the most difficult places on the personal development path. But, it is often the most rewarding as a person’s lens literally changes and grows. The same energy - that was used to hide, fragment and lie about the parts he/she was too embarrassed or terrified to show to the world - is the same energy that is transmuted into a confident nervous system. In other words, from fear to love.
Facing Reality: Leslie’s commentary
For years, even decades, I held a belief that the amount of love I gave to another, I would get the same amount in return. The jagged, nauseating pill I had to swallow was the reality that people could only show up relational to their emotional capacity. I fought reality long and hard with the strategy of hope. Hope that if I gave them the love, tools and security, then they’d not only be full of gratitude, but also become the person I’d idealized them to be. I was hoping for them to be different…to show up in the form I needed them to be. This was coming from my own co-dependence, i.e., from a place of need. Need and love live in two completely different spheres, for true love needs nothing.
When I got to this realization point on the path, my bipolar symptoms as well as my body’s tendency to freeze, began to dissipate. Here, I found a much more grounded and equanamous version of me. I no longer had access to the high of mania states, nor the ability to split off into fantasyland. I grieved the loss of those two coping mechanisms. But, it also relieved me of the deep depression states my nervous system dipped into in order to compensate for the mania and fantasy highs.
Interestingly enough, when those mental illnesses lifted, I became in closer relationship with my cPTSD symptoms. I see my (and clients) mental illnesses states as “lids” the ego creates to protect us from the immense sensational pain that is experienced in cPTSD. Only when we’ve done the capacity work can we be in direct relationship with cPTSD symptoms and sensations.
I tell clients, that doing the “inner work” is a long process. I personally view it as a life-long exploration. There has never been and never will be a quick mechanism that brings traumas to the surface and integrates them into wholeness. As Thomas Moore said, “ Being a friend to yourself is no mere metaphor of purely sentimental idea. It is the basis of all relationship, because it is a fundamental recognition of soul.” Befriending and somatically integrating the fragmented parts of our individual self is the foundation of collective consciousness.
This “wholeness” is what I feel nearly every human is psychologically seeking. The physiological counterpart would be equilibrium. Most of us, on the soul-level, are born whole, but our social norms have yet to match up with the needs of soul, so we frag Humanity is currently in the process of doing this calibration. This process might be better illustrated as an undoing: it first takes individual work in coming to terms with the blocks that keep us separate from our True Self. Then, when we have a large collective consciousness from doing the individual work, we’ll be able to lovingly release the structures that engender systemic trauma.
Facing Reality
On the path of recovery, one of the most devastating points is when we face reality. Some might describe it as an existential crisis. This typically comes in the form of authentically seeing a loved one for who they are. And, most importantly, who they are not…and possibly who they never will be.
For those of us who have experienced relational trauma, the lack of co-regulation and attunement in the early years of life left us feeling incomplete and hollowed out. When our parents (especially our mother) was unable to reflect back to us our soul and it’s purpose, we began to split from the core of the Self to find it. This split created an ache, which then lead to a plea…a bargaining with the external world to fill this void.
Like a baby bird rooting around for its mother to feed it, we began to “root” around for co-regulation and attunement. Over time, we were met with continuous dismissal, which might have been read as annihilation. And, so the splitting took sophisticated forms. It took the form of a creating a fantasy person or life: someone or something that would finally fill the void and take the pain of abandonment away. Some of us created multiple fantasy worlds that we believed did or could truly exist. These states are the foundation for psychosis: namely delusions, paranoia and hallucinations. In essence, we created false realities to cope.
Many of us began to project this fantasy, i.e., idolized version onto those with whom we were in intimate relationship with.* For, in an intimate relationship, we were brought close to the core of who we were through mirroring. This mirroring reflected our insecure and fragile bonding and attachment system. Oftentimes, this reflection was too much for our nervous system to hold, so we unconsciously stopped it by needing them to be different and reverting back to the idolization.
Lack of co-regulation in early development is the breeding ground for co-dependency. If we remain stuck in this stage, we may find ourselves caught in a a viscous cycle of desiring bonding and connection but being dependent/reliant on another. It can lend itself to a double-bind: feeling imprisoned by Soul’s need for attachment and Spirit’s need for freedom.
The “now what work”: Rebuilding a life based on reality is essentially creating an entirely new life. In the beginning stages, there will be a great deal of grieving the personas we created that accompanied the false realities. Addthis stage, a re-wiring of healthy bonding and attachment is necessary. It is critical that individuals work with a practitioner skilled in physiology, bonding and attachment as well as somatic integration. It may also be necessary to create space from a romantic partner if a trauma bond has formed.
* For some, this may be their children
To read Leslie’s personal commentary on Facing Reality click here.
AoH Learning Lab Yogic Term: Shraddhā
Shraddha is a yogic and Sanskrit word. It may be translated as faith.
Personally and professionally, I see this faith as a devotion to the practices that connect us to the purest, inner-most part of the Self: the soul. That is to say, the place within us that is beyond mind and body.
A criticism of religion is that it asks for blind faith. Yoga is not a religion. It is an evidence-based science; a practice of purification. So, it may be said that Shraddhā in yoga is an evidence-based faith. Through these practices - some 5,000 years old - we gather evidence through actions (karmas, Samskaras and kriyas) - which show us that ALL the answers are within.
Our societal conditioning has us erroneously believing that the answers lay in the external world. This conditioning may have begun some 10,000 years ago when totalitarian agriculture began, i.e., our love affair with control. Some will spend their entire lives living in this veil (Maya), pleading, begging, needing, justifying, wanting, hoping and explaining to the outside world in a futile attempt to connect with Soul.
Others will find “the” path, which may not necessarily be yoga. But, is one where tools are offered to suture the chasm caused by duality. I do believe that most, if not all, religions began from this place of purity.
As above, so below: the duality we harbor in our individual self spreads and creates collective duality. So, it can ALSO be said that individual growth in consciousness spreads to collective growth in consciousness. As the yogic scriptures teach us: as long as there is duality, samadhi* cannot exist.
We are constantly offered a mirror - via the external works - showing us where our individual self is at on the path. Some of us see our own duality reflected as we use politics, religions, etc., to polarize into one “team” or the other. These are called attachments (ragas) in yoga. They keep us separated from our individual pain but they also keep us separated from love and ultimate connection: oneness.
From a psychological perspective, this polarizing is a “splitting” away from the core of who we are. It can lead to full-on psychosis where we create our own states of reality (a way of living away from the pain). At this extreme level of duality, we are neither living in the abode of our heart nor among the outside world - we feel lost, misunderstood, alienated and marooned - there is simply no where to turn for peace. The pleading here, may change form into a rage against the machine, whereby one is - in a misdirected way - literally screaming at others.
Indeed, yoga warns us that pleading for the duality to cease can become its own form of an attachment and/or addiction. For example, calling out how crazy supporters of politics are; blaming people for being apathetic and ignorant. From a quantum physics perspective, this is only adding to the energy of the duality of which you are pleading to stop; it is increasing the consciousness around said craziness. We are in essence, criticizing the criticizers.
Western appropriation of yoga has us believing it an external practice of love, light, beads and elephants. These are byproducts of purifying the Self by means of burning (tapas) through the illusions (mayas) and it’s cousins, personas. To turn all that is reflected from the external world back to the Self is by no means an easy path. It truly is one of ultimate self-responsibility, and so it is not for everyone. I feel very strongly - especially now - that paths which offer tools and practices that traverse the inner landscape are critical. For those who choose to endeavor there, Shraddhā is the vehicle that keeps one keeping on.
*A state of mind free from karmic impressions (samaskaras).
AoH Learning Lab: Calling Out for Help
“Calling Out for Help” is a little-known and rarely talked about survival response. In my opinion, within a regulated nervous system, it reflexively precedes the well-known survival responses, fight, flight and freeze. It is a mammalian behavior, and most distinctly, human, as we have the most sophisticated form of verbal communication.
“Calling Out for Help” typically shows up in infancy. When our cries for help (feed me, change my diaper, soothe me), are met with attunement, our nervous system will establish a secure relationship style with the Self, with others and with the world.
If our cries for help are met with dismissal - especially chronically - the nervous system will interpret it as rejection, neglect and abandonment. If this rupture is not repaired, we will often stop using this pathway, i.e., co-regulation, but we may also spend the majority of our life attempting to get the necessary repair.
As we are creatures of patterns, this “repair” may play itself out by getting into intimate relationships with those who lack attunement and empathy. As well as those who dismiss, neglect and abandon us, over and over and over again. This is also where co-dependency features may show up: trying to change others to meet our early need for compassionate and empathetic love.
In my clinical work, I’ve noted that clients will speak not of the traumatic event(s) per se, but rather, how no one showed up in their time of need, distress or crisis. Whether someone came to our aid or not, is often the determining factor of whether an event(s) becomes trauma or not.
Becoming aware of our relationship patterns and allowing compassion and forgiveness are first steps in repairing this rupture. Limbic revision and resonance is the second step. This second step entails establishing a safe, therapeutic and platonic relationship with another over an extended period of time.
AoH Learning Lab: Learned Helplessness
Learned Helplessness* is a psychological state that occurs when an individual believes he or she has no control over a situation, so the only (perceived) option is to give up. It is an unconscious and deeply embedded psychological acceptance of failure.
Over time, learned helplessness begins to affect self-efficacy: the extent to which an individual believes in his/her intrinsic ability to achieve goals.
This is typically due to relational trauma where one has chronically experienced interpersonal abuse. The mantra for this condition is, “failure is inevitable and unavoidable.” Especially when an individual is chronically annihilated, bullied, humiliated, undermined and invalidated, he or she begins to adopt a core belief that there is no way out other than to give up and give in. Over time, this belief bleeds into all aspects of one’s life. So, even when opportunities for change are available, they do not try or even sabotage the opportunities.
Physiologically, learned helplessness falls with the Dorsal Vagal pathway of the autonomic nervous system, i.e., freeze response. It tends to manifest deeper than only a momentary “freeze” in that it causes a collapse response somatically, where the individual feels immobilized to act and take care of its own organism (being).
From an attachment perspective, being helpless gets the individual what they needed (but did not get) from their caregivers: sympathy and attention. If this need is not interrupted and given healthy intervention, it can lead to narcissistic behaviors. Along with shame, learned helplessness is at the core of this devastating psychological disorder.
Nervous system depressants (alcohol, marijuana) exacerbate this condition and should be avoided, especially during intervention when new neural pathways are being formed.
*Learned Helplessness was coined by American psychologist, Martin Seligman, who began his studies on this psychological construct in the late 1960’s.
Related blogs: The Toxic Shame/Failure Loop
Are Your Stories Making You Sick?
Oftentimes, stories show up as defenses; they offer a coat of armoring around unprocessed traumas. When we were in our younger, formative years, they provided us a logical reason for why our caregivers would hurt us. Back then, the stories might have assisted us in staying alive. That is to say, they were an adaptation.
Simply put, traumas are the energy of incomplete arousal states* that are locked in our body. Arousal states hold tremendous amounts of charge and, therefore, reverberate when stuck in our bodies. In order to release the charge, the arousal experience needs to be completed.
By continuously telling stories, we are keeping the highly-charged arousal states locked in the body. These arousal states contain hormones**that are meant to stay in the body for only seconds at a time. Left in the body for longer periods, these chemicals induce inflammation, which then causes a host of physical issues, including disease.
The energy of these incomplete arousal states store themselves in the body; from the epidermis of the skin, all the way to the marrow in the bones, and everything in between. Therefore, to “process” traumas, we must utilize the body to gain access to the energy of these arousal states. A trained somatic practitioner is a necessary piece in this process. She/he will be able to gracefully create a container of safety while simultaneously challenging the stories created around the traumas.
*Flight, fight, freeze
**Namely, cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine
The Now-What Work:
Partake in a self-experiment. For 3 days do the following when you become activated by the world -
Without judgment and only curiosity, notice the core beliefs you tell yourself. Examples of core beliefs: “I did something wrong.” “I fail at everything.” “It’s always my fault.” “I’m not good enough for_____.” Etc, etc.
Notice the stories you tell others in defense of these core beliefs.
Roll up your sleeves, make an appointment with a somatic practitioner and prepare to find your true Self - who you are without your stories.
The Inner Work
I took this picture about 10 years ago. For 3 solid years, once a week, I’d drive to San Clemente to see my somatic therapist and afterwards, I’d stop at this outlook spot overlooking the Pacific Ocean along the 5 freeway. Overwhelmed by my traumas and grief, I’d watch the seagulls fly overhead. I’d imagine what it would be like to have the freedom of these hollow-boned ethereal creatures. Little did I know back then, I was practicing the art of nature integration.
That was also the time I’d started the Somatic Experiencing program. It was one of the (if not the most profoundly) shifting experiences of my life. I vividly recall Peter Levine telling us during training that it gets worse before it gets better and that there are no shortcuts - “slower is faster” is another famous mantra he used in doing the inner work.*
Like most of the counterparts of my species, I was seeking freedom. And, likewise, “why and how” were the existential and proverbial questions running circles around me.
For those 3 years in seeing my therapist on this weekly basis, trusting my body, the process, and another human were the components of surrender that were critical in forging a path of loving myself. In the somatics world, using the body to access traumas - and the resistance created in defense of them - is called bottom-up processing.
I see many people doing the top-down processing work: reading books, listening to podcasts, watching videos, even talk-therapy. I consider these auxiliary and support practices. But, they won’t permeate the deep and subtle tissues that are holding the traumas hostage. This is because they are mind-based tools. Sometimes they may even turn against us: when they are subconsciously used to keep us from taking responsibility, as they allow us to create a story around it being the fault of another, an experience, or even the world-at-large. That is to say, to partake in Victim Consciousness.
The individuals I see experiencing the most growth, expansion and relationship to purpose are those who are consistently showing up to meet with a practitioner. I’m going to make a bold statement here: we will not be able to resolve our traumas and stop hurting ourselves and others unless we are working with a practitioner, teacher, coach or sponsor on a regular basis. I do not see the type of lasting, embedded growth from top-down that I see from bottom-up.
There are many reasons for this necessity. The most important one I see: it allows for re-wiring. If you have relational trauma, the “predator” was likely caregiver(s) and/or family members. In other words, when you reached out for love (attachment and bonding), you were rejected in some form. This caused your nervous system to wire for protection (fight, flight, freeze) when it was seeking attunement, safety and protection.
No human is capable of giving unconditional love. We’re not yet evolved to that place. But, there are individuals who are highly attuned, compassionate and understanding - through their own inner work. These individuals will understand the finely-tuned art of pendulating between safety and challenge. They pair being a consummate figure that shows up consistently and reliably with gracefully show their vulnerable side when deemed beneficial.
Under these newfound interpersonal circumstances - almost miraculously - the nervous systems of the traumatized person will unconsciously begin to re-wire for safety in intimate moments with another human - perhaps for the first time ever. They will begin to practice recruiting the Ventral Vagal Complex (the cooperation, curiosity, connection and empathy pathway) over the Arousal System pathway (fight, flight, freeze). Eventually, they will use the Ventral pathway as a default mode.
If your nervous system has been wired to use the arousal pathway as a way to cope, you’ll notice a pattern of highs and lows in your life. You’ll also notice that the ego will come in with myriad defenses as to why you are not doing the inner work. Notice “when” statements such as, “When I have______ figured it.” “When I have the money.” The greatest act of love for yourself might be mobilizing against these defenses by taking action to set up an appointment with a practitioner.
I’m now 10 years into this work on a personal level. I have a standing appointment with my mentor/therapist that I consider as critical as exercise, nutrition and meditation. Doing the inner work is not the easy route but it is the one that will stick. I can tell you firsthand, that the freedom I was seeking, I have now begun to embody; I have a place in my body where I source not only my freedom, but my power as well.
The “why” and “how” answers are appearing as I’m seeking them less. This is not to say conflict, confusion, grief and sadness are gone. But, it is to say that I’m in right relationship with them now. The shame, blame, projection and victim are seeing their last moments and the pathway of love (ventral) is rising up in the vacancy they’ve left.
I wish this for all of humanity. I believe in you. I believe in us. I believe in love. Let’s put an end to the wars within so we can put an end to the wars on the out.
*Also called Shadow Work
Victim Consciousness & Global Codependency
The world doesn’t need to be saved. The world doesn’t need to be changed.
The vastness in me as a human being is immeasurable. The vastness to inspire and love others is infinite.
Along the path, I have spent years, even decades, attempting to puppeteer my world. “If only he/she/they would…” was my subconscious motto. I created imaginary worlds and models for the way other people should be behaving.
This desire for the world and people to change was born from truly being victimized. That was, and still is, my personal work: how to save myself and show-up for myself in the way I needed when I was unable to care for myself.
The stuckness in feeling perpetually victimized led to a codependency on others. I was like that bird in the book, “Are You My Mother?” Rooting around the world looking for the person, community or experience that was going to make me feel better. I was a taker coming from a place of need - an ugly reality pill I had to swallow to get to the next place on the path; to get out of the looping quality of victim consciousness.
These days, I still feel the urge to reach out beyond my being when I feel alone and abandoned. My desire for them to change and show up in the form that would lick my wound away rears its ugly head. Left unfettered, I call this Global Codependency and it can render itself in disease-like form.
Only now, I’m in relationship with it. I know it’s a trauma response to the terror of being abandoned and annihilated. Now I stop myself from reaching out for that proverbial bottle - that knee-jerk reaction is what caused my addiction in the first place. I take that outward-reaching energy and turn it back on myself. Sometimes I need to talk to myself in that, “there there child, you are loved” way.
But, what keeps me truly regulated is staying true to my daily practice. In yoga it’s called Sadhana. When I veer away from my practice, I see this as my victim consciousness getting kicked up. Instead of punishing myself for falling off my spiritual practice wagon, I see it as a sign post. What do I need? What am I missing? What am I craving? These are the questions I ask my gut and heart (not mind!).
Simply taking a few quiet minutes everyday to check in with myself this way always helps me to come back to my own excellence. My body knows that being born as a human is an immense gift. As a human, I have the potential to make mass amounts of change by simply increasing my vibration. Stay inward and the outward will spontaneously follow suit. That’s my mantra and I do believe it is love.
Client Question: Can mental illness be played-out in a conscious community/spiritual group?
There's a lot to be said about this topic. Here’s one perspective that is based in the psychobiological approach. And, as a side-note, the question was asked in reference to the members of the group, not the teacher/leader of the group. Dysregulation within spiritual groups/conscious communities is almost always a two-way street (from teacher to student and vice versa). I’ll address the teacher/leader aspect in another blog post.
I see one of (if not THE) greatest addictions being: the need to be accepted. This need usually stems from being annihilated in one’s family of origin. To cure the horrendous sensations associated with annihilation, the individual goes about trying to find a "tribe" who will unconditionally accept them. Many spiritual communities make this delusive claim and so these individuals project onto the members - and especially the leaders - a sort of unreasonable omnipotence. They unconsciously go about trying to get met what they didn't get from their caregivers and other origin family members. This can create a codependent relationship - among the group and the leader(s). This dynamic additionally creates an unbearable experience if a severance takes place, as it may read like a double-hit of annihilation.
It is critical that we do the groundwork of finding our individual place on this planet, having a right-relationship with reality, and integrating into the material world before we start doing "spiritual work." Otherwise, we risk getting disassociated into the highly ethereal realm that exists in the spiritual world: dreamy words and ideas, far-off concepts and worlds that are intangible begin to create an existential crisis because we haven't done our own existence work in the first place. Roots before fruiting, to use a tree metaphor.
It becomes extremely challenging - by way of confusion - when the members start picking up and speaking a common vernacular; there is a sense of being understood and connected - an element that often goes missing relational trauma. This vernacular is usually coming solely from the mind (where disassociation takes place). The mind is a fabrication storehouse, so it's not rooted in anything reality-based. And, soon enough, the chasm between one's dis-integrated nature and their split-self (spiritual self in this case), will be brought to surface by the world.
Us humans are masters at detecting incongruency. So, while not everyone will be able to clearly identify what is giving them an "off" feeling about these people, they will eventually get called out on their incongruence in some form or another. Incongruence being: words not matching up with actions. An adept (learned teacher) will be able to quickly detect how and where these individuals are off and compassionately re-direct them to the correct place on the path.
Unlike the eastern world, us westerners do not have a spiritual practice imbedded in our culture. So, many people will go straight up to trying on the clothes of the spiritual world without first knowing their size. We will eventually get kicked down and told to start with the groundwork. This seems to be a rite of passage for many of us.
Unfortunately, for some who are prone to disassociation - and as an adaptive measure - the spiritual world can act as a vehicle for splitting, delusion, and even hallucination. Left unfettered and for an extended period of time, one can believe they are truly (and for the first time - maybe ever), accepted and, therefore, invincible. Who doesn’t want to be bathed in a near-constant stream of positive affirmations? This is very dangerous territory as it's a paradigm built from the ego and is destined to implode. So, yes, it can be a slippery slope, leading to a mechanism on which one can met-out their mental illness if they are headed in that direction.
The Middle Path
I would like to share a reading from one of the spiritual texts I read from on a regular basis, paraphrased from Pandit Rajmani Tigunait. PhD.
This is about "The Middle Way," also known as the middle path or right direction in Buddhism.
It was discovered by Buddha experientially - as is the case with all embodied teachers. This is as opposed to simply reading and studying. Some have deemed the former “unearned wisdom," and the latter, "earned wisdom."
Buddha was born a prince and was introduced to kama shastra, the art of sensory pleasure. His father, the king, made sure he was only introduced to the best teachers practiced in wordly manners. He was also kept away from any trace of grief or sorrow. As fate would have it, he came upon a sick person, an old man, and a corpse. He began to question his life filled with pleasures. He saw how sorrow, grief and wanting more when these pleasures went away would appear.
So he resolved to discover the root cause of this sorrow and grief. He committed to self study which led him to the renunciate path. He believed this path would burn his inner impurities, allowing his mind's brilliance to come forth. As many of us know the story, he sat under a bodhi tree for 39 days without food, drink or sleep. Upon noticing his near-death state, a woman named Sujata gave him some water and rice and he regained consciousness.
He concluded that extremes lead nowhere. That indulgence nor extreme restraint aided in self-discovery. From this moment of understanding, he began his practices and conducted his life in moderation, even interacting with people in moderation. He discovered that he no longer was numbing and indulging his senses nor was he restraining them. In this process, he discovered effortless effort not only in his spiritual practices, but in life in general.
This allowed him to reach higher samadhi - the highest state of meditation in yoga. The division between lower and higher samadhi is a transition from duality to non-duality; from being ruled by the phenomenal world (time, space, and the law of cause and effect) to the realm of transcendental. The practiced yogi or bodhisattva has reached this state and is able to move freely from one world to the other. He or she is simultaneously "here" and "there." They are able to be the witness to their own strengths and weaknesses; to positive and negative tendencies. They are able to discern uplifting tendencies from afflicting ones and transcend both. They understand through their experience that fulfilling a craving gives birth to more cravings, which creates a cycle (samsara) and negative karmas and Samskaras…addiction in western terminology.
We all have the inner workings to get to this state. It's a practice of discipline to devotion: committing to a daily practice (sadhana) and staying with it until it becomes embedded in your system, i.e., secondary, so that life becomes one filled with ease and enjoyment. We do our practices not to make negative feelings and sensations go away. We do our practices to build capacity to be in right direction (better relationship) with ALL feelings and sensations.
Sending you lots of strength and love, LB
Your Body is Not a Halfway House
Your body is not a halfway house
Your soma is not a corridor to those who have not yet learned how to integrate into the world. Your psyche is not an open domain for those who have not sat with discipline then the devotional path to the extent they can govern their own being. Your heart is not a repository with which those who lack capacity can use to insert their bio-waste. Your eyes and the depth of their gaze are open only to those who can reflect back to you your soul’s purpose. The openness of your authentic smile is only accessible to those who have created the capacity to honor and stay with your vulnerability, kindness, and love.
You have swam in the icy, turbulent waters of the Arctic. You have earned your emotional sobriety and recovery of Soul that has allowed you access to the Bering Strait of the Divine. In turn, you can now feed off of the nutrient rich waters of the Pacific. The resources endowed within you were hard won, evidenced by the sweat on your brow and and ache in your body. You have paid back your debts, apologized to all you’ve hurt and made living amends so that your karmas are now allowing your dharma to shine through Your back is not a flotation device on which another can use to access the fertile waters and lands of peace, contentment, abundance, sovereignty and joy; the Divine knows we all must swim to get to these shores. From here on out, no one gains entry to you and your field unless it is duly earned.
Stand up with me now. Root your feet into your first Mother. Allow her electromagnetic energy to run up your legs. Now give it back to her. Feel the beauty of self and co-regulation; back and forth, back and forth. Bring your collar bones apart and the tips of your scapula together. Breath into your heart space. Feel the aliveness through which the bundle of nerves pulses in and out of this precious plexus.
Bring your gaze up and look out. You are grown up now. You will no longer collapse into niceness among bullies. You no longer need to be saved, for you now have embodied self-protection. You can stand up and speak up for yourself. No one is ever going to take advantage of you or your vital resources. Breath in, breath out. You are love. You are love. You are love.
AoH Learning Lab: Emotional Incest
Emotional (or Covert) Incest is a severe form of codependence that is played out as a parent seeks emotional support from their child/children. The parent views his/her child/children as a close friend, partner/spouse, or even their own parent. Codependancy is a lack of intimacy with the Self. So, the parent begins “using” his/her child as a surrogate intimate relationship; to fill the gap of intimacy they did not receive from their caregivers early on.
Emotional incest does not actually involve sexual abuse, but may create similar symptoms. It can occur when the children are of juvenile and adult-age. It may, in fact, “turn on” when the children become adults - the reasons for this are beyond the scope of this post.
The parent may justify their behavior has being “very close” to their kids. They may even, receive praise for being so close to their kids. But, Emotional Incest is too close; it is a form of extreme enmeshment where little to no boundaries exist. Enmeshment may be expressed, in this case, by the sharing of social activities, money, clothes, a bedroom, even a bed or showering together.
Just like every psychological and physiological disorder, emotional incest runs on a spectrum. On one end, there is the parent who identifies their children as “my best friends,” to the extreme end of the spectrum, where a parent parties and engages in drug and alcohol intoxication with their kids.
The most extreme manifestation of Emotional Incest is a parent who partakes in nudity (beyond age-appropriateness) with their kids - again, even if the kids are grown. Skinny-dipping, is one example. This is where the line between Emotional Incest and sexual abuse may get blurry.
As with all forms of codependence, Emotional Incest stems from immaturity. That is to say, the parent’s nervous system became thwarted - and hence stuck - in an early developmental period due to abuse suffered in their own childhood. So instead of looking inward to investigate what is causing stress or disruption, the parent looks to his or her children to get needs met - the way a child would look to his or her parents for this.
A father or mother who engages in Emotional Incest, oftentimes, lacks age-appropriate friends. They may have no age-appropriate friends at all. Again, they utilize their kids to get social needs met. When Emotional Incest is occurring where the children are of adult age, the parent may identify their kid’s friends as their own.
Emotional Incest can get triggered, so the parent “cycles” in and out of being an adult to child version of him/herself. This is where “splitting” may occur. Getting too close (enmeshed) with the child or being away from them (feeling abandoned) can cause the adult to unconsciously split and regress to the age of the thwarted development. This can also be triggered when the parent becomes involved in an intimate (especially) romantic relationship where early bonding and attachment ruptures are brought to consciousness and mirrored by the other. It can additionally get triggered simply by overwhelm/stress in the nervous system.
When the triggering takes place, the regression may be expressed as the parent not being able to take care of themselves. They may suddenly step away from adult responsibilities (paying bills, missing appointments, making the bed, washing clothes). They may begin wearing dirty/same clothes, start eating unhealthy foods, “hide” (a freeze response), leave in some form (flight response), have anger outbursts onto others and the world (fight response), and start to feel disorganized and chaotic. If this individual was physically or sexually abused as a child, he or she may engage in self-harm or a form of self-flagellation as a reenactment of this stage. The self-harm may range from unconsciously putting oneself in “homeless” or destitute types of living situations to actual harming of his/her body. The “child” who is stuck in the body of the adult needed to be protected and taken care of during that stage, but clearly was not. While it may seem they are acting out or being inappropriate with their own children, it is a cry for help. Nevertheless, it creates confusion and disorganization for all parties involved.
Also within the realm of splitting, Emotional Incest often causes role reversal, where parentification takes place; the child will take on roles of the mother or father in the areas where it went missing. Unfortunately, when these individuals turn to their children to get the protection, care, unconditional love, safety and attunement they missed from their parents, it is a wholly unfair and unreasonable responsibility to place on children, even if they are of adult age. It may, in fact, cause the children to begin splitting into personas or personalities to cope with their own overwhelm in having to take care of a parent who lacks the skills to govern their own being and integrate into the world.
As to be expected, there is a co-morbidity with Emotional Incest and substance use - by the parent and children. Firstly, due to enmeshment, a lack of boundaries and hierarchy, the children are being robbed of important developmental stages that must be fully entered and experienced to move on to the next stage. Secondly, if a parent is using substance with their children (even adult age), the parent is modeling to the children that substance is a way of coping with stress and reality; that one uses external means instead of practicing intimacy with one’s Self.
If you see yourself in any version of the above description, know that repair of early attachment and bonding ruptures is how you heal. I recommend seeking a practitioner who has knowledge in: The psychobiological approach, the nervous system, somatic integration, family systems, parts work and Attachment Theory. And most important: finding a practitioner with whom you feel connected to. Connection with another is how we re-establish safety in our being.
Related blog: Substance-Use as a Substitute to Intimacy, Bonding and Attachment
Substance-Use as a Substitute to Intimacy, Bonding & Attachment
I work in the world of trauma. I am afforded access to some of the deepest, darkest and most protected parts of individuals. It is a great privilege to be invited to these sacred places. These individuals are not only learning their true selves and re-wiring their nervous system via a healthy relationship, they are also providing me with empirical knowledge. I use this knowledge to distill education in written and verbal form so that a greater audience may learn and grow. The contents of this blog, especially the empirical data, come by virtue of my clients. I am hugely grateful to them for this precious gift.
Here are some stats I’ve pulled from my client base: In the beginning stages of committing to doing the inner work - which I called “existence-level work” - about 90 percent of my clients have acknowledged they are addicted to substance. Of this 90 percent, 40 percent are poly-users (alcohol and marijuana) and 60 percent are mono-users, split about 50 percent: alcohol or marijuana. The population that is 40+ tends towards alcohol, while the population 35 and under towards marijuana.
Through my private session interactions, I have concluded that nearly every “disorder” is a manifestation of a very early bonding and attachment rupture. Our mother is our first intimate relationship. This relationship establishes how we will ultimately interface with the world: through a filter of safety or a filter of threat. If her nervous system had the early experience of being nurtured and attuned to, she passed on to us the feeling of security; that the world is safe, caring, predictable and supportive. If her nervous system had unprocessed bonding and attachment ruptures, she passed on to us the hyper-viglience associated with feeling insecure and threatened. If there was physical, sexual and/or emotional abuse on top of that from either mom or dad, a recipe for a highly disgorganized and chaotic nervous system was imprinted into our nervous system.
As we are the most relational animal on the planet, we will always seek to have relationships; we will always desire bonding and attachment. But, when other humans have been the cause of our threat-based nervous system, we will seek that feeling outside of our Selves. This is where substance may come into the picture and begin to play a very dangerous substitute. What we ultimately sought from our mother during infancy was to have our life’s purpose (dharma) reflected back to us. When we would eye-gaze with her, we were asking her to teach us how to source our own being for answers to life’s fundamental experiential questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose on this earth? Through the immense love only the feminine could provide - via soothing touch, caring eyes, presence, honoring, containment and fluidity - without words, she answered these questions.
What if we didn’t receive that from our mother? And what if our father was heavy handed and unpredictable in his discipline? What if the extended family member or family friend I loved, sexually abused me? Then, the world became a danger zone populated with supposed booby traps where I continually felt ambushed. Who does one turn to in such a war where it feels like constant subterfuge by way of one’s own subconscious? The answer becomes not who but what. And that “what” is easily fulfilled by substance. It eases the pain (instantly if smoked or injected), it allows me to breath deeper, to forget about the “war outside,” and to have a false sense of intimacy with my Self (and others if present), that I’ve been so deeply desiring.
What I have discovered via my clients, is that when one has an incoherent and dysregulated nervous system, this can become a very slippery slope. When substance-use becomes a substitute for real connection, intimacy and bonding, we are very close, if not already in, the throes of addiction. Here are some of the signs of using substance as a substitute for Intimacy, Bonding and Attachment:
All or most of my social activities involve substance use
I tend to avoid experiences and/or people who do not use
I am a poly-user - in the US, the two substances most used are alcohol and marijuana
It would be difficult or impossible to be partnered with someone who did not use substance
I have chosen to live a life where I can use on a regular basis over a deeply loving relationship (where my substance-use was an on-going point of conflict)
I have lied about my substance use and/or hid it from another
I have been on the wagon/off the wagon cycle multiple times in the last few years
I stop using to prove to myself that I can quit anytime and as justification to continue to use
I take it personally and/or become extremely defended over my preferred substance when someone speaks ill about it.
I search for reasons that’s it good for me to use, i.e., it promotes my creativity, I’m celebrating, so-and-so celebrity uses it, etc.
Despite it being a risk to my health, I continue to use. Ex: I have asthma and continue smoking
When I have gone sober in the past, it has negatively affected my relationships, i.e., I feel peer-pressure, I feel like I’m no longer part of “the tribe” when I’m not out in the lot smoking and/or drinking
I self-medicate using substance, i.e., when in distress I drink and/or smoke more; I turn towards substance instead of healthy habits.
I have created a relationship with my adult children that almost always involves substance use. I feel like my habitual use may have contributed to their habitual use.
The biggest sign that one is exchanging true intimacy for substance?
Anthropomorphism: applying and describing substance with human-like characteristics, i.e. “I looove smoking.” “Whiskey feels like a warm hug.” Those in the depths of a false intimate relationship with substance, will often give a proper name to substance, “I’m going to go out and spend a few moments with Mary.”
Professional disclaimer: I am not a drug and alcohol specialist. My speciality is trauma resolution with an emphasis on relational trauma, attachment and bonding ruptures - there is high co-morbidity rate with these elements and substance use/abuse.
I don’t promote or even suggest a sober lifestyle. I, myself, live a mostly sober life but not 100%. My private practice aims to foster higher levels of consciousness, freedom, sovereinty and choice in life; a life where one is free of attachments; where one is not weighted and tied to external dependences and addictions.
Regular and heavy substance can, and is often, a huge impediment to living this type of lifestyle. My clients come to me seeking to have a more intimate relationship with their Self so they can experience deeper and less conflicted relationships with others and the world at large. I work with individuals on the path to freedom by way of utilizing their own being to find coherence and regulation. Upon taking this path for an extended period of time, most people - in my experience - end up choosing a sober or mostly sober life as living as close to consciousness and the Divine breeds this type of decision.
Related blog: Emotional Incest
Emancipation Proclamation
Two months ago - against the will of my subconscious - I went on a boating trip with most of the members of my family of origin. Due to the nature of trauma I’d been personally sorting through over the last few years, this wasn’t a good idea on any count. Beginning with my dad, I’ve experienced countless traumatic experiences with bully men. I’ve had a history of using “hope” as a way to cope, and a means to try to understand why someone who is supposed to love you, would inflict pain in the way that they did. Low-and-behold, I “hoped” that this trip would turn out peaceful.
One form of disassociation begets another when it comes to trauma. Cognitively, I understand that this list of men who have hurt me and supposedly loved me, were all disassociating through splitting: rage, substance use and leaving me. I in-turn, would disassociate by “hoping” they’d change. By hoping they’d stop yelling at me. By hoping they’d stop hitting me. By hoping they’d finally step off the substance-wagon-dance and be done with it, so they could finally love me more than the substance. I believed the love I gave them would help them heal.
I’ll spare the details and stick to the meaningful parts of the story. On the last day of a 3-day trip of near-constant intoxication of most members, I found myself on a boat with the member who took the crown of “most inebriated.” A beer in one hand, a marijuana vape in another, I found myself pleading with a poly-using bully to apologize to his daughter, as there had been a physical altercation moments before with her boyfriend.
When I asked him to stand up, be the adult, be the parent and be a Man, I pushed all of his shame buttons. Then came trauma no-man’s-land, as his only protection was to defend and project. I was sitting in the back seat of the moving boat. He was on a chair just a few feet opposite and facing me, yelling demeaning remarks with his smoke and beer breath. I’ve had to endure countless men in my personal space with this emotional lethal mixture; most bullying and/or abusing me. It’s an olfactory night-terror for me - quite literally - as the man who snuck in my bed and molested me, emanated this vapor. Smell is the sense most highly associated with memory; it has a direct route to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus - structures related to emotion and memory.
Every time I smell this mixture, especially drunk beer breath, I’m met with a raging waterfall of terror throughout my entire body. I’ve had many nights where I’ve laid in bed with an ex (of some sort), barely breathing as an attempt to hold in terror and rage-related sensations because I was told I was “crazy, over-reacting, emotional and sensitive.” I’ve begun to call this form of gaslighting, spiritual homicide. It’s an annihilation so deep, one feels like every part of their being has - in an instant - been gutted from their body.
I distinctly recall sitting on that seat in the boat, and the quote, “If you can think in front of a tiger, you will surely succeed,” (for some oddly-placed reason) was playing in my head. In what was likely just a few seconds, but felt like a century, I attempted to obey my ego by sitting there and remaining calm, while “the tiger” was yelling and energetically inserting his toxic karmas into my body - like I’d obeyed and tolerated thousands of times. Then my beautiful, always-in-truth instincts rose up and said, “Fuck you ego! I’m not obeying anymore!” I literally stood up to the tiger, to the bully, and to all the men who had hurt me…to all of them who had used my kind demeanor as a route to my body as a host for their traumas. I began yelling in his face, “Stop it, Stop it, Stop it! Shut up, Shut Up, Shut up, “ over and over again.
While the boat was still moving, I suddenly jumped out and began swimming for shore. I had to flee - I was no longer going to endure abuse from bully men, even if it cost me my life. The sun was just setting - it had already been a long day of boating, skiing and coping with drunkenness - so I was very fatigued. It was a good mile to swim, and at about three-fourths of the way in, I began to tire - I’d never swam a long distance in my life. I looked at the shore and I still had a ways to go. Then my body started to feel heavy, my legs felt like they were being pulled downward…like I was sinking. The thought of dying was real. With concentrated effort, I raised my arm out of the water to usher help. I saw a man look my direction, but he was probably a few too many sheets-to-the-wind and incoherent, as most everyone on the hotel grounds was. It was a reoccurring scene that had been played out numerous times in my life: needing help, needing saving and the so-called savior was too checked out to do so.
The feeling of my life-force coming up to save me in that moment was something I’ll never forget. The will to survive is a miracle when we’re faced with dire circumstances. Tears stream as I write this because God spoke to me. God told me that my life-force would get me there, that I had to make it because I was swimming not only for me and my emancipation, but for all my clients and countless other women who needed validation in order to source their voice back to song. When I didn’t think I could swim anymore, something in me (God) told me to look down. There were rocks that allowed me to stand and take footing. That break got me to shore. And, when I got there, I felt like a sea urchin coming out of the water after a long period of hiding. Perhaps some messy version of Amphitrite who hid in Atlas, all weary, beaten-up but yet ready to fight to protect the sea; the goddess who embodied the moaning of the fish, seals and dolphins.
The gravitas and the symbolism of this recent experience only came to me three nights ago when, unable to sleep, God again rose up in me, this time in the form of a lucid dream. I was told to write down all the toxic experiences these bully men had put into my body without consent. Because men who bully are the most insecure animals in the pack, I wouldn’t be able to sit in front of them and read them the list - if they didn’t have the strength and capacity to take responsibility for their traumas then, why would they now? Within that frame of living in reality (and no longer in a disassociated state of hope), I was to find someone with whom I implicitly trusted to read my list to. The next step was to use this technique with my female clients - what all survivors are seeking (in order to heal) is for our experience, and the pain ensued to be validated; for the felt sense of being annihilated to dissolve.
On January 1st, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, changing the status of over 3.5 million enslaved African Americans to be free. In no way do I compare my experience to that of the enslaved African Americans. I do believe, however, as did Lincoln, that every human is deserving of freedom; that no other human has a right to take that away from another. Yoga too sees freedom (Moshka) as our birthright. I see the horrible traumas in the eyes and bodies of my female clients on a daily basis. I work with them slowly and safely, so that one day, they can have their day of Emancipation from the horrors of PTSD that they’ve endured for decades.
Like most of my female clients, I’m a survivor. This allows me a rare perspective of empathy. For some reason, I’ve been wholly gifted with a body of work (Somatics and Yoga) that allows me to witness the life-force, instincts, sense of existence, boundaries and felt-sense of safety come back online in my clients. As of late, I’ve freely cried with these beautiful humans who are showing up consistently to do the inner work so this cycle of annihilation ends.
If you are reading this and it resonates, hear me when I say: you are somatically deserving of freedom, peace, contentment, love, understanding, validation, safety and honesty (even when difficult). You are deserving of your story to be heard. There are superb humans who have the honesty, integrity, capacity and coherence to stay with you and your experience. Take an oath with me to never be left again. The greater intelligence in you and the universe is sending you heaps of love and support!
Tolerance vs. Capacity
Tolerance = Splitting off from one’s Self
Capacity = Staying with one’s Self
Tolerance for stress is a very different thing than having capacity for stress. When we have tolerance for stress, our nervous system and our being is enduring or coping with the experience and the sensations it created; just trying to keep it’s head above water. When we grow up with relational trauma, we are often faced with learned helplessness – a feeling that no matter what we do, nothing will change. So, we hold the stress of the experience in our body. When this stress hits the energy threshold that our nervous system is able to contain, we begin to “split” off from our Self; a dissociation.
We need somewhere to “put” the intense energy of the sensations showing up in our body. It can be expressed through creation of personas or personalities, literally running away, use of substance, enmeshing with others, hiding, lack of communicating, incongruent laughing, etc. In essence, it is a false sense of being able to hold stress. Additionally, it is a non-growth state because we are “pushing” the energy down into our bodies as opposed to allowing it to be absorbed; the latter being where growth, i.e., capacity, in the nervous system is created.
In relationships, this often shows up as incoherence: an inability to hold, empathize and have compassion for the other’s stress when I’m under stress. In other words, I do not have the bandwidth in my nervous system to hold my own stress, let alone the stress of another. Those with this type of nervous system tend to have difficultly staying in intimate relationships.
Capacity on the other hand, is an authentic and embodied sense of holding stress. If we were fortunate enough to have had caregivers who were attuned to our needs (especially during the formative years), our nervous systems grew capacity by being held, touched and soothed when we cried out for help. This gave us a sense of safety and security in the world; a space to learn how to speak up and take care of our Selves. Through this process, we were able to transfer excess energy onto a loving and secure caregiver. This allowed us to learn the integral experience of relationshipping: co-regulation and self-regulation. This, in turn, fostered an ability in our bodies to have inter and intra coherence. In other words, the ability to hold multiple states (mine and another’s, for example) at the same time. Those who have large capacity in their nervous systems tend to have very fulfilling intimate relationships.
Working on growing capacity. Fortunately, we can repair the ruptured bonds we experienced as young children and rewire new relationship pathways. This can be done within a romantic relationship but safety is key and I’d recommend working with a therapist who is learned in somatic work, nervous system regulation and early attachment/bonding ruptures.
Where I see the most growth is via the use of communication. As aforementioned, many of us had the experience of our voice being thwarted through learned helplessness. While learning to stay with ourselves through hyper arousal states (fight or flight) - as opposed to going away (splitting) - we can speak to the desires and needs of the part of us that got pushed down as a child. From this sacred space, we can begin to find our inherent power. This will allow us to absorb and integrate the power parts of our survival responses (intuition, life force, kundalini) and discard the biowaste parts. Just remember, every time we utilize an old adaptation of “splitting,” we are not growing. Stay with your Self!
What’s The Point?
What’s the point?
I recently got an update from my phone regarding the hours per day I’m logging screen time. When I realized how much time (per day, per week, per month, etc.), I was spending in hustle mode to get my business going, I had to take a moment to grieve the time I wasn’t out living a life.
Like many of you, I spend a lot of time reading and studying about living a better life, but I had to ask myself, “Are you using this information to actually live a well-lived life?” The answer - in numbers - was right in front of me. The truth couldn’t be denied.
So what is the point of doing the inner work? The good news is that the answer is quite simple. The point is to: live in the present moment and ignite our life force (prana, chi, qi, elan vital).
We are wired to use past experiences to infer the future, so it’s a moment to moment checking in with oneself to live life in the here-and-now. As Lao Tzu famously said, “If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”
So we do the inner work to clear the karmic patterning, so we can see the forest through the trees. But, let’s remember to come up for air too. For, as much as we dive into the depths, we have to put our work to the test. We only live through experiencing and hopefully, that includes dancing and flowing (at least) as much as we’re reading, listening to podcasts, and having the deep conversations. Otherwise - dare I say - it’s just another distraction, dependence or addiction.
Make a conscious choice to be among those who are living a solvent life in relationship to all connections: Self, others, community, money, home, nature, world and cosmos. We can simply make note of those who are bankrupt in one or more of these areas and be an inspiration, as our job is not to save people.
The picture above is of a magical spot I love spending time in. It’s creekside and among ancient oaks. It plunks me right into present moment when I’m there. Nature is the most potent salve and antidote to this ever-distracted society we live in.
How would life be different if we were to match the time we spend on screens to the time spent in nature?
“Voluntary Simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.” - John Kabat-Zinn
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A Love Letter to the Artist
In my clinical work, I’m drawn to the artists and the creatives. Or are they drawn to me? One can only ponder this as we only influence one another…completely. Enduringly, intrapersonally and interpersonally, we are ever and only seeking to forage for our aliveness. This “mining” gets played out in my work with my clients - lucky me!
Recently, we have moved in unison to use art to descend into the more granular layers of the Self…getting closer to Soul and Dharma with variated art mediums. Alice Coltrane (yes, John’s wife) and her Universal Consciousness work was recently used as a way to move a young artist out of her head and into her heart.
I told her this - and, it’s great advice for all of us:
Don’t tell anyone what you’re going to do or even what you’re doing. Just do it and put it out there, unabashedly. If we have to tell people what we’re going to do or what we’re doing, then we’re likely pandering to that part of us that needs approval and attention. That’s head, not heart. Art does not seek approval, it seeks disruption of the most beautiful quality.
Alas, all art originates from the most untamed part of us: the heart. As the saying goes, the rib is a cage to contain the wildness. Anatomically, the health of the heart is found in the millisecond-timed variation between the heartbeats. It’s as if we’re made for art that causes disruption. Can it be that syncopation - a stress on the offbeat - is our natural state? Can it be that we’re wired to place rhythmic stresses where they “normally” wouldn’t occur?
In either case, and as such, my clients have moved me to not only see life as one big rendering of art, but to also seek further, by seeing what “society” is: a process of recognition. This recognition is comforting as we are beings drawn to pattern recognition. But, if art is not that which makes us more conscious by way of discomfort, then is it not art? Is it not a production of conscious artistry as opposed to passive popularity? God save us if the the latter over the former!
And, is the latter not what is on the current hamster wheel? I’ve a slight envy for those living in periods of artistic movement; wherein art, there existed a stratum of the intelligentsia of society. Those poking and prodding radical and reformist ideas by way of different mediums, intending to invoke original schemas. Never placating to the desensitized and stupefied.
Unapologetically uninspired by what is being offered on the passive popularity menu -“food” devoid of the nourishment of awe, I’ve been poking my nose in the obscure… dare be dubious and determinate. It’s out there, just not available on the fast-food- art circuit. It’s been so long since I’ve been moved to tears or shivers by music - either lyrically or musically. It is not too much to ask art to assist me in gaining access to my aliveness. It appears, we just need to search, to work a bit to find the artfully obscure. Perhaps search within the “Uneasy Listening” genre?
I’ll leave these ideas here: an incomplete completion. Does that make you uncomfortable? Good!