Inside the Masquerade

The Right Medicine

2010-11-01T22:01:00.002-07:00

I have come to an end of a chapter…so this will be my final post…for now.

November 1, two years ago was the day I got up close and personal to my inner wounds. Catalyzed by a break up.

It turned out, I was being given medicine from the Universe. It tasted like poison, but it was MY medicine, the medicine that would heal wounds I didn’t even know I had.

He was a Medicine Man of sorts. Giving me a dose of homeopathic medicine: drawing out the poison with the same poison.

I realized through an honest and raw probing of my feelings and reactions after the break up that these feelings were really hidden fragments of ME, and have very little to do with him.

A painful, emotional rollercoaster ride that had me feeling lost, confused, sad, angry, resentful, self-pitying, worthless, doubtful, insecure…and did I mention, confused.

I didn’t get it. What was going on? An 8 month relationship…that I chose (although didn’t want to) end, and this is what I am left with: a mess of dark, crazy feelings to sift through?!

And I kept the story alive; I couldn’t let go. I was trying to find an answer, trying to find a reason, trying to make it make sense…whatever that would have been. I was just trying to quiet the noise, soothe the pain and feel okay again. I want to end my suffering. I wanted a way out of my painful feelings.

“A whole person is one who has both walked with God and wrestled with the Devil.” ~ Carl Jung

It’s funny how we hold on to things, replay them in our head over and over, trying to figure it out, wishing we would have said this, done that, analyzing it to death, believing we can find some sort of answer or something that will make us feel better. Whatever that really could possibly be, who knows, but we try in vain to find it… yet we never do because it doesn’t exist.

We hold on to the anger, pain, resentment thinking that this will in some way correct something, make us right, punish them, change things. We don’t let go until we find something that will give us some peace, make us feel better again, make us feel like we are okay.

It’s crazy and it’s distorted thinking, but it’s what we do.

But the craziest thing about it is that it is this very need to have it be different, that keeps us stuck in the place we are trying to get out of. It is what is causing the suffering…the clinging to how we think things should be.

The pain isn’t the pain; the hiding, running away from, the ignoring of, and the hating of it is the pain.

“The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.” ~ Ram Das

It is funny how we always want things to be different when they are challenging or cause us uncomfortable feelings that we don’t want to deal with. We, then, choose our default coping mechanism, which actually just keep us in the abyss of our suffering or a million miles away from our true selves, rather than taking a closer look at ourselves.

“What lies before us and what lies behind us is but a small matter compared to what lies within us.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I learned that nothing needs to be different; that is NOT what will end my painful emotions. I needed to change to make me feel better, not him.

And by change, I don’t mean I needed to change my thoughts and perceptions I had about him and the choices he made (I did ENOUGH self-doubting), rather I needed to change my thoughts and perceptions about myself…the ones that created the ego wounds, the self sabotaging beliefs and patterns. The very ones that lead me to have this relationship with this person.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Victor Frankl

Our wounds are wise; perhaps the wisest part of us.

We don’t come by our wounds by accident. They are meant to be ours. They are part of a larger purpose.

Our wounds carry within them the answers we look out there for.

Our wounds embrace our true gifts.

So as I close this chapter of my life, I will carry forth a very precious gift: the chance to get intimate with me/my deep, dark hidden wounds. Giving me the opportunity to understand them, accept them, love them, and heal them. Transform them. So that they can serve the beautiful purpose they were meant to in this life.

“Go on a journey from self to SELF, my friend…such a journey transforms the earth into a mine of Gold.” ~ Rumi

What Mask are you wearing this Halloween

2010-10-30T13:31:00.006-07:00

Halloween is known as the day of the dead. Halloween, or Samhain, marks the Celtic New Year, a mysterious point in time when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, and people are said to be able to communicate with the dead - ancestors and departed loved ones. Samhain is literally a world between the worlds. It was believed that on this day, the dead would be able to intermingle with the living. The living, to protect themselves from being possessed by lost souls, would dress up in ghoulish masks to frighten off the evil spirits OR to fit in with them and go undetected in order not to be possessed by them.

But it’s not just Halloween that people wear masks, maybe in a more literal and visible way we do, yet everyday we wear a mask, only these ones are invisible…even to ourselves. And we do it for the same reason: “to frighten off the evil spirits OR to fit in with them and go undetected in order not to be possessed by them.” The only difference is that now we are possessed by an invisible ‘evil’ spirit, in which we created.

We begin to construct our masks at a young age as we tried to fit into our family roles and figure which way of being would make us feel the most safe and loved. These masks were constructed to cover up deep feelings of shame, unworthiness and powerlessless.

And we don’t just wear one mask, the wounded ego can take on a variety of different masks to camouflage its perceived inadequacies. The nature of the facade that we choose varies from person to person, and most of us have more than one social mask that we wear, depending on who we are with and what stage of life we are in.

Many of us created personas based on how others perceived our true selves and adjusted our personas accordingly to fit in, to be accepted and to feel like we are okay…creating false selves. Our false selves, then serves as a way for our wounded ego to distance itself from our deep painful feelings, in an effort to protect us. But instead, the masks that we construct to hide and protect what others (and we ourselves) have made wrong, bad, and unacceptable become an invisible fortress around our true selves.

Day by day as we continue to wear our masks of “protection”, we lose contact with our true selves. We obscure our true essence, hiding who we really are and even our ability to know and see the truth about ourselves because we have come to believe in the false self. Once our facade is firmly in place, we begin to be used by the nature of the mask we have chosen. We attract to us the very people who will help us ensure that we can continue playing the same character over and over again-even when it has become so painful that we can no longer take it. We stay glued to our false self because we believe we are the mask we are wearing.

Yet, the ‘evil’ spirits we are hiding from or fighting against is really lost fragments of our true selves. As Samhain is literally a world between the worlds, so is our everyday lives as we continue to wear our masks and live through our false selves. That is the real day of the dead.

It’s not the masks that scare us; it is what is underneath them that frightens us the most.

The Mystery of it All

2010-10-18T20:20:00.001-07:00

You may not want someone to leave your life, you feel you are deeply connected and that you have something great to offer them, they even make you feel that way. But then they do leave (or you may do the leaving because of their actions) and you feel despondent – having you believe that you do not have something great to offer…why else would they leave, or move on?

Perhaps, and most likely, they do not have something great to offer YOU, and that they do NOT add value to YOUR life. And perhaps they were unable to accept the great things you do have to offer because they are filled with too much insecurities of their own. They block good and healthy things from their life because it threatens their security, their deep-seated beliefs, and arouses uncomfortable feelings. Feelings that are buried, unresolved and they are likely in denial of.

They seem so confident in themselves, that you will believe that what they think and believe must be right, because you are not as confident in your thoughts and feelings. And you begin to doubt your own. That confidence is more than likely a survival mask, an amour, ego pride, arrogance and a selfish resolve of their beliefs being right. You threaten this very fragile sense of self…so they leave.

They move on quickly to appease this insecure sense of self, to feel “whole” again, to feel right, to bandage up a wound before it gets to breath. A new companion that, in their mind, proves they are okay, yet in reality it is one that doesn’t threaten their comfortable sense of self, or the status quo. Someone that doesn’t ask them to LOOK at the wounds that are buried within, doesn’t ask them to step up, to become stronger and to heal. Someone who is likely codependent and has the same level of insecurities…someone that is a better match to their level of evolution at this time.

NO, them leaving is NOT proof that you don’t have anything good to offer them, or that you were not good enough, or that you are not worth fighting for. Them finding a new companion so soon does NOT mean you are easily forgotten, that your thoughts and feelings were wrong, that you made a mistake, rather it is proof that they are too weak and too insecure and too in denial to be with you.

Them leaving is a gift from the Universe. Yes, you do have something to offer them, in which they are not ready to receive, but more importantly they do NOT have something great to offer you. So if you won’t leave, if your shadows have taken a hold of you and your fears set it, the Universe will make sure that they leave you…because you are ready to come into your own greatness.

You have healed on so many levels (you just don't know it) and this time the Universe will not let you slip back. So often we wonder ‘why is this bad thing happening to me?’ ‘Why doesn’t the world give me a break?’ This is your break! Taking that person away from you IS because of the grace of the Universe. Allowing you to grow, to find your inner power and move further down your path and toward your destiny.

Our answers don’t come in the way we expect them; if they did then we wouldn’t learn anything because we wouldn’t have anything to learn – we’d already know it if it came the way we thought it would. When the Universe is helping you in this way, making damn sure that you cannot fall back into your self-defeating patterns and staying small, then you are beginning to align your soul with all that is true for you.

The Universe works in mysterious ways, we are not supposed to know it all, or our life would not unravel as it should and the lessons that teach us who we are and what or destiny is would not be learned. I think if we could stop analyzing it all, stop trying to figure it all out, and stop forcing our will (ego wounds), not only would we lessen our suffering, we would also get out of our own way so that we can see the blessing the Universe has bestowed upon us. And really, wouldn’t it be boring if we knew it all?

Everyone loves a mystery. Life is the great circle of mystery.

Love the mystery of your life.

Let the leaves fall where they may

2010-10-07T21:29:00.004-07:00

Until we can claim our true worth, we are always unconsciously proving our false beliefs correct.

No matter the circumstances or the person, the story is always the same: “I am not good enough” “I can’t trust myself” “I was betrayed” “I am a victim” “I am not talented/skilled enough” “I will be rejected” and so on. Your mind will always spin this story as soon as something or someone triggers the corresponding emotion. Analyzing, blaming, resenting, sulking, feeling like a victim is not going “fix” how you feel.

One needs to go deeper. Go inside themselves, rather than look out…out at the “circumstances” or the other people. If you keep running into the same story, there is a block within. It’s not that there is something “wrong” with you, but there is something that is in need of healing or needs to be acknowledged, or something that needs to be challenged by your adult mind.

Until you tend to the roots, the tree will never stand tall and grow, and the branches will break with the slightest breeze. And in keeping with that analogy, Autumn is the time that nature hibernates, let’s go of the old as it prepares for new growth. This is the perfect time, as well, to tune into our natural rhythms and turn inward. A time to go within and reflect. Find out what’s really going on within yourself that keeps creating these circumstances that strips you of true self worth, a sense of self that is unshakeable from experiences out there.

When we realize we control our thoughts and emotions, when we become masters of our thoughts and emotions, then we will no longer feel like victims of outside circumstances or of other people. When we feel like we are victims of circumstances, or that other people are causing us to feel distressing or uncomfortable emotions, that is where we are giving our power away.

A true sense of self worth and power will never be found outside of us, no matter how much money we make, how big of a house we live in, what job title we have, who we are married to, etc.

I don’t claim to know how one can own their power and feel a sense of true self worth, but I do know what keeps one from it. Not believing in ourselves. Not trusting our own voice inside. Needing others to change to make us feel better. Allowing others behaviours, words and actions define how we feel about ourselves.

I do know unconscious patterns are hard to break. I do know it’s difficult to really believe in ourselves when we have learned not to. I do know that it is scary to speak up for ourselves. I do know it is scary to take risks and try something new. I do know that it is heartbreaking to let go. I do know that it is a long and arduous journey to our true selves. I do know that transformation and breaking out of our comfortable cocoon is painful.

But if we could just take a cue from nature and use the Autumn season as a time to quiet ourselves, to rest and just ALLOW things to decay and fall away. Like a tree shedding its leaves. If we could tune into our own true nature, just as a tree does and trust in this natural process knowing that it is preparing us for new growth, we would be much closer to finding our true power and self worth.

What are you hooked on?

2010-09-29T21:45:00.000-07:00

When we are not aware of or have healed our own wounds, we end up chasing them out there and become hooked on to other people's wounds and issues. Instead of listening to our own inner wisdom and being guided by our own feelings, we dismiss them. We tolerate behaviour that is unhealthy, or makes us feel uncomfortable, or is hurtful to us. We try to get them to change, behave differently, think differently, so they’ll treat us better – the way we want to be treated. And when the other doesn’t change, we start pushing down our own feelings, justifying their behaviours, making excuses for them or for ourselves, fooling ourselves, and doubting our own thoughts.

What we are really trying to do, I believe, is have the other validate us and the more they don’t, the more we try to prove our worth to them. BUT, what we are really trying to do is prove our worth to ourselves. It is us who do not believe we are worthy or special enough.

And there is my hook.

That’s why I kept sticking around, even though my head and heart were saying, “this seems unhealthy”, “he has unresolved emotional issues around relationships”. When I felt his actions (not his words, so much) were not honouring me, respecting me or valuing me…I stayed. Hoping he’d see my worth and change. Yes there is many “wrongs” in that statement.

But what really awoke those painful, almost hidden beliefs was what happened after the relationship. After the break up. Sure my insecurities and lack of belief in myself had me be and stay in the relationship, but I am not a wimp or a pushover in a relationship. It was the break up that woke up the beast! The wounds broken wide open! He didn’t fight for me, he didn’t change, he didn’t fall apart (that I saw), he didn’t validate me, rather he disconnected from me AND he found a new girlfriend soon after…one that is still with him almost 2 years later (how invalidating to my thoughts and feelings). Not fighting for me, not falling apart without me, seeming ‘okay’ to let me go and getting a new gf fairly quickly had me hearing my old wounds and beliefs LOUD & CLEAR: “YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH”.

And I realize it was this feeling “I am not good enough” that had me clinging, obsessing over him, holding on to the pain, doubting myself, and a plethora of other self-defeating behaviours, not the break up…not him. I was just chasing my own wound and trying to get it healed by him!?

The more I tried to get him to validate me and prove to me that I am worthy and special enough to fight for, change for, stay with, the more I was invalidated and ‘proved’ otherwise…and then the more I clung and obsessed and held on to the story and the pain of the ‘break up’. Ironically, it is these actions, that not only reinforce those feelings within ourselves, but also adds yet another layer of pain onto that self-defeating belief.

All the clinging and obsessing is not really because I want him (or I wouldn’t have broke it off in the first place), nor is it a measure of my love for that person, it is because I am now looking for proof that I AM GOOD ENOUGH, so I don't have to believe my own demons. And who I am ultimately trying to prove it to, is not him, it’s myself. And I am looking out there for proof of it, driving me to behave in codependent, obsessive, and unhealthy ways which are self-defeating and get me further and further away from “I am good enough!”

The fact is no matter what he did or does, no matter how much I obsess, cling, beat myself up, doubt myself, analyze it all or get the 'proof' that I am looking for to validate my thoughts and feelings regarding him and that relationship, it is not ultimately going to make me feel like I am good enough because the truth is, deep down it is me that does not believe I am good enough.

My wound just hooked on to him. I'm hooked on to my wound.

All I See is Me

2010-09-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

It is so difficult to see ourselves. That is why we have relationships, whether friendships, siblings, coworkers, or intimate relationships, through them we really get to see and learn about ourselves. It’s really not so much about them, it’s really about us. The world – our relationships and our circumstances – are a mirror for us. They mirror back to us how we really feel about ourselves deep down.

But it is so difficult to see ourselves. Difficult situations will come along and maybe help us, and we get glimpses and may decide to alter a behavior or perspective. But we still so often just see the other person. It’s them. We can see their faults, their issues, their unhealthy behaviours…their baggage. It’s easy to see. It may be projection, but it may not be. Either way we see it over there – in them, and we focus our attention outside of us. Nothing really changes much. More of the same people and circumstances keep coming along. Until that ONE!

Sometime we even say it: “he/she is the one”. And they probably are, but in a way quite different than we expected. They are the ONE that has exposed all our wounds, all our hidden fears, trauma and pain. They are the ONE that exposed it to the light of day. And we may try to shove it back down in our own special way, or ignore it, or try to outrun it, but this time we cannot. Our “Soulmate” has exposed our truth. And a true soulmate really is the ONE that will teach you the most about yourself. And often it is the most painful.

Yet this is the chance to really SEE ourselves. If it is our time to grow, time for our soul to evolve to the next level, all our distractions, band-aids, defenses, saviours, and safety nets will be taken from us. The drugs, the sulking, the clinging, the pleading, the next ‘one’ won’t make it feel better this time, so that we can stay the same.

Everything will be stripped away, and you can stay stuck, fighting what is, and screaming “it’s not fair” and nothing this time will save you. You are now face-to-face with YOU! Introduce yourself. There is no longer anything or anyone else to look at, but you. You are alone with yourself. That anger, that resentment, that pain, that sadness…it’s all yours.

This is the struggle we come up against when we come to this point, where there is nothing or no one else…nothing to blame, no one to save us. If you really think about it, it is our own souls (ourselves) that have brought us to this place. We have, at a deeper level, created this for ourselves. Why?

Because our souls are asking us to grow. Our souls want us to save ourselves. Our souls want us to know our own strength. Our souls want us to know our own worth. Our souls want us to find our own power.

Our souls are asking us to look at ourselves. Our souls are asking us to become who we are…or, rather remember who we really are. Our souls are asking us to stop looking outward to find ourselves because that is not where we are. Our soul is saying “look here…inside”. That is why we are stripped bare. That is why we are left alone. That is why our own defenses and band-aids no longer work, so we have nowhere else to look, nowhere else to go…but inside. It’s like tough love.

This ‘painful’ process is an opportunity to get to know you…the real and amazing and complex and worthwhile you. An opportunity to grow…grow into you. And really, what a great opportunity. You have been awoken. You now have the chance to get to really know YOU!

Your fears, your hopes, your wounds, your dreams, your strengths, your joys, your sadness…and accepting it all. Get curious and excited about getting to know you and be close with you as you would with another. How lucky, because what a beautiful person you get to know – you!

These seemingly painful experiences are likely really one of the most special experiences of our life. We are being given a gift— a gift to really know ourselves, know our truth and move closer to our destiny.

I believe when one surrenders to this process and gets to the other side of it, they will have found a strength, a power, and a love they have never known…because they will have found themselves.

Thanks to the pain.

My Self is in here somewhere

2010-09-19T22:24:00.005-07:00

This weekend I came across a new blog, a woman who dealt with her husband’s addiction. I won’t get into her story much, because it is her story, but so many of the things that she was going through during her letting go of him resonated so much with me. To put it briefly, her story validated my feelings.

And during my process of working through my emotions (that were very confusing to me), I thought it was not all that healthy for me to need someone else to validate my feelings. After all, that is part of my “issue”, not believing in my own thoughts, feelings and instincts. Looking outward for validation and proof of value is exactly what got me into that situation in the first place. Which, granted is true enough; however I have learned through this women’s blog that it is okay to want and have your feelings validated … especially when you can’t yet do it for yourself. I think she learned this as part of a Trauma Response Therapy.

And maybe it is okay that I want someone to validate me, and that it’s not because I am just weak and have low self-esteem. If we didn’t get the validation we needed in childhood, then how the hell can we know how to validate ourselves?

Looking back on my childhood, although not tragic at all (and I thought pretty damn good, until I was faced with some of my dormant emotions in the past few years that came from relationships with two dysfunctional people, one with a past addiction problem and the other...just a loser, drinking problems and perhaps a mental illness. I haven’t talked about him here because I wasn’t in love with him, but his fucked up behaviours and meanness to me AFTER I broke it off is what woke up these dormant wounds and hidden beliefs of low self-worth in the first place.I was still working through these feelings when I met my last ex, so it is no wonder I found someone dysfunctional).

Anyway, as I was saying, my thoughts and feelings were never validated when I was young. If I was crying (which I seemed to have done a lot of, including classic temper tantrums), I was told to stop it or don’t be silly. No one tried to understand why I may have been feeling this way…I was just a suck and a cry baby. Oh I heard those ones a lot. I did have three older sisters after all – whom I love and adore! So I believed this about myself.

I looked to my older sisters to tell me what I should be thinking because apparently my thinking was wrong, definitely confused I’m sure from living with a hot-tempered alcoholic father. If my thinking differed from theirs, then I was told I didn’t know what I was talking about because I am younger than them, or my thoughts were just weird. I believed this about myself.

The way I behaved was wrong or inappropriate, was the message I got from my parents. My Mom, from her own upbringing I guess, was always concerned about what other people thought so I always had to act a certain way. If my behaviours brought attention, then I was told I was wrong. I learned to always please others, to change the way I am to fit others sensibilities. I also learned from this, that other people are better than me. I believed this about myself.

From my Father, oh the things I have learned from him that I never knew I learned from him until I went through this dark journey. I learned how to behave from his moods. His drunken outbursts at any time taught me that whatever I did was wrong, therefore something was wrong with me. It taught me that whatever I did was not good enough and I was bad, therefore I was not good enough. I felt ashamed of who I was. Or at the other spectrum, he could be in a jovial, fun mood and would engage me in play. I just didn’t know how to act. My actions would be the same but his responses would change. Although not much of this is clear in conscious memory, but I can surmise that I learned how to be and what I believe about myself from him just by knowing the way he was and how I became.

I became a people-pleaser and would change who I was so not to be criticized or humiliated for who I really was. I became afraid of any confrontation. I became untrusting of my own thoughts and feelings because, well, I was taught by both actions and words, not to believe them. I learned that other people were more important than me and definitely better than me. I internalized it all and came to conclusions about who I was. I became a victim, powerless, weak, timid and self doubting.

My self-expression was lost. I was afraid to show and be who I really was. The little girl who was so funny, self-expressive, affectionate, a ham, an attention-getter as I was told I was ….and I remember that as well, and I am still that way when someone gets to know me well and I feel safe enough to be me, was gone. By the time this happy-go-lucky little girl went to school, she was shy, nervous, withdrawn and stuttered (so stated in my report card that I found in recent years)…and I was still peeing the bed.

So where did this expressive, charming, happy girl go to?

I have been uncovering the answer to this - a question that I hadn’t even thought of asking myself - since I fell into this dark emotional abyss after my break up. And that is probably why I have held on to the story for so long. I am finding me through this.

The Final Performance

2010-09-10T20:43:00.008-07:00

The mind is so ego maniacal. So self-important. So Serious. It grasps. It creates drama. It spins stories. It denies. It defends. We attach meanings and interpretations to everything in context of our ego. An ego created to keep us safe and to defend our fragile insecurities, or to prove our fragile insecurities to be true.

Our egos created from the perceptions of our minds – underdeveloped young minds – that are very ripe and vulnerable. Pure unpolluted minds that perceptively pick up on everything in our surroundings, in our culture, from our family, our peers, and our teachers. Then – voila – we have created our self-image, the person we think we are.

But is it really who you are? Our ego was created so long ago from that young impressionable mind and we have automatically believed this is who we are. No questions.

You may think you are meek, boisterous, social, anti-social, untalented, inferior, superior, smart, dumb, able, incapable, etc. Is this really true or just the image you have created for yourself from all the feedback and meanings you placed on experiences at a young age? It’s like choosing a role in a play a long time ago – a child role – yet continuing to play that role your entire life. It doesn't fit anymore...

So many of us need to break out of old ego molds because they are no longer serving us or supporting us. We are living false lives, merely an image of ourselves, or rather an image of someone else.

Often, it is difficult situations that have us questioning who we really are, the lives we are living, the behaviours we are engaging in, and the patterns we keep repeating. For some this may be a serious illness, a great loss, an end to a significant relationship, or even a job loss.

The situations, people and experiences that really shake the ground that we stand on and break the very foundation that has supported us. The situations, people and experiences that strip us of our ego and leave it weak, wounded and broken beyond repair.

They are our wake calls. A message from a deeper part of you. Shhhhh….just listen without imposing your mind on to it and you will hear the message you are meant to receive from that deeper part of yourself, your authentic self, your all-knowing self, your soul.

And the broken ego mind will struggle to hold on, to get back to 'normal', yet this ends up causing us more suffering than if we just let it die ... let it go.

If you can let go of how you think things should be, the need to hold on or fight what is, to find right or wrong, drown in self-pity, deny, run from, blame or whatever else you may do to ‘deal’ with difficult emotions, you will be able to heed the message that these painful and challenging situations bring.

Perhaps it is time to build a new ego structure, a new image of yourself.

As painful as it is to let a part of ourselves die, or as easy as it is to judge these parts we don't like, make your old ego's last performance stellar! Allow it to leave with dignity and love. Give it the gratitude and applause it deserves.

Then choose a new role. One that supports you. One that is more aligned with who you REALLY are.

Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed – borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves. ~Osho

Shadow Dancing

2010-08-28T13:58:00.001-07:00

Come join the dance

Here you will find the partner that has all the qualities you are looking for
Immediately, like magnets, you are drawn to each other
The lights go dim and the music begins
You sway to the music, you are twirled and whirled
As you hold each other close on the dance floor
Your bodies melt into one another
His scent, you breathe in as if it is life itself
You feel alive, elated.

You admire your partner’s charisma
His confidence and how he takes the lead
His talented footwork sweeps you off your feet
His sweet words fall gently on to your heart
So perfect, all of this, you want to hold on to it
You attach yourself to him to make it more real-like.

You put your treasure under lock and key to keep it safe
As if you were guarding your life
And you give him the key
Your dance partner, now the holder of the treasure you have found
You close your eyes, hypnotized by the music
You feel yourself floating away … floating into him
Attached as if one on the dance floor.

Then the music stops and the lights turn on
You begin to awaken from your trance-like state
You’re confused and feel lost
Things start looking different, feeling different
It appears empty, but you see shadows … like ghosts almost
It feels scary and dark, even in the light
What kind of dance was that?

It felt so good and now it feels so bad
You beg the music man to play another song
But nothing happens
It’s become very quiet except the noise in your head
Still spinning from the dance of your life
But now it sounds distorted
You beg the music man again, to play music like he did before
But only more distortion.

And where is your treasure? Where is your treasure?!
You no longer have access to it because you gave the key away
You look for the key in your partner but you can’t find it anymore
He’s the one that has it after all.

You continue to look to him for the key to your treasure
You try to hold on to him, pull him in close again … dance again
You need the treasure that he has
It is your life-line
You want answers
From him … from the music man … from anyone.

But no answers come from anyone or anyplace
Out there
Beaten, exhausted and ready to give up the fight
In your surrender, you begin to look for the key to your treasure
In a place you were certain it would never be found
Inside. Yourself.

It’s no longer so loud
You begin to hear the music again, but it’s not as distorted
There is clarity
Although fearful that you may be hypnotized again and fall
You remain somewhat doubtful, slowly
Step by step you move alone on the dance floor
The shadows begin to disappear one by one
Soon you realize that the gifts you thought belonged to another
Were really yours all along.

The shadow dance is now over.

A Tempting Poison?

2010-08-18T21:25:00.002-07:00

We feel resentment toward others ONLY because we are not happy with ourselves and our own lives.

The Temptation of Resentment:

Resentment allows us to be self-righteous
Resentment allows us to make another wrong and us right, them bad, us good
Resentment allows the ego to rule and the masks to stay on
Resentment allows our deep painful emotions to stay hidden in the dark
Resentment allows us to abdicate responsibility for our choices
Resentment allows us to blame others for our unhappiness
Resentment allows us to not deal with our own stuff
Resentment serves as a defense mechanism to keep our own monsters at bay
Resentment gives us an excuse to stay with the status quo and not risk change
Resentment allows us to stay safe and comfortable

The Poison of Resentment:

Resentment serves as a barrier to feel our real feelings
Resentment makes us hard, rigid and bitter
Resentment keeps us stuck in the pain we say we want to get away from
Resentment takes away our power
Resentment keeps us victims
Resentment closes us off...to others and ourselves
Resentment serves as a distraction to keep us disconnected from ourselves
Resentment keeps us connected to that which has wounded us
Resentment blocks us from knowing our real selves
Resentment blocks us from healing the real pain

Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to get sick.

Where to point to?

2010-08-12T21:46:00.003-07:00

Why do we view something that didn’t work out as we wanted as bad? A relationship fails. We get unfairly fired from a job. A friendship ends.

Why do we have to find someone to blame? Why do we feel we need to hate, be mad at or blame someone or something? Or if we are more ‘spiritually evolved’ and realize that we are part of the equation, that our beliefs and patterns helped co-create a situation, we still may hate, get mad at and blame, but this time ourselves.

Someone must be responsible! Someone must be punished, we think. We need to know. We need an answer. We need to point a finger at something, someone.

I would say many do not even realize they are blaming or resenting, but even being angry with ourselves is a form of blame, resentment and harsh judgment.

Why can’t we view these ‘failures’ as a learning experience or just an experience? An opportunity to grow? An opportunity to see deeper parts of ourselves? Why do they have to be ugly, wrong, stupid or bad?

One theory. That is what we were taught when we were children and/or perceived with the mind of a child. When we did something ‘wrong’, or something they didn’t like, or we failed at something, we were made to feel (or felt through our own perception of their reactions), that we are bad, stupid, ugly, not worthy, etc. And who wants to feel that?

So we need someone/something to blame for this experience or these feelings. And if no one else can tell you as a child that it is okay to make a mistake and that it doesn’t mean you are bad, dumb, unworthy, inferior, or if they can’t admit they were actually wrong, you carry the burden of blame and shame yourself. A huge and complex burden for little shoulders to carry.

This is then instilled in your belief system and becomes the patterns by which you behave by and the way of seeing things and experiencing things in life.

So, how do we learn to really just experience things, especially things that don’t seem to work out in our favour, or as we wanted, or the experiences that hurt us? And how do we also not make them mean something about ourselves?

How do we accept those experiences without needing to cast blame or make someone wrong or bad and deserving of punishment for their actions?

Theories? Ponderings?

Taking the Stairs

2010-08-07T11:44:00.003-07:00

You walk into a dark stairwell and the door slams shut behind you. You panic! You stand there with no way out; frozen to the spot…numb. It’s pitch black, you can’t see anything. You can’t hear anything, except the loud fearful thoughts in your head. “What do I do now? Where am I? Where am I going? I am lost. I am scared. How did I get here? I can’t do this. Why did this happen to me? Who is going to rescue me?” And after screaming and fighting and denying that it is really happening, you realize no one is coming to save you.

So you finally start moving forward and up the stairs. The stairs are steep, some are very unstable and you feel like you could fall through them at any time and back down to the bottom. And sometimes you do trip and fall on them, especially when you start going too fast and try to miss some steps in order to get to the top sooner.

You still can’t see where that is though, you still don’t know where you are going and your thoughts get louder and your imagination more wild with images of creatures that could come out and hurt you at any time. So loud are the voices in your head and so vivid the images, that they have now become your reality…they are real. You panic more from this false reality you have created with your thoughts and imagination.

The stairs seem to go on forever. You have become so weak and you resign yourself to believing that you are stuck here forever in this dark, scary stairwell, with no way out. So much energy wasted on your fear-filled, delusional thoughts. You are so caught up in your own delusions and fears, in fact, that you can’t hear the laughter that is coming from the top of the stairs.

Finally as you sit down, exhausted from all your fighting and denying of what is, your mind starts to quiet down and you begin to hear faint voices, perhaps familiar voices of friends, coming from above you. You find some hope and you get back up and start climbing the stairs again. Yes, you continue to meet more fears along the way, but you keep going towards the voices above you. It feels like an eternity, and then you finally reach your destination.

A door is opened. There is a party going on with people you know.

They toast you – the Guest of Honour! Still shaken and confused by your journey, you walk up to a friend and she puts her arms around you and smiles. She knows what you know – the way to the light isn’t easy.

Then, you are given gifts: Clarity. Truth. Authenticity.

Something I read: You have been given a gift of seeing clearly while others around you may not. Allow others their reality, even if it differs from yours. If they are in denial, this is a time to honor that.

Allowing others their process is the best gift you can give someone.

How does your garden grow?

2010-07-24T18:56:00.002-07:00

Feeding our negative emotions.

They feed off our thoughts. Our negative emotions want to be fed. Why? Because there is an unfed, an unnourished pain inside of us and the only way we know how to fill it is through feeding it the same garbage that gave it life in the first place. My pain gets fed a healthy dose of negative thinking, unworthiness, self-pity, powerlessness, and victimhood. Others may feed their pain anger, violence, blame, arrogance or whatever satiates it. (Oh, and that’s not to mention the alcohol, drugs or actual food some also use to feed these negative emotions. Just as an addict, we become addicted to our negative emotions.)

Although not easy to admit or even recognize, we do get some sort of pleasure out of continuing self-defeating behaviours because on an intellectual level we know that it is not good for us. Yet, perhaps we just don’t know any other way to relieve our negative emotions and we just feed them the same diet that others have fed it in the past … or how we perceived it to be through a comprehension level of a young child. And we need to feed it. It’s hungry for something, the unresolved pain is just like a hunger pain that needs to be satiated, a hole that needs to be filled.

However when we feed it, we keep it alive, not only alive, but if this becomes our steady diet, we help it grow and it becomes an identity of its own. And then we identify with it. It is us, we think. But it is not! It’s a false self image. An IMAGE. Not real. We keep giving power to it by feeding it and then identifying with it. Giving power to an image – an imaginary monster. If we stop feeding it, it will die. Oh death is scary, isn’t it? So it will cling and fight back with all its might, just as a wounded animal might. It’s called survival instinct.

It is not only the diet of negative thinking and beliefs that fuel these negative emotions, eventually our experiences will feed it too, making the beliefs even truer and that much more powerful. It’s just another form of like attracting like. Our pain is seeking out the same, thus creating experiences that feed it and re-creating experiences very similar to the ones that created those painful emotions.

For me those experiences seem to reinforce that I am inferior, not as good as others, untalented, powerless, will be rejected...

So, how to change it? Find a new way to feed those emotions, I suspect. One that will nourish it, not just satiate it, validate it, make it right. And isn’t that why we keep feeding it? The negative thinking and beliefs validate those feelings, gives them a reason, an understanding. Likely exactly what was missing in the first place.

Maybe it’s like growing a beautiful garden. We need plant the right seeds, feed it the proper nutrients, tend to it daily, prune when needed, and provide it with enough light.

Then we can sit back and appreciate our creation and soak in the beauty of our own garden.

Deluded by delusion

2010-07-07T21:12:00.007-07:00

I deluded myself into believing that, that relationship was okay with me. Deluded myself by thinking his behaviours would change because of his love for me, because of my support and understanding. Deluded myself by convincing myself that my thoughts and feelings could be wrong, rather than his, even though he had a lifetime of dysfunctional thinking and behaviours (just 5 years before and for more than half his life he was an active alcoholic, drug abuser and an associate of bikers (his Dad’s gang)).

But still I questioned MY thoughts and feelings. Maybe I am the one that doesn’t understand, doesn’t get it. Maybe his relationship with his ex and even his son isn’t dysfunctional and emotionally unhealthy like I think it is. He’s so convinced that it isn’t. So I keep deluding myself with self doubt, beliefs that it will change (and I did see some progressive healthy change…so maybe I wasn’t being delusional).

Then I deluded myself again after I let go of him. Deluded myself by thinking he must have changed because he has a new gf soon afterward. Deluded myself by thinking I must have been wrong about seeing his behaviours with the ex as codependent and unhealthy because this girl is STILL with him. I MUST BE WRONG. Deluded myself into thinking that I just wasn’t good enough. I didn’t wait around long enough. I didn’t know what I was talking about. I can’t believe in my own wisdom and instincts.

Throughout the whole relationship I deluded myself. I was questioning my own thoughts and feelings. My own intuition. I tried to override them with excuses, ‘I am not the type to have a conventional relationship,” “he’s like this because he’s had a bad childhood so I will accept it,” “he will realize he needs to change once he sees that he can trust me,” “we are meant to be”…

But that was the fearful codependent girl speaking who believes she’s unworthy, who is very self-doubtful and who clings when she is afraid. Delusion to feed my own unhealthy emotions and wounds. Delusion to keep me from stepping into my power.

Delusion is just another defense mechanism – a very sly one because it is almost undetectable – that keeps us from facing our unwanted wounds, ‘flaws’ and the things that we believe are unacceptable about ourselves. It shields us from hidden aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to feel, such as unloveability or self-loathing. Things we believe we cannot face because we are afraid it will kill our SELF. We cannot live with it. Delusion can even be fear of facing your own strengths!

Although delusion isn’t inherently bad, it was put in place by us to keep us safe at some point because we believed we could not cope with certain feelings or stand up for ourselves, so we shoved the feelings (and maybe even the once upon a time confidence) down more and more as we replaced it with a self we thought was better. A self that kept us safer. A self that fit the role we were put into.

Delusion then became the iron shield that protected us from our greatest fears about ourselves – the ultimate protector. We shoved it all down into a dark cavernous place and labeled it bad, unacceptable, unsafe, unloveable and unlivable.

It’s the big bad monster under our bed that we need protection from. And as we learn, the monster is only a hurt and lonely creature that just needs a friend, and some love and understanding.

But as we held on to these fears, false beliefs, and roles that seemed to keep us safe, delusion only came to serve as a very high and dense wall – hiding us from ourselves. In the end we are only fooling ourselves. We are losing ourselves...our authentic selves and our true power.

Sifting through the sands of time

2010-06-28T23:35:00.002-07:00

Sift: To separate and retain the course parts

To question closely

To distinguish as if separating with a sieve

To examine and sort carefully

That relationship brought out my weaknesses…my wounds.

It brought to surface my dormant wounds. The wounds and beliefs that were “secretly” driving my life. The puppet master controlling my thoughts and behaviours. Beliefs that I didn’t even know existed. Beliefs about myself – not good enough, not special enough, inferior… Ingrained and accepted…without even knowing.

Brought to the surface. His stuff pulled out my stuff. Energetically it magnetized and attached on to mine and pulled it up to the surface. What was this? What was going on? I thought it was him that had the emotional issues. Indeed he did, that is how it pulled up my dormant and similar ones. His, so strong and apparent (to me) that they had the strong pull of a magnet and pulled mine up from deep within.

My strong attachment to him was the attachment to my wounds. It was a match. I just didn’t know what it really was. I thought it was a deep connection to another, one of soul mates, one of … close to love. I guess it was a deep connection, because it was a strong attachment…to some dense wounds.

Brought my toxicity to the surface. Where they really needed to be. Where they really wanted to be so they can be seen. SEEN. Seen for what they really are. Old wounds. Not true. False beliefs.

Brought to the surface to be sifted through. Separating the useless stuff from the useable stuff.

The Child

2010-06-06T13:05:00.000-07:00

Who is it that is reacting this way? Feeling so full of self-pity? Feeling so pained? Breaking down in tears? Not accepting? Not letting go? Making it mean that I am not good enough, worthy enough, special enough? Who is having this internal temper tantrum? Where is this coming from?

My 5-year-old self.

She has been awakened -- all her repressed, unexpressed, misunderstood pain. Old perceptions that she still believes: someone else’s behaviours mean something about her; not realizing it is about them. Perceptions of a 5-year-old still imprinted in my mind, in my heart & in my soul. And I am doing to her, just what was done to her/me.

Doubting her thoughts, her feelings, her choices. Getting mad at her for being so sensitive and behaving this way. Not understanding her, rather just trying to get her to stop, to shut up. Not nurturing her hurt, rather punishing her for it. Belittling her for being a cry baby. Telling her the way she is reacting is not right. Then, continuing to allow her to believe that it is her. She is not good enough, worthy enough, special enough. And this just compounds the hurt and the lack of confidence. It’s not someone else doing this to her now or making her feel this way…it is now me!

I am doubting me; I am belittling me, I am not being understanding….and so on. I think it hurts even more when we hurt ourselves.

We do to ourselves what was done to us because this is all we know. Yet we don’t even realize we are doing it. A break up triggered all the pain and beliefs my 5-year-old self has been carrying and believing all these years. She is still very much alive. She is still very much in pain. She is still very much in need of healing.

And so how would a healthy, loving, adult – a parent treat a child, her own child if she knew she was feeling this way. Believing these things about herself? A nurturing parent would say something like: Your thoughts and feelings are valid. It is okay to be sad. It is okay to be mad. You know what you are talking about. You can trust yourself. You are good enough. You do deserve to be treated with love and respect. You can do and be anything you want. You are smart. You are talented. You are just as good as anyone else. Don’t believe what people tell you about you. Don’t let other people’s behaviours mean anything about you. Don’t take things personally. Know that you are worthy, smart, special, loveable and deserve to be treated in such a way. Believe in yourself! Something like that…

So what I need to heal is NOT him. Is not having him see “the light”, or apologizing or validating what I said. Not needing to see him unhappy. Not needing him & his gf to break up to validate my beliefs that his relationship with his ex was unhealthy and thus not conducive to having a healthy relationship with me. Not needing him to realize that HE fucked up and that He lost someone great. NO, what I need is me. I need me to believe in me. I need me to validate me. I need me to believe I am something great. I need to be that nurturing, loving, understanding parent (not that my Mom wasn’t) to myself.

All he really did was made my 5-year-old self known to my 40-something-year-old self.

The Mask of Control

2010-04-26T13:02:00.001-07:00

The reason we try to control life or other people, is to really control our own emotions. We need things to go as we want them so we don’t have to deal with our own feelings if they don’t. Now this may not be in every area of our lives and it can be so subtle that we don’t even fully notice we are doing this.

For me, and for many, it will come up in intimate relationships. I don’t see myself as someone that tells another what to do and how to do it, but when a relationship is coming apart or I know I have to end it – always for the same reason: they are too immature, have emotional issues (which yes is another indication of my OWN insecurities) - I try to control the situation and that person’s thinking. It becomes manipulative and almost turns into a desperation. I need things to be okay, I need that person to be different; I need that person to understand their “issues” and change them … so that I can feel okay. So that I don’t have to deal with my intense emotions, the ones that come from letting go or feeling rejected.

I have to learn to allow this to be what it is without resistance, without analyzing him and the situation and without the constant doubting of my own thoughts, feelings and the choice I made. These are just my attempts at trying to control my emotions, which actually only cause them to be more distressed and confused.

That’s really what it’s all about ... controlling our own emotions. We can easily fool ourselves into believing we can’t live without that person and we keep our focus on THEIR issues, try to “figure” it out, or try to fix it. But what is the real reason why? Because if we really loved the other person, we would realize they need to find their own path, that they need to “fix” themselves or stay the same if that is what they choose. The point is people do what they do and it is not up to us to control it or change it, but it is up to us to make a choice. A choice for ourselves! One that empowers us, not diminishes us. A choice for our happiness. And don’t fool yourself into believing that you are just compassionate or you want to help them…truth is, you want your feelings to be okay.

FEAR. Fear of our own feelings. Fear of having to cope with our own feelings. Fear of having to really make a choice. Fear of needing to change ourselves. This is why we control.

An inability, or belief that we are unable, to cope with our own intense feelings.

I need to teach myself how to be able to just feel the feelings without having them CONTROL me, so that I no longer try to control outcomes and people.

I need to teach myself how to be okay with my feelings and allow the strong winds of emotion to carry me, rather than spin me around like a tornado.

I need to teach myself how to stay afloat of my feelings and swim along the river of emotions, rather than drown in the muddy waters of self-defeat and despair.

Lies, Lies, Lies

2010-04-21T15:58:00.003-07:00

It seems we lie to ourselves a lot, but it is the believing of those lies that get us into trouble. I am talking about our self beliefs. The ones we picked up in childhood and they just became a part of our identity, that we don’t even know they are not us. Many of the things we believe were taught to us as children or rooted in experiences we had as children. But those decisions to believe what we were told about ourselves or the perceptions that we concluded from difficult experiences were made by a child, yet we continue to believe them and play them out in our adult life.

We keep drawing to us people and/or experiences that prove these lies to be true. But all they are really proving is that we still believe our own lies about ourselves or the beliefs we have. For instance, if someone believes men cannot be trusted (likely they seen this in a primary adult relationship as they were growing up), they will continue to draw men to them who are not trustworthy, confirming their belief, which is actually the lie they have decided to believe.

Now this is not my case, but for me I have come to realize through some painful digging that I have a slew of lies that I still believe, without realizing that they were even there. And this is why we keep living out the lies, because many of us aren’t even aware of them, they are ingrained in us and we just automatically believe this is our personality. But they are LIES!

For me, and probably for most others, I became aware of mine….well acutely aware of mine, when I went through a painful experience and taking note of my reaction to it, which was just way over the top (internally so) and still lingers. It doesn’t fit the actual situation. That’s where I came to meet my lies in the light of day. They are mean and painful lies, but underneath it all I do know they were created from hurt and confusion. I had to ask: "What am I believing about myself that is causing me to feel this way, to react this way, to torment myself in this way?" And the answers were: “I am not good enough. I am not special enough. I am not worth fighting for. I am inferior. Others are better than me. My thoughts and feelings are wrong."

Wow! And I knew I already believed some of these things. I knew I have low self confidence and self doubt, that I have problems with asserting myself, but I NEVER knew I was believing all of these things about myself deep down. I thought I really liked myself, after all, I don’t get into abusive or degrading relationships (but I do get into relationships with weak and dysfunctional men), I don’t allow people to talk down to me, I have a pretty good self-image, I think I am fairly intelligent and funny and I am socialable, so it took a lot of digging to realize I had these beliefs about myself because on the surface it didn’t seem that way…and still doesn’t to the outside world. But I know, from looking at my life – past & present conditions – that I have believed these lies for almost my whole life!

If you take a really close and honest look at your life, especially the things that are not working, no matter what the story and reasons you build up around it, you will begin to see the lies you are believing. Your life will always mirror back to you what you feel about yourself. We draw in circumstances and people who will keep proving to us what we believe, whether it’s true or not. We can only see and experience what we believe to be true.

For me (as for most others), it is taking some time to stop believing the lies because, as mentioned, I have been believing them as truth my whole life, without even knowing I am believing anything at all as they are just ingrained in my psyche and became my personality and my behaviours.

I am still, however, looking externally and trying to collect outside proof to validate for me what I want to believe “that I am good enough, special, worthy…” but I keep finding “proof” of the lies, which just indicates that I am still believing the lies deep down and very much likely why I keep holding on to my “break up” story and needing to remind myself of who he is (dysfunctional and his choices have nothing to do with me) and checking to see if he is still with his new girlfriend because I want to use that as proof that my perceptions of him were correct and I am not worthless and unspecial and so on, but it continues to "confirm" my self defeating beliefs if I see that they are still together. Even though I know logically this proves absolutely nothing at all!!

And this is how I know that I am still believing MY LIES because if I realized they were just lies then I wouldn't need any external proof or validation of my worth....

The lies we tell ourselves hurt us the most.

LOSE Control

2010-04-09T22:00:00.001-07:00

Not the brusque type of control where you tell people what to do or use of physical force over something or someone…I am talking about a more subtle type of control, one that is more deceiving and not as easy to detect or even acknowledge.

I realized I try to manage my feelings – the painful feelings of rejection, thinking I am not good enough, not special enough, not worth fighting for by clinging.

By Clinging. By Resisting. By Convincing another. By Doubting myself.

All ways to not have to deal with my own wounds, my own painful feelings. A way of avoiding them. For instance, we make a choice, one that seems good for us, one that is powerful then we start doubting our choices because it means that things will change and that means that we must change too. And change is scary, it takes us into new and unknown territory…out of our comfort zones and we want to just jump back in, to have things back the same way they were (but different), even if it wasn’t ideal.

For me, after I made my choice to finally leave a relationship that wasn’t feeling good for me in some ways, I got too scared with the choice I made because that meant life would change and I would no longer be with that person (which I am sure triggered many emotions and insecurities) so I started DOUBTING myself, started CLINGING. I reneged on my decision, groveled to have him stay (even though I was quite clear that I couldn’t stay in the relationship and I let him know how unhealthy I think his behavior is).

Then I start needing to convince him that what he is doing is indeed unhealthy and that it is not good for him or his son. I use examples, I use psychological definitions, I think I even try guilt. And even if this is all true and I am right on the money about his issues, I have come to realize that, that is still CONTROL. A way for me to control the situation, so I don’t have to make a healthy choice for me and go through the subsequent painful feelings of letting go. And so many of us do this, I know that.

Then when none of this works - my feelings aren’t soothed, he won’t change , we aren’t together anymore- I resist. I resist the process of letting go and begin to obsess and analyze him. And I believe that this may just be a tactic to manage my feelings and not fall prey to my insecurities and those old self defeating beliefs.

Trying to control.

It’s hard to think of me as controlling because it is not in the way we think of control: aggressive, malicious, loud, abusive or whatnot.

It’s more subtle, and yes I know control is a huge thing for codependents but I am not even talking about it in that way as a form of manipulation, enabling and empty threats, but, yes I suppose codependent in way of relying on someone else’s behavior to dictate how I feel and needing the other person to change to make me feel better.

All ways to control our emotions. And herein lies where I realize I have issues of control.

Doubting.Clinging. Convincing. Resisting. Trying to control the situation so that I wouldn’t have to feel these painful feelings…the painful feelings of what really are wounds from self defeating beliefs. And I realize I have done this since I was a child. To avoid feelings of humiliation, or rejection, or feelings of inadequacy - the things that seem to trigger my insecurities and cause painful emotions - I would either avoid the situation or person completely or try to “manipulate” the situation into being a certain way or the person into behaving a certain way. And it was not to be malicious or to have authority over others, more so to have authority over my own emotions because I didn’t/don’t have the healthy and mature coping skills to deal with such feelings. Again, just conditioned ways of coping created from a child’s mind.

But the irony of control, just as with addictions (another way to control or completely avoid our painful feelings) is that it ends up causing us more pain and drives us even further away from resolving these things in our life and further away from ourselves.

It’s funny how we do certain things as a way to protect and save ourselves from things we think will hurt us, but instead these tactics are the very things that end up hurting us and leaving us feeling abandoned.

Do we hide in our pain?

2010-04-06T15:11:00.002-07:00

If so why? Is it so we don’t really have to look at our own life and do something different about it? Is it a way of filling a void inside, an emptiness? A way of numbing the real pain?

I think it may be, but filling this void with pain and suffering is certainly a dysfunctional way. It could also be a way of distracting ourselves from the real pain as well, one that is buried so deep. Perhaps just as an alcoholic or drug addict fills their emptiness with their substance of choice or to numb their deep-seated pain. It’s a way of coping. A dysfunctional way of coping. A learned way of coping without even knowing it is being used as a coping mechanism. Or, rather the lack of coping skills…

But, these conditioned reactions/coping mechanisms end up doing just the opposite of what you intended. So rather than filling a void, soothing your feelings, they end up increasing the feeling of emptiness and disconnecting you from your feelings and your soul.

However these coping mechanism, put in place likely a long time ago as a child as a way to keep you feeling safe in the situation/circumstance you were in, a role you played to fit into the family or society structures, are now just hindering your growth as an adult.

My obsessions and my addiction (which may be to pain) do this to me. I feel a painful emotion and instead of just coping with it in a healthy way (whatever that may be, I obviously do not know), I intensify it. I dissect it, analyze it and definitely the person who triggered it. I dive into my pain and stay. I realize when I feel a intense and painful emotion as a reaction to something,(which right away is usually a sign that it is something from the past) I make it more intense – maybe akin to a temper tantrum – and the intensity of it no longer really fits the situation, so then I intensify the situation to make it match this, thus intensifying the feeling more.

Does that make sense? I blow the situation out of proportion in my mind, make it mean sooo much more than, not only what it really meant, but than what it really meant to me. When I broke up with him, I wasn’t crying, when I heard the news (the last straw in a string of hurtful behaviours: his ex-wife sleeping over, who just lives down the street and has tons of friends of her own, so he can take care of her after cosmetic plastic surgery (can't imagine why I felt like a third party in our relationship)) I was not devastated, in fact I was just in waiting for something to prove to me AGAIN that my perceptions were correct (oh I wish I was wrong, perhaps why I held on and ignored that inner voice for so long) that they have an unhealthy attachment and likely a codependent relationship happening, thus this isn't the place for me or the place to have a healthy relationship. So it wasn't a HUGE shocker, because, as I said, I was just waiting to see what else was coming. But here I am enmeshed in these painful emotions 1.5 years later!!

It seems when my “rejection” button is triggered, I go into these ways of reacting and behaving. And because most of us do not recognize these automatic ways of being, I believe it’s real. It’s real that I am so pained, devastated, powerless and have been victimized because that is what this feeling is telling me. This feeling that I am actually feeding and that feeds the situation, morphing it into something barely recognizable now and then that just fuels and intensifies the feeling more, thus having me believe the situation was that painful …and round and round it goes. Are you dizzy yet? Certainly confused.

Just as an aside: Not that I think feelings are false at all, in fact it is more the stories that have been attached to the feelings that are a misperception. I note this because I grappled with this question. Aren’t feelings real? Can’t I trust my feelings? If not, then what can I trust? I believe feelings are our faithful guide, guiding us to inquire into what is going on and that is what will bring us to what our conditioned beliefs are and give us a glimpse of what thoughts we are telling ourselves.

So in order to heal this, I must first unravel this riddle of pain and confusion that I have created JUST to get back to the truth of the original experience: “the Break Up”, which, yes, was hurtful and disappointing BUT not all this other stuff, I’m sure. Then from there I need to heal the ORIGINAL wound and break the automatic, self-defeating patterns. Although I think I am going through that process at the same time as the unraveling.

Perhaps that’s why it is taking so long to do. Awareness, healing new and old wounds, breaking old patterns and transformation all at the same time.

Slowly coming out of hiding in the pain.

Meet my Inner Goddess

2010-04-02T20:54:00.002-07:00

I have found my Inner Goddess. This is the Goddess that lives within me. She speaks of my experience and my process. A feeling and a knowing I have had with me my whole life.

Queen of the Night, Goddess of the Dark Moon, Guardian of the Underworld

The triple-faced Hekate is one of the most ancient images from a pre-Greek stratum of mythology and an original embodiment of the Great Triple Goddess. She is most often linked with the dark of the moon and presides over magic, ritual, prophetic vision, childbirth, death, the underworld, and the secrets of regeneration.

Gifts of Hekate: Vision, Magic, and Regeneration

Hekate is every woman's potential as a witch, seer, medium, healer.

Guardian of the Unconscious

Hekate stands at the crossroads of our unconscious. As she watches us approach she can see both backward and forward into our lives. When Hekate is honored she bestows the gifts of inspiration, vision, magic, and regeneration. However, when we reject and deny Hekate, her shadow side manifests as madness, stupor, and stagnation. Her creative activity takes place in the inner world. As Dark Moon Goddess of the dead, she not only represents the destructive side of life, but also the necessary forces that make creativity, growth, and healing possible. The paradoxical function of this goddess of the moonlit crossroads is to pierce the darkness.

As the Queen of the Underworld, Hekate is a guardian figure of the unconscious. She enables us to converse with the spirit and thus is mistress of all that lives in the hidden parts of the psyche. This Goddess of the Dark Moon holds the key that unlocks the door to the way down, and she bears the torch that illuminates both the treasures and terrors of the unconscious. Hekate guides us through this dark spirit world wherein we can receive a revelation. She then shows us that the way out is to ride on a surge of renewal.

Hekate may inspire us with a vision, insight, or prophetic foretelling, but the way to her wisdom most often involves a descent into the underworld of our unconscious. When Hekate comes upon us we can experience her as a plunge into darkness. She is often present in our nightly sleep and casts her glow to illumine our dreams. She is also hovering over us when we are immobilized in long, sleeplike stupors of addiction, depression or blocked creative energy. During times of drastic change, when we face the loss and death of that which gave our life structure and purpose, Hekate is there. And when we encounter her through the vast transpersonal realms of the collective unconscious, her light can show us God/dess or the Devil as she fills us with divine inspiration or deluded madness. Hekate guides us whenever we do our inner work through both spiritual and psychological processes.

The symbolic images found in our dreams are messages from Hekate. They show us in visual form the drama of our internal personalities and the issues that live in the unconscious, as well as the shape of the future and the delusions of our minds.

Hekate embodies the cycle of death and renewal. Death always brings us face-to-face with our fears of the unknown, which surface during these critical crises of our lives. The process of renewal necessitates change and the sacrifice or letting go of the old. As our life forms begin to deteriorate, the phosphorescent light of decay begins to glow and illumines the landscape of our inner darkness.

This vast transpersonal dimension contains both positive and negative energies, which are constantly changing and shifting back and forth into one another, and here we can easily lose our sense of individual self who has an identity, purpose, and direction. Because the shape of things keeps changing in these more fluid realms and we do not understand what is happening to us, we can be filled with fear, anxiety, and feel as if we are going mad. There is a sense that we are out of control, this can't really be happening to us, everything seems unreal. A descent into what appears like madness may often be involved in the coming to terms with this ancient Triple Goddess.

Incubation Period

Hekate also suggests the motif of incubation as we go down deeper still into the darkness of unconscious sleep as a necessary step in the cycle of transformation and renewal. The silence, stillness, and solitude that descends and envelops us in a cocoon of what seems like non-being. This is a space of inactivity and unknowing when nothing seems to be happening. Because Western culture emphasizes action and productivity and devalues those times of lying fallow and waiting for what one knows not, we sometimes label Hekate's incubation periods as being immobilized, getting stuck, being in limbo, spacing out, depression, despair, feeling numb, blank, or frozen.

Journey of Becoming

This time encompasses the formless void in the transformation cycle when what was, is no longer and what is to be has not yet appeared. Like the ebb tide, which is the still pause between the tidal Waters going out and those coming in, this extreme stage generally occurs prior to the creative freeing of bound-up energy. The still pause of nonactivity is Hekate's contribution to the journey of becoming.

Hekate teaches us that the way to the vision that inspires renewal is to be found in moving through the darkness. As we enter into Hekate's realm, we must confront and come to terms with the dark, unconscious side of our inner nature. If we are to receive her gift of vision and renewal, we must face this Dark Goddess within ourselves, honor, praise, and make our peace with her. By giving her our trust as guardian of our unconscious and surrendering to her process, we can allow ourselves to grow into an awareness of the rich realm of our personal underworld.

Are safety nets safe?

2010-04-01T15:47:00.004-07:00

The next series of postings will be loose transcribed excerpts from my journal on things I have already or am still working through as I continue on my journey of healing. Thoughts and feelings that seem to cycle around and hopefully taking me deeper into myself.

I know I have to let go of this break up story. I know it is useless and tormenting but for some reason I am still holding on. Holding on to what though? He is gone, the past happened waaaay in the past and it can’t be changed anyway. And furthermore, I really didn’t want to be with him…well the him he was or rather in that type of relationship where I felt like a third party.

So then why do I hold on to the story? I guess this is a safety net for me. By “reminding” me of what his character flaws are, of why I believe he did the things he did (insecurity, codependency issues with ex, fear of abandonment, emotional immaturity) I don’t have to believe my demons. Those painful beliefs that I am not good enough, loveable enough,special enough... I keep needing to retell the story to myself and go over his “issues” over and over again so I don’t fall down into the devil’s lair.

I need to keep analyzing his personality and his behaviours as a way to convince (maybe that’s the wrong word) myself that my initial perceptions of his “bizarre” behaviours and this ex relationship were correct. I need to keep convincing myself, perhaps like a good parent or friend would, that my thoughts and feelings were “right” – not that I am trying to go for right and wrong, I am just trying to get to a place where I can BELIEVE and TRUST my own thoughts and feelings about things.

And therein lies the real problem. My inability to believe in my own thoughts and feelings, thus this story stays with me. I need to use his “stuff” to convince myself that I am ok, that I am not wrong about this, that I did not perceive this incorrectly because if I did that means that I CAN’T trust my own thoughts and feelings. It really is an internal war and he is being used as the … I dunno… scapegoat (again maybe the wrong word).

An internal war between my self-defeating beliefs: self-doubt, self-pity, inferiority, and my inability to know my self-worth to trust myself and my wiser self that does believe in my own thoughts and feelings.

I know a lot of spiritual texts say just LET GO, but perhaps this holding on has served a purpose: a way to keep myself afloat and not drown in these old and painful beliefs. A way to keep disputing these beliefs, until they dissolve. Yet, I do know, this is still a form of codependency or being outwardly focused by needing others to validate me, validate my own thoughts and feelings.

I do at least know this experience is pushing me to look within and to learn to believe in myself, to look to me for answers and to trust what’s inside. But I keep looking outside of me - to others … anyone and checking out his website to see how his life is going, especially to see if he is still with his girlfriend that he found soon after me(which to my defeating self means that I wasn’t good enough, special enough , so it actually defeats the purpose and creates the opposite effect) - to validate my thoughts and feelings.

Perhaps this story won’t go away until I become strong enough in myself to just fully TRUST and BELIEVE in my own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. Then I can leave this false safety net behind. Actually, these are the same words I said to him. He holds on to his ex-wife, keeps a close, platonic marriage type of relationship with her because it saves him from having to face his painful feelings (just as alcohol and drugs once did for him) and feelings of abandonment (his childhood wound) after she told him she wanted a separation 6 years ago. She left him, but she didn’t really leave him. Works well for a recovering alcoholic and a codependent, I guess. But it didn’t work for me.

I don’t want to have this false safety net, which I can soooo clearly see with him (yes, more proof that, that is what is going on with me too because our relationships hold a mirror up to ourselves), because I know that ultimately it is not safe at all; it just becomes a way to get tied up, stuck in the past and caught up in the net...so to speak.

But again … if I don’t have the story of him and his stuff, I will believe my own demons…more so than I already do. I can’t let them win. I suppose I know I won’t really drown if I let go of the story/safety net. I really believe it’s all about our own sense of self, our own security within…I have always known that, as I said it about him a looooong time ago.

BUT how does one become strong and secure within themselves, learn to trust in themselves – whether in their own abilites or in their own thoughts and feelings – without using other people, relationships and experiences to help validate that for us?

Taking my projections back

2010-03-28T14:34:00.001-07:00

People come into our life and it may be a painful experience in order to help our souls emerge into who we are. It’s just like a birth process and that in itself is painful, but ultimately rewarding (I am guessing as I do not have children). These experiences can trigger our deepest fears of abandonment and rejection and our insecurities.

The person that catalyzes these feelings represent an aspect of ourselves that we are trying to reclaim and get back or that we have never come into. For me it is knowing my self-worth, believing in myself, self-value, self-trust and just a strong sense of self. If I could just see this symbolically, see him a symbol of the power I lost in childhood. What does he symbolize about who I am? About what I am trying to reclaim? Because I do know that it is really about me.

Projections. Often when this is talked about it’s about how we project our shit on to other people, as in misdirected anger, but often we project our “good” stuff on to others too. And maybe more so if you have codependent tendencies... I dunno. So I made a list of the things that I admired in him, that I thought were him, but perhaps really weren’t. We can perceive things in different lights depending on how we feel about the person or rather more correct, how we want that person to be for us.

The Projection List:

Stage Presence

Charisma

Confident
Sexy
Talented
Creative
Profound
Wise
Strong
Responsible
Committed
Loving
Spiritual
Intellectual
Awesome

And most of those perceptions came from him being a musician and song writer. In reality, that was more his stage persona or narcissism, a word he used once to describe why he had to be the singer even though his singing voice isn’t so great. Some of the other perceptions came from him being married for 16 years, him having the son live with him most the time, him having such a close relationship with ex and an extra close (read clingy) relationship with son. In reality, this all had to do with his addiction issues, codependency and deep-seated insecurity.

So perhaps all these projections I put on him are really aspects of me. I don’t claim many of them because I don’t believe them about me. And it’s just that, self-beliefs that hold us back. It’s what we believe about ourselves that directs our lives and feeds our experiences. What we believe is not necessarily the truth. Truth is, these are likely all my unclaimed power. I see it in others because I am unable to see it in myself. After all, people and relationships just hold up mirrors to us. Maybe I was never really seeing HIM, rather I saw my own strengths and power that was cut off from me in childhood.

I am here to reclaim my power and give his stuff back!

The Original Sin

2010-03-19T14:21:00.003-07:00

REJECTION: The original wound

That’s where this relationship, this break up, this inner torment has lead me – to my original wound. I know and have always known that since this break up happened it wasn’t so much about him, the relationship or the break up. Hell, I knew all along he had emotional issues and I knew all along it wasn’t going to last. I was always waiting for the next shoe to drop. I knew I couldn’t stay with someone whom I thought was emotionally unhealthy and whereas his behaviours (not mean) hurt me and made me feel…well rejected.

I went through feeling a connection with someone, feeling happines, feeling joy and helping someone open up and grow (and that happened to a certain extent), but when it stopped: I went through heartache, I went through attachment, I went through obsession, I went through self-hate, I went through resentment, I went through blame, I went through codependency, I went through ego pride. And going through all these layers (over and over again) brought me to the core wound: Rejection.

So what does rejection, then, mean to me? It must mean something very bad, very dark and ugly if it created all these other painful and destructive layers. Of course, they all were originally created as layers of protection. Protection from an emotion that was too confusing and too painful to look at. This feeling that I most likely experienced in childhood at a very young age from someone I loved and looked up to, someone I thought was there to guide me, protect me and love me (in a healthy way.) So what meaning did I give this feeling, this feeling that I am sure I didn’t have a name for, let alone an understanding of? I guess I made it mean that I am not good enough, I am not worthy, I am not special enough, I have nothing special to offer, I am inferior, my thoughts and feelings are not valid, I am not worthy of healthy mature love and so on…

Which then lead me to look for validation of who I am through others… anyone, and obviously through others that have very similar dysfunctions as the original wounder. It led me to not believe in myself, to feel inferior, to not voice my opinion, to not be self-confident, to not trust my own thoughts and feelings, to be powerless and a victim and be unable to soothe my own pain. The feeling of rejection – rather perhaps actually just the belief of being rejected, has not only clouded my vision of who I am really am, but it has clouded my vision of others. And thus I project. Perhaps I project my true power, that in which I have not been able to connect to, onto others thus believing they are so wonderful, confident, talented, worthy and I cannot live without them. But I am wise at the core, because I do eventually see the real person but it becomes so difficult to believe what I see, to believe what I know deep down.

This feeling of rejection has even clouded my meaning of rejection. After all I was the one who chose not to accept him and his behaviours in my brief moment of connecting to my power. After all I do know that another’s behaviours have nothing to do with me and it is their crap, so rejection really isn’t REAL. My illusion. My delusion.

Pain as a gift?

2010-03-15T15:17:00.001-07:00

Could this pain really be a gift? Is pain ultimately guiding us to our true selves? To live our destiny? Is it just our perceptions of pain that keeps us suffering? Do we misguidedly believe pain is bad and we must rid ourselves of it. Our conditioned belief that we cannot endure suffering and we must do anything to overcome it, rid ourselves of it no matter what the cost.

But what is the cost? Pushing down feelings, closing our hearts, living lives that are just barely tolerable and possibly creating illness in our bodies from unprocessed pain? I have read many times that many physical illnesses or chronic injuries in our body are caused by unresolved pain. There’s a whole book on back pain being contributed to addicts and alcoholics not facing their pain. Our emotions get lodged inside our bodies because if we can’t express them and choose to repress them, our bodies will express them for us.

Or another cost could be not realizing who we really are and allowing our fears, addictions and obsessions to rule our life, creating the same patterns of pain over and over again. Instead of going into our pain, we just remain on the surface of it or not even going close to it by running away from it. Instead of investigating the dark and embracing our wounds and feeling our painful emotions, we find something to distract ourselves … a new relationship or an addiction to a legal or illegal substance. But can you really run away from your pain? Can these distractions really soothe these pains for good?

Sometimes I wish I could do this. I really do. I still see pictures of my ex with his girlfriend, the one he got right after our intense (and his first sober) relationship, and wonder how can they still be together after a year. I thought she was just a bandaid to fill his void. I often wonder how is it she tolerates him having such a “close” and what I thought was a dysfunctional and codependent relationship with his ex if I couldn’t (which I go into in the post Happy New Me). I thought it was my semi self-esteem and self-value that had me choose to not tolerate that anymore. I thought it was my wise intuition that finally said “no more, it’s time to leave. You are right this is not healthy even if he is so sweet to you and you adore each other. Nothing good can come of this.”

But good came to him just two months later and a new admiring girlfriend that he has now had a relationship with longer than we had. And, me, I’m still here in the pain. Am I in the right place? Like the wise sages say, I am going through this pain, working through my feelings, really trying to process old wounds, yet I am still suffering. So how can I can believe this pain is a gift? How can I know I did the right thing, not only to leave, but to investigate this pain? To go down into this really dark place? Do I just need to embrace this suffering instead of trying to rid myself of it, believing this will lead me to my authentic self, to a happier ending? Is it really better to go into the pain like all the wise spiritual teachers say? Because I am not feeling it. Yes I know my perception probably needs to change, as do my self-defeating beliefs and on what I see/perceive in his life and his relationship. But it is really hard. I guess I want a guarantee that I will be free by doing all this deep and painful work. I want to see (want proof) that my "intuition" and my "courageousness" to leave was right. And by right, I want to see that it is not working out for him. That choosing to run away from your pain, run away from something good due to fears & codependency is not a good choice and that will lead to unhappiness and suffering. But I am seeing quite the opposite! Or perhaps I am just creating my own suffering by doing this. I don’t know. I want to believe one thing, but I don’t yet.

If pain truly is a gift, I am ready to accept my gift.

Thanks Dulce for inspiring me to post something. I have all this stuff locked away in my journal...

The Language is in the Knowing

2010-02-05T21:22:00.004-08:00

We get all caught up in trying to describe stuff, label things or analyze something or someone, and we lose the real meaning of it all. Sure words are a useful form of communication, but often when we are trying to figure out an issue or facing a difficult challenge in our life, language just gets in the way.

Using language is what I have been doing for over a year now in trying to “understand” the break up, to get a handle on my emotions, and to try to quiet the demons in my head.
Analyzing all his issues, so I don’t have to believe my own self-defeating beliefs because he and the break up really TRIGGERED them.

Descriptions of all my emotions so I can better understand them and where they came from.
Replaying everything over and over again in my head to find the right words to describe my feelings at the time, to remember why I chose to walk away from that relationship….because once I did, the words of self-doubt and ‘not good enough’, ‘not special enough’, ‘not loveable enough’, ‘not worth fighting for’ were all screaming in my head.

Explanations of what went on and who he is to convince myself I did the right thing, that I made a healthy choice. But all of this language to understand and make sense of it all has just added to the noise in my head, the self-doubt and the confusion…more ammunition for the demons to play with.

It is true that ‘The devil is in the details.’

Our mind, and the way the brain functions, needs to make sense of things and create patterns to organize and understand things, which is all good and useful for it's purpose, yet we rely way too much on our minds and so little on our gut instinct or intuition. That inner knowing that doesn’t require all the workings of the brain.

In yoga, my teachers and myself, as well, talk about quieting down the mind in order to get in touch with your inner voice and your intuition. Your inner wisdom. It’s just a knowing. The heart and the soul does not work in language, it works in a deeper knowing. I even use words to try to help remember that I had the knowing and to try to remember what that knowing was! WORDS, so many words…almost like an addiction that I keep relying on.

I could go over my break up and his dysfunctional behaviours, what happened, why it happened, what I should have said, what I should have done (listen to my intuition in the first place) to get more and more understanding ,thinking it will help me in letting go . I could spin these words over and over in my head and in my journal for another year plus and I likely won’t get any closer to healing.

I need to stop using the language of the mind and trust the knowing of my soul.

Beauty and the Beast

2010-01-22T11:10:00.003-08:00

I went for a hike yesterday around what’s called The 4 Lakes and the scenery is absolutely breathtaking. I was walking up a forested path with trees, mountains and a picturesque waterfall on one side of me and the calmness of a still, blue lake on the other side. It felt like I was walking through a story book; a fairy tale. And as I was enjoying the surreal beauty and peacefulness of the walk I became acutely aware of the possible presence of wild animals as noted in my article below and I thought to myself:

Don’t allow the monsters to ruin or prevent you from seeing all the beauty that surrounds you. Don’t let them scare off all of the beauty within you. I told myself that the monsters in your head, after all, are just a figment of your imagination born from wounds, wounds from misperceptions of a child’s mind.

The monsters in reality are afraid of YOU, so they use scare tactics as their defenses against you. They know you are more powerful, it’s only YOU that does not know this. Why do you think they fight back so hard? Why do you think they are so relentless? Because they know you are stronger and you could take them out.

They will do whatever they can to survive: trickery, become louder, project images onto your mind to prove they are real and they are stronger. They will even have you experience repeated hurtful patterns externally and repeated self-sabotaging patterns internally to prove their realness and strength. Yet, what you don’t realize (because they are so sly and deceiving) is that it is actually YOU creating these situations just by the sheer fact of believing in them!

It reminds me of the lives of circus elephants. As babies they are chained by the ankle so they can’t escape their cage. When they grow up to be big, strong, magnificent animals, who can now break that chain with their own strength, they don’t. They don’t escape that life of entrapment and cruelty, even though they can, because they have learned to believe that, that weak chain can still retain them and hold them to their cage.

So for the rest of my hike, I decided not to believe in the beasts, and I continued my walk in solitude and freedom taking in all the beauty. I decided I was going to write a new story, my own fairy tale.

Being Bear Smart

2010-01-17T23:45:00.010-08:00

Where I live is beautiful with lots of wondrous mountains, flowing rivers, an omnipotent ocean and lush forests. But amongst all this beauty there is a presence of danger. While enjoying nature’s beauty you may encounter wild and dangerous animals, especially bears, who habitat these lands - a large, powerful animal that may be hungry, scared or just in a bad mood. Residents who live in this part of the country or tourists visiting this scenic area receive pamphlets on what to do if you encounter one of these wild animals:

• Don’t panic

• Never feed the bear

• Indentify yourself as a human by talking in a calm tone of voice

• It may try to intimidate you by popping its jaws or swat while blowing and snorting

• It may lunge toward you or bluff charge you, but will turn away

• Although scary, you are not likely to be hurt

• Do not provoke or try to fight off the bear

• If the bear does attack you offensively, fight back with any weapon you can find

• Do not play dead

• Never run. Running could invite pursuit

• Stand your ground and face the bear

Great advice for our own monsters that are lurking in the dark forests of our mind. When you are faced with your own “dangerous” monster, do not panic. Stop feeding the monsters with your negative thoughts, your addictions, your obsessions, and any of your other unhealthy behaviours.

Talk to them from your adult self, that wise, knowing self. Soothe them with a calm tone of voice and do not attack them. They may try to intimidate you with their scare tactics, threatening your safety. Call their bluff and they will eventually retreat.

If your monsters are relentless and are hurting you - fight back. Fight back with all the strength you have inside of you, do not roll over and play dead. Do not let them win or believe they have won.

Never run away from your monsters. You can’t escape your monsters by running away from them because they will run after you. You cannot outrun your monsters because they will always been in pursuit and they are much faster than you.

You cannot escape them by trying to hide from them or fight them off (through your addictions, obsessions and other distractions) because when they come to, when they find you they will fight back harder and fiercer.

You escape your monsters by facing them and standing up to them and letting them know who is in control. Identify yourself as a wise, confident, powerful human being!

Who is responsible?

2010-01-15T10:22:00.003-08:00

I wrote this article for an online magazine: examiner.com

When our life isn’t working out the way we want it to, we often blame external things or other people. The relationship isn’t working because he is dysfunctional, your job isn’t recognizing your full potential, or you aren’t making enough money and can’t afford a vacation. And it’s because of this or because of that, this circumstance or that person. Although these may manifest as external problems, it is often emotions or thought patterns that hold us back.

We believe we are victims to circumstances and other people. That it is someone else’s or something else’s fault that we are not happy or getting what we want in life. Something out side of us is causing us to be unhappy or stuck. And even if you don’t think you are blaming someone or something else, you probably are if you are not taking 100% responsibility for what is going on in your life and for your unhappiness. Be careful not to blame others for who you have chosen to be or what you have chosen to believe about yourself.

Sure, maybe it is true that you are in a relationship with an emotionally unhealthy person or that your boss is a tyrant, but these are all choices you made. I am not saying they are good choices or bad choices or that they are right or wrong choices, I am saying that you and only you made the choice. Even how you reacted, perceived it, or perhaps, made it mean something about you, is your choosing.

Perhaps an unconscious choosing due to your own self-negative thoughts and self-beliefs, but it is your responsibility to clean these up … without judgment and blame towards yourself as well. Merely become aware of what they are, and then realize it is you who is choosing to continue to believe and act upon these thoughts and beliefs through your choices and through your reactions. They are 100% your thoughts and 100% your emotions, no one else is thinking or feeling for you.

Taking 100% responsibility for your life may sound difficult or scary but it can be very freeing too because you will know that you have the power to choose. Choose who you allow in your life, choose how you react to situations and choose how you perceive certain events. You can unlock from the shackles of blame and resentment and take your power back.

Ask yourself the following questions. If you were 100% responsible for yourself:
What would you do for yourself today?

What choices would you make?

What boundaries would you set?

What would you stop doing?

What or who would you let go of?

What would you open up to?

By being 100% responsible for your life, you learn to be able to respond to your own needs, build a sense of personal authority and save yourself because no one else is coming to rescue you.

Letting the Enemy In

2010-01-05T15:22:00.001-08:00

I open the door wide and let them in.

Oh I try to blame others for it, spend my time analyzing the other person’s issues, how they hurt me, how I am the victim, but it is only I that let the enemy in. And I make the enemy stronger by repeating the same self-defeating thoughts and make the enemy stronger by continuing to believe these false self-beliefs. Beliefs created so long ago with an innocent child’s mind and sensitive heart.

Unskilled behaviours of the adults I looked up to, looked to for love, support and understanding and when it was dysfunctional, it created my sense of self, how I felt about myself and who I thought I was. And I realize I am still operating from that same place decades later! I am not who I think I am. These thoughts, these beliefs are what are creating the pain inside … nothing external. I am the one feeding the imaginary monster.

We let the enemy in when we are weak.
We let the enemy in every time we lie to ourselves and make excuses and justifications for our unhealthy or addictive behaviours.
We let the enemy in every time we listen to our negative thoughts and destructive self-beliefs and self criticism.
We let the enemy in when we try to control or manipulate a situation or person to feed our own unhealthy emotional needs.
We let the enemy in when we aren’t compassionate with ourselves and forgive our mistakes.
We let the enemy in when we don’t believe in ourselves and don’t trust ourselves.
We let the enemy in when we choose not to listen to our instincts, our feelings and our own inner knowing.

I have not been a good guard of my gateway to my heart and soul ... the gateway to inner peace … the gateway to my happiness.

Not taking care of ourselves, not taking responsibility for ourselves…we allow the enemy in. And when the enemy does get in we blame others, external things and allow it to beat ourselves up.

The real battle is inside. Not out there with something or someone else.

Lessons, Letting go and Love

2009-12-31T20:45:00.003-08:00

Reflecting on 2009…

Lessons Learned

1. I have codependency patterns in my intimate relationships

2. I take other people’s issues personally then create self-defeating stories

3. I incorrectly base how I feel about myself by the behaviours of others

4. I have let unconscious wounds run my life

5. I have come to realize my own worth

6. I am not inferior to others

7. I do have gifts and something to offer

8. I can trust my own thoughts and feelings

9. I am stronger and wiser than I think I am

10. I can rescue myself

Letting go of:

1. Self-pity

2. Childhood and self-defeating patterns

3. Victimization mentality

4. Self-doubt

5. Beating myself up

6. Allowing my mind/demons to torment me

7. Overanalyzing things and confusing myself

8. Taking on other people’s issues as my own

9. Low self-worth and lack of confidence

10. My old self-concept

Love & gratitude for:

1. Friends who have been there through difficult times and good times

2. Family who have always been there for me

3. My cats whom I learn so much about living peacefully from

4. New friends in a new town who have been so warm and welcoming

5. My good health

6. Beautiful landscapes that surround me in my new home across country

7. Writing from my heart in this blog and the words of encouragement from others

8. Teaching yoga, which inspires me and allows me to inspire others

9. My vulnerability and open heart

10. The courage to face my demons/wounds

I hope to take all these lessons and love and step into 2010 lighter as I let go of all that was holding me down. Much love, happiness and peace to all in 2010!

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.” T.S. Eliot

To Let Go Takes Love

2009-12-29T16:49:00.004-08:00

As 2009 comes to a close, it's a good time to look in our hidden places where we carry our fears, our hurts, our resentments, our bitterness, our anger, and all our self-defeating beliefs and LET THEM GO! Clear out for 2010 and make some space for new possibilities and more love to come in and fill you up.

To Let Go Takes Love

To "let go" does not mean to stop caring;

it means I can't do it for someone else.

To "let go" is not to cut myself off;

it is the realization that I can't control another.

To "let go" is not to enable,

but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To "let go" is to admit powerlessness,

which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To "let go" is not to try to change or blame another;

it is to make the most of myself.

To "let go" is not to care for, but to care about.

To "let go" is not to "fix", but to be supportive.

To "let go" is not to judge,

but to allow another to be a human being.

To "let go" is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,

but to allow others to affect their own destinies.

To "let go" is not to be protective;

it is to permit another to face reality.

To "let go" is not to deny, but to accept.

To "let go" is not to nag, scold, or argue,

but instead to search out my own shortcomings and to correct them.

To "let go" is not to adjust everything to my desires,

but to take each day as it comes, and to cherish myself in it.

To "let go" is not to criticize and regulate anybody,

but to try to become what I dream I can be.

To "let go" is not to regret the past,

but to grow and to live for the future.

To "let go" is to fear less and to love more.

Author Unknown

Allowing

2009-12-28T11:54:00.001-08:00

As we approach the end of the year it’s a good time to let go of all that no longer serves us, all that is holding us down or holding us back. Let go of the heaviness of your past and move into the future lighter and more open. Let go of what is weighing heavy on your heart and make some space within. If you are holding on to something else you will not be able to receive what the Universe wants to give you.

Allow the Universe to fill this space with what you need. You don’t need to search for it, you just need to be open and allowing and it will come to you. Just stop resisting, clinging, holding on. Let go of victim mentality, defenses, blame and attachment.

Stay in alignment with who you really are and your truth. Just be open. Just allow. Then all the love, happiness and peace you are seeking will come to you.

All you need to do is embrace it. It is already here just waiting for you to accept it.

Presence as a Present

2009-12-23T14:58:00.007-08:00

Presents is what we give our loved ones at Christmas. Presence is the best gift we can give our loved ones at Christmas. Is it a coincidence that these two words are pronounced the same? Presence truly is a gift. Your complete presence. Present in the moment, present in your communications, present in listening, even present in arguing.

So often we are lost in thoughts of the future or pains of the past. We worry about, or anticipate a future event or we become nostalgic about, or regret a past event. Very rarely are we ever completely present in our interactions or even with ourselves. Or present in our own lives!

And subsequently all our relationships with people are skewed because we are not relating from the right now and we may also be diminishing our own power, our power of authentic choice when we are not truly present in the moment. Everything seems to trigger a past event in our subconscious and we react from there or sometimes it triggers our fear or expectations of the future – although that is still related to past experiences.

Yet our power lies in the present moment. It is only the present moment that we can effect. The past is gone, what’s done is done. The future hasn’t happened and can’t be controlled anyhow.

It is ONLY the present moment we have.

It is ONLY in the present moment that we can truly be alive.

It is ONLY in the present moment that we can give our love.

It is ONLY in the present moment that we can find peace.

Give your greatest present this Christmas…your Presence.

Love and Peace to all this Christmas and in the New Year.

Set the Dark Alight

2009-12-20T22:50:00.003-08:00

The passage from darkness to light.

The Winter Solstice – daylight is the shortest due to the tilt of our planet, leaning it the furthest away from the sun - occurs on December 21^st.

The longest night of the year has long been celebrated and heralded as a turning point – the day that marks the return of the sun. The rebirth of the sun.

In darkness we turn inward and reflect on the past year – our joys and our challenges and garner the lessons learned. This earthly shift is the perfect time for creating and accepting change, and realizing our personal growth over the past year. Our own rebirth of sorts.

Many cultures the world over perform solstice ceremonies. At their root: an ancient fear that the failing light would never return unless humans intervened with anxious vigil or antic celebration. In darkness we must face ourselves, our fears – the monsters in the dark and we must intervene with anxious vigil so the light can enter and dispel our darkness.

A celebration of changing dark into light. Celebrate who we are, our lives and all of our lessons.

The Winter Solstice is a time to release our fears, our pains and let go of our difficulties and as we do, the light of a new day can enter. A perfect time to set positive intentions for the year ahead.

Trust. Faith. Light.
This is the meaning and magic of the Winter Solstice.

Trust that at the very darkest moment, the light will start to return.

A Winter's Night song

One day, if you are lucky...

2009-12-13T20:58:00.004-08:00

...you will be in pain.

Why do we hang on so long after someone is gone or something is done? We go over and over it in our heads, rehashing the conversations, what we said, what they said, what we should have said. Keeping the story alive. Giving the “sad” story more power than it had even to begin with. We feed the demons, feed the sadness, feed the pain, feed our own story that we created a long time ago about who we are. Or rather, who we believe we are. Our conditioned self, the role we played in our family, our patterns of behavior, our way of coping and surviving in our family structure. And we take these roles and wounds out into the world, projecting them everywhere and on to everyone, especially in our intimate relationships.

Whether we want to admit or not, or whether we are even aware of it, most of us recreate our family patterns in our relationships. We approach love the same way we did as children, whether that is through shutting down, acting out, seeking constant approval or trying to be really good to prove our worth. We keep chasing that wound. Searching out there so we can feel good in here.

And it works for a while; all the same familiar patterns over and over again feels strangely comforting, feels like home, feels like what you know even if it isn’t healthy.

But one day if you are lucky, you will hurt so much that you will no longer be able to bear the pain of living these old beliefs, behaving from your conditioned self and allowing that wounded child to steer the wheel that keeps you from the path of finding who you really are. Keeps you from owning your own power and from living from that space. The very space that will provide you with what you are seeking out there for: love…happiness.

One day, if you are lucky, you will be cracked open so wide that you will need to look inside and from there the real you will begin to emerge.

RIP - Pieces of Me

2009-11-29T11:21:00.011-08:00

Rebuilding. I didn’t realize it would take so long to build a home with a good, solid foundation, but that’s what I have been doing for the past year – rebuilding from the ground up.

My old home shattered, fell apart, collapsed from a life storm, but it had slowly been crumbling over the years from many other life conditions. The hurricane swept my home away and took away everything I clung to, including my self-beliefs. This home could not simply be repaired; I could no longer live here safely and certainly not happily. All the mortar in the world wasn’t enough to fill these gaping holes in the foundation; it had to be torn down and rebuilt from the beginning.

Pieces of me scattered everywhere. Pieces I didn’t even know existed. Dark, ugly demonic-like pieces lay there claiming to be a piece of me. I couldn’t even pick them up and look at them. ‘No these pieces belonged to someone else, they belonged to the person who caused the storm in my home.’

But in the light of day, after the storm passed through and after the year it took for the dust to settle and clear, I could see that these pieces were indeed a part of me.I came to see that the dark storm lived inside these pieces and inside my home for most of my life. That these pieces were the cause of this destructive force.

And as I started to rebuild, these pieces just weren’t fitting in anymore, in fact they just kept hindering and delaying the rebuilding project making it extremely difficult to continue to build. I had to rid my home of these pieces of debris that caused my home to be weak and insecure even in the best of weather conditions.

A painful and arduous task to rid yourself of pieces that have been with you for so long, even if you have learned they are threatening your survival. They are a part of you, you believed them, you took comfort in them and they are so familiar after all these years that they feel right.

It feels like I am ripping pieces of my flesh away from my bones, reaching in and tearing out a living, breathing organ from inside of me causing me to want to hold on to them or else I will die. Yet this is exactly what needs to happen. A part of me must die, so that the healthy part can live … can thrive … can find peace.

Score 1 for the Devil

2009-11-22T22:31:00.007-08:00

Why do we sabotage ourselves? We do things that we know that will hurt us or are not good for us, yet we do it anyway. Expecting a different outcome, but it is never a different outcome.
I put these ridiculous absolutes in my head that feed into my self-defeating story that if this person is doing this or if I see that, then it must mean I am (insert any self-defeating adjective here).

I use someone else’s behaviours to gauge how I feel about myself, rather than seeing it as something completely detached from me, nothing to do with me. And I rationally know this, but if it will feed my false self-beliefs, the self-defeating story of I am not good enough, special enough, loveable enough, I will believe it over rationale. And then I am on a role as I further feed my story with skewed perceptions of what I see or hear and make it mean something negative about me. “Oh my ex is still with that girl that he met just 2 months after we broke up, then I mustn’t be very special, I mustn’t have meant very much to him, he mustn’t have cared about me, she must be better than me” and on it goes….feeding the story, feeding the demons.
My wisdom and all the things I claim to believe and know about the human psyche goes out the window.

I claim to believe that we draw to us how we feel about ourselves, yet if I really believed that then that would negate my self-defeating story. I would see that he only drew to him exactly what he is, exactly what he always has. Someone that is codependent and insecure, someone that will tolerate being treated poorly.

I would believe that he just defaulted back to who he always was and how he has always been because he never did the hard work of facing his own demons, his shadows, rather he ran away like a coward and stayed in denial. If I believed what I claim to and believe what I know strongly enough then my self-defeating story would be squashed and I wouldn’t be tormented by my thoughts. I wouldn’t perceive his behaviours as proof of a negative self-belief. Yet I do. Thus, the demons have won this round.

The old stories and self-defeating beliefs are still winning. My inner demons are still stronger than my wiser, more evolved, esteemed self.

These demons need to be slain once and for all so I can LIVE.

Happy Birthday to Me

2009-11-20T15:14:00.016-08:00

Today is my birthday. A time I usually look back on the year and reflect. Reflect on where I have been and where I am now. I'll start by saying that this birthday is better than last year's. Last year I was in a place of pain and confusion as I just ended a relationship with someone I adored. It ended suddenly, no time for falling out of love or getting tired of the person or arguing or not getting along. I felt alone, abandoned and heartbroken.

But the break up ended up being a catalyst for me in finding me. Leading me on a long and painful journey of healing as I began to realize where I was deeply wounded. A year of coming face-to-face with my shadow. Old wounds I had been carrying around unconsciously for my whole life and definitely what drew this person, this relationship to me in the first place.

I am very aware that it is my own wounds and ego that keep me stuck and holding on and that he was merely a mirror of my deep inner wounds. Wounds needing to see the light of day and be questioned and analyzed. An old story that needs to stop being told to myself. And, oh, did this person fit perfectly into my story. The break up fit into my story of “not good enough, special enough” even better. Yet he never said these things to me, in fact he adored me. All he did was be who he is: emotionally dysfunctional, codependent, insecure, fearful, cowardly and stuck. I am the one that made it mean something about me.

So, I guess I could say in the past year, where I have been is Hell. In my own dark, self-created hell. Where my shadow, my wounds, my fears, my insecurities, my obsessions and my codependency dwell. In hiding, yet were the silent but deadly drivers of my life.

Over the past year, I lost my relationship, lost my job, got rid of my car and moved across country. And where I am now is in a new home, a new car, new friends and in a new job that I love – teaching yoga. I am in a much lighter place, perhaps not Heaven or a place of peace yet, but I have escaped the captivity of my personal demons. I have the key in my hand to unlock this cage, now I just need to figure out how to use the key.

My ex wrote a very heart wrenching, soulful song when he escaped his substance addiction years before we met, called “Happy Birthday to me, I think I’m finally free”. My birthday wish is to be free of the deep hurt this relationship brought about in me.

Looking forward to my new journey this year.

Teach Me

2009-11-11T21:31:00.001-08:00

What does being a teacher mean? Does a teacher have to be better than or know more than their students? Are teachers wiser and smarter people? More advanced human beings?

Even as a yoga teacher I have struggled with that question at times wondering if I am “advanced” enough to teach when I still struggle with some more challenging poses that may come easier to others, even if I can teach them well. If a student can get into and stay in headstand better than I or balance upside down on their arms when I cannot, can I then still be their teacher?

Yes I can, I realized. I believe a teacher is someone who guides you to find your own potential, challenges you to grow and ultimately guides you into your own self.

And I believe there are two types of teachers in general: those that inspire you and build you up and those that discourage you and tear you down. But both serve the same purpose: to guide you to you. To who you really are, to your authentic self. Both push you to grow and challenge you to reach your potential and find your own power within.

We can love and look up to those people in our lives that have encouraged us, recognized our potential and made us feel good about ourselves and we can despise or resent those people in our lives that have hurt us, broke us down and had us feeling like shit about ourselves … yet they are both catalysts for the same thing... bringing you closer to you.

A true teacher gives us the gift of ourselves.

And most times it is the hardest teacher – the ones we resent or despise - and the most painful lessons – the ones that hurt and bring us to our knees - that leads us down the right path. Our own path. Our true path. The path that leads us deep into ourselves where our gold is ... just waiting to shine.

There’s a Buddhist proverb that goes: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

Know, that when you are going through difficult times that your teacher has indeed appeared. So pay attention, learn your lessons and you will be ready to claim your piece of gold.

Now I'm Gold

Happy New Me

2009-11-01T16:52:00.000-08:00

Just as today, November 1st, marked the New Year for the Celts: the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new cycle, today also marks an end of one cycle and a beginning of a new one for me.

One year ago today, I ended a relationship I really didn’t want to come to an end, but something inside of me told me something was unhealthy. His extra close relationship with his ex, although healthy in some aspects, seemed really unhealthy and bizarre in other aspects. And I knew it, felt it all along…but I tried to ignore it or allow his dysfunctional logic to override my own thoughts and feelings. Upon hearing that his ex was now sleeping over, so he could help her recover from cosmetic plastic surgery was the last straw.

Amongst the many other situations that I won’t bore you with, this was the two by four I needed to be hit over the head with. This is codependency, an unhealthy attachment, a non-letting go. I should have known there was codependency at play here, so I told myself as self punishment, after all he was an alcoholic and drug abuser for 20 years of his life and all during his marriage. She stayed with him through drama, selfish behavior, violent lifestyle, lies and whatever else goes on in those types of relationships. A part of him I had never known, but only heard about from him. It was only when he became sober, that she fell out of love with him and in love with another heavy drinker for 4 years. Yet she and her ex, my ex, kept on carrying on like a happy little family, or maybe for the first time as it may not have been so during their 16 year marriage.

Now living a platonic marriage? They would even celebrate each other's birthdays together and Mother's Day, Father's Day with their son, but still.... where is the separation in this scenario? Besides not sleeping together anymore or having "romantic feelings". Is it not just a platonic marriage now but still a marriage like, bizarre, unhealthy thing? No?! She even had a key to his place! And all the while she was living with another man and leaving him at home for these ex-husband excursions! So why did I not listen to my first instincts? I was so confused with my own thoughts and feelings (still am to this day). I suppose because I cared for him so much I pushed away my inner knowing. I should have listened to myself in the first place, continued the self punishing voice.

And this day marked my own descent into codependency, obsessive behavior and my own inner addict. A year where all my own deep, dormant wounds came to wake and wreak havoc with my life. Self-pitying, self-doubting and self-loathing. Along this dark, long, winding road I learned a lot about myself at an even deeper level than I had already explored. I seem to be low on self-value, self-respect, self-worth, self-trust. Why? Where did this come from and how has this affected my life? All these questions were answered through painful bouts of sadness and loneliness and immense inner turmoil. Old wounds, old beliefs and subsequent old patterns were exposed.

Dragged out of the comfort of darkness kicking and screaming into the harsh light of day. No longer able to hide and subtly control my life from an undetected place from deep within. Wounds and beliefs and patterns that now had to answer to these questions because they had nowhere to go anymore; their shelter had been exposed and demolished. Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. I had to sit with them for a year, calm them, interrogate them and then embrace them and learn to love them.

So why did this happen? Why did this relationship, with this person whom I had such strong feelings for, such a pull towards and vice versa, end? Or happen at all? I conclude that it is because he had all the “right” qualities, wounds, dysfunctions to awaken my deep wounds. It was because he had some wonderful qualities that I adored and commonalities that we shared that drew me to him, but it turns out he had all the similar dysfunctional characteristics as the person who originally wounded me and lead me to create these false beliefs about myself in the first place ... so I learned through lots of deep, painful self-reflection.

And I realized I needed to be wounded in the same way so that I could process these dormant, life-stealing wounds with the awareness and wisdom of an adult mind. It’s like homeopathy; you need to be given the same poison such that a greater healing can occur. In retrospect, maybe I should thank my ex for setting me free … but I am not quite there in my healing yet. It is said that the people that hurt us the most are our greatest teachers.

My ex had all the key ingredients to unlock my self-created cage and set me free. Free of my wounds, free of my false self-beliefs, free of my self-created limitations.

Free to fly.

Let the New Year begin….

The Unveiling

2009-10-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

Halloween is the time of year when we put on masks and go out and be something, someone different than we are.

Yet this annual event of becoming someone else by putting on a costume or mask, is something we subconsciously do every day of the year and perhaps a different mask many times a day depending on where we are, who we are with, the role we have assumed, etc. We often choose the mask that matches the mask of the person we’re trying to please. The masks we have chosen to wear in our varied experiences are a way to keep us safe, but hides our true self from others and ourselves.

And that is exactly what the Celts were doing on Hollows Eve … trying to hide their identity to keep themselves safe. Celts who lived 2000 years ago, celebrated the New Year on Nov. 1. This marked the end of the Summer and harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold Winter. The Celts believed that transitions, times when things change from one state to another, had magical properties.

They, thus, believed the night before New Years was a powerful time in which the veils between the two realms was thinned , allowing one to move between the two worlds with ease. October 31st they celebrated Samhain or Hallow’s Eve, when the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. Afraid the undead would harm them and cause trouble, the Celts left out food on their door steps to keep their homes safe from these ghosts.

And if the Celts people needed to venture out on this eve, they would dress up in costume and don masks in hopes of being mistaken for one of the ghosts' fellow spirits. Just as we do with the masks we wear every day. To hide our true identity, to keep ourselves safe, to fit in, and pretend to be something we are not.

Indeed October 31st - Halloween – is a magical and powerful time. A transitional time. A time to get in touch with our inner spirit, to observe ourselves more clearly as the veil of illusion is thinned. As the lines of our two worlds, our inner self and our outer selves (our own ghosts), are blurred. Opening up the realms so we can move with ease into deeper regions of ourselves and begin to remove the masks.

This Halloween I am going to be someone totally different than I, or anyone has ever been...

I am going to be me!

Happy Halloween!

Love Yourself Today

2009-10-29T11:33:00.001-07:00

Twisting out the Toxic

2009-10-28T23:02:00.000-07:00

At the end of teaching my yoga class tonight, I found myself thinking, “Did they like the class?” “Did they like me?” “Did they think I was good or bad?” “What did they think of the words I said, the ‘wisdom’ I imparted during class?” “Did they think it was corny, did they think it was profound, did I talk too much?”

Rather than just approaching the class from a sharing experience, I was wrapped up in my fear of rejection or failure. And here I was again, working through these codependent behaviours. Patterns I have learned about myself in the past few years after a couple of broken relationships…with broken people.

In my relationships, intimate or friendships, I realized that I worry about what they think of me, if they like me, rather than what I may think of them or their behaviours. I seem to need people to like me and/or approve of me, no matter if I really like them or approve of their behaviours. Sounds crazy and it is, but so many people look externally for proof of their worth, their value because somewhere along the line (usually childhood) their worth and value were not validated.

Let’s face it, most of us were born into some level of family dysfunction and thus learned specific patterns of behavior that made us feel safe or loved, for example pleasing others so they will like you or not expressing your opinions for fear of being shot down or worse. Then we carry these patterns of behavior into our adult relationships, without even realizing it because these patterns and wounds are so embedded into our subconscious. And as a child we did not have the cognitive skills to realize this is their shit, their issues and their unresolved pain not yours.

But I am slowly waking up to these hidden wounds that seemed to have been driving my life. I am learning to trust myself, believe in myself and really love myself. Learning to pay attention to my feelings, my thoughts and my intuition and make me matter. Hopefully empowering myself to find my value and worth inside instead of chasing my wounds out there trying to heal them. When we look for it out there, all we are ever going to draw in is our own subconscious, hidden wounds. Our relationships mirror to us how we feel inside.

So I will continue to do just as I told my yoga students in class tonight during our twisting postures, "Keep twisting from deep within your core and release all your toxins".

When you are falling ... Let Go

2009-10-23T21:47:00.000-07:00

This is what I learned in Yoga class tonight as I went into a pose I have went into successfully many times before – headstand.

I was getting up into my headstand at the top of my mat, my right leg was up and as I began to bring my left leg up in line with the right I started to lose a little balance, but that didn’t stop me, I kept going. I can do headstand! I’ll balance myself out as I keep going in this already unsturdy foundation, I thought. And as I started to sway more, the more I tried to get up into place. It wasn’t working, I was struggling and starting to fall out of it yet I continued to get into the “right” position rather than just go with it, to just fall. Go where I was going anyway. It would have been easier, less painful and certainly more graceful.

Wish I had this little piece of wisdom in my pocket about a year ago during a break up that caused me so much inner turmoil … I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t let go of the pain of breaking up, couldn’t let go of my expectations of the relationship, couldn’t let go of why he couldn’t understand, couldn’t let go of analyzing him, analyzing the relationship, couldn’t let go of the love we shared, the words he said, couldn’t let go of the why’s. Why did he do this? Why did this happen? Why couldn’t it work out? Why? And the more I held on, rather tried to hang on, the more suffering it caused me. My mind, my ego had a grip on me so tight that it was squeezing the life out of me. Yet it was the trying to hold on that caused the inner turmoil, the pain, the suffering more so than the actual break up, the fall.

Then I fell … awkwardly. Not awkwardly in a humiliating sense (although I am sure humility would have served me here instead of my ego mind), but in a potentially physically harmful way. My left leg fell over to the one side and I came crashing down on the side of my heel, my other leg fell forward over my head and my neck twisted sideways, while my hands were still grasping to hold on! When I fell, I felt a little stunned but I also had this weird sensation … an exhilaration. I had felt, for a very brief moment, like I was flying. Then I landed ... not so gracefully.

So, instead of all this time spent thinking, doubting, questioning, trying to get it right; instead of all these mental acrobatics that wouldn’t change the outcome anyway, all I needed to do was let go. LET GO. Just let go and land. On the solid ground beneath me. A stable place. Then try again from this new landing place.

Try again. I recommend falling, in fact, because it is your chance to really experience freedom, but try to fall with grace. You do that by letting go.

It is from falling that I have started to learn how to fly.

Fate or Free Will?

2009-10-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

This is the question I was left with after my, perhaps, “fateful” meeting with a homeless, gypsy Tarot card reader the other day as I stepped out into the streets from my friend’s downtown apartment. “Would you like a reading”, greeted a friendly and a little disheveled man holding up a worn deck of Tarot cards. “Sure,” I answered, a little too eagerly without asking what this would cost me … financial or otherwise.

He guides me to an empty bench on a quiet side street as we chat and immediately find a connection through our mutual hometown 3000 miles away. This is fate, I thought, I was meant to bump into this homeless gypsy so that he could offer me some profound insight into my future!

I won’t bore you with the details of my reading…okay just a little bit…I am going to live to be 100+, I am going to be successful, write a novel and have an animal sanctuary. Oh and he said I am very youthful and look much younger than my age (yes, flattery works!) I must admit that writing a novel and owning an animal sanctuary have been dreams for me, but does his prediction of such mean this is truly my destiny no matter what choices I make?

First, I actually think there is a difference between what is termed Fate as opposed to what is our Destiny. I think fate is something we subconsciously create for ourselves as we make choices from fear, insecurities, the need for security, beliefs, family structures, wounds we carry from the past and so on. The cage we create for ourselves leads us to a certain fate.

Sure there is free will involved, in so far that we are making our own choices, but we’re operating from a subconscious place. One of security and familiarity, self-imposed limitations and old patterns. Like a gerbil running on its wheel in its cage, but always ending up in the same place. We are fated to something as we keep making the same choices from the same place and end up just recreating the same experiences … maybe different people and different scenarios, but all part of the same theme. That seems to be fate.

Destiny I think is what we are supposed to be, our purpose; that innate calling we feel inside and the yearning in our soul. It is what we could be if we let go of our fears, insecurities and ego. If we truly follow our hearts, listen to our instincts and truly make choices out of self-love, self-esteem and self-value. This is authentic free will, perhaps. The freedom to break out of our own self-created cage.

All our own choices, but choices made from different parts of ourselves. Choices made from fear or from love. One seems to fate us and almost seems to steal our free will and the other sets us free to live our destiny. Although I think many of our fated events are the unfolding of our destiny … if we learn and are willing to change.

Free Will? Absolutely. But we can “free will” ourselves into fated lives or living our destiny. Therefore, every choice we make is an investment of either our Fate or Destiny, that’s our free will.

So was my encounter with this gypsy fateful? I guess fated to be out $30 by placing my trust in someone else to tell me what I am destined to do, to be.

The Guests

2009-10-16T14:04:00.001-07:00

No one knows where the night is going...

Anthem

2009-10-15T09:14:00.001-07:00

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.

Ah the wars they
will be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood of
every government --
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned,
they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring ...

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

Caterfly - Freak of Nature?

2009-10-13T14:07:00.001-07:00

There it was on my dining room floor of my apartment, a half caterpillar, half butterfly – a caterfly. Not fully metamorphosized into what it was intending to be.

Crawling on my floor, flapping its wings you could see the beginning of aesthetic beauty, the bright orange colours of a monarch butterfly at the centre of its otherwise faded brown and underdeveloped wings. But this creature could not fly.

Assumedly blown into my apartment during a torrential downpour, the blustering winds tearing it from its home on one of the trees out back. Breaking open its cocoon that was created for shelter from the inner storm of transformation. It’s self-created protective device to keep it safe while it goes through the agonizing discomfort of change. Not unlike our own self-created, eventually self-destructive, protective devices intended to keep us safe from the storms of life.

This caterfly was unceremoniously cracked open far too early for it to reach its full potential, to fully transform into a butterfly. Ripped from its shelter, while in transition from beast to beauty.

But this caterfly did not come to me by accident. Propped on my apartment floor six storey’s up, the wind guiding its way through a small opening in my balcony doors seemed like an extreme feat even for nature …. not to mention that it had not been eaten by my cats, who were in fact just merely staring at this “odd” creature in awe and curiosity just as I was.

This creature torn from its cocoon, its comfort zone during its most fragile transition was symbolic of me, of my life … able to crawl, but not quite able to fly yet.

Yet this caterfly survived the storm, seemed to be accepting of its limitations, not frantically searching for its cocoon of safety and needing to fearfully crawl back into it, rather it appeared to be at peace as it continued to crawl on and attempt to fly.

And it is with this observation of character and perseverance that I realized it is exactly these imperfections that make it beautiful and unique … perfect in its imperfection. And it is here in this transitional stage where we find our own way, who we really are and develop our own wings to fly.

But I wanted to keep this caterfly, to nurse it, help it grow and become what it should be or so what I thought it should be, but I knew I couldn’t. It would wither and die and never be what it is supposed to be in this life if I tried to hold on to it and force it to become something it couldn’t and, perhaps, something it didn’t want to be. I knew it could only be what it is and realized there was nothing wrong with that when I saw it find comfort and joy as I placed it where it belongs … in the garden. I watched it happily crawl up the stems of the plants, proudly spreading its wings and showing its unique beauty to the world.

I knew it was flying on the inside.

Beautiful Freak

Tides of Change

2009-10-11T23:32:00.001-07:00

The change of the season can be felt in the air, with the days becoming shorter, the nights growing cooler and the waters turning colder. It is said change is a constant; something we can always count on. We often view change as good or bad, depending on our own wants, desires and perception of things. We tend to notice change more when it is something we don’t want, and then we have difficulty dealing with it … accepting it. We think it should be different or it’s not fair. We resist, sometimes even deny it’s happening at all.

As I resisted “unwanted” change in my life, I felt I was swept up by a cyclone, spinning me around, spinning me down into a dark well of stagnant water with walls so high I could not climb out of. Holding on, not wanting the change to take place (even though it already had). My mind gripping on ferociously to what was already gone, already done. My resistance and the not accepting what was, created a dam inside me; blocking the natural flow of the river, the flow of my life. Not letting anything in, not letting anything out. Being sucked down by the undertow.

It wasn’t until I let go, stopped resisting and accepted the change, that I found some peace, a glimpse of joy … the very things I was searching for in the first place. Though in an attempt to calm the raging rivers of emotions that change brings, I clung, resisted, not realizing it is just that which kept me from what I was seeking.

Perhaps we resist change because of the fear of the unknown and our primal need for security and safety. And sometimes it’s just easier to stay with our limitations and with what doesn’t work. To keep things the same. Keeping us in a state of inertia, yet one of familiarity and comfort, even if it isn’t ideal. But things will never stay the same no matter how hard we resist or stay in denial; we just prolong the struggle.

Just as we can’t stop the trees from growing, the flowers from dying or the rivers from flowing - all the natural beauty and wonders of nature - we can’t stop change. And when we can learn to accept change – “good” or “bad” – perhaps, then, we will be able to embrace the beauty and wonders within ourselves.

Between Mountains and Oceans

2009-10-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

Power and Peace.

Solid and Malleable

Stable and Supple.

Strength and Surrender.

All that I have been trying to find in myself; find the balance between. The ebb and flow of our lives require a certain power to navigate the rough waters, not one of force or will, but an inner strength, strong and stable like the mountains; peaceful and surrendering like the ocean.

It is the majestic, omnipotence and serenity of these landscapes that brought me all across Canada to the West Coast. Hoping to receive inspiration as I breath in the air, taste the salt on my lips and soak in the mystical energies of these wonders through every pore of my body.

To possess what they emanate. As I navigate the landscapes of my life.