I am naturally generous

I love giving and sharing what is mine to share, there is no joy for me in hoarding things while another could make good use of them to enhance their experience and joy.
As I have gone through several cycles of lessons with takers, selfish people, and abusers which are never far from generous people, there are clear and non-negotiable boundaries to my giving. You might not sense them or come against them until I sense a lack in adequate reciprocation, a sense of entitlement to what is mine, taking me for granted, or trying to play games. Then, depending on the degree of seriousness, you will see the boundary illuminating my generous self in a way that reveals my warrior heart underneath it or make you taste some medicine.

I take full responsibility for my life

In the beginning many enjoy this as novel and intriguing as it takes expectations and coercions, which are normalized in relationships, off the table in engaging with me. Especially selfish/player types feels like they can get away with more or dupe me.
Though I do not expect others to share my beliefs and lifestyle, their choices do define if and where they may or may not fit into my experience. Living from a perceptive vantage point running contrary to common culture creates a need to keep a close eye on the energy of those close to me and my circles in general. Which means that I will keep stepping back from someone, who does not embody responsibility for their life, until the distance makes it feasible to have that person in my life. Which also translates as getting less and less of my energy, attention, and time until I eventually move on and end the connection.

Integrity is key to my life path

I am held to learning about and living from integrity in this life.
And having circled a few times around the sun while learning lessons on integrity from master manipulators, intimate betrayals, and more from the narcissistic playbook, I have functional boundaries and best practices in place even if they are not initially visible.
Generally I prefer to disconnect from anyone consciously choosing to walk a path lacking in integrity. Mind you, not because it is inherently evil but because I had my fill of experiences based in the shadow aspects of integrity and now intend to learn from the light aspects for a change.
The point of discernment if someone stays or goes is how they engage with their current lack of integrity. Are they struggling with it and doing their best to grow and move into integrity? Are they smug or in total denial of it? Does their ego feign incompetence and victimhood in order not to be held accountable and responsible to change?
Expect less leeway if our dynamic has veered me away from my integrity. I will put my whole effort into getting back into integrity, once done, the gaze on you will be compassionate but the steel of my commitment to integrity will stand against you and keep you at a distance appropriate to energies which are not conducive to my purpose. I might move slow, for my own benefit, but once I decide to move there is no turning back.

Learning, growth and wisdom are key to my life path

Whatever supports me in learning is welcome, even if painful in nature. Whatever stands in the way of my growth, holds me back, or slows me down by trying (non-consensually) to ride my coat tails is not welcome and will be dealt with swiftly and unapologetically.
I do not take kindly to things which stand in the way of my learning, regardless if they are internal/external or positive/negative. At best I take them as a playful challenge to work/grow around and leave behind, at worst I take them as something asking for my Taurean horns and power.
Don’t play yourself and think that someone who will ruthlessly root out even beloved patterns within her will be swayed by your cuteness or a shared history. Everything is fair game if it stubbornly takes the form of an obstruction.

I choose to surround myself with people I love, admire, and learn with

I understand how surrounding energies subtly yet profoundly influence us, which is why I am very clear on which energies I accept in my inner/outer circles, and which will block access to my life.
My life has thankfully been blessed with connections of immeasurable value next to the wild mix of contrast it offers. And I am not speaking of celebrity status or money but of true value gained and cultivated by hard work across lifetimes, gifts, energetic frequencies, and showing up consistently with qualities of wisdom, kindness, love, joy, playfulness, insightfulness in the face of life’s adversities and pleasures equally.
I have no interest in being surrounded by people who are intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually lazy or complacent in their deliberate ignorances, though theirs is an equally valid way of ‘doing human’ to me.
I am only mildly interested in those who chose lives of self-destructivity or self-sabotage, regardless if they do it in what is deemed a glamorous or destitute way.
My interests firmly lie with those who chose specific types of excellence that speak to my soul and consciousness, those who silently and persistently work towards inner mastery and service to the All from higher consciousness not their ‘pain body.’ Everything else is at best an entertaining and at worst a background noise to be silenced.

I am loyal

I am fiercely loyal to my friends, will stand by their side and in front of them if necessary. My friends are what family is to others, they are my family of choice, family of spirit, and soul family. It takes a lot to make me walk away from a long standing friendship or relationship!
As long as you walk in integrity, honest, accountability — read as trustworthiness — we are golden. If you should fall out of these, for more than a short while, I will support you in your journey and growth of reclaiming them should you ask me to and show sincere effort.
But if you show lack of trustworthiness, avoid contact though I reach out repeatedly, become disrespectful of my time, energy and person I will move on in a heartbeat. And no, I will not first talk to you about it as from my vantage point we are no longer treading common ground.

I am playful but I do not play

Don’t mistake my lightheartedness and playfulness for a lack of seriousness or grit. I can step at any given moment into full warrior mode and use my swords of truth and intuition to cut through smoke screens, lies, games, and other BS. Which is a fun exercise to me really and no hardship. Invite me and you will get a taste of its glorious joyful flow or the bite of said blades revealing truths and falsities, depending on where you stand.

I will not hurt you intentionally

No longer am I wasting my energy on illusions of retaliation, no longer do my wounded parts get to avenge themselves for a painful past on the current protagonists.
My shadow and darkness are allowed to express internally but rarely allowed to come out and play in the old ways. And as they have come to accept the truth that Karma knows to make you pay justly in a currency that is dear to you, I have become good at walking away and letting life deal with people who show up in hurtful, disrespectful, manipulative, etc., ways. I no longer make them my problem and respect that they belong to Lady Karma, to deal with in her divine time.

I choose to take my energy and invest it into life-giving, expansive, joyful things, relationships, projects, thoughts. Or I channel the energy into self love for delicious dividends from the drama observed and happily side-stepped.

The benefits of my way of engaging

Whatever I do, I always end up thanking the adversarial energy or person for enriching my life by creating contrast, making me learn, stretch and get better at inner mastery.

I simply cannot lose in this little game of BEING human because everything enhances my experience and offers me an opportunity for growth or pivoting towards more fruitful endeavors and connections.

It is up to you and your behavior if you are, and remain, part of this playful unfolding of magic or need to be left to the past.

Sculpture by Bruno Walpoth

The post How I Engage with Life and People appeared first on Venuskind.

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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