With changes to my cosmology, the way I make sense of existence and my experiences, a lot has changed in my perceptions and being on this journey. I have reclaimed generously loving and caring aspects of me which were locked away for protection from a culture which tended to run rough shod over sensitivities and emotional realities of those who did not align with the mythical norm of ‘normal’ that was upheld. Being unable to live from these loving and open-hearted aspects has cut me off from my aliveness – to the point of clinical depression. Which is why I am committed to living and loving from the abundance of my core, even if it incurs pain or conflict.

It lies in the nature of the human state that we adapt to a given circumstance as other skills and abilities adapted to absent circumstances begin to fade. But on the spiritual path another dimension is added to this as the journeyer rebirths new versions of their being by integrating what was split off and changing internal hierarchies of aspects to move from egocentric to Self-led being. As the shifts are usually quite subtle we only realize the nature and form of changes when confronted with novel experiences and observe our capacity to respond and spaciousness in the moment. Old skills will be called upon to manifest in a new form, letting us stretch and strive to find a more fluid and adaptive way of embodying them. We learn to embrace a pause between trigger and response while internally redirecting the reactive response of old, should it come up. In time we taste the sweetness of the void space of the pause, connecting more deeply and joyfully to its innately creative energy. And if we look more deeply into the subtleties of it we can see our spirit revel in the elixir of potentiality every venture into the void offers. But I digress…

This year has led me to interact more consistently with people more aligned to the usual way of relating. It was interesting to observe how ways of behaving, speaking and being, which wouldn’t have fazed a younger version of me, suddenly felt starkly brash, cold, and lacking in empathy for self and other. In a sense it felt as if I had become more raw and fragile to it, when what I was experiencing was aspects, once protected, were now exposed to the behavior and expressive habits of the other. A need to translate these behaviors into a calming reframe for conditioned responses and to attune to a new reality of relating arose. Eventually leading me to teach tender parts to be with this kind of human manifestation in equanimity, while being mindful of the awareness levels they point to. Unlearning reflexive protectivity to give the tender ones repeat experiences of their new capacity to meet the harshness and egocentricities with kindness and compassion in ways that have not been available before, is very challenging as it feels counter-intuitive but the rewards are sweet beyond imagination. The grace of watching what once was wounded and weak remember its true nature is magnificently beyond words… and well worth the pain and struggle on the path.

I choose to make sense of this experience by perceiving it as an opportunity to heal the conditioned mind-body reactivities in areas, where it is prone to feel vulnerable and victimized by the way another shows up and expresses or doesn’t express. After all a sovereign or whole being is not disrupted in its flow of being and self-worth by the way another chooses to express, they take note of it and meet it from grace and compassion. That which is fragile and easily rendered insecure cannot be Self but an expression of the distortions I hold due to earlier incarnational experiences. 

In my case it is the imprinted memory of the little girl who anxiously listened to most nuanced shifts in tones, visual expressions, and behaviors of her parents to preempt and prevent experiencing devastating pains of rejection, abandonment, and neglect. Now I am strong enough to hold space for the gentle recalibration and integration of these memories and parts into the fluidity of my being. That in itself is a miracle given where this journey started.

Nonetheless my preference for relating, especially with close and beloved people, clearly lies in a more verbally expressive, appreciative, and loving way of relating. Especially in the face of German culture, which traditionally leans towards limited emotional expressivity (most defined as too mushy, weak), and operates on the misconception that making expressions of love and praise scarce renders them more precious. Which of course makes for rather cold and austere relating, devoid of most emotional warmth, starving the heart and emotional body. I do not care to perpetuate, nor participate in, this distortion and rather practice being a source of a different frequency set point and relational baseline. Living in this field, though, has a way of affecting and making me regress into these patterns, whenever I fall into unconsciousness. That is the dance I signed up for when choosing to leave behind the culturally conditioned norms and contracts of relating and communicating. I consider this to be one of my juiciest current growth edges.

It is a strangely empowering experience to intentionally show up, in what feels more warm and generous to me, by being verbally expressive of genuine appreciation and words of affirmation, when most people choose to be morose, aloof, or to express their negative biases and discontent. 

An even more tender and overflowing gratitude arises for all the beings who showed up in my path to teach and support me in the unlearning of unlove, and especially for those who journey with and are interconnected with me in a web of love. Thank you for being radiantly loving, kind and compassionate companions, friends, and beloveds in my experience!

What a dance of multiple dimensions and experiences this life can be, when lived with growing awareness, lessening attachments and identifications, and growing trust in the benevolence of life! 

I bow in gratitude to life and its endless teachings and expansive humor in guiding me along the path.

Photography by Unknown

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Slowing experiences down to a crawl, sending them through new layers of inquiries into subconscious perceptions, subtle projections, and distortions. Acknowledging meanings of my creation and the feelings these cause, observing feelings about the caused feelings. Analyzing and clearly naming defensive behaviors and their underlying stories or fears. Giving the subconscious visible and tangible form to observe, know and play with consciously. Adding new layers of awareness to the original meanings and watching them transform, reframe, and create new feelings which no longer create internal conflict or blockages.

Aspects that were vague come into focus and are more susceptible to transformation through new data and the compassionate and loving gaze of consciousness.

I am gaining more clarity about what exactly triggers my survival patterns and have more choices in responding to them from a more congruent, integrated, and whole state.

Now I see why for the longest time the words of people too afraid to take a stand, have boundaries, express their principles, beliefs, and opinions carried little weight in my perception and feeling. Their praise often weak and inconsequential, their words feeling strangely empty and not worthy of attention. Lack of integrity and self love translates as a lack of truthfulness and trustworthiness to me.

How can someone who doesn’t love, stand up for themselves, live in true integrity or wholeness?
How can someone like this be trusted as a friend or more?
Will their capacity to abandon, betray, manipulate and lie to themselves not inevitably become the way they relate with me?

The child in me was surrounded by many incongruent people and could not have survived without several survival patterns. Yet survive she did- and has grown stronger and wiser from struggling with incongruences.

It feels great to have new tools to dismantle the mental and emotional residues of this aspect of past trauma. Intuitively guided and paced I am unpacking patterns ready for change. Teaching myself new practices to resource myself well for these inquiries and seedings of more congruence. Congruence, I have always sought and appreciated wherever I found it, even if expressing in ways I do not concur with.

Incongruence, even when expressing values and perceptions I share, has always set off my warrior into a protective or hostile stance. My senses are acutely attuned to picking up on incongruence, as my system sees it as the hallmark of the worst of relational harm and pain I experienced. Even if I do not comment on it, I pick up with ease when the spoken words are in conflict with the body language or the frequency of another has the distortion of contradictory or conflicting stances expressing concurrently. I might not interpret their meaning correctly but I do sense the lack of congruence, which takes away from my trust in the person and lets me take their words with a huge grain of salt. Thinking to myself I shall believe your words when I see them in consistent embodied action.

Now I also realize that incongruence was not addressed and healed in most NVC practitioners I have met. It might be helpful to get some there eventually or serve them in gaining a practice of empathic relating. Yet it misses its point to me when the underlying incongruences of the person stay invisible and unaddressed. And the formulaic approach- using another layer of artifice to rectify what at its core is an artifice just does not resonate or make much sense to my being. Don’t get me wrong, I support people’s choice in their tools of growth even if it does not resonate with me. As long as they abstain from attempts at coercing or manipulating me into lifeless artifices and what feels like stilted inauthenticity to me, I am good.

Now, I get to choose how I want to meet incongruence.
Do I even want to respond to it, and if so how?
Do I ignore it, while noting the incongruence, and move on with my life?
Do I engage in a process of making the incongruence visible to the other?
When is it appropriate to do this emotional labor, for and with another, and when is it better, for both of us, to bow out?

To do this emotional labor means to open myself up to deeper intimacy with the other.
Do I really want more intimacy with that person?
Will said intimacy cost me down the road?

Currently I do not see the need for depth of intimacy with everyone I like or love.

Which is surely owed in parts to aspects of my being who are avoidant and see intimacy as potentially dangerous, or as burdensome when intimacy is expected, coerced, manipulatively invoked. Yet there is another aspect to it for me. Time and social energy are limited in my human experience and I like to consciously choose where to invest these in alignment with my purpose and evolution. Social contracts among humans make intimacy into a sort of contract of fulfilling other people’s expectation or needs whenever they arise or hazard harming the connection by not being available for it.
For the past years I have only selectively been willing, and resourced enough, to be in deeper intimacy with people- selective on the people and the moments I am open to it. And it has done me a world of good to be deliberate and deny automatisms of habit or social constructs. I am not ready to give away this hard earned spaciousness and freedom without prompts from Spirit or seeing true value in doing so.

This is a period of stepping into a novel chapter of life for me, new skills want to be gained, integration and cohesion want to be upgraded to level up to what comes next. Not everybody can be a part or witness of this process, only select energies are supportive or aligned with this becoming.
Healing needs it protected spaces, growth needs conducive surroundings, expansion needs spaciousness. Some parts of the path need to be walked alone, some fellow travelers cannot accompany us on new paths as they have diverging paths to walk.

Maybe somewhere down the road I will be open for this depth of intimacy with incongruent people without a need for congruence on their part? I quite like that evolutionary idea…

Until I get there I shall side-step external incongruence and its draining effects on my wellbeing, while attending to transforming inner incongruence into greater integrity, wholeness and balance.

Image by Venuskind

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Trying to remember when last I had a comparable experience of effortless and seamless flow of understanding, knowing, expansion, inspiration and the wonderment of encountering oneness, sameness and differentiation concurrently and blissfully. 

Thinking back and sense-feeling through memories of encounters with beloveds and inspiring beings on my path I only came up with two people who elicited similar, though by far not equal, experiences when first met: my best friend and one of my ex partners. 

This made the encounter even more rare and precious in retrospect.

This meeting did not feel like those with people  recognize as part of my soul tribe as it was not his energy feeling-sensing harmonious with mine which drew me in. Soul tribe gives me a sense of kinship, safety, and speaks to a similarity of heartfulness and qualities of being. I remain aware of our differentness while delighting in contrasts as opportunities for inspiration, learning, and expansion. There is an imminent affection and endearment I am well aware of and enjoying in the moment. It is a conscious experience of knowing and a choice for boundless openness and curiosity to explore and be with the other and whatever unfolds between us in time.

This was not what happened here.

It is only in retrospective reflection and contemplation that multilayered nature of our encounter reveals itself to me. In the moment of meeting him I was ‘just’ present, focused on the delightful mental-emotional exchange. It is only now that the extraordinary sense of ease and being at home with them and the felt-sensed sameness of frequency is cognizant to me. I guess it is so rare to be emitting the same chord of complex tones that I have not developed the awareness or alertness to it in the moment. It poses no danger so my nervous system did not develop an acute awareness to it. It was far more important to this human experience to suss out frequential harmony or disharmony with others to foresee and prevent pain or dysfunctional dynamics. 

The experience I had is decidedly different from moments of conversations with others where we gleefully discover same interests, ideas and finish each others sentences. It was not the delight in finding overlaps of perspectives, feelings or thoughts. These of course are amazing and valuable in their own right. What I shared with him was not a sameness of ideas or heartfulness but a sameness of calibration and focus of soul consciousness: The way our soul chooses to explore the human experience, to play with what is learned, and what gives the human mind purpose, meaning and delight in this journey. 

Which makes for a rare effect: A thought or experience shared is taken up by the other and threaded into an experience or idea of theirs, which doesn’t lead to the ‘usual’ delight in learning something new or unexpected through the different prism of perception of another but rather to an expansion of my own experience as the signature of his sharing is not just coherent but actually equal to mine. Their experience, though clearly not what I experienced in this incarnation or journey, is integrated seamlessly as if I had experienced it. There was a level of direct transmission and integration, I have not experienced in this degree of seamlessness and effortlessness before.

Can you tell how much I am struggling to find adequate words for this specific texture and sense of resonance with another?

I sense this is a new level of communion and communication which is slowly opening up to me and us. One where union and individuality are experienced at a depth which makes relating more joyful and less challenging as the knowing of oneness (not sameness!) is so wholly known that differences and sameness are but colors to explore in painting shared experiences and adventures. There is little snagging or adversity in contrasts of opinions, feelings or concepts as the degree of detachment in playing with human perceptions is more total than I have experienced before. And yet the feelings of love, compassion, joy, and being engaged as a whole being are much higher and encompassing than in other exchanges or meetings. Fascinating.

I know this is not essentially about the person I communicated with, though it has its weighty part in it, but primarily about the frequency of being we both have been emitting and engaging from. 

This seems to have been one of the preview moments I am gifted in order to call me into another dimension or mode of being and experiencing this magnificent life. A moment of remembrance of what life can be to inspire me to focus and master my energy purposefully and intentionally on what expands and grows the experience and radiation of love and unity in diversity.

The invitation has been received with gratitude, now I shall work with excitement towards a life filled with this level of communion, shared being, inspiration and bliss.

Have you ever experienced something like this?

Do you feel like sharing a bit about your perceptions and experience? 

Art by Unknown

The post The Invitation appeared first on Venuskind.

What is transparency in relationships?

Transparency means to be open, honest and truthful.In the context of relationships, it is vital to the evolution of the partnership. It shows trust in our partners and our ability to be vulnerable and let someone in to what we are experiencing. Without transparency, there is no sharing and it shuts down growth.

Lack of transparency or openness can cause issues in relationships. Deflection can occur which gets us nowhere and keeps us trapped in a never ending cycle. Keeping someone in the dark and treating them like they have no right to care or to information breaks down communication and leads to the erosion of the partnership.

Why is transparency in relationships so important?

Transparency is important as it sets the depths in which the partnership is able to penetrate. If there is constant deflection, avoidance, excuses, or games there is no way to move deeper. Trust is broken. Communication becomes impossible. The party that is being deflected stops trying. Intimacy is shut down. It closes doors and builds walls. The relationship is effectively frozen.

Relationships are never easy, but they are built for two. If you’re constantly having to beg for someone to let you in, it’s time to walk away. Yes, sometimes we have to spend time alone to figure things out or deal with things. It’s important to have space in relationships in order to figure that out. But if someone is always leaving you in the dark or deflecting when you try to reach out, you need to decide if this is the kind of relationship that really nourishes you. Open, honest communication is vital for the continuation and expansion of relationships. Without this cornerstone, the pillars crumble. The more we open, the deeper we are able to go.

The truth is some people are happy in the shallow end of the relationship stream.

They don’t want to travel the intricate levels of the spirit. They don’t want to open up or have a soul deep connection. And no matter how hard you try to pry them open, you can’t. The important thing in these situations is to acknowledge your own need for greater depth and move on to something that provides that. You deserve someone who is open and willing to let you in. Life is too short to spend begging for someone to open up to you.

~ Ara Campbell

Photography: ‘White Gauze’ by Robert Mapplethorpe

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When my mother called to tell me that she met him while visiting with my aunt and was asked by him for my number I felt lots of strange sensations. This brought the etheric and intuitive down into the physical making me curious in mind and feeling on edge emotionally and physically. On reflection I realized that he has my mail addresses and mails by me that included my mobile number in the signature. That raised red flags but I was willing to keep an open mind.

And of course it has been more than a week since he got my number without a text or call from him.
Knowing my father and his sick relationship dynamics with his wife, this must have been part of their games of stabs at each other by bringing in third and fourth parties. They have been initiators and enablers of such toxic dynamics in our family ever since I was a kid and I have developed a strong aversion to it. As my mother only reservedly converses with him if it is about me, making me the topic would have been the only way to engage her. And talking to my mom triggers the hell out of his wife (my mom’s half sister) whom he delights in comparing unfavorably to my mom – in public.
So my best guess is that this was merely a comeback at his wife or some twisted drama that has nothing to do with my mom or me… and a way of bringing this dynamic and my part in it to my consciousness.

Every time someone comes at me via a third party, although having channels of connecting with me directly, a whole set of dynamics and sensations are triggered thanks these familial patterns. More intensely so if they make it a public conversation where they misrepresent the past to make themselves out to be the victim after having been hurtful and way out of line (my dad’s Oscar worthy performances of this are unforgettable).
My system perceives people acting in such a way as cowardly, manipulative, untrustworthy and unwelcome. Though these days my response will be tempered and kind with compassion, my warrior is monitoring it all poised to not give an inch and shut them down if anything less than integrity and honesty shows up.

If you come at me this way, know that your best outcome most likely will be a pyrrhus victory.

Father and other manipulators or tricksters of old, when you return bring your honesty and integrity or else prepare to face my warrior as she gives you the one thing you have been avoiding in your dealings with me: TRUTH – incisive, unrelenting and dispassionate.

The post Triangulation appeared first on Venuskind.

I held an unconscious misunderstanding of what it means to give of ourselves and our gifts to life for most of this lifetime. Conditioned to (un)consciously take undue responsibility for the wellbeing of all beings and things around me and having come with a contract of lightening and healing karma and distortions in my ancestral lineages was a fruitful if unhealthy combination that fed into above misunderstanding.

In my limited human feeling I longed to share and give of myself to all beings to alleviate their pain and lighten their load while my limited human thinking informed by trauma and conditioning held to people needing to earn and be worthy of whatever I have and was gifted to share. These two contradictory stances, in their decades of conflict, have attracted many an interesting albeit at times painful or confounding experiences.

I realize now that there were aspects in both attitudes that were right and equally wrong for lack of perception of reality as it truly is and not the illusion we perceive within the distortion fields of our collective and individual conditioning. 

The reality of existence is that we live in a permanent vibratory communication with everything in the Universe, we simply cannot not communicate. Therefore all we do, believe, feel, think is constantly feeding into what connects all of life in oneness. None of us can ever stop being of service to the One, regardless of our choices and deeds, it all informs and serves the collective and the unfolding of life.

And yet this doesn’t translate into us sharing everything and giving of ourselves equally to everyone who crosses our path in the denser physical reality of human interactions. This is where discernment and higher mind can come into play and engage in creative, un-linear and seemingly illogical or inconsistent ways through our beings. If we step out of their way they can create more meaningful experiences born from what feels like magic and incites bliss, equanimity and a deep sense of alignment in us.

Our (conditioned) human perception of what another needs or wants is faulty at best and harmful at worst. This is why humility and higher discernment are needed, to counter the prideful or shameful conditioning in us that we may walk with loving-kindness and playful fire of Spirit in our being. 

Therefore I choose to focus on my vibratory integrity, walk this earth with sovereignty, being as joyful, peaceful, loving, compassionate and mindful as I can, listening to intuition and Spirit to guide my sharing and keep knowing and thoughts to myself whenever they are silent. My life is now about honoring and being in service to the higher wisdom of Life/Spirit/Source (or whatever you prefer to name it).

If you want to awaken all of humanity,

then awaken all of yourself,

if you want to eliminate the suffering in the world,

then eliminate all that is negative in yourself.

Truly the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.

~ Lao Tzu

Photography by Dewan Irawan

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It is temptingly easy to walk the path of the ego and uphold narratives of victimhood and helplessness while giving away our power by blaming life or others for the pain and challenges we face. Our cultures have conditioned our responses and thinking to fall into these self harming habits and they sure can be overpowering. Yet at some point in our life, evolution, maturing and growth we have to cultivate the ability to check our ego and keep it from lashing out at others and diminishing ourselves with thought patterns of blame/ guilt/ shame and denial of our co-creative responsibility for our lives.

We cannot change our experience, communities and world if we keep going back to the dysfunctionalities we were raised in. We need to learn to cultivate self leadership, to support each other in this shift. Therefore I will not silently accept when I see actions that lack integrity and wisdom play out in harmful ways. With fierce compassion and kindness I will remind you when you have fallen out of alignment and offer you my hand in finding your way back. And I hope you will reciprocate in kind when my darkness gets the better of me.

Let us learn to tell our stories and experiences without blaming, guilting and character assassinating others while keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves and the power we hold to change and create. I know it is hard and challenging but also very empowering and holds the gift of freeing us from the addiction to unconscious perpetuation of the pain we experienced. 

We can choose to transmute our pain into inspiration and become more loving and kind with ourselves and others or we can let it fester into suffering which we (passive) aggressively take out on others.

I do not wish for a council, no external authority to create a corrective in our communities because I trust you and I to work it out without giving away our power and shrinking from our responsibility and accountability for our actions and words. Accountability not only in a larger karmic sense but in a very real everyday life sense.

The conscious/ spiritual/ self work communities have to awaken from the trance of their infatuation with “love and light” to hold everyone accountable and not keep bypassing the wiles of spiritualized egoic patterns. It is a truly lacking facsimile of love that allows the other to remain stuck in blind ego pain. Love doesn’t coddle, it gently reminds us of the grandness and strength at the core of our being, it leads us back home and calls our deeds by their real name: without blame and also without acceptance of our bullshit rationalizations.

We are capable of so much more! 

Please let us not remain in the illusions of our egoic comfort zones but keep waking each other up to deeper truths and higher wisdoms we can access through our hearts and spirits! 

Photography: Embrace #47, 1970 by Eikoh Hosoe

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Our wiser ancestral traditions had the ability to engage with ideas, be they opinions truth folklore or myths without rigidity, with a sense of discernment, a beginner’s mind and trust in their heart’s guidance.

The ability to engage with anything internal or external from a playful curiosity, devoid of judgement and fear programs, seeking insights into truth’s and illusions’  emanations is truly rare.

Why are we so afraid to allow our mind to entertain the foolish, the different, the dejective and let our curiosity and intuitive capacities of creating knowing use these for a more differentiated and subtle understanding of our reality?
Why is it so hard for so many to grasp the beauty and miracle of our individual realities thanks to our meaning creators of minds?
Why are we quick to forget how easy it is to manipulate our brains, decisions and thinking with simple strategies and techniques? Why are we ready to embrace this knowledge but so unwilling in researching how we have fallen for manipulation?
When have we begun to be so awfully serious, fear-driven and incapable of holding several contrasting ideas in our mind?
How are we so blind to the oneness of seeming dualities all around us?
Isn’t it time we stepped out of this suffocating game of ignorance and fear to claim our wholeness and sovereignty?

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.“
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Photo: “Utopia and Dystopia” by Kelia Anne

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This mean ego move is not unknown to me, I have been doing this and might be in the danger of doing so when triggered, out of ignorance and lack of sensitivity.

I understand the discomfort with labels some might feel with a view to how many people utilize them as a means of setting themselves apart, exotizing the other or rendering the unique human being behind it invisible in any other way.
I get the subtle ways words and labels can have a self-limiting and -isolating effect if we are not mindful. “I AM” is a very powerful self programming sequence that can be useful or create unexpected suffering when chosen unwisely.

Rejecting the use of any labels or self chosen prescriptive of others is an expression of a lack of respect and understanding of another human’s equality and sovereignty. It speaks to me of the person’s lack of freedom to be all of who he truly is due to strict critical and judgmental self-management.
Not using labels, as a shorthand to convey multi-layered concepts, ideas or identities without adequate explanations is showing a lack in communication skills and understanding of its challenges. When you side-step labels to monologize on their content you might be in danger of being disrespectful of another’s time and communication preferences.
If using an appropriate label gives you a feeling of being “less than” our being out of your league and makes you reject and reframe the meaning the labels instead it speaks of old pain of being shamed to me.

I have compassion for internal conflicts and protective patterns but fiercely oppose the externalization that hurts another’s feeling or becomes part of systemic oppression.
Our discomfort and pain are invitations to inquire, to educate ourselves and use the tools of language even if they are lacking. When we follow that invitation and explore we inevitably will be met in our shared humanity and enriched by the diversity of lived and embodied realities and the kaleidoscope of insights it affords those open to receive.

The freedom of some to relabel themselves and their preferences is an act of liberation for all, opening the pathway to understanding our society and freeing ourselves from any label that limits our self expression.

Respecting everyone’s freedom of expression and choice of labels is a small admission fee to our own freedom, don’t you think?

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