An Empathetic Civilization

http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_rifkin_on_the_empathic_civilization.html

This reminds me that we all have the power to create positive change.

Your Fear is an Ally

You know that part in you that holds the trepidation, the idea that things could go wrong, that you could maybe repeat a “mistake” that brought you pain in the past….Listen to it!

That doesn’t mean stop what you are doing and do what that voice says.  It doesn’t mean that part can predict the outcome any better than any other part of you can.  It just means some part of you has something that needs to be heard and acknowledged.  Why not sit and listen.

Often, it is our instinct to keep our fears at bay.  It is like we listen on the side.  Just how much energy are you using to keep it on the side, just pushed out of your conscious attention?  If we use any energy at all to keep it down, out of sight, out of fear that it will take over then you are creating a conflict in yourself. You are only giving that part of yourself a tight, constricted place to live within you.  Then that voice stays a contracted voice because we are contracting against it.

When we stop and sit and deeply listen to our fear then we can hear its message.  We can embrace the concern that our being is bringing forth.  We can use our understanding to say to ourselves, “Yes, I know that hurt in the past and I learned something from that experience.  Thank-you fear for speaking up what I understand is that I don’t want to be hurt again.”  You can use that fear to guide your present actions and choices.  When you listen to your fear with understanding you are giving yourself the opportunity to not use the past as a guide rather to be here now in full acceptance of yourself.

When fear is present remember to ask yourself, What is the worst thing that can happen?  Then ask yourself, and if that happens what would I do?

How would I respond?

Who would support me?

What is it that I need?

Fear voices, like any other voice such as judgment, anger, resentment, etc. can be your ally.  Really there is just a part of you that is attempting to express itself.  You have the choice to welcome that expression and maintain your freedom of conscious presence or to push it away and keep yourself fragmented and feeling that something could happen that you won’t be able to deal with.

It has been awhile and I am reminded…

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.  Who looks outside, dreams.  Who looks inside, awakens.”

Carl Jung

Again, I am reminded of what self-empowerment really means.  In my gestalt training, I remember really getting this statement.  When we look inside with conscious awareness (mindfulness) to observe our responses and reactions, we gain the ability to question our thoughts and acknowledge our feelings…..and we awaken.  We awaken from the dream that outside ourselves things are happening to us and we have no control.  From inside we have all the control to respond and relate how we choose, to see a situation from all angles, to come into our hearts, our centre and know the truth that is ours, this moment.  For me, that is self-empowerment…..coming into the Heart and operating from that place that is my centre……from here, I can see.

xo

Love your poo chi!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a2DQC-ghio

How’s your shadow today?

Today is Groundhog Day!  …..it is a cloudy day here in Toronto so I don’t think the little guy saw his shadow and scared himself into hibernation for another 6 weeks!

How’s your shadow today?

Our shadow represents our repressed and unconscious instinctual energies.  When the shadow remains unacknowledged we project it onto others, like a hidden shape over which we shine our inflated light.  When we are polarized between light and dark, we are like a magnet drawing the opposite pole-we attract them, into relationships we cannot easily escape,  and the greater the repression the louder the shadow has to yell to get us to hear it.  While we may not like it, I for one, am thankful it does, how else would we heal.

How do you know if you are encountering your shadow?

Shadow qualities are often met with intense criticism and judgement, especially when we experience those qualities with others.  We can use criticism and judgement as our clue to know our rejected self, our judgement is an attempt to deal with our discomfort of meeting our own shadow qualities.

Doing shadow work opens a space for us to shine the light.  We reclaim lost and abandoned parts of ourselves.  Like today, this midpoint between Winter and Spring, death and rebirth, hibernation and renewal, groundhog day is a reminder that we have a shadow…..but is it something that scares you into hibernation or do you embrace yourself.

Chakra Psychology: A Spiritual Map to Knowing Yourself Better

An Informal talk at Roxanne Reads, 750A Queen St. E, Toronto

February 4, 2010 from 7 to 8pm

The human energy field is composed of 7 chakras that each have unique attributes.  Together, they balance one’s physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well being.  Delve into the qualities and needs of each chakra  while learning what is required for their healthy development in childhood and how to approach healing in your life now.

Based on the book Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith and Wheels of Life: A users guide to the chakra system by Anodea Judith.

Lovely

If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions are the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.

Rachel Carson

Considering

We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

W. H. Auden

Tough and one of my favourites.  It makes me think of how much energy it really takes to hold ourselves down, especially when it begins to manifest as a sore neck, tiredness, or that other feeling that comes when we know we aren’t living our truth fully.

This speaks of the fear that often is unconsciously guiding us away from what it is we truley long for and to become.

Is it really easier to go along with it?  Rather than do or say something that is hard for us, or others,  but so definately true?

Get out of the Way

I find often one of the biggest barriers to awakening and healing is our ingrained idea of progress (that and our attachment to rational thinking).  Even thinking we are on a path suggest to us that there is a defined ground to walk.  Linear thinking that if I do A + B my life will lead me to C.  How do you even know what C is.  You may think you want C.  But after a little time will you think, “Ugh, C wasn’t so good.  Time to move on.”? Living life in the drivers seat can keep us in the cycle of constantly trading one set of circumstances for another.

Entering the healing force of spiritual life requires us to give up all our ideas of C.  Even though there may be stages and cycles that are identifiable.  We can talk to someone and quickly they can relate to what is happening with you and connect to something that has happened to them.  This helps us and we need that too, to find community, a sangha to travel with on our spiritual journey.  But we also have to be prepared to give up the attachment of relating to seek advice for problems and be open to recieve what is inside us already.  What actually needs responding to and what is that still centre in us speaking right now.

If you are imagining a process to be a certain way then likely you are out of the moment that is happening right now.  You have inadvertently put yourself back in the drivers seat.  Strategizing your process to what you want to happen.

Real healing requires us to surrender all of our preconcieved notions.  When we give up our expectations of how we want things to be, when we want things to be, and what things are….  then we remove ourselves from the driver seat.  Then it is possible for something Bigger to guide us.

Even when everything in us is railing against what is happening.

Even when it is really uncomfortable.

Even we we are repulsed.

Even when all of our senses tell us this must not be so, there is something to be done.

It is so.

We must Trust.  In that which is bigger than us.  We must get out of the way for healing to happen.  For Grace to descend.  We must give up our knowing to be informed and guided towards BEING.

Can you think of an example of a time when you really didn’t like what was happening and then everything turned out alright without all of your involvement?  Those moments are building our strong faith.  To trust the process.  Trust that we will be carried through.  Spirit knows what we want and will bring us to it, eventually.  Though, it generally doesn’t look like how we thought of it ourselves.

It will be better.  Because we will have been cleansed our ideas of how we thought it will be right or wrong and open to just recieve.

Feel

Feel

Feel with every cell in your body.

Sense how it moves, it is an e motion.

Resist holding it in, down, away from your attention.

And then ask “what do you need?”  “how can I acknowledge this without letting it consume me?”

And just be present, let it move through you.  Know this is the beings way of organizing sensation.  The mind is what brings the emotion to a story.  Just feel.  Sensory information.  Count to 100 if you have to, just to stay with it.  Breathe.  Just feel.  Acknowledge and honour its coming to inform you.  And let it pass, without the story.