On the last post, I wrote about the heart and the mind and how their perceptions are very different. For most of us, getting out of our minds into our hearts is not easy. We are very used to living in our thoughts and only allow ourselves to feel something occasionally. A feeling may surprise us into tears or laughter. We may even daydream about feeling something strongly but don’t actually let ourselves go there, to feel it.
This was a long road home for me. My Mom was the overly emotional type who was always in tears about something. My Dad, being the practical and logical type, dealt with the world through his head. Being shamed for crying too much, I tried to be like my Dad. It looked easier. Don’t feel, don’t cry, don’t even talk about it. Zip it! Or at least hide until the crying stops.
Yet I was the super sensitive person who felt everything, especially with nature. So I spent alot of time outside, thank goodness, with the flowers, trees and animals. My healing process began when I allowed myself to feel, as scary and overwhelming as that was. There was no trust of what I felt and it was painful and scary to feel I was becoming my Mom. With people I trusted, I cried. I began to feel the dismissed hurts, the minimized needs and unmet wants I’d had as a child. It felt surreal at times and I questioned my sanity. Do I really have to do this? It was a way back, I’m sure not the only way, but because I sat with those who respected my tears and feelings, I began to do the same. I had spent most of my life discounting, minimizing or avoiding how I felt. Sounds familiar?
Culturally, we regard the mind and our thoughts as the supreme answer to eveything. Yet when it comes to some things, it falls so short. I have witnessed this especially in parenting. A 4 year old child asks a question and the parent tells her an answer that is just a mental explanation. Children under seven don’t understand the difference between fantasy and reality and are not cognitively very developed yet. The answer given doesn’t access the feeling level the child lives in so the child continues to ask the question or seek an answer. The parent gives a linear, logical answer to an emotionally based child. You can see the gears spinning in a child’s head as they try to understand what is being shared. You can feel the disappointment in the child’s heart. So a child is taught to process everything mentally (ie safely) as soon as they are able. Children don’t want their parents to feel uncomfortable and learn to suppress, parents want their children to be happy.
This is not an uncommon story, mine or the child’s. Yet nowdays we hear alot about emotional intelligence. How can we raise ourselves and our children to be astute emotionally? We begin by allowing ourselves to listen to what we feel right now.
Let yourself feel whatever you are feeling. This makes sense and sounds so easy, but try it when your mind comes storming in and says if you feel this, you’re going off the deep end, or making a mountain out of a molehill, or you just don’t have time for this right now. The minds’ job is to keep you safe so now it shames you just like your parents did. Intellectuallizing, explaining, shaming, whatever works to keep you safe from feeling that hurt like when you were a child. Now the mind runs riot over you and doesn’t allow you to feel any at all, or just the ‘good’ ones.
If we open our hearts to all of who we are, this is not some fantasy daydream world. This is deep dark soil where the loam of the new you can be born. Born out of the patience and persistence to own all of what’s in you, light and dark, up and down, you begin to piece together the fragmented emotional body. You begin to own a clearer sense of what works for you. You don’t feel everyone elses feelings and not your own. You live in you, not through others. You begin to know how to feed yourself because you know how you feel about what’s in front of you, or know to take the time to feel it out.
Here the mystery is regained; the fullness of trust in self. This is what it takes, step by step, allowing yourself the gift of this next feeling to grow compassion for yourself and thus for others. We all want to be compassionate people yet our minds are often not. Learning to live truthfully and listen to our emotions begins to bridge the way back to the heart. This is a feminine (not female) way. This honors the half of each of us that is now ready to come forward to take a place in the world. This is true intelligence, a clear heart supported by the subservient mind.
Blessings,
Laurel
Showing posts with label Heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heart. Show all posts
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Call for Change- Monday, August 25, 2008
As the US political parties gear up for our Presidential elections and everyone is calling for change, I want to propose a call for change also. We’ve not just had 8 years of movement backwards, we’ve had lifetimes of it. It’s time to really move forward by staying in the same place and not doing anything! It’s time to take your life back.
For thousands of years we have left the garden believing we can use our minds to solve our problems. For lifetimes we have left behind the heart as our personal ruler, falsely believing it could not understand enough, fight the fear enough, to save us from the spin put on the world.
The heart is considered weak, ineffective, not really having the power to change our world.
The mind tells us it has the answers, it can solve the problems we face, yet it hasn’t and can’t. More information and more manipulation of information never solves anything. More details about our fears doesn’t change our fear. We’re given a false sense of security to having more and doing more and knowing more yet we are only really content and secure when we’re seeing the world through our hearts.
The mind has held dominion over our hearts and poisoned our view of what it is and the power it has. Maybe the fall of man is just this, the takeover of command by the mind, leading us to be puppets to information and fear. Our current world is all about fearmongering and scarcity. We no longer see the truth of the abundance of our planet and our lives and so this falsehood is perpetuated and we see our world destroying itself. Man can only solve the problems he has created, giving himself the illusion of control.
We attempt to remain mentally positive and generate some good feedback from that yet the foundation of that is not grounded. The heart’s view unfolds a true reality, the mind’s realities only appear real. We easily slip back into fear and trying and work even harder at believing that we can affirm our reality to be what we desire.
I’m not saying that postive thoughts aren’t beneficial, because we know they work alot of the time. Just not all the time. Why? Well because we’ve been taught that we are less than, not enough and weak, etc and the mind doesn’t want to lose control so it sabotoges the love we really are so we’re constantly working at our lives. Maybe you don’t believe that anymore so now it generates distrust of others or your safety in the world. It looks like a gerbil on a wheel and feels like it also. It’s time to get off the wheel dear ones.
“Consider the lillies of the fields, they toil not.” Why? They know they are love, as do the animals and the trees and the earth. Really. Honest. When you are in love, the whole world looks and feels very different. How about us? Who are we?
The trees teach us we are the masters and commanders of our lives, that we are LOVE incarnate. Through the love we hold for ourselves, our lives and our planet, we open to a higher understanding of what we are here for and how to live on this planet. Yet we don’t know how to do this because the mind, which is supposed to be our servant (a brilliant one at that) has become the master and commander. It lies to us about how ineffective the heart is to maintain control.
In the teaching from the Council of Trees, the heart is our center and holds seven levels of understanding and power. It is the key. It informs the foundation of who we are and how we are in the world. It provides us with safety and security because it connects us to the deeper rhythms of all of nature and the universe. When you are in your heart, you lead your life without judgment and you want what’s best for all, naturally. You sit in your heart, BEING all of who you are, having the natural intelligence of the universe creatively avaliable to you. The heart generates trust and the world responds in trust of you. As the heart is present in time, fears from the past and of the future are neutralized. You go home to Eden, to heaven on Earth. From this place you can respond to life with care and wisdom, drawing from a deeper intelligence, the one of your heart. The mind becomes a good servant, as it was originally intended to be, and relaxes, no longer spinning tales of doom and gloom.
This is a change I believe in. This is the only way that works in my life. A thousand years of peace begins in you and reverberates through your family and around the globe. We can do it, saving ourselves and our planet through our love and compassion.
Blessings,
Laurel
For thousands of years we have left the garden believing we can use our minds to solve our problems. For lifetimes we have left behind the heart as our personal ruler, falsely believing it could not understand enough, fight the fear enough, to save us from the spin put on the world.
The heart is considered weak, ineffective, not really having the power to change our world.
The mind tells us it has the answers, it can solve the problems we face, yet it hasn’t and can’t. More information and more manipulation of information never solves anything. More details about our fears doesn’t change our fear. We’re given a false sense of security to having more and doing more and knowing more yet we are only really content and secure when we’re seeing the world through our hearts.
The mind has held dominion over our hearts and poisoned our view of what it is and the power it has. Maybe the fall of man is just this, the takeover of command by the mind, leading us to be puppets to information and fear. Our current world is all about fearmongering and scarcity. We no longer see the truth of the abundance of our planet and our lives and so this falsehood is perpetuated and we see our world destroying itself. Man can only solve the problems he has created, giving himself the illusion of control.
We attempt to remain mentally positive and generate some good feedback from that yet the foundation of that is not grounded. The heart’s view unfolds a true reality, the mind’s realities only appear real. We easily slip back into fear and trying and work even harder at believing that we can affirm our reality to be what we desire.
I’m not saying that postive thoughts aren’t beneficial, because we know they work alot of the time. Just not all the time. Why? Well because we’ve been taught that we are less than, not enough and weak, etc and the mind doesn’t want to lose control so it sabotoges the love we really are so we’re constantly working at our lives. Maybe you don’t believe that anymore so now it generates distrust of others or your safety in the world. It looks like a gerbil on a wheel and feels like it also. It’s time to get off the wheel dear ones.
“Consider the lillies of the fields, they toil not.” Why? They know they are love, as do the animals and the trees and the earth. Really. Honest. When you are in love, the whole world looks and feels very different. How about us? Who are we?
The trees teach us we are the masters and commanders of our lives, that we are LOVE incarnate. Through the love we hold for ourselves, our lives and our planet, we open to a higher understanding of what we are here for and how to live on this planet. Yet we don’t know how to do this because the mind, which is supposed to be our servant (a brilliant one at that) has become the master and commander. It lies to us about how ineffective the heart is to maintain control.
In the teaching from the Council of Trees, the heart is our center and holds seven levels of understanding and power. It is the key. It informs the foundation of who we are and how we are in the world. It provides us with safety and security because it connects us to the deeper rhythms of all of nature and the universe. When you are in your heart, you lead your life without judgment and you want what’s best for all, naturally. You sit in your heart, BEING all of who you are, having the natural intelligence of the universe creatively avaliable to you. The heart generates trust and the world responds in trust of you. As the heart is present in time, fears from the past and of the future are neutralized. You go home to Eden, to heaven on Earth. From this place you can respond to life with care and wisdom, drawing from a deeper intelligence, the one of your heart. The mind becomes a good servant, as it was originally intended to be, and relaxes, no longer spinning tales of doom and gloom.
This is a change I believe in. This is the only way that works in my life. A thousand years of peace begins in you and reverberates through your family and around the globe. We can do it, saving ourselves and our planet through our love and compassion.
Blessings,
Laurel
Healing the Past, Monday, August 18th, 2008 Being Present for Today
I’m allergic to cats, have been for years. The sneezing and runny nose are bearable but tearing, itchy eyes can really overwhelm me. So I’ve been here for two days with two lovely cats, and I’m going back and forth between the 2 parts of the house, getting things I need to be comfortable, feeding the animals, etc. I’m taking a homeopathic animal dander remedy and putting in eye drops but whoa, it flares up and I can’t stop tearing and it’s really uncomfortable. Saturday I go visit a friend who I didn’t know also had a cat and even though I spend most of the time outside, I’m pretty miserable. My other eye starts to react also. Sunday, I’m constantly putting drops in, remembering the last time when I ended up at the eye doctors in a toxic allergic state. I attend a healing group I belong to and plan to stop by my house after and pick up my air cleaner for the apartment here. I’m worried I won’t be able to stay here and I love it here.
Please know with every healer and modality I’ve done, I’ve brought up this allergy for treatment. Usually I feel better but it has never cleared completely. So in our group I put it on the list, open but not convinced it’ll help much. In our group everyone puts their stuff on a list and we all work the list. (We’re all in this together!) So I’m working on my allergy and receive this whole picture of a conversation on the phone a long time ago with my Mom where all she’s talking about are her cats. Here I see myself saddened one more time with my Mom’s self absorption and my neediness. It’s painful and the message is to forgive my Mom and embrace who I was back then. I do not allow my mind to recreate a story or attempt to ‘process’ this information. I stay with the sadness, accept what I feel and stay with what’s in my heart. In order to move forward, I need to embrace my past self with full acceptance and absolve my Mom of my self care now.
My eye starts to quiet immediately after the healing. I open up the whole house to the cool evening air as I have done each night here. The tearing lessens and I take particular care to avoid the main house and to trust my body to resolve this. Of course I take the remedy and the drops, but something feels very different. Today my right eye is fine and my left eye has a mild irritation, the tearing is minimal.
I am reminded once more that this life is deeper than what we think. Maybe I have never really been allergic to cats at all, just allergic to a hurtful experience in my past, my body graciously somaticizing it into a bearable problem. Today I have felt okay when I was in the ‘catful’ part of the house, as I am right now. My eye feels like it is healing and my soul feels it is opening to a new level of acceptance of myself.
I know my expansion comes out of the connection to my past. Some people feel that each of us cannot more forward without all of us moving forward together. I don’t know if this is true; I do know that I’m responsible for me and I can help myself. My job is to heal my life by total radical acceptance of all I’ve ever been. This is the biggest and most blessed challenge I’ve ever taken on, especially since the only way, after all these years of thinking through it all, is to feel, feel and keep feeling until I’m done. The mind can never heal a broken heart and the heart is the only place where truth and reality appear.
Long ago, one of my teachers said the first thing we feel when we begin to open the heart is sadness. Most people back away right then, moving up into their heads to explain it all away. But the illusionary cure is not real. The pain goes underground and often comes out in weird ways. I’m sure we’ve all experienced that; the surprise attack of an emotion out of the blue that seems overdone for whatever situation we’re facing.
Being with myself totally, with whatever I’m honestly experiencing, is not always easy. It doesn’t necessarily look spiritual. Yet it works and I’m a practical person, I want to do what works. Loving my Mom and loving myself doesn’t always feel like the shortest path to a resolution, or the easiest. I don’t know yet whether I am free of my cat allergy but I am loving all aspects of my life right now.
The feeling I had most of today was one of immersion. Immersion into the depths of life, opening to the unseen world that underlies everything, the sacred world that holds the fabric and the magic that goes beyond what we usually see and think. Loving all of who I have been and all of who I am right now heals me. Then life unfolds her aliveness out my back door and the earth sings it’s glory.
Blessings,
Laurel
Please know with every healer and modality I’ve done, I’ve brought up this allergy for treatment. Usually I feel better but it has never cleared completely. So in our group I put it on the list, open but not convinced it’ll help much. In our group everyone puts their stuff on a list and we all work the list. (We’re all in this together!) So I’m working on my allergy and receive this whole picture of a conversation on the phone a long time ago with my Mom where all she’s talking about are her cats. Here I see myself saddened one more time with my Mom’s self absorption and my neediness. It’s painful and the message is to forgive my Mom and embrace who I was back then. I do not allow my mind to recreate a story or attempt to ‘process’ this information. I stay with the sadness, accept what I feel and stay with what’s in my heart. In order to move forward, I need to embrace my past self with full acceptance and absolve my Mom of my self care now.
My eye starts to quiet immediately after the healing. I open up the whole house to the cool evening air as I have done each night here. The tearing lessens and I take particular care to avoid the main house and to trust my body to resolve this. Of course I take the remedy and the drops, but something feels very different. Today my right eye is fine and my left eye has a mild irritation, the tearing is minimal.
I am reminded once more that this life is deeper than what we think. Maybe I have never really been allergic to cats at all, just allergic to a hurtful experience in my past, my body graciously somaticizing it into a bearable problem. Today I have felt okay when I was in the ‘catful’ part of the house, as I am right now. My eye feels like it is healing and my soul feels it is opening to a new level of acceptance of myself.
I know my expansion comes out of the connection to my past. Some people feel that each of us cannot more forward without all of us moving forward together. I don’t know if this is true; I do know that I’m responsible for me and I can help myself. My job is to heal my life by total radical acceptance of all I’ve ever been. This is the biggest and most blessed challenge I’ve ever taken on, especially since the only way, after all these years of thinking through it all, is to feel, feel and keep feeling until I’m done. The mind can never heal a broken heart and the heart is the only place where truth and reality appear.
Long ago, one of my teachers said the first thing we feel when we begin to open the heart is sadness. Most people back away right then, moving up into their heads to explain it all away. But the illusionary cure is not real. The pain goes underground and often comes out in weird ways. I’m sure we’ve all experienced that; the surprise attack of an emotion out of the blue that seems overdone for whatever situation we’re facing.
Being with myself totally, with whatever I’m honestly experiencing, is not always easy. It doesn’t necessarily look spiritual. Yet it works and I’m a practical person, I want to do what works. Loving my Mom and loving myself doesn’t always feel like the shortest path to a resolution, or the easiest. I don’t know yet whether I am free of my cat allergy but I am loving all aspects of my life right now.
The feeling I had most of today was one of immersion. Immersion into the depths of life, opening to the unseen world that underlies everything, the sacred world that holds the fabric and the magic that goes beyond what we usually see and think. Loving all of who I have been and all of who I am right now heals me. Then life unfolds her aliveness out my back door and the earth sings it’s glory.
Blessings,
Laurel
A Noisy Quiet- Friday, August 15, 2008
I’m housesitting for the next few weeks way out in the country and down a long dirt road. The planes still zoom overhead but it’s minor compared to the deep stillness in the land. This is how I want to live; with stillness within my aliveness. It seems a contradiction yet it is so obvious out here. There’s a constant racket from the birds, hens, frogs and ducks, yet the tree life is immense and deep roots run under it all. The racket is really song and story and somehow adds vs. subtracts from my awareness of my center. They call me into my heartspace. Feel, feel says the world. Be attracted to who you really are. Sit in your animal being, let your mind take a back seat, give up control by the mind to the heart.
Yes, I have some ‘work’ to do. What value is work when it comes from a space ruled by the mind? How does it feel if my hearts not in it? In my heart lie realms of creativity, depth and shadow, austuteness all sure to be missed by a mind that is looking for safety and security. In my heart, I am allowed to be with all I’ve ever been and all I am now, bringing all these aspects of myself into a new resolution of healing. There is space and depth of being that the flatness and linearity of the mind can’t embrace. Like the crooks and curves of the tree’s roots and branches, it’s time to open to a new awareness of being. By living all of who we are and opening to the wholeness and creativity, we can heal our lives and our world.
Take a breath, feels how it nourishes your heart. You are divine, stop giving control of this precious life to the mind. It’s yours, take it back to your heart. Here your life begins anew each day, here true living has magic and mystery and meaning.
Blessings,
Laurel
Yes, I have some ‘work’ to do. What value is work when it comes from a space ruled by the mind? How does it feel if my hearts not in it? In my heart lie realms of creativity, depth and shadow, austuteness all sure to be missed by a mind that is looking for safety and security. In my heart, I am allowed to be with all I’ve ever been and all I am now, bringing all these aspects of myself into a new resolution of healing. There is space and depth of being that the flatness and linearity of the mind can’t embrace. Like the crooks and curves of the tree’s roots and branches, it’s time to open to a new awareness of being. By living all of who we are and opening to the wholeness and creativity, we can heal our lives and our world.
Take a breath, feels how it nourishes your heart. You are divine, stop giving control of this precious life to the mind. It’s yours, take it back to your heart. Here your life begins anew each day, here true living has magic and mystery and meaning.
Blessings,
Laurel
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
