There are many layers and subtleties to its gifts of insight into my unhelpful beliefs, forgotten pain, behavioral and thought patterns, and my sweet little girl‘s longings that remained unfulfilled. Illuminating attachments in need of attention, transformation, or release. Alerting me to contractions, stuck energy, and tensions alive in my body. 

Inviting me to become intimate with the complex ways I create experiences which are unfulfilling and fall short of meeting my needs and wants, to gently coax out the parts who due to invisibility and neediness sabotage my ability to perceive all of the layers of an experience, to be still and listen to their pleas and complaints. Inviting me to observe the gentle and playful reparenting my inner father and mother bring to these voices and my little girl. Inciting and honing my creativity in finding means of fulfilling my needs internally with more skill and playfulness. 

An invitation to lean into a bigger YES to life, to gently melt tensions, apprehensions, and resistance, and reminder that ‘resistance is futile’ and unloving when the Universe is teaching me lessons in receptivity to its abundance and unconditional love. 

Becoming stronger and clearer thanks to disappointment, the light bringer and liberator.

Art: ‘I Have Finally Arrived’ by José Cacho

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Years back, I have been guided to step away from generosity and taught to painstakingly observe, witness, and analyze the dynamics of giving and receiving in my relationships.
Learning to differentiate between healthy flow of generosity and the ‘faux generosity’ of over-giving, and to notice when and why the first is turned into the latter. Realized how draining and withering lack of reciprocity, and giving to the wrong people, are for my heart and being, and to become aware of the high cost incurred to my body-mind by experiencing and healing this. Reflected on the heartrending devastation experienced in the emotional realm when giving from an open heart to an imbalance in giving, attention, awareness, care, or love.
Learned to hold myself accountable for that pain I caused myself while being compassionate with the parts that replay this pattern. Practiced releasing the ‘other’ from the blame my protectors and wounded parts would put on them by expanding their perceptions and leading them to embrace accountability.

After all that work, energy, and love flowed into this ongoing process of understanding and integration I still find myself slipping back into this distorted pattern of hurting myself by inviting misaligned people into my experience and replaying old scripts with their ‘generous’ help.
I cannot express how much it tires me to find myself in these repetitions, how much energy is spent on going through the whole process with gentleness and care for subtleties. And yet, what else is there to do but to work towards integration and liberation?

Thus, I find myself contemplating, once again, how to teach the parts of me, who give generously without keeping an eye on reciprocity and equality, to be more discerning and moderate their giving. How do I ensure that powerful feelings and the overflow of love and affection do not manage to disrupt awareness and alertness to the replay of old patterns?
Maybe it is also about accepting the humanness of forgetting and awakening in-midst of a replay, and embracing it as a humbling experience and reminder to stay aware and alert?

It is still challenging to engage with above mentioned helpers in this pattern in the aftermath of awakening to the pattern, to protect them from the immensity of anger and rejection triggered, from expressions of the deep-rooted dislike for the stingy and miserly in perfectly honed daggers in word form, and any other impulse to make them feel the pain their actions translate into for me.
The parts in me that hate them are powerful and sly and I still haven’t mastered our dance, finding myself taken in by their rationalizations and emotions more often than I like. I have a lot of growing to do in this…

Which is why I choose to step back from engaging in any deep or intimate way with those, with whom I find myself in patterns of giving and withholding, emotional openness and unavailability – if they cannot or will not step up and work with me in diffusing the activation and emotional charge.

Here is an interesting thing my reflections have made me become aware of: Those who have the skills and emotional intelligence to move between states, self reflect, and retain access to meta perceptions and exchanges on relating, are only rarely in this dynamic with me. And if they are it plays out in a different and more mellow way (regardless of the intensity of emotions or heated exchanges), as we can talk about it from different dimensional perceptive points (identified/detached, mine/theirs, human/consciousness) and open to unknown possibilities, negotiate compassionately to have our needs met, and navigate the challenge with humor and playfulness.
These are my people with whom I can fail better, grow, and thrive.

Now how to teach my parts to direct their healthy generosity and affections towards my kin, decline invitations to over-give, and be more discerning and reserved towards those who cannot meet me on an even playing field of consciousness that is on the level that serves our wellbeing.

Work in messy but gratitude-inspiring process…

Photography by Caroline Tran

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The sly power of dysfunctional romantic conditioning and the repetitive nature of ego, shadow and subconsciousness is truly fascinating and at times daunting.

At least this time around it wasn’t spent in confusion, delusion or unconsciousness but under the guidance of my Self and in high awareness and observer mode. The idea being that if I do this with full awareness and and full allowing it would be a last experience to close out the pattern and cycle equally. I am so grateful for the humorous way my Self teaches me about the patterns of my small self and the enchanting way I am called home to be loved on and showered with gifts from Spirit once the lessons are learned. 

Every disappointing relationship, betrayal, manipulation, abuse, injustice, denigration or selfish behavioral pattern I have been confronted with has helped me to unlearn the “good girl” programming and to prioritize my relationships with Self and Source before ALL else. 

I am grateful to my teachers, catalysts and mirrors who have led me home to the place which fills my being with love, bliss, wellbeing and balances what needs balance. Please understand, though, if I choose to no longer engage with you or keep you in my experience when you cannot meet me on the levels of relating I prefer. I trust you will find countless others who will avail themselves for the continuation of the ego games we played or who will help you awaken and reach for more or better ways of relating.

I am grateful for the relationships and soul kin who relate with me on dimensions of reciprocity, compassion, generosity, integrity, creativity, ease, bliss, love and most of all on the dimension of Spirit. Without you I could have never survived and thrived through the karmic load of the old cycle. Thank you for being in my life and making me laugh! 

I am ready to leave these experiences, patterns, beliefs, karma, dynamics and people behind me and to welcome more of the balanced and holistically fulfilling relationships into my life which mirror my expanding relationship with Self. Thank you Source for always teaching and loving me through all my experiences.

May we collectively transcend the darkness of the old scripts and rise into the light of loving, equal, sovereign and generous relating!

Photography: Tony Thornburg by Unknown

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I had witnessed with increasing awareness the emotional charge held in my body around men denigrating themselves or acting out of integrity due to feelings of inferiority and lack of worth. 

So when this pattern crossed my awareness in a meditative introspection today I asked to see its roots. Opening myself to feeling, sensing and knowing whatever might arise with gentle curiosity and acceptance. 

The first images, emotions and knowing that emerged were of my father as he was in my toddler years. I felt his weakness, discomfort at feeling inadequate, not measuring up and feeling less than my mother. I felt the urge to control it by posturing as secure and invoking biblical hierarchy to gain authority whenever he found himself questioned by my mother. I saw my mother and her strength as well as her intense and unforgiving expectations of integrity of herself and others and the lack of gentleness and understanding.

After observing and delving deeper into those memories and sensations I asked both for forgiveness for using their emotive, sensate and spoken experience to hurt myself and forgave them for bringing their unresolved issues to my innocent being.

When I felt into my body I sensed a lessening of sensations of contraction and heat but also sensed chords painfully tugging at my solar plexus and sacral chakra. Touching them I asked to be lead to their origin and suddenly patriarchal concepts and beliefs started surfacing in my mind. Letting me realize, once again, how deeply ingrained and alive this toxic programming is even after decades of self work.

I waited till I got a sense of having received all related beliefs with their corresponding emotions and images.. then I invoked memories of men whom I had uncomfortably experienced in such a state recently, sitting with the memories and feelings while asking myself why it hadn’t allowed for my natural empathy and compassion to flow towards them, asking to be led to the origin of this. And my emotional reactions of disgust, repulsion and rejection lead me to my shadow aspects of weakness and cowardice, my numbness and coldness to a blockage of my natural empathy by subconscious beliefs and rationalizations of their unworthiness and the underlying fear of touching into the shame and pain I felt and encapsulated from moments of weakness and cowardice of my own. 

It was easy to release the patriarchal beliefs but quite painful to embrace my lack of compassion, to own the pain and harm this has caused the men I had engaged with. It took a while to get to the point where I was able to forgive myself and integrate weakness and cowardice as parts of my self expression. Disarming my defense to owning, accepting and laughing about myself being in any of these states and letting go of the contractions, tensions and judgements by bringing self-compassion and love to it all and my affected chakras.

I am grateful to have a multitude of tools of inquiry, knowing and intuitive integration of unconscious and painful dualities within me. I bow in gratitude to the healer in me, my countless teachers and ancestral helpers along my path.

A profound sadness enfolds me as I reflect on the intricate web of contradictory beliefs, judgements and blockages the patriarchal cultures have seeded and grown in us. My heart hurts for the messages of unworthiness men have to live with internally and which are consciously and subconsciously being reflected back to them by all of us (not just male code and men). 

To witness how deeply we have been and are being manipulated and affected in our psycho-social being and relating by distorting programs meant to divide and oppress us in a multitude of ways and our co-creative part in it is hard. To have to own the responsibility in upholding, reaffirming and fueling patriarchy even though my conscious beliefs and principles are not aligned with it in the least saddens me and equally fuels my intention to keep doing my work.

And I wonder how I will meet feelings of inferiority in a man next time I encounter them.

What lies in my power to help heal this distorted perception in the other? 

Have I done sufficient work to no longer hold that distortion in me? 

Can I make it my conscious practice to bring the reality and frequency of worthiness and wholeness to the men I engage from a truthful perception and reflection of their being? 

How do I engage or gently disengage when someone is not willing, ready or capable to do the work and embrace their worthiness? 

How can being a silent witness be of service or is silence enabling?

When will we collectively end the torturous patterns embedded in our patriarchal programming?

This is just a small part of the processes of integration and unification of dualities those walking a similar path are being called to keep up and reverberating into the field. Cleansing ourselves and the collective with love and consciousness from the distortions of the controller matrix is an ongoing process. Every little moment of insight and healing is rippling out into the collective consciousness and changing the frequency of reality and calling in new timelines of healthier relating and being. 

May humanity keep rising above the evil interwoven into our psyches.

Photography by Marcus Branch

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This frustration causes the child to feel rejected, which, in turn, causes hatred, resentment, hostility, and aggression. This is the second part of the vicious circle. The need for love that cannot be gratified causes hatred and hostility toward the very people one loves the most. Generally speaking, this is the second conflict of the growing human being. If the child hated someone it did not love at the same time, if it loved in its own way and did not desire love in return, this conflict could not arise. The very fact that hatred exists for the very person one loves dearly creates an important conflict in the human psyche. It is self-evident that the child feels ashamed of these negative emotions, and therefore it puts this conflict into the subconscious where it festers. This hatred causes guilt because the child is taught early that it is bad, wrong, and sinful to hate, particularly one’s parents whom one is supposed to love and honor. It is the guilt, living on and on in the subconscious, which in the adult personality causes all sorts of inner and outer conflicts. Moreover, people are unaware of the roots of these conflicts until they decide to find out what is hidden in their subconscious.

Fear of Punishment, Fear of Happiness

This guilt has a further, and again inevitable, reaction. Feeling guilty, the child’s unconscious says “I deserve to be punished.” Thus a fear of punishment arises in the soul, which again is almost always completely unconscious. However, the manifestations can be found in various symptoms, which, if followed through, will finally lead to the chain reactions I will describe next.

With this fear of punishment a further reaction sets in, that whenever you are happy and enjoy pleasure, in spite of this being a natural longing, you feel you do not deserve it. The guilt of hate loves most convinces the child that is undeserving of anything good, joyful, or pleasurable. The child feels that if it were ever to become happy, the punishment, which seems inevitable, would be that much greater. Therefore the child unconsciously avoids happiness, thinking to atone in this way and thus to avoid even greater punishment. This avoidance creates situations and patterns that always seem to destroy everything most dearly wished for in life.

It is this fear of happiness that leads a person to all sorts of unhealthy reactions, symptoms, endeavors, manipulations of emotions, and even to actions which indirectly create patterns that appear as if they would happen involuntarily, without the personality being responsible for them at all. Thus a further conflict comes into existence. On the one hand, the personality is yearning for happiness and fulfillment, on the other, a fear of happiness prohibits the fulfillment. Although the desire for happiness can never be eradicated, yet, due to this deeply hidden guilty feeling, the stronger one desires happiness, the guiltier one feels.

Now the fear of being punished and the fear of not deserving happiness creates a further and more complicated reaction. The unconscious mind thinks, “I am afraid to be punished by others, although I know I deserve it. It is much worse to be punished by others, for then I am really at the mercy of others, be it people, be it fates, be it God, be it life itself. But perhaps if I punished myself I could at least avoid the humiliation, the helplessness, and the degradation of being punished by forces outside myself.” These basic conflicts of love and hatred, of guilt and fear of punishment exist in every human personality. The compulsive desire for self-punishment due to wrong and ignorant conclusions exists in every human being to some degree.

Thus the personality inflicts punishment on itself. This may happen in various ways, either by physical disease that the psyche produces, or by various mishaps, difficulties, failures, or conflicts in any area of life. In each case the area affected depends on the personal image the child has formed and carried around during this lifetime until it is found and eventually dissolved. Thus if an image exists regarding profession and career, for instance, it will be fortified by the inherent desire for self-punishment; difficulties in this respect will constantly arise in the person’s life. Or if an image connected to love and marital exists, the same pattern will hold true there.

Hence, if and when you do not succeed in a conscious and legitimate desire, and looking at your life you find the pattern that the fulfillment of this conscious desire was constantly frustrated, as though you had nothing to do with it (as though an unkind fate had befallen you) you can be sure that not only does an image and a wrong conclusion exist within you, but that, in addition, the need for self-punishment is also present.

A further chain reaction in this vicious circle is the personality’s split in its desire currents. The original split between love and hate, which started the vicious circle, causes further splits, as you can see quite clearly by now. One of these conflicting feelings is the need for self-punishment, yet, on the other hand, the desire not to be punished coexists with it. Thus a hidden part of the psyche argues, “Perhaps I can get around it, Perhaps I can atone in another way for my great guilt of hating.” This imaginary atonement amounts to a kind of bargaining. One does so by setting such high standards for oneself that it is impossible to live up to it in reality. This little inner voice argues, “If I am so perfect, if I have no fault and no weakness, if I am the best in everything I undertake, then I can make good for my past hatred and resentment.” And since this little voice was at one point repressed into the unconscious, it did not die; t is still alive in the present. 

~ Eva Pierrakos, Fear no Evil – The Pathwork Method of Transforming the Lower Self

Definition of Image: “Every personality in the course of a lifetime, usually in earliest childhood, often even in infancy, forms certain impressions due to environmental influences or to sudden unexpected experiences. These impressions are usually based on conclusions formed by the personality. Most of the time they are wrong conclusions. One sees and experiences something unfortunate, an unavoidable hardship of life, and then generalizes these happenings into beliefs. The conclusions formed are not thought out; they are more in the nature of emotional reactions, general attitudes concerning life. They are not completely devoid of a certain kind of logic, but it is of a very limited and erroneous kind. As the years go by, these conclusions and attitudes sink more and more into the subconscious, molding to some extent the life of the person in question.”

Photography: Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick by Unknown

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