"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." – The Little Prince
These are the words we see sprinkled throughout department stores, decorations, and greeting cards each holiday season.
Yet how often do we pause and reflect what they mean? Or, more importantly, the feeling that these words embody?
Most of us have realized and accepted that the feelings masked behind these words cannot be found in material things. Actually, I would say that the millennial and younger generations have rejected the notion altogether. Unfortunately, I think most would also find it hard to believe that these feelings can be found ever present inside of ourselves, underneath our anxiety and depression. But the truth is…Peace, love, joy, and magic are the ingredients that make up the light of our souls.
Why? Why is it so hard to tap into this natural state of being?
Well, at one level, many of us were taught to seek for answers, wisdom, validation, love… salvation, from sources outside of ourselves. Thank you religion, material culture, societal structures, and fear/anger-based parenting.
For some reason, the line “kingdom of Heaven” kept coming into my head while writing this. I think it’s because my Catholic upbringing clearly taught me that God was outside of myself, God and Jesus were male, and while on earth, I should look to priests for both answers and forgiveness, and then my parents*. But the phrase, “kingdom of Heaven” pretty clearly seems to state otherwise both in my mind, my own practice, and even in religious texts. While various verses in the bible are partially up for translation (or rather, they have been translated in a way that the “editors” saw fit), Luke was pretty clear (17:21) when Jesus said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” (NKJV) BOOM. Of course, I love The Gospel of Mary (Magdalen), which includes the passage:
“When the Blessed One said these things, he greeted them all and said, “Peace be with you! Acquire my peace. Be careful not to let anyone mislead you by saying, ‘Look over here!’ or ‘Look over there!’ Because the Son of Humanity exists within you. Follow him! Those who seek him will find him.
“Go then and preach the gospel about the kingdom. Don’t lay down any rules beyond what I’ve given you, nor make a law like the lawgiver, lest you be bound by it.”
*How cool would it be if more parents asked their kids not only what they think about various topics, but questions like “What is your heart telling you?”, “What is your body trying to communicate to you?”, and “What does your intuition say?”.
Another translation comes from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who said, “The “kingdom of Heaven” is a condition of the heart- not something that comes ‘upon the earth’ or ‘after death'”.
Yet these verses are not widespread because, well, it sure would be hard to control and make money off of people who didn’t live off of fear but instead knew they were different rays of God/ Consciousness/ Source/Love, etc.
Still, you could just say that I am picking the passages and quotes I want to to prove my point, so let’s go to part two.
If we go off this theory, that in the heart resides the kingdom of Heaven, that we can always access it when we are aligned with joy, peace, and love, what blocks us from accessing it?
The short answer: The ego-mind.
From a psychological perspective, we know that neural pathways tell the story of our belief systems and thoughts. Remember “neurons that fire together, wire together.” These pathways are created and strengthened throughout childhood and teenage years. Developmental theories, like Erik Erikson’s Stages of Development, or Bowlby’s and Ainsworth’s Attachment Theory, give us even more tangible guidelines on how the ego is developed. For example, according to Erikson, between 18 months and three years, toddlers learn autonomy and/or shame, based on their situation and nurturance. It’s really all about the story the child tells themself about what happened and the feelings they experienced (and did or did not process), which continues through life until that belief is challenged. And remember, a child will prefer to live in a world where s/he is bad rather than ever believe that their parents, or god, is bad, for their view is ego-centric (children can only explain things from a personal standpoint) and they rely on their parents/caregivers for survival.
Then we get to question, what lies under these developed belief systems? What is left when we prune back the neural pathways? What happens when the mind quiets?
It’s not a blank slate. We know that from both observing and studying the brain scans of well-trained meditators. Those blissed out monks. The smiling, curious babies (who are also super sensory and not yet trained in emotional regulation…they just let it all flow out no matter the who or how.).
My best guess as to what is left when we quiet the mind and remember to look inwards?
It’s a return to the heart and hearing the heart’s guidance. It’s a return to our soul and the peace, love, joy, and magic that makes up our Light.
***
I’m going to write more in depth on this topic in my next blog, but for now, a great practice is to (individually at first) imagine what peace, love, and joy feels like inside your body. It may be helpful to bring up a memory that helps you tap into the feeling or imagined scene. Then, just take a few breaths, a few minutes, to bask in the feeling. If you can’t get there all the way, that’s okay. Even if you “pretend” the feeling is there, that is great too! The imagination is an amazing, amazing tool for creating.
I started forming my shell long ago. A protection against the world. My defense against a false love named fear.
It started pre-memory, I’m sure. Yet innocense left room for possibility. A possibility that turned into defeat. There was no space for my tears.
In high school, on my dresser, I hung up a poem, about a mask.
The mask I wore, but no one could see. They had mistaken it for me.
Eventually, I believed it too. I got lost in the identity of my mask, and left myself behind.
Still, she called to me. The little girl without a voice. But I had forgotten how to listen, my heart, boxed up and tucked away.
My shell turned into armor, and I became untouchable. Disconnected from myself, and all of you, too. No hug could pass through.
I wonder, If someone knew… If someone like me… Would have seen… Would have loved.. Would have said “you’re okay”… “You are meant to be here”… “You are meant to be a light in the dark.”
I wonder, What life would be like, if I had had me. To love me. To instruct me. To give myself a voice.
Yet I know I am exactly where I am meant to be, and the opportunity still exist. To love myself back to the beginning. In the armor and beyond the shell. In the pain and through the fear. To find myself again, and be exactly who I am, innocent, wise, and whole.
******
The two poems on masks have been taped on that dresser for 20 years. TWENTY years! But even before that, I tried to simultaneously mask up and numb out…below is my 7th grade basketball picture, not long before I ended up at Rainbow Babies & Children’s hospital to be treated for anorexia, just before Christmas. Did my smile hide the fading body that didn’t know how to be in this world? It was recently brought to my attention through a podcast, reading, and experience, that empaths and highly sensitive people tend to protect themselves more with their masks than others who are not so sensitive, as it is a survival skill to live in an insensitive world. The painful part is that deep down, they know its a mask…
Reparenting comes in loving each wounded part. For me, because I have worn masks for so long, it took years and years and lots of, unconsciously, re-identifying with my masks, making the journey of letting go quite painful at times. It’s also a re-training. I’ve always felt either armored or weak in my sensitivities but have discovered the strengths of feeling so deeply. I have come to understand that if I tap into the energy inside myself and allow it to be expressed outward, I can both keep other’s energies out and help others feel there emotions while allowing them to de-mask. (Link to part 1 of my 2-part Sensitivities as Superpowers series: https://www.instagram.com/p/C0w0H6RPgd5/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MjJkMmIyYzQxYw==.)
While I can’t physically go back in time and give my younger self “me” to love her, I can mentally and emotionally go back in time while also using my imagination to insert myself in challenging memories. I can still give her/me, what I needed, thereby healing old wounds. In healing, I no longer have to live from a wounded place, but from a place of wholeness.
I may never be able to sing as beautifully as Jade Castrinos and Pacer may never be able to match the notes I’m singing (not that I ever know what note I’m signing in). *Pacer’s aunt and uncle are teaching her to differentiate between speak, talk, and howl… I suggested adding in “whisper”.
Pacer is never going to be able to do a whole Yoga flow sequence with me and we’ll never do a choreographed dance routine, partially because Pacer is smart enough to know she’ll get a treat anyway (have you seen her big brown eyes?) or she’ll counter surf for leftovers, partially because I’m not patient or interested enough to teach her, and mainly because its just not our thing. (Although it’s neat to watch other humans and their dogs do these cool tricks!)
What perhaps is more amazing- dare I say miraculous- is that every time I have been lost- and I have been really, really lost- Pacer has found me and brought me Home.
****
I have always said that Pacer is an extension of my heart. And in the past, when I was too afraid to love other humans and let other humans love me, she gave me enough safety that I could allow hers in. I love and have loved her so much, that I’ve risked my heart breaking in the fear of ever losing her. Our love has remained my one constant in the past decade of change. In all of my screw ups, failures, and bad decisions (or so my ego labels), she still loved me. She never wavered, as a human might. Eventually, even through all my shame stories, she got me believing that I was worth loving. She has taught me that it’s okay to be soft, that softness is the other side of strength. In her unconditional love, she reflected the Home that resides in all of us. Sometimes I’ve been too blind to see all of her lessons, such as that the risk of loving so deeply is always worth it, that true love never really goes away. I think that must be the gift of all doGs.
In this too, I am reminded of the last line of the prophetic poem my older sister wrote for me, now four Christmases ago, her last. She paraphrased JRR Tolkien, reassuring me “not all who wander are lost”, because when you are Home, you are never lost.
The hardest truth I have come to terms with in relationships is that all the problems I experience in relationships were and are created by me. Period. Hi, Me.
My ego HATES this truth.
Honestly, if I let it, my ego would never, ever admit this. My ego would have me continue on as normal, always pushing love away.
While this can be true in many of my relationships, be it friendship or family, this is especially true in romantic relationships.
My ego loves to hold moral superiority. Like really, really loves it. It feeds off of it. My ego wants to be right and wants to blame. My ego loves to tell partners that they need to be stronger in their masculine energies (think steady and stable) so that they can create a safe space for me when I’m feeling hurt and emotional. *I’m sure you can imagine how it goes when I tell a man that they have wounded/disempowered masculine energy. And, even if I’m right, what really needs to be looked at is how my own masculine energy has either been toxic/controlling or disempowered, meaning I went from controlling my emotions to not being able to hold my emotions in a safe container for myself when feeling big emotions. **I should clarify that we all have masculine and feminine energies, which I won’t go into detail about here, but they go much further beyond what we associate with male and female.
When the guy I’m crushing on all of a sudden heads to another country or into the mountains and out of cell service for three days without telling me (his last message, a question), I want to be mad. My ego tells me that he is rude and disrespectful…that he doesn’t actually care about me. That I should protect myself from him. (The thought of other women agreeing with me here makes my ego happy, too.)
When my next partner texts me “live and let live” after I provide what I think is valuable information, my ego tells me that he would have taken the information seriously if it came from a man. My feminine wound of not being taken seriously is triggered. I shut down, thinking that he should be the one to reach out, hold space, and try to understand ME.
I deny myself the connection that I really want.
The truth is, I made these situations about me. And I pushed love* away. *Whenever I say “love”, I’m usually referring to unconditional love rather than our normal, conditional and fear-based love.
If I felt secure in myself, these wouldn’t have been problems. Problems that I made into bigger problems by reacting rather than responding from a calm, centered place. If I felt secure in myself, I would have led with love rather than fear.
Because honestly… I knew that in the first example, he was innocent. While my ego likes to believe most people in conversation would let the other person know that they’re about to leave the land of technology, I knew the guy had acted from a place of child-like innocence. In fact, one of the qualities I found endearing about him was his periodic aloofness. Yet the emotional pain of separation triggered* old stories in my mind: 1) that I wasn’t cared about and 2) as a strong, independent women, it shouldn’t bother me (I think this guy mentioned that his previous partner didn’t care- again, he said this innocently-which sent me into more self-judgment). This caused my protection mechanisms** to go up: a little bit of fight before freeze. *The difference between a trigger and an appropriate emotional response is that a trigger elicits an emotion that is out of proportion to the situation. **If you’re tracking for your own healing journey: emotions, thoughts (story we tell ourselves about the emotion), and protection/defense mechanism
My ego loves to protect me against love, because it fears it.
This is because the (unhealthy) ego was created by fear. Fear is love’s opposite. Love is the only thing that can make fear disappear. We believe that we need fear to survive. This is why we- consciously or unconsciously- fear love.
For me, this fear started early on in life. Part of it was the whole weird Catholic thing on fearing God (literally, fearing Love), but a large imprint was left on me in my parents divorce. I’ve written about this before, but anyone who knows my parents knows that they are not a match and simply a product of getting married too soon because of societal and religious conditioning (and thankfully, because I am here). The problem wasn’t the divorce, the problem was that no one helped me, a highly sensitive kid, understand what was happening. No one helped me process my emotions (which is why I got really good at numbing through food, exercise, and starvation in adolescence). When my dad told me he and my mom were getting a divorce, I literally remember imagining me and my sisters floating away in boxes in the ocean, without land in sight (I was 7 or 8, to be clear). Later, still playing barbies (before denouncing anything girly or “soft” because it wasn’t useful or respected where I grew up), I remember thinking “Love isn’t real. If it was, how could it just go away?” My dad nearly died of a broken heart (heart attack) shortly after the news of the divorce. (How I took on his heart break is a story for another day.) It wasn’t until my older sister’s funeral, when my mom turned to my dad and said “Oh Bob, I didn’t think it would ever come this” that I realized how much love was still between them.
Mostly unconsciously, I warded it off like we warded off and protected ourselves from Covid in the spring of 2020, wearing a hazmat suit against connection.
This all made it easy for me to confuse fear for love.
A great question you (the reader) might have for me is, “What about the abusers, the narcissists, the immature jerks? Aren’t they the problem?” I’ve been in one of those relationships. I’ve been with the narcissist that came home drunk and used my emotions against me (he would have never have touched me- that would have ruined his game).
And here’s another hard truth… if I loved myself, I wouldn’t have ignored the red flags. I would have had the confidence to leave. Actually, I would have taken the opportunity to leave in the first year, rather than allowing the relationship to carry on for another 2 and half. I would have told my new landlords that I changed my mind… I had been scared when we signed the lease to the apartment in Estes Park and didn’t want to say anything (he had yelled at me the day before and I had spent the first half of the night driving up the canyon with Pacer, searching for shooting stars), but I didn’t want him moving in with me. I wouldn’t have rationalized reasons to stay…that even though I didn’t want to be in the relationship, the rest of my life was good, so it was okay. Who needed romance anyway? Even though we had nowhere to go, I would have left…trusting the universe and loved ones would provide me with everything I needed. Yet I kept my emotions secret. I stayed.
And that was my choice*, unconscious as it may have been, like an addict choosing to have another drink, not being able to see that there is another way. *When we identify with our thoughts and pain, we actually lack the true ability to choose between our minds and our hearts.
Here, I think it is important to clarify… the problem isn’t Us. It wasn’t Me. It was mE. The problem was my lower self, my ego*, the part of me that runs off of fear and fear-based identities. Yet I didn’t know any of this until I admitted that I wasn’t happy and could see, at least a tiny bit, that I kept creating out of fear rather than love. All three of the aforementioned guys were my mirrors, helping me see clearly. They led me to choosing the extremely uncomfortable experience and painful process of healing. *While I won’t go as far as to say “ego is the enemy” as Ryan Holiday does (and titled one of his books), I will say the ego is to be learned from, not to live from.
More truths:
–I cannot unconditionally love a partner if I am expecting him to meet a need for me. I can ask him for help, but ultimately, I need to be the parent to my inner child, my higher self to my human self.
–When I withhold love from someone else, I am withholding love for myself. Literally, I am stopping the natural flow of love.
In my last relationship, I finally chose to listen to what my boyfriend was telling me and look within… to admit to myself that my mind was causing the problem. (It was helpful that he had read “The Power of Now” and directly told me “Your thoughts are sabotaging you.”) When he told me, as I had heard from both Obi-wan and the previous guy, “it always feels like you’re half in, half out”, I listened… after using all of my conscious power not to shout “that’s not true!”. I finally looked at the reflection he was offering me: I often protected myself by threatening the relationship, saying things like “maybe this just isn’t going to work”, “I don’t fit in with your friends”, and “I’m just going through too much right now.” He was right. (I can still feel my ego protesting against this fact, yet I’ve at least managed to take the microphone away…and it’s control). The funny thing is, that when I said those things, I was really hoping for my partners to tell me that I was wrong and offer reassurance. I was pushing them away and yet still expecting them to fight.
In the end, in the unconsciousness of my words and actions, I was proving my ego right… no one really loved me. Love doesn’t exist. I’m not enough.
You may have caught it.
Yes, I did write “in my last relationship”.
Because that one ended. (I actually wrote the first half of this blog weeks ago and then couldn’t finish it…which, I now realize, happens every time the story or my lesson is not finished.)
And, after a few more nights of panic attacks after the initial hurt of the situation that had occurred, it was the most peaceful and calm I have felt after any break-up. I’m of course still a little sad, because this guy was sweet and had a big heart, plus, was looking forward to a few cycling adventures we had talked about. But I wasn’t in pain.
What I realized after this experience is that while it is ultimately up to me to identify the trigger, comfort myself in the pain, and heal the wound (this can be done in a conscious partnership too), I still get to speak my needs and feelings. I still get to let the other person know when I am hurt, what my boundaries are, and expect a safe place to share my emotions. An un-triggered but honest sentence might look like: “I know you care about me and I know you weren’t purposely trying to hurt me, but this situation/or action did make me feel sad. I’m wondering if we can talk about it?” And, if a partner can’t provide a safe place for me to share my feelings, I’m not going to blame them. My best friend and sister both allowed me to be on the other end of this in recent months. It’s not easy (extremely uncomfortable) to acknowledge when we have caused another pain, because most of us will fall back on our own “not good enough” wounding, another lie. We really are all just doing our best.
Holding all of that knowledge: that we are primarily responsible for healing our own wounds, that we get to speak our truth, and that everyone is doing their best, which may or may not mean change… then we can make a choice on if we want to continue the relationship or not. Or…
We can wait and see. Because my last partner was not abusive or even mean in any way, I was taking some advice from a spiritual teacher I admired (I don’t always recommend this) to “allow it to be choiceless”, rather than make a decision I wasn’t sure about. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t reacting from my own wounding and I had learned all that this partner was meant to teach (his last name is pronounced “Kenobe”*, yes, like in Star Wars…so he had to be a great teacher for me.) *Just to confuse you…Obi-wan and Kenobe are TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Young Kenobe was my teacher in one way, wise Obi-wan is my energy and mind-control teacher. Which, if you think about it, is really a crazy synchronicity.
So I waited a few days before sending him a calm and kind text message, wanting to connect. He replied honestly, “I’m burnt out from hurting you.” It was fair.
I knew he was, in part, clinging on to my past behaviors rather than seeing the growth that I had made. Yet, as I’ve stated before, this is how we unconsciously protect ourselves. I get it. So, I chose not to fight or argue back, to “make him see clearly” that this wasn’t about him doing anything wrong, that I just wanted a chance to express myself and reconnect. Instead, I chose to let go. (Okay, okay…my ego did creep up a BIT here and I decided “I can’t let him break up with ME”…so I may have said something like “I see where this is going. I’m okay with being friends.”) I also finally felt that I was ready (rather than just want) to be with someone willing to grow and lean in with me.
This too, letting go, was huge for me. I didn’t shame myself for doing anything wrong. I forgave myself.
With the previous guy, I had anxiously attacked myself in the belief that it was “my fault” for things not working out, that, after wanting to blame him, it was ultimately because I was either not enough or too much that things didn’t work out with this amazing man.
Several truths exist here: He was/is amazing. I was doing the best I could (as was he). I could forgive myself for unconsciously working off of old wounds…and really, there was nothing to forgive: I was a hurt child and, ultimately, the “crack” he made to my shell led to my healing. And finally, I truly believe that anything, or anyone, meant for me will come to me at the right time, especially when I am patient and open to it. (Patience is the ultimate form of trust.)
Until then, I get to continue working on an even deeper and loving connection with myself…and enjoy all the snuggle time with Pacer.
(If you’re wanting to heal your relationship patterns too, hopefully I offered a little bit of a guide. It’s also extremely helpful to be working with a therapist, or at least talk to an honest friend. On at least two occasions, I walked into Obi-wan’s office and said “Tell me what I’m not seeing.” Between having worked through a disempowered masculine wound himself (a common thread here being he and some of my previous partners had authoritative moms) and being able to track my energy and emotions, he could help me see my situation clearly from a bird’s eye perspective in a way that was loving and kind, yet still allowing me to see my role in the situation.)
I never thought I would be “smart enough” to understand the matrix, cyclical time, or quantum physics…yet here I am:
We can’t change the past. The past was a moment in time of material creation that our soul called in for us to experience, either to heal or for joy. Since then, the material, or matter, has changed. Plus, if we physically changed the past, we wouldn’t be existing in the same way we are now, nor do we understand how intricately our lives our connected with others. Personally, I like that I get to write to you right now and express my thoughts in this way… I’m grateful to each person who led me to this moment. So no, as much as we wish we had a time machine to go change what our ego minds would like to call “mistakes”, we can’t (and really, mistakes are just redirections). Where the past does exist is in our minds and it is in our minds that we have the choice and the power to shift how see (perspective) and feel about the past…this may seem miniscule, but this is huge!
Personally, I like to throw love at any pain. It’s easy to do with friends who are in pain, so my suggestion is to step out of the past memory and see it from an outside angle (or lens of spirit). If you were scared, angry, or in pain, can you now see yourself with love? Or, you can imagine inserting your higher self (or inner parent) in the memory, holding yourself through the challenging time?
Now here’s the really cool part…when we insert love into a painful memory, not only do we see it differently…but we see it clearly. (Fear often presents as a veil of illusion that obscures clarity). You might see why the event had to occur as it did, or you might see the lesson you can now apply in the present…and, if the memory was about a decision you felt torn about and feared you made the wrong one, you might actually see how you made the right one!
In summary, by using our presence in the present moment, we can send loving energy back into the past and heal old wounds, thereby affecting the outcome of the future.
Love, my friends and followers, is an extremely powerful force.
(Sometimes I wonder where I’d be now or what level of awareness I would have expanded to if someone like me- an empath with heightened sensitivity for energy, big emotions, and deep thinking- would have been if I would have been given instruction on how to fine tune my gifts rather that expected to fit the assembly line of “memorize this, just believe the book” mold. Within that, I can appreciate and understand how each experience in my life has led me to where I am now, exactly where I’m meant to be.)
The truth is, to become unshakeable, you have to be broken. Layer by layer. Part by part. Cracked. All the way down to your core. All your wounds, exposed.
Then, you must choose. To armor more, to let the cracks turn to scars, the skin thicker than before. Or, To let go. To open up. To shed your skin. Each layer disintegrating into nothingness.
To become unshakeable, you invite death in. Forgetting who you were, to remember who you are.
It is in the stillness of winter, the hush of the snowflakes, the whisper of the trees, where peace is found.
And in the quiet, standing naked, you become free.
****************
At the beginning of the year, when I told a therapist “I want to become unshakeable, but not in the narcissistic kind of way”, I wanted it to mean that I just had to believe in myself, to be confident, and then I could achieve the things I wanted to. But really, becoming unshakeable meant: achieve nothing, fail at everything. It meant losing labels, money, physical ability, and almost all of my hope. It meant praying on my knees (or in the fetal position), picking myself off the floor, and facing the long standing belief of never being enough, in the midst of my woes. It was fighting for myself, the child within, who had been conditioned with the belief she was unworthy, to repent, but regardless, that she could never be enough, who was controlled by the stories of the shadowed priests in her mind. It was holding onto the thread, the chosen thought gifted to me my Obi-wan “that isn’t me.” I am not my thoughts, my fears, my pain. I am the love that lies underneath. Becoming unshakeable meant throwing all of my love at my wounds, all of my love to the little girl who had learned not to trust herself. Demanding that I was enough, money or not, trophies or not, boyfriend or not. It was me coming back to my truth…that I was, always, inherently enough. The rest just lies and fear. Even when the anxiety came back again, choosing to see through the illusions, my protections, and leaning into both love and my enough-ness. It was becoming nothing to remember I was everything.
While I have previously written on the literal aspects of “how” my older sister died from cancer (with many of the roots of the disease such as mental health and diet left untouched by doctors), I’ve never really delved into the way in which she transitioned from human back to spirit…or the lesson she left for me in the process. Here is that story.
****
“Call me when you are both together.”
When we got the text from our older sister, Sandi and I were both out camping and adventuring in the mountains. Blessedly, we weren’t that far apart. I was in the Holy Cross Wilderness area and didn’t receive the text until I was back to my car and had cell reception. I believe I somehow managed to suppress the thoughts and much of the anxiety I felt around the elusiveness but also known meaning around the text. Sandi wasn’t so lucky. She and her partner, Sage, were well above tree line, exploring part of the off-trail Nolan’s 14 line on Oxford and Belford, when Sandi received the text. Already crumbling with emotion, she navigated the technical line back to the trailhead as best as she could.
We met in the middle. Leadville. Right off of Hwy 24 at the Mineral Belt trailhead. Sage took Pacer’s leash from me and walked with her as Sandi and I called our older sister. Amanda, just 4 years older than us, calmly, peacefully, told us, her younger sisters, that the doctors had told her they could do no more for her cancer ridden body and that she had a limited time to live. Sandi and I simultaneously and instantaneously collapsed into a unintelligible pile of emotion and tears. Our mom, always the tough one, stoically stood by Amanda and listened to her eldest daughter tell her younger daughters that she had accepted her fate and trusted God was with her.
And there we were, all of us together, both broken and at peace.
Over the next few weeks, after Sandi, Pacer, and I drove back to Ohio to help our older sister transition, we got an up close glance and what dying looks like. In hindsight, what a strange thing…to be guides to our sister in the death process. (Amanda would later guide me on my own.)
Sometimes, Amanda was tearfully happy, especially when her closest friends or our younger cousins came to visit. Sometimes she laughed at our dinner mishaps or the mess she was leaving for us to clean up. Sometimes, she was frustrated at the bills she had left to organize and the limits of her body, while other times, she offered us grace by allowing us to help. Sometimes, Amanda was in pain. Sometimes, she cried anxious, panicky tears, like when we went over her will. Oftentimes, she asked us to hold her hand.
Sometimes, she was grouchy.
This, I want to highlight. Not all, but a lot of family members of dying loved ones have the extremely painful experience of their loved one going through a temporarily grouchy or even mean period before their death. This most acutely affected Sandi. I can’t quite remember the situation, it might just simply have been Sandi giving Amanda her medication to help with the physical pain, and Amanda uttered something like “you’re killing me”, which caused Sandi to retreat to the kitchen in tears. I can imagine that this sliced like a knife, especially when I had the same (but inaccurate) worry that I was killing my older sister with the prescribed pills from her doctor. What was really happening here to my older sister, who, just a week earlier had declared our indoor picnic lunch with our mom, stepdad, and 2 little cousins “the best day ever”?
My belief now is that this was one of the final fights from her ego, her fear-based human identity, that now faced imminent death.* (This will be the key point of the second half of this essay.) Amanda was never truly mean, grumpy, or in a bad mood throughout her life…it had only been her wounded self and the ego trying to protect her from the beauty pain of life. In these last days, Amanda’s ego knew it couldn’t survive the end of the physical body and the spiritual transformation happening within. It spoke its last words, then dissolved like the wicked witch of the West(Amanda loved the play Wicked), before Amanda surrendered and her ego disappeared forever.
*From my understanding, the brain can also start to malfunction near the end of life due to low oxygen, deterioration, etc. Again, this is an example of the outer reflecting the inner. Additionally, Gabor Mate explains in When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, how childhood trauma can lead to Alzheimer’s (among many other diseases), using the case study of Ronald Reagan.
After that, I believe Amanda was already living more in the spirit world than she was here on earth. From what I have read on near death experiences (NDEs)*, her spiritual guide team was already with her and re-orienting her back to true self and Somewhere Else. On September 1st, my dad’s birthday, she mustered enough consciousness to sing him happy birthday and tell him he was the best dad ever. (This, I know, meant the world and back to my dad. He and Amanda were more alike than she would have admitted, and as so often happens with parents and children that are similar, they often butted heads.) If my memory is accurate, it was later that night, she said her last word, “yay!“, a parting gift to all of us.
In the wee hours of September 3rd, she quietly made her full transition from human to spirit and back to Somewhere Else. Her family and friends would no longer know her in human form.
Since then, Amanda has turned up in my and my family’s life in various ways. Roses (her middle name was “Rose”), butterflies, felt senses (a heightened gift Sandi often experiences), her favorite songs on the radio at times that could never be just coincidental, by doors creaking open (to the slight fear of my one of my younger cousins), and most recently, in a dream.
I wish I would have written it down as soon as it happened, in the still hours of darkness. I could only partially recall it back in the daylight hours. Amanda had come to me, looking young (probably around 30) and joyful, saying something like “This would have been an easier way to say goodbye”. Yet that felt odd to me at first… I already knew goodbye is only real in the earthly realm and in fact, we were now closer than we had ever been in our human armor. Now, as I write this, I think I know what she meant…she was leaving a message for all of us, for this essay, on how to die.
While I have limited experience with dream interpretation, what I believe my sister was telling me and encouraging me to write, is that it’s easier to say goodbye to our loved ones and human body when we have already dropped our ego identity and reunited with our true essence. We don’t have to put up a fight, we just surrender and allow the transformation to occur, because really, it’s an “awesome” (Amanda’s word) experience. However, I realize that sounds a little a little out of reach in just a few sentences. So instead, let me outline the stages of her death from the above description.
Acceptance: When Amanda told Sandi and I the news, she was calm in the acceptance of her fate.
Half & Half: I have often been told by my Reiki therapist that I am often half in, half out, or rather, half in the material (ego) world and half in the spiritual (energy) world. For Amanda, her spirit was at peace but her ego was terrified.
Pain: Anxiety, grief, and anger, suffering, and physical pain with long periods of rest/sleep. The ego fears its own demise and often doesn’t want to go without a fight. Pain exists in the separation of our minds and true self and diminishes in unification. This step can be quite intense if the separation hasn’t yet been addressed. Grace allowed Amanda to fall asleep after these intense energetic periods.
Surrendering: The ego simply can’t survive death or the call of a spirit back Home. Amanda’s human identity ceased to exist, although her body allowed for one more step…
Joy: “YAY!” (The soul celebrating freedom.)
Physical Death &Return to Spirit.
Peace.
If I’m being completely honest, the ego death I’ve been experiencing over the past several years has been just as messy (if not much more) and emotionally painful. Without really realizing it, I fought my ego death, hard. My ego is especially tricky and manipulative (hence why I was able to date a covert narcissist for 3 years) and my fear was subtle, at least from my conditioned human perspective. In time, I allowed myself to be unravelled and stripped from identity, a process that was extremely uncomfortable (to say the least). Really, it was my only choice. It was either that, physical death, or returning to live by my ego, which would have killed me anyway. Slowly, I began to see how my mind and fear (often around not being enough) were in control of my decision making and how I went about creating my life. Yet that is a story for another day. For now, let me tell you how to die (while still alive), starting with some clarification of the ego and the “dark night of the ego”.
What is The Ego?
The ego is our human identity, often created from a foundation of fear. When explaining the ego to others, I usually just call it our “fear-based mind”. The tricky thing about the ego is we often don’t realize we have one, saving it only for those we call “egotistical”. Yet the ego lies on the spectrum of believing one is not enough, from martyr to narcissist, and can present in various ways. In actuality, when one is identifying with their human self and all of its fallibilities and success, they are believing in a false self. For this reason, I have even called our human self our shadow self, for it hides our true identity. That being said, neither our ego or our human self are bad. A healthy ego is the realization that we are human and keeps us safe from physical harm (Ex. Fire is warm, but bad to touch). It is also of upmost importance that we love our human selves and the life we’ve been given… in playing out various identities, we are healing past wounds so our soul can evolve. It is also in physical form that we can create in the material world and allow for all kinds of magical experiences.
How is the Ego Formed?
The ego begins forming sometime in childhood, once the brain has had some time to develop and the mind can start creating meaning and stories. Yet at birth, we are all simply sensory beings. Some babies cry a lot, I think because they are feeling the stark contrast of being in the realms of heaven, in the cocoon of a mother’s womb, and then squeezed out into a world of various energies being swirled around. All babies, however, are generally curious. It’s like they were just plopped down here in this weird place and have no conditioning telling them what to think, expect, or who they should be. They’ve got joy still in them too, laughing at sweet nothings. These are all general statements and other factors play in, such as the well-being of the mother and father during pregnancy, past life imprints, and overall sensitivities. What really matters, however, is the story a child tells themself about the sensations in their body after core needs (yes, food and shelter, but mainly, connection and love) have gone unmet, or rather, the heart has be invalidated. It is these stories that the ego is formed from, and it usually begins with feelings of unworthiness. Sadly, our society has been built off of conditional love which creates the world’s deadliest weapon: fear. So instead of minds growing from the fertile of soil unconditional love, most minds grow in the barren desert of the subtle and not so subtle tyrannical rulership of fear.
The ego can also carry unhealed wounds from past lives. This is what I call “karma”. Yet regardless if the wounds are from this life or a previous life, we have the opportunity to heal all wounds once we start to un-identify from the ego. How I see it is that we live a chunk of our lives forming and perhaps strengthening the ego (historically, this has been until death or midlife), and the next chunk of our lives unravelling ourselves from it. If we can do this before physical death, well… I’m excited to see what happens.
The Dark Night of the Ego(Ego Death)
I want to start out by saying (writing) that the dark night of the ego and hitting rock bottom are two different things. Hitting rock bottom is relatively quick. It is the night on the bathroom floor after drinking too much, the life-altering diagnosis, the end of a romantic relationship, or that first time you make a decision with the heart rather than the head (ego). It is what I call “the crack” that leads to the dark night of the ego (others refer to this as the dark night of the soul, but I see the soul rejoicing when this happens). The dark night of the ego, on the other hand, is usually a several month to several year long process (there are, of course, exceptions), where, layer by layer, the ego-identity is unravelled until we get closer or even back home to our true selves. For many who have undergone this kind of spiritual awakening, the process has been painful. Yet I think this is going to be less so in the coming years, for many light workers have walked the “path of darkness” to leave a light for others to follow. (I first read and appreciated this phrasing in a Mary Magdalen book, describing Jesus’s death.)
How to Die (While Still Alive)
When the ego becomes our identity and is based off of fear, it limits the beauty of life and the potential of our souls to heal, create, and love. When we allow our ego to die, at least the fear-based part, we actually get to experience what it means to be free while in human form. True freedom, I have learned (the hard way), is of and from the mind rather than something gained by material wealth or by experiences manifested from a place of lack. Transcending the ego means moving from a place of pain (hell) to a place of joy (heaven). It allows our hearts to lead over the ego-mind, giving the steering wheel back to our soul’s and the ability to live from a place of peace, despite life’s circumstances.
But how do we do it? And is it possible to do it now without experiencing tremendous amounts of pain?
Yes…and/but, if you’ve numbed from the emotions in your body throughout your life in any way (and this is especially true for empaths), there is probably going to be a lot of energy moving through that may or may not come in the form of emotional, mental, or even physical pain (backache, throwing up, injury, etc). Fortunately, I believe that the need to experience pain is going to be less and less true for future generations as more parents, and the world, becomes more emotionally and spiritually intelligent. Plus, if you haven’t yet noticed, a large chunk of the current generation of kids are already coming in way more conscious (and energetically sensitive) than previous generations…they’ve got great bullshit-o-meters and have little tolerance for conventional norms.
Ok, with that caveat, the steps on how let go of the ego:
Be disobedient to the (lower/ego) mind*. All those thoughts in your head, you don’t have to listen to them, and you certainly don’t have to follow them. Call out the fear-based stories and the conditions that have been given to you. Choose to see through the illusion of the mind. Choose to see things from another perspective. Choose to see through the lens of love. *I added lower mind because this line is paraphrased from The Gospel of Mary. When “mind” is used in that text, it is not talking about the ego mind but the “higher mind”, which I believe refers to true, unified consciousness (what some might call “God”).
Extra: Starve the ego You may or may not experience “the crack”, either because you don’t have to on your journey or you choose to intentionally “starve the ego”, simply meaning, you don’t give it what it wants. This is in part not listening to it, but is a slightly more intentional experience of rewiring your brain’s reward system, meaning denying the brain the normal ways it seeks out dopamine hits, be it seeking out validation through big accomplishments or simply checking how many likes you received on your latest social media post. In the past, many spiritual teachers have done this by both living as a hermit and starving themselves (which could be a reward system for those with eating disorders). Very few have actually received enlightenment that way, and I believe the work now (especially for those of us who would prefer to be hermits) is to stay in relationship with the others.
Be prepared for the ego to “flip the fuck out”(the profession phrase I often use with my clients doing ego work). And for those who have dated narcissists, double check for your own inner narcissist trying to manipulate your process. Remember, the ego fears its own death and will kick and scream its way out. Love that, too.
Breathe: quiet the mind. Some options include: meditation, play, dancing, creating art, walking in nature. Anything that turns down the volume of the mind or allows you to turn it off altogether. Pay attention to your breath…it is, after all, what makes you alive and able to live beyond the shadows.
Love fiercely. The ego is made up of fear, and the only thing fear cannot survive is love. My suggestion here is to consciously throw all the love you have at the fear-based stories in your mind, all your wounds, all your pain. When these things start to surface, see them, feel them, and love them. Call on the Divine Feminine for help. Love yourself through what you would call mistakes or sins and the times you were invalidated as a child, when your parents weren’t or didn’t know how to be there for you. Love yourself through the stories of “not enoughness”. Remind yourself that any story other than one of love and inherent worth is untrue. This is in part what therapists would call “re-parenting work”, but with even more clear (higher) seeing and love.
During my own journey, there were times when I “woke up fighting”, meaning my anxiety and fear-based thoughts would start as soon as I opened my eyes I’d have to immediately chose not to believe the fear, and, after praying for help to see with clarity and through the lens of love, I’d end up repeating “I love you. You are enough.”
Listen to the heart and body. This often feels like a foreign concept, even….especially for people in the athletic world who have learned to overrule the body’s signals. It’s even more foreign for empaths who learned that feeling was unsafe and built up layers of armor. However, listening to the heart and body is completely innate. Many of us may just have to deconstruct to get there.
If you have any aches or pains, you can start by feeling and breathing into them and asking the area “what message do you have for me?”. You can also practice breathing into the heart, taking 3-5 deep breaths and focusing on your heart center. Practice feeling your emotions. If they don’t move (think of a passing cloud) in a minute or two, get curious if you have a block that is not allowing the emotion to pass, or if there’s just a lot more in there from suppressing emotions for so long. (Note that thoughts can keep emotions stuck.) If you have a block, feel into why its there and/or how it is protecting you. Underneath emotions are sensations, the gut feelings. The contraction and expansion. Notice when your heart energy feels like it is getting bigger or growing smaller. Your heart will be one of your greatest guides. Be patient…if you have a lot of blocks or emotions that need to be experienced in the body, you may not be able to access these sensations for awhile. Keeping going. This leads us to our last step…
Trust the timing of the Universe (ask for guidance and reassurance when you need it)
You may experience situations during this time that you want to deem as unfavorable, but really, these experiences are just showing you how the ego is still in charge and what needs healing. From a “higher” perspective, it’s truly “all good”. Along your death journey, ask for guidance and support from your spirit guide team, be it angels, deceased loved ones, ascended souls, animals, etc. Notice who or what shows up in your life. Maybe you find a teacher, therapist, or friend, or maybe the right book or podcast appears holding just the information you were seeking. You may ask for signs that you’re on the right path, and look for synchronicities (like angel numbers). Most importantly, and once again, be patient. In a human body, it’s usually impossible to see the intricacies of life and how we affect one another, or one situation (no matter how small) is the catalyst for something else. Remember that saying “love is patient”? That’s true. That is trust. Only fear is ever in a rush. The peace and healing you are seeking will come as long as you hold the intention in your heart. Even though the path may be unclear, all you have to do is follow the breadcrumbs and keep putting one foot in front of the other. As Rumi said, “As you start to walk the way, the way appears.”
Extra exercises to support you on your journey to the underworld:
1. Sit with The Trees Trees know how to die. Each Autumn, they die externally as their leaves and needles fall to earth. They just. let. go. Softly and gracefully. This is because trees don’t carry the weight or anxiety of the human ego. And, while our surrendering may not be so graceful, what we can do is notice each thought as it comes up, realize it is not us, exhale and relax the body, and imagine allowing the thought to fall away. This is, in fact, meditation. Tree energy can help support us in this process, especially during the fall and winter, so this is a great practice to take outside.
2. Newborn When you wake up in the morning, pretend you were just plopped down here. You have no prior conditioning. No expectations. Just be curious about the strange, beautiful world you are in.
3. Free-write Free-writing has literally been a god-send to me, as it connects me to my higher self and guide team. In your journal, head the page by writing something like “Spirit, what messages do you have for me today?” and then just let your pen flow, doing your best to avoid conscious thought. Some people find it helpful to write with their opposite hand. The messages may be super simple (and very needed) at first. As you get more familiar with the process, you’ll find it easier to ask specific questions as well.
*********
Don’t like who you think you are?
You are not who you think you are.
Don’t like your body?
You won’t have it for long, so love it for the ride it’s taking you on.
Want to crawl out of your skin?
Break open. Feel. it. all.
Are you on a path you despise?
Turn towards the unknown.
The totality of who you are cannot be stated by thought. Your soul cannot be confined by the constraints of the ego. In order to know yourself, you must die unto yourself. Only in death can you experience the entirety of yourself. You are infinite. You are Love.
Trees will talk…trees want to talk and share their ancient wisdom… to those who are willing to listen.
There is this quote by Jesus that appears several times in the gnostic text, The Gospel of Mary that goes: “Anyone with two ears capable of hearing should listen.” If I may be so bold, I can’t help but wonder if line was slightly misinterpreted, or misunderstood by the reader (me)*. My interpretation is “Anyone with a heart has the ability to hear the truth.”
If you want to speak to trees, plants, or animals, you have to know how to speak and understand the language of the heart. The heart speaks and listens through sensations, felt-senses, love, contraction and expansion. The messages are only subtle because our minds are so full of chatter. Yet the language of the heart is the only one we were born with…all other languages we were constructed and taught. Some languages bloomed from the heart, and some were created as distractions from it.
How do we get back to our native heart language? Obviously, we must learn how to detach from our mind and meditation is a practice great for this. Another practice that you can apply, perhaps at a holiday meal, that was taught to me by Obi-wan (my teacher), is to track the energy of a conversation over the words. Is your uncle talking from a place of love or fear? If he is speaking from fear, can you find compassion and empathy?…because my guess is you’ve been there too. And if the energy is too negative, can you give yourself the grace to walk away and go sit by a tree? Close your eyes, breathe into your heart, and listen to the heart teachings of the Tree.
***
I think a lot of people are familiar with Simard’s Ted Talk, but if not, I highly recommend it to learn how tree’s literally talk to eachother (I’d compare this to spoken language): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=breDQqrkikM
However, what I’m even more fascinated with now on my journey is the electromagnetic wavelengths and energies of Nature and our brains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zJRdQGlZzI (I’m also a big Lisa Miller fan)
*There are actually a few passages in The Gospel of Mary that I would have misunderstood without translation and understanding of what was meant. For example, when “the mind” is talked about, Jesus nor Mary are talking about the ego mind, but the Higher Mind. I found @megganwatterson‘s book Mary Magdalene Revealed extremely helpful for this.
**The pictured Cottonwood is nearly 120 years wise.
“My Love, Patience. Trust the timing of the Universe. Trust the timing of your soul.”
Patience is hard for most humans (and for my dog when she’s waiting for a treat.) We fear if we don’t move, if we don’t work hard, if we ever just stop and rest, that nothing will ever get done and we’ll never get anything we want.
But how much of what we want have we really gotten by working hard? Rarely is it the ease, peace, and joy that I hear at the depths of people’s wishes. We must always be cautious of what we create when fear is leading the way.
It hard to be patient when we are healing. We want to get it over with, forgetting the medicine is in the pain. The more we understand the causes of our pain, the swifter our healing. (Scientifically speaking, the pain center for both physical and emotional pain lives in the brain.)
Patience can also be hard when we feel lost. Patience asks us to trust, yet most of us lack trust in ourselves, others, and the Universe. Yet it is only when we are lost, when we have forgotten who we are, that we can be found. It is in the the liminal stages of lost and found and with a torch made out of patience and trust that we can discover who we truly are.
Even after dropping more specific labels such as runner or athlete, I still allowed myself to be somewhat identified by “adventurer” and “explorer”. Those our broad enough, right?
I also explained explorer (this is even in my bio in Light & Dark) as being a person willing to explore both their outer and inner landscape. This is pretty accurate. I just wasn’t doing it.
I was creating and forcing my own adventures. And yes, in terms of mountain adventures, you want to plan appropriately for safety reasons, yet the real grace is when you can let go of the plan and allow the Mother Nature and the day to bring what she will. Being a true adventurer is going with the flow. It’s accepting that when a door shuts on you, or it starts to rain, that you’re being redirected by something greater than yourself and toward something that is in your highest good. (You may have just avoided a huge accident by returning back to your car.) It’s realizing that an injury or illness isn’t punishment, nor is it something to push through. It’s the knowing that something greater is happening in the Yin (resting potential).
Being a true explorer means being curious. Honestly, 3 year olds are probably the best explorers our there. They’re just going where their parents take them and stopping to look at all the bugs and leaves along the way. Adults tend to plan and force, even when it doesn’t feel good or aligned with joy. We’re ruled by our minds and fear. Instead of looking to others for inspiration, we look at them through comparison…If this adventurer has a van, we need to have a van and YouTube channel too. If this athlete is running these races and that’s where the money is, I need to run those race too. If this wanderer is traveling to that state or country, then I need to wander over there too… Rarely are we actually willing to let go of plans and travel into the Unknown, allowing the path to be revealed to us.
Being a True Explorer is going into the Unknown with curiosity, trust, and joy. A True Explorer accepts the redirects of life and happily changes path. A True Explorer is guided by their heart rather than fear. A True Explorer lives from inspiration instead of motivation and comparison. A True Explorer is free. In actuality, a True Explorer doesn’t have to create or carve out a new path. Instead, she relaxes knowing that a unique path is already laid out for her. A True Explorer is willing to follow the breadcrumbs of Life, recognizing animal symbolism, dreams, and synchronicities as guidance.* A True Explorer trust that she will be guided to experiences for her highest good, that the challenges (often in the form of ego** slaying) are necessary for ascension, and that love not be searched for in far away places, but it is always there. A True Explorer is always on the Divine Path back to True Self.
*I just checked my phone and it was, of course, 11:11.
**When the Bible talks about “demons”, the metaphorical translation is ego.
A Dog and Her Girl 