"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
When I say grief, what I really mean is Love. When I say pain, what I really mean is my perceived absence of it. When I say fear, what I really mean is that I have forgotten. When I say dog, what I really mean is Love. When I say Love, what I really mean is that I have remembered.
***
Fear was created when we first felt separate from our parents or caregivers. When our needs or emotions weren’t met with care and compassion. To an infant or child, our earliest caregivers represent Love, or God. This is to stay it is during this time we truly felt separated from Love, which created fear in the body. Through developed mental processes, that fear materialized into stories of unworthiness and not enoughness. This created shame in the body, and further perceived separateness from Love.
To remember who were are is to connect back to Oneness, to Love. We have to let go our stories, free (allow) the stuck emotions to be experienced, and surrender back to Love. Which takes Trust, because most of have forgotten a time when it was there. (Dogs and other animals can help remind us.) So ultimately, your trust fall is letting go of fear and falling back into Love.
Today, on what would have been my “older” sister’s 41st birthday, I find myself searching for grief. I find a little, but no tears fall. Part of me feels guilty, like I should feel sad, like I still should be mourning her “too short life”. Guilty, knowing this might be my last post on my sister’s birthday. Like I should continue to feel weird for being physically older than my older sister ever got to be. Yet, I can hear my sister say, “You can’t find me there.”
And in truth, I know what she means. She’s free. She’s expanded. No longer bound by the limitations of human perception. The part of me that clings to grief as a way to connect, the part that tries to hold on to grief… while they served a purpose, those parts aren’t actually me.
So when I search for grief, I must dive so far into the well that at the bottom, I only find love. Then, when I find myself swimming in the joy of that Love, I know I’ll find her. I’ll be reminded that actually, we’ve never not been- we’ve always been- connected.
While my path back to finding her has been nothing short of wayward and wanderlust, she’s always been sending me signs, whispering “You can meet me here. You can be free now, too.” (while still incarnated). Just the other week, I was driving back home and asking for a sign on what to do. Before I could fully comprehend what was happening “Can’t Stop the Feeling” by Justin Timberlake (one of Amanda’s songs) comes on the radio while an RV pulls in from of me that says “T-Align”! The synchronicity of this is that my nickname for my older sister growing was “T” (and for the life of me I can not remember why) and lately I had been playing around the idea “what does it feel like to align with my True Self”?
Somedays, I can almost feel my sister holding my hand, just as I did for her when she was finding her way back Home and letting go of her human identity. She’s guiding me back toward the light, the truth of who I am. Who we are. Knowing that, if you are reading this, you came to earth for self-realization. To remember you are a soul in a human body. Away from the falsities and myths and limitations of the ego. She’s leading me back towards my deepest desire, to be free.
Here, I hear her say, “Yay!”
*Please be respectful of and honor your own journey with grief. There’s no time lifeline and no agenda on your path.
And isn’t freeing to know… …that we are all going to die?
That everything matters… …and nothing matters?
Soon, it will all disappear.
The clothes and cars, yes. The people too. And you, the human. The human with the stories, beliefs, and attachments. The story of you. The limitations. The doubt.
So yes-
Go thrust yourself into the beauty of life. Climb that mountain. Have your adventures. Dance under the stars. No, better yet… dance in front of a crowd a let everyone whisper, “I wish I was more like her.” Become her. You are Her. Free.
Know this too:
The mountain that you didn’t climb, the adventure you never had, the relationship you were never in -those things never really mattered.
Your perception of wrong or right, bad or good, you can’t take those when you go.
So laugh, cry, sing. Release and die into the moment.
While we’re in these physically bodies, it is important we live, but live without the pressure of living and doing “things right” or trying to do “everything”, because then we’re living in fear, not love. Yet love is often a forgotten state for many of us, and it is through the death of our limitations- our beliefs, our stories of not enooughness, our shame, and the continual allowing and surrender of our emotions- that we can return to love. And so, it is through the “death” or our small self, that we can become free while incarnated, then reclaim our small self that is now inspired by Love rather than fear.
***I alway feel like I have to add this too, to cover my therapist basis. It’s never us, unless it’s really our time and then there is no choosing, that wants to die. It is always a PATTERN or a PART. It’s a shame-based belief system that our soul is ready to let go of. That is, essentially, what is asking to be seen, loved, and let go of/die. Our souls want us to experience the joy of being alive.
If you were supposed to be “healed” by now, you would be.
If you were meant to have won that race, you would have.
If you were meant to still be with that person, you would be.
If you were meant to get that job, you would have.
If you were supposed to be father along by now, you would be.
If those plans were supposed to work out, they would have.
If that person was supposed to still be here, they would be.
If you were mean to make a different decision, you would have.
If life were meant to be different than it is right now, it would be.
Breathe.
Everything that has happened was meant to happen.
Everything that didn’t happen wasn’t meant to happen.
Everything that is meant to happen, will happen.
Breathe.
Here is where you will find your peace.
Suffering lies in the shoulds, attachments, and wishes of things being different than they are.
You have power, just not control (of the external).*
This doesn’t meant we stop learning or growing. In fact, this is the catalyst for growth.
Now that we know what happened is what was meant to happen, we CAN grow, as guilt and shame are what block us from blossoming. Acceptance, curiosity, and love become fertilizers.
The mind often likes to try and figure everything out, but really it’s a way to keep us stuck. To the lower mind, having an explanation will appear to give us safety, but this is a false theory.
It’s often better for us to recognize our own emotions and belief systems around the event, feel what we need to feel, and let it go.
For instance, after a breakup with someone we believed to “be the one”, our mind will try to create stories on why it didn’t work. Sometimes we blame it on ourselves, sometimes we blame it on them. We think we’ll feel better if we just had closure. We try to speak to the person and are denied, or we get the same confusing answers and no closure is given. Our mind continues to problem solve, keeps looping in its limited perspective, and we stay in grief, anger, and fear.
This is obviously not helpful. It’s better to simply know that the person, especially at a soul level, does love you, but they were/are stuck in their own wounds, stories, and fears, just as you were at the time, and hence why you were attracted to one another. Now, you get to empathize with your own emotions, uncover your own limiting stories, and let them go. And maybe to, you understand that this was all part of a Divine Plan to bring you back into clarity of your true self and deeper forms of love than what is often seen at the human level.
You don’t need to agree with the voice to validate the emotion.
The “Emotions Wheel” has “ashamed” in the category of sadness. If I sit and feel into it, it’s fear, sadness, and anger combined. Then, there’s usually emotions under that, as the inner shamer is different from the part being shamed.
Honestly, the story you’re living in, the story that you’re broken or not enough, is really hard. And the shamer is just doing what it knows how to do.
We always do our best with the skills we have. If you dig into it just a bit, you’ll most likely realize that your inner shamer sounds a lot like one of your parents, enhanced by some other mean voices you’ve heard on TV.
The experiences and voices of others that gave birth to your inner shamer are most likely not from super memorable situations. It could be a small thing that felt really big and confusing in your little body.
For example, when I was a little kid and I said something “bad”, I would get my mouth washed out with soap. This might sound extreme now, or you might think, “why didn’t your parents just have your brush your teeth or use mouthwash?”, but this was fairly common in the 90s. Now, I was a really good little kid… and I was a kid. I can’t remember what I would have said, it just couldn’t have been that bad. But even if I said a swear word or was mean to one of my sisters, it’s because I didn’t have the skills to regulate my own emotions and the only thing I could to to release some of the anger or frustration or despair in my body was to let it out verbally. Again, I didn’t have any other tools, and this is probably what I saw others do. My parents too, were of course doing the best they could with the parenting and emotional skills they had. Unfortunately, that didn’t prevent my little mind from making up a story that when I mess up or have big emotions, that I’m bad*. Something is wrong with me. Which brings in a huge energy of fear, as I then question if I’m lovable. The story I further create is that I’m only lovable if I’m perfect. And in this fear, I strive to be perfect, but because I’m acting out of fear instead of love, I inevitably make “mistakes” (miss the mark) over and over again (and also, because I’m human). Because the only skill I learned was how to shame myself for making a mistake, I keep doing it over and over and over again. Until I learn about, and start practicing, self-compassion and Love, which my dog has been trying to teach me for over a decade.
*While I used a personal example, this is really how all our little brains work. This is called “egocentric”.
What we can start with is forgiveness. Forgive your shame for being so hard on you. It’s been doing the best it could with what it knows. Forgive yourself for anytime you missed the mark, because you were doing the best you could with the emotions and energy you had stuck inside of you. (We only do “bad” things if we feel bad inside.) And, half the time what you did was probably just fine, you put that “not good enough” story on top of it.
From there, you can practice self-compassion. Find compassion for the perfectionist, the achiever, and other critical parts of you that have been doing the best they could. Allow the inner child, the one that has been shamed, to feel all of his/her/their fear, confusion, frustration, and grief. (This will take time and most likely multiple therapy or journaling sessions.)
Then Love. This is less of a practice than going within and finding the Love within you that’s been buried. It might be breathing into your heart charge, or drawing on your dog’s beingness for inspiration. Ultimately, Love is your most natural state.
Failure may actually be one of the best and most efficient ways to get in alignment with the truest and highest versions of ourselves. A path to really living our best lives. …IF we can wrap failure in love.
The more mistakes we make, the more we learn how a choice or path isn’t for us, or we realize the way in which we are trying to get where want to be is out of whack (fear-based), and the more we have the opportunity to remember who we really are.
Which takes us to the blocks around failure. Shame (a topic I’ll talk more about how to work with soon) prevents us from evolving and seeing the failure, or simply the situation, with clarity. When we get lost in shame and stories of how we’re bad or not enough, we can be assured we’ve identified with our subconscious programming (small selves/ego) and NOT our Higher Selves. The irony is that the more we stay in shame (which believes we’ll make a better choice if we’re super mean to ourselves), the more likely we’ll take the take the wrong path again, make the same mistake, and fail again. (If the emotion is in you and still in the shadows, you probably won’t even know when you’re doing this.)
Yet, if we see failure through the lens of love, or rather, we love ourselves when we make a mistakes, we open ourselves up to new ideas, paths, and…to use a super spiritual word, EXPANSION. Loving energy helps us see new options and make more optimal choices (we’re past good or bad when we’re in this space).
Because we know we “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”, to quote Albert Einstein (a super spiritual dude and scientist), it’s not thinking about being kind to ourselves that’s going to get us out of this one. Which to me, is a relief, because my neural pathways are pretty set on how I really did screw things up. (Yes, I’m right here with you on this topic.) In addition to working with childhood memories on how our shame got its origins, what we can start doing is FEELING into the energy of compassion. Personally, I have no problem doing this with my sister, my dog, my dad, etc. Once I conjure up this feeling thinking of them, I can then PRACTICE (it is a practice) turning it towards myself. Try it our yourself.
I’ve got a lot more to say about shame coming up, when I have time to write more of my thoughts down. For now, here’s some food for thought and some compassion to feel into.
One thing that I didn’t mention in my previous post on considering that every experience in your life is happening for you, even the one you don’t necessarily like, is that in addition to rising from victim mentality to to hero of your story (thank you, Joseph Campbell, for first writing about the “Heroe’s Journey”.), you’re entering a new reality.
Before I explain further, I’d like to thank the YouTuber who left a mean comment on my last video- all my haters seem to always come from YouTube. (I don’t actually upload any videos individually to YouTube, it’s just connected to my Substack, but I use YouTube often to listen to podcasts. Because I’m practicing becoming the focus of my attention (subject) rather than the outside world (object), I just turned off all my YouTube notifications. Look up Dr. Sue Morter if you’re interested in learning more about her “subject-object-subject” practice). I’ll return to the YouTuber and his (or the bots?) role in my evolution shortly.
What I’m going to attempt to do for you here is explain 3D to 4D & 5D reality super simply, as it’s taken me years to understand it.
If we take a situation and simply tell it as it is, the story, or plot, is pretty flat. “I have been injured.” What most of us do, from the place of victim mentality (which arises from unprocessed fear), is say “I’m so frustrated I’m injured. This is sucks.” While it is important to honor our emotions, the thing that keeps us stuck are beliefs such as “This is bad.” “Bad things always happen to me.” “I have no control over this.” And, while it is true that you might not be able to magically heal from the injury overnight, what you DO have the ability to shift is your perspective over what happened (in this example, the injury). This doesn’t mean you have to know why right away, but simply holding on to the belief that there is something for you in it can return you to a place of power, and perhaps paradoxically, actually support your healing. (Honestly, I don’t care if you believe everything happens for a reason or that you can simply choose to give any circumstance meaning…both are way more empowering then playing victim and labeling what happens as a negative experience.)
With that understanding, you can now create a new story around the plot. It might start with, “I’m injured. And part of me feels sad about it, but I also know that there is something for me here to support my growth.” Later, it might turn into, “As much as I didn’t want to be injured, it really helped me pause and go inward. I have more peace in my life now, because I learned how to create it within me, than I ever did before. I’m actually glad I got injured.”
Realizing this post is getting long and I have work to do, I’m not fully going to differentiate 4D and 5D reality (in truth, I’m also still trying to fully understand it) and because I wanted to get to the YouTuber story. The short version is that 4D reality says, “I don’t like my current reality, and I can DO things to change it”. 5D reality says “I don’t like my current reality. I can shift my inner experience (emotions) to BECOME a higher version of me, and ALLOW a new physical reality come to me.
Okay, one more short story. So let’s say I’m the hero of my story. I decided I’m the main Player in the video game called Life. When the YouTuber/Villian writes a mean comment, I first allow myself to feel and heal some of the emotions from my old victim programming. Then, I realize that the Negative Ned YouTuber/Villian is just another challenge for me to get to the next level. I realize he can 1) support me in my aforementioned) healing and 2) is trying to throw darkness my way so I continue to dim my light at stay at the level I’m at, 3D reality. Having been at the level so many times, continuing to fail and calling on another life, my soul, or Player is finally evolved enough to see another path. Actually, I realized the YouTuber isn’t an enemy I’m trying to fight off. He’s actually trying to support me in my journey and challenging me to NOT dim my light this time. With my light now actually brighter, I decided to share what I learned with other Players (You), so we can all start moving to the next level, or reality, together.
You will always receive exactly what you need for your highest possible evolution… if you accept the challenge as a gift.
Now I know…the idea of “everything happens for a reason” has often been poo-pooed upon by many as “toxic positivity”*.
*Positive psychology is highly misunderstood. It is a strength based process that doesn’t ignore problems but puts a larger focus on what is (going) right.
…And it’s absolutely not.
Part of the challenge is, in fact, feeling your emotions fully so you can uncover the wounds that are asking to be healed.
By accepting life as it is, and that even challenges have a gift for you, it takes you out of the victim mentality and back into a position of power. It’s an acknowledgement that you are the co-creator of your life.
Even in this belief, or knowing, you might not feel good at first. It still may take days and months (and sometimes even years or a lifetime) to process the emotions and experience. Yet now, you can keep moving forward.
(Personally, although I think I am speaking for many here, the victim mentality can keep me in a dangerously depressed state.)
You don’t actually have to like what you’re receiving (although your soul WILL be rejoicing). You just have to accept it. In that willingness, you’ve already stepped into a higher version of yourself.
Most of my clients come to me saying some version of, “I feel like I am at war with myself.” And they’re right. Most of our parts (identities), or various internal programs, are just battling it out inside our brain, with our wounded inner child hiding for cover.
Now, if I told my clients upfront that love and self-compassion were the answer they’ve been looking for, they might agree (or they’d at least agree self-hate was the problem), but they’d also probably roll theirs eyes, think “love is the answer” is a nice song lyric, and then inquire exactly what they need to do to heal.
And so instead, I’ll do some version of parts /shadow work, helping them see how their inner critic, judge, perfectionist, addict, saboteur, etc, is actually trying to protect them from a painful (emotional) childhood experience and allow compassion to come right on in and do its job. Simple, but not always easy. Some of us have built up a lot of resistance to love.
Let’s look at it this way…
Many militaries train those going to combat by using dehumanizing strategies (I’ve read some cool research being done within the US military, but unfortunately haven’t heard a lot of great stuff from vets I know). If every military taught empathy, how to see their “enemies” by understanding their childhoods via their upbringing (aka programming) (“Oh, no one was ever there for them either? He was abused too?) and that they too, were doing the best they could, how many would still be willing to go into battle? Throw in some self-compassion and self-forgiveness, realizing once again that our own inner demons are just kids doing the best they can to survive in an insensitive world, how many wars do you actually think there’d be?
We live in world of fake enemies, inside and out. Yet when we break it down and remember everyone- that we ourselves were once just innocent little kids wanting to be loved, we can start to soften. Going deeper, we realize all our hardened parts are the result of our little selves not receiving unconditional love and learned to turn towards fear (living in survival mode). From here, we can soften more.
And once we can love those kids, or “inner enemies”, and parts of us that got confused between the difference between love and fear, they heal.
*I was recently in a workshop with Dr. Sue Morter where someone asked what to do with the resistance that came up during a love-based meditation. She said “Just love that part of you” and that interrupts the cycle. I loved that answer too, as sometimes I think we can get stuck try to figure things out , and instead we can just go back to love.
A Dog and Her Girl 