For most people the word healing describes a goal-focused process akin to the healing of a cut in our skin: a localized process of hurt, inflammation, scabbing over, creation of new skin and retaining a faint or obvious scar.

Healing to me has a more layered meaning and is absolutely process-oriented not just goal-oriented.

In an interconnected web of existence, a world made up of on quantum particles and their potential for entanglement, as an organism within a complex interdependent ecosystem – healing is not limited to the individual being or organism nor solely dependent upon them. In other words, everything I do to heal myself feeds into the web of our shared existence, our collective consciousness, and affects my relational systems and engagements with All That Is. Equally all that is done by other aspects of the All affects and influences me via the field of consciousness.

Healing in my understanding is a life-long practice – it is not something that can be done in a few months or years (unless you look through a purely reductionist lens at localized physical ailments).

To me it entails being aware of our woundings, early childhood traumas, and what is often overlooked what was missing to support our healthy development. The trauma and developmental impairments afflicted on us through neglect are the hardest to notice and become aware of and yet their are often the most important aspects of our woundings in need of healing.

We need a certain level of psychological knowledge and developmental understanding to attain to our tender and wounded aspects skillfully, while also practicing being gentle, compassionate, and loving with all aspects of self. Gently ending internal wars, divisions, and other self sabotaging or self harming patterns we have learned.

It means questioning all we have learned and belief, researching and learning more about the things we hold strong beliefs on, contemplating and critically reflecting on our life experience and trying to find other ways of perceiving or framing our memories and stories.

In the process of healing we will find aspects, traits, skills, parts of us that we lost along the pathways of trauma, adaptation, and conditioning. We need to recognize, reclaim, nurture, and cultivate these to integrate them into a more whole and integrated version of ourselves.

Our perceptions are changed by this healing process as distortions from trauma lose their hold over our mind, and with new perceptions new layers of reality become visible and call for our awareness in engaging with them. More discernment makes itself available to us. And what once seemed black and white to our conditioned minds and hearts suddenly has multitudes of nuances of grey and colors.

Healing reclaims feeling. We feel more, we learn to engage with our emotions wisely, never suppressing them, nor fueling those which may burn or harm us. Learning about the pitfalls of being identified or lost in our emotions, to respect their power and bring in consciousness and intuition to help us channel and utilize their energy in service of our path and life as a whole.

We become appreciative observers of life within as without as life now reveals more and more of its subtle magic, humor and playfulness to us. Fear loses its grip over our thinking and feeling to regain its function as a navigational signal.

Learning to feel and think without identifying ourselves with emotions and thoughts, becoming more detached and yet more engaged. No longer being hijacked by tsunamis of emotions, blinded by limiting beliefs, we can be fully and sustainably present.

Healing is deeply relational. I concur with the notion that many of our woundings have been created in relationships and necessitate corrective or healing relationships to fully heal, as there is only little that can be done in the absence of relating in terms of healing. Being a mystic I would count all kinds of relationships as potential sources of healing, not just relationships with humans. One of my most powerful healing and corrective relationships is the one I have cultivates with Self (or higher self) and which is my most nurturing, loving, and joyful relationship.

Allowing energy to flow through us with less obstructions, having more spaciousness in choosing what to engage with and what to let pass us by in order to protect our wellbeing and expansive trajectory.

Healing is an ongoing process and journey for multidimensional beings, whose every change to one aspect of inner being affects all other parts and thereby calls for recalibration, adaptation of skills and practices, or cultivation of new skills. It is a premise for true growth, expansion, greatness, and change.

Once we have attended to ourselves enough, an inner knowing lets us know that moment, we will not only desire to share our tools, experiences, and knowledge but also be able to do so with the necessary awareness, discernment, and knowing to minimize potential obstruction or harm to others, while remaining open to keep learning and showing up better.

I feel myself transitioning from primary focus on personal healing to making collective healing my focus. Whatever form that may take or which adventures beckon along that new pathway are still unknown to me. But I hear the call clearly and delight in following it as intuition guides me.

Photography by Unknown

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These are some of my reflections at the end of this adventure in humaning.

Men of my age and older

Having been surrounded for more than a decade by very aware, caring and spiritual people has upped all my baselines for communicating and relating. And engaging with mainstream ‘normal’ men gained a surreal retro feel thanks to the evolution and growth shared in various communities. I caught myself over and over in surprised and speechless moments of “People are still doing this and not aware enough to see it for what it is and change or grow?”

Habituated to fellow growth-minded people the slow pace of progression and learning in others, coupled with an unadulterated and unapologetic rigidity in holding on to dysfunction felt not only alien but put me off, even if the man had other good qualities.

A history of immersion in psychology, communication sciences and being part of the polyamory community has taught me early on about communication, consideration and respect for another’s needs and feelings. So much so that it has become second nature and my world is primarily populated with people who are eloquent practitioners of it. Therefore the disjointed communication styles, absence of consideration of my needs and feelings, unabashed egocentricity, unconscious mind games, ego tantrums and other manipulative attempts felt jarring and alienating. And I realized these block communicating and relating so much that even the most basic levels of these are repeatedly or permanently unavailable with these men. Though the reasons for said blockages are amalgamated by individual unaddressed patterning and wounding the general dynamic was quite repetitive.

Overall I observed the immensity of emotional and spiritual poverty rampant in men of my age, the ways they try to compensate or flee it (sex, status, money, etc.) and the suffering, fragility and loneliness underneath all their striving or posturing as they have achieved enough of their goals to be confronted with their fecklessness in the face of the hole within they tried to fill with them.
I am saddened by how few of them are courageous and willing enough to face their shadow and integrate it now. Too many messages and conversations had men acknowledge that they probably should address this or that and then giving me rationalizations and excuses why they won’t just now or ever. Of course change and healing is impossible, shouldn’t I know?

With men who are spiritual and have their own self work journey the fault lines lie along similar lines though in a more tempered and less obvious way. They also strive and posture by displaying their spiritual practices, jobs, achievements – the more integrated have a humorous awareness of it when pointed to it while others will react with the same fragility to be found in other men. I cannot help but see a lack of decisive actions and investment in things of value due to the ease of being distracted or too sluggish to leave the (spiritual) comfort zone. A lack of ability to slay the Buddha on the path and progress beyond on the one hand and the inability or unwillingness to marry spirituality with the mundane on the other.

Conditioning is truly strong and finds ways to operate in new ways along old lines, the spiritualized ego is just one of the more visible ways this shows itself. If we do not keep alert, sharpening our awareness and consciousness our human affinity for comfort and consistency will limit our progress and insert unhealthy stagnation and calcification. A valuable reminder to be honored.

Power differentials

The most fascinating experience I made for the first time in this intensity and across all encounters is a dynamic power differential which put me in the stronger position without any intent or effort on my side.
All the disappointments, heartbreaks, and subsequent ongoing self work that emotional unfulfilment has brought into my experience has blossomed and is bearing a magical fruit. Said fruit is twofold as it manifests as the ability to fill my own cup by having a variety of ways and flexibility to fulfill my needs independent of a singular other. Sitting alone and dropping inside already washes away all burdens, worries, and needs in the luminosity of presence and equanimity. Taking full responsibility for my experience has grown and transcended me beyond the strangling grip of trauma and conditioning into a state of compassionate self love that allows me to navigate life with awareness, trust, playfulness and inner strength.
The second manifestation is the curated life I have been slowly building from the inside out, rich in connections and relationships that can nurture me more than *enough* and which evolve and grow steadily and healthily. When filling my cup internally or from Spirit doesn’t quite hit the point there are cherished friends and acquaintances who will do it. And often it takes only a word or sentence here, a hug, moments of shared laughter or commiseration. Even little things are superfoods to my heart and Soul in this web of love that lights up around and in me.

Having worked on my childhood trauma and with my sexual desires and energy has shifted my relationship with sex in ways I haven’t had a chance of being so acutely aware of in the absence of viable sex partners. I realized that the past years had taught me to transform the dense, sharp, burning imminence of sexual desire into other forms of energy in service of my spiritual practice or into a gentle, encompassing, warm, expansive erotic energy that is more akin to a wide flowing river than the intensity of burning fiery sexual need. My urges no longer hijack or control my being, I can feel, sense and take pleasure in them without having to act on them right here and now, frustration, or loss of the energy. There is no enslavement nor opposition to sexual desires, just an allowing, awareness and loving intentional engagement. Which is very different to the way it dominated and drove the decisions and action of the men I encountered, even the spiritual with a few exceptions (true tantric practitioners). This dominating drive was often the reason why connection was impossible as their system had concept of relating and connecting outside of sex. Not only a mental poverty but also a terrible pattern of starving the emotional body.

I enter every encounter as a whole being open to new experiences, cognizant of the goodness and abundance of life, while these men act from mindsets built on scarcity, competition, domination and neediness. A power differential asserts itself as I am less driven than them, moving at the pace of my awareness and intuition, my desires for the encounter being for it to be respectful, kind, and interesting/expansive. While on the other side they are under pressure to fulfill their burning needs and desires for ‘the one,’ sex, admiration, alleviation of loneliness, filling the emptiness in their life, etc. The exception being that spiritual guys have less of a pressure and more of a desire and the best of them meeting me in a similar openness to mine.

This calls for extra mindfulness and compassion in my words and actions in order not to enter into the dysfunctional patterns this power difference might invite and to be kind and caring towards the tender aspects of the man. Gifts always come with new responsibilities to keep relating balanced and fair.

Take away for me

All the work to disempower and dismantle romantic conditioning and be more spacious about relating and loving has changed how I perceive relationships, my visions and needs in relating with an intimate partner or friend, and lastly me. I can smile at my inner romantic when she starts going off creating Hollywood movies in her future projections, and still stay anchored in awareness and act from my higher senses and mind.
No longer a slave to these narratives by blindly following them nor by rebelling against them, I have learned to allow life to write an authentic and healthier narrative into every encounter with potential while practicing detachment from outcomes and surrender to the way life unfolds.

And so here I am in a state of awe of the wholeness this path has gifted me. Grateful for the expansion of my awareness, the learning of skills that help me navigate challenging feelings and pains of the past with tender compassion and firmness in service of the wellbeing of all. Grateful for the lessoning of the selfishness and self absorption of the ego which used to blind me to the needs, wants, desires, and feelings of others in the pursuit of my emotional fulfillment. Thankful for leaning into interdependence, allowing vulnerability, honesty and tenderness to strip me to my essential nature and truths in the face of worthy beloveds, learning and practicing how to keep filling another’s cup while keeping mine full *enough*.

I bow in gratitude for my teachers in the past months for the insights and learning they co-created with me. Grateful for them helping me realize that companionship and friendship are fundamental to me and my vision of an evolutionary and fulfilling relationship and that many fail to meet the basic skills and awareness needed for that starting point, let alone the evolutionary trajectory I see as intrinsic to my life and loving. Grateful for making me realize how unique and special a man has to be to co-create a relationship and life with me that would be worthwhile to surrender my aloneness for. Laying the foundation for the proper appreciation and gratitude for the one that will take this role in times to come. Grateful for making me more committed to my path and consciousness work to avoid the pitfalls of conditioning, rigidity, and stagnation which render us lifeless.
Hoping from the bottom of my heart that our encounter was in some little way enriching and nourishing to them and that their Soul flourishes and delights along the path she choose.

Last but not least I bow in gratitude and awe to Life/Self/Source for the playfulness, love, creativity, care, and challenges they pepper my life experience with. And for the blessed and indomitable knowing that what is mine will never pass me by!

Photography Karen Williams by Paul Innis

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“It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self discovery,
rather than to choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness
that would last the rest of our lives.”
~ Marianne Williamson

For a long time I have been perceiving things along the lines of this quote, believing it to be a primarily a question of individual courage if someone walks a path of self discovery and self work.
But the years of the pandemic have illuminated this and allowed me to perceive and reflect on it in a more detailed way.

There is a lot more to this ongoing choice of self discovery, and there is a distinct difference between those who will keep choosing this path and those only willing to follow it up to a point, until it causes too much discomfort or begins to undercut too much of the beliefs and desires of the ego.

Paths

Sure it takes courage initially to follow the call of the soul, to listen to the voice insisting on change and a different way of being. That could be already achieved by comparatively small and superficial lifestyle changes, changing our diet, choosing yoga and mindfulness practices. This is how far most will take it, and they will benefit in ‘functioning’ better in a sick and exploitative system. And that is all they wish for.

Some will take the path of psychology and delve into certain aspect of its insights, get help and work things out to the degree that they feel balanced and well enough to engage with life in a new and less painful way. Some adjustments are made to beliefs and perceptions with the focus being predominantly on helping the personality better navigate life.

Others will move into esoteric and occult teachings and belief systems, incorporating those beliefs into their daily lives and practicing relevant rituals. They might also strive to be more loving and compassionate, molding the personality, without delving too deeply into spiritual self discovery and the work and changes arising from it.

And then there are those whose soul’s are willing to immerse themselves more fully into self discovery in this incarnation. Who will seek many different sources, or maybe just one, and utilize them to go beyond the personality, to touch on the Self, to let it rework their being. Those who will go through all the challenges, pains, and losses it takes to make the personality and mind take the backseat as the Soul/Self take the lead. Those who learn to ‘step out of the way’ as the forces of life change them and their life, who are willing to unlearn all that they have been taught, to experience the mystery of life unclouded by the misperceptions and deceits of ancestors and the cultures and conditioning handed down to them.

Insights

From where I am at in my journey and knowing I realize how little these paths, and how far we are capable and allowing in walking them, are dependent on the traits of the personality or the resistances of the ego. That which is decisive lays at the core of our being at the Soul level of our being. It is there, where the choice of experiences and learning for this lifetime are made, not in the mind or personality – those only get to rationalize them after the fact.

The complexity of factors that have to come together to create an ongoing and truly evolutionary trajectory of growth is more aligned with the mystical teaching that separate and individual agency is an illusion and that as ‘all that is is affected by all that is’ life, including personal choices, is a collective unfolding.

Which has taken away the wish to ‘help others know and understand’ and replaced it with a knowing of their understanding perfectly well for their soul path and intentions. No need to interfere or wish for change. And if it puzzles me, I may try to inquire into their perceptions and inner trajectory to make sense of their beliefs and behaviors, but it no longer is necessary beyond teaching me lessons needed to for my own becoming.

With it the burning desire to find others, who know more than me or have explored differing paths, in order to expand my knowledge has mellowed out. I still enjoy deep and expansive exchanges on philosophical, cosmological, energetical aspects of our experience. But exchanges focused in awe and delight in the mystical unfolding of life have taken their place and leave me charged up with delight and joy like the earlier never could.

There is no longer a need to judge another’s path or confront them about it. Instead there is an experience of a loss of interest and willingness to engage with certain dimensions of consciousness. To engage with these feels like constricting into a limited and painful way of perception and engagement with life, a form of self abuse, and wasteful of my energy and time.

You would think that it makes for a lonely existence but in fact it has made being rich in what feels like another dimensionality. Which in turn seems to feed a sense of wholeness and wellbeing I have not yet felt in this level of calm imperviousness. And it seems to open to a kind of encounter with the being, or is-ness of others, which provides a reciprocal level of luminous nourishment for the Soul which is very different to what used to feed the ego or heart.

Emergence

What is emergent is what I call Self-sufficiency, being whole unto Self, deriving everything needed from Self – regardless if through this being, another, or cooperative energies. To rely solely on the Self means releasing all attachments to things perceived as a security in life (jobs, homes, family, friends) and leaning into the spaciousness the detachment creates. A spaciousness that can be mistaken for emptiness and therefore scary to the personality/ego. In time and with persistence the fears eventually melt away and so does the interference of the personality with experience.

What follows is what we can taste in a lesser form in moments of ‘flow’ – pure being. Zero point consciousness in embodiment. Which in turn is but a beginning of another multidimensional adventure in embodied consciousness and experience.

Art by Unknown

The post Self Discovery 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

The post Congruency appeared first on Venuskind.

To survive I emulated these attitudes consciously and subconsciously in parts of my internal tribe. Inadvertently and sadly taking up the role of abuser towards myself and others in its wake. Rarely allowing myself to feel or own moments of sensitivity or tenderness, my subconscious numbing and repression being instant and almost total in all but a few situations. Recoiling from, feeling uncomfortable with and irrespectful of those who expressed their sensitivity and tenderness, all the more harshly if they were male. And yet I felt attracted to the more artistic, poetic and creative types who tended to be more on the sensitive side – nothing about trauma and wounding is ever logical in my experience.

Concurrently I incarnated with a strong warrior spirit willing to protect whoever was marginalized or attacked, most often than not the weak, the powerless, and the sensitive and tender. And so this specific internal war was seeded and took a great part of my energy, attention, and capacity to live life in inner peace and full creative expression away. Decades of moving from one perception to the other, feeling good about myself in one and painful shame when the harshness overtook.

I began my work on this in my late teenage years with whatever tools I could find in a world that was still pre-internet and little psychological and neuroscientific research being accessible to ‘normal’ people. I learned to manage the external expressions of the abuser, by sheer willpower, and had to endure many defeats and failures without the soothing balm of self compassion, which heaped more shame to the mountain I already held in the subconscious. In my thirties things thankfully began to take a turn as better tools and practices became available to me and I opened more to ‘esoteric’ tools. This is where my true and most effective work commenced. Everything before could only be compared to putting bandaids on a deep and infected wound. A temporary solution at best but mere useless actionism in the long run.

Fragility

Reclaiming my tenderness and sensitivity only happened once I had learned to differentiate it from the fragility of my wounded parts. In my mind fragility is an expression of the egoic nature, its existence serves to protect the status quo and is counterproductive to true healing and integration. Fragility is what makes us reactive, defensive and stubbornly avoidant to all that would heal its underlying pool of emotions, sensations, memories distorting and festering in the depth of the subconscious expertly hidden from our waking awareness. 

Fragility being a function of the ego is cunning, a shapeshifter and spinner of illusion which manage to enchant us into believing them to be reality. Fragility’s rationalizations and emotive reactivities have an intensity of pull that effortlessly highjacks our awareness into its states of hyper-activation and limited higher brain functioning.

To calm fragility I have to face, feel and integrate trauma and shadows – it is, of course, an ongoing process as we keep experiencing new traumas which express in novel ways and necessitate new and better adapted tools of knowing and healing. 

Trauma and Shadow work

A lot of people speak about trauma and shadow work these days but when I look at them and their words I can often sense with clarity that they only ventured to do the most superficial work on these themselves. Rare is the voice of wisdom and the glint in the eyes of those who went deep into the abyss of trauma and shadow.

I have written and shared some insights into my ongoing trauma and shadow work here, but admittedly only in the lightest way, as to write about it as I experience it is nigh impossible as our language lacks words to aptly describe the depth of despair, excruciating pain and abject sense of disorientation and lostness and all the other hues of sensations and emotions that I have to sit with as I contain my impulse to flee and deny whatever arises. This work is not for the faint at heart, it is definitely not for those lacking in discipline, honesty or the lazy.

Shadow and trauma work necessitate much courage, resilience and willingness to begin them and stick through the challenging moments, but the most precious qualities needed are cultivated in the process when handled right: self compassion, self love, self trust.

Without self compassion and love we cannot gauge in a helpful way how much work is needed, when to take breaks, when to resource ourselves by doing things we love and by taking loving care of our body, mind and spirit like the amazing parents and lovers we never had. Without self trust we will crumble whenever our fragility speaks in the language of fear and catastrophizing instead of trudging on the seemingly endless path of self work. And in my case I will add that I needed my inner light and spirit, the aspect at the core of my being, which has always led and gently pushed me towards healing and integration and picked me up whenever I was down on my knees.

In shadow and trauma work I learned to feel and engage with my sensitivity and tenderness in wholly new ways.

Sensitivity and Tenderness

When sensitivity and tenderness are released from the repression of our wounded patterns we might easily feel overwhelmed by them and with the old judgements still echoing in our minds we might feel like stepping back or distracting ourselves in order not to feel them. And we might even feel shame-anxiety or the shame that was induced into us when we showed ourselves in tenderness. 

It is key how we respond in these mystical moments of new beginnings. We are learning emotional intelligence and competence here. It takes time, effort, compassion and a playful attitude to navigate this with grace. This is where our trust in ourselves deepens: In daring to experience how much we can stretch, how much more than our mind believes we can actually take and what happens when we mindfully move past the boundaries of our thinking. 

It is uncomfortable to be sensitive or tender, things get under our skin much more than they ever did in our previous armored iterations of self, therefore we will have to learn ways of dealing with sensations and emotions as they arise and keep tinkering away until we find our stride. It helps to train the mind to look out for the gifts of these states: What are we experiencing, learning and accessing through being sensitive and tender? Where do we need to set new boundaries now that we are becoming softer and more receptive to energies and life? 

I have found, with an infinite sense of awe and wonder, how much strength and resilience I derive from reconnecting with and making ample spaces for sensitivity and tenderness. Once I had my critical selves come around and welcome them, external comments or dis-ease could not get to me as much anymore. I am more sensitive, I feel more of the violence and harshness that has been normalized and embedded in human relating and communicating. And yet it is by far easier to balance and integrate any harm encountered in a state of tenderness and sensitivity than it ever was to do so from states of fragility. 

In other words it is SAFER to be in open, sensitive and receptive states than it ever could be to be armored, protected and therefore in fragility. Read that again and ponder it!

Yes, it may seem that people can hurt me more easily than they could hurt previous iterations of myself. But to an awakened and self-knowing observer, who has done quite a bit of deeper trauma and shadow work, it is clear that the cost of armoring and hyper-activations are much higher and self-destructive than open-hearted living could ever incur. 

Living in our trauma and without integration of shadow has deeply destructive costs to our mental and physical health down to changes of our DNA and limits our capacity of making a good life for us in all other aspects of life. That is why I often silently shake my head at those who are health fanatics, experts on nutrition, body work, health hacks, etc. but deeply avoidant of anything that would take them deeper into trauma and shadow work. And though working on your psyche and subconscious unlocks positive effects for your physical health, merely focusing on the body only has a lightening but not a consistently healing effect on our psyche and subconscious. 

The only adjuvants or partial alternatives to doing self work I have observed are conscious and shamanic plant medicine treatments and highly charged and focused energy healing work, which both take a level of mastery most energy healers unfortunately cannot access due to their own states of fragmentation and lacking spiritual mastery.

From my current vantage point I am observing on the global plane humanity experimenting with fragility and clashes of fragilities.

My hope is that we are becoming aware of the immense costs of egoic games of protection, victimhood, abuse and dominance and that we heal and transcend them in our race consciousness. Ending the need for endless replays of hurtful and destructive patterns and opening the pathway to higher and new ways of engaging with each other, with animals, plants, and our beloved mother planet.

I see the opportunity for us as a collective to learn and evolve past fragility and learn to live with sensitivity and tenderness instead. Deeply empowered by the gifts of tenderness and enriched by the dimensions of life, joy and fulfillment it unlocks for us.

This is the dream, hope, and vision I hold at my core.

Art “Neuroses in Blossom” by Shikeith Cathey 

The post On Fragility, Tenderness and Sensitivity appeared first on Venuskind.

Art by Unknown

The post History to HERSTORY appeared first on Venuskind.

The moment I KNEW that I am ready and fully capable of loving another in their light AND darkness, EVEN if my darkness is raging in the loudest language of trauma.

This is a self mastery I wouldn’t have believed I was capable of just a few years back and yet I choose to work towards it nonetheless. Choosing to keep getting up from my knees, look back, forgive, learn and do or fail better. Again, and again. 

And here I AM.

Reposing in this knowing, celebrating another milestone, thanking the Beloved for all the lessons that led me here and the grace that empowered me to transcend more of the past. 

Grateful to my closest friends of the past decade who had a big part in helping me grow towards this NOW by co-creating relationship with me where I could safely practice showing up as a more whole version of me and allow more of my soul to embody. Without our beautiful connections, your role modeling and love this would have been a more arduous and maybe even impossible journey. 

Thank you for the gift of your being, your medicine and unique soul expression which keeps enriching life and making this world a brighter place!

I also thank those who made it unsafe to show up as myself, those that triggered my core woundings and gave me opportunities to feel and release the raw pain that was still stored in my body. They might no longer be part of my life but I do not want to forget their part in awakening me to the need for growth, for confronting me with my complicity in my suffering and for teaching me discernment in recognzing and choosing my people.

Now I am raising my gaze towards new horizons expanding before my newfound eyes and envisioning how this new skill can be utilized to live more dangerously, grow in novel magical ways, serve others in their journey of healing and growth and serve the ALL as a ‘more hollow’ bamboo.

Will you journey further with me into the mysteries of love?

The post Milestone appeared first on Venuskind.

In the past 5 years I have shared a little on the disruptions, betrayals and ending of friendships that were very dear and precious to me. Yet I did so only haltingly and while keeping the depth of pain, disappointment and devastation I have felt mostly contained to myself. Not out of fear of burdening you or making myself ‘too’ vulnerable but out of a sense of sacredness of those feelings. They were mine to feel and hold in their entirety and to share them with another necessitated, in my healing phase, a deep degree of intimacy and trust with another as well as the knowing they can and know how to hold this space with me as I was feeling and processing.

Now I feel I have come to the end of said cycle of learning and can more holistically and openly share my experience and process as I stand in a space of enough integration and transformation that I can communicate it in a way that makes this a sharing of medicine and not of distortion or affirmation of imbalance. As I progress on my path I am learning the importance not only of the intention behind my words but also their form and accompanying energy and to hold myself more accountable in being mindful of all three.

Looking back from where I stand now I understand how these 3 friendships ended in a way that opened a gateway to my three core woundings and original trauma triggers:

The first outright abandoned me in a rare and precarious moment I turned to him for help. 

The second crossed boundaries, triggered inadvertently my childhood sexual abuse and manipulations and denied me an opportunity to talk about it and ground myself through reconnecting, co-regulation and save our friendship which was very precious to me. 

The third neglected our relationship, took my being there for her for granted, without any willingness and capacity for reciprocity and distanced herself from intimacy and sharing in a time of extraordinary challenges and hardships in my life.

It is hard to convey in words the depth of abject pain I felt at the betrayal and abandonment, the disorientation, the distrust in my relational system and capacity to choose and cultivate friendships… the regression into the wounded child I was, feeling the vastness of despair, disconnection and loneliness and the need to hold my raging protectors in all their anger, resentment and vengeful feelings. All of which lasted for years.

It is fascinating how I was guided to respond to all three in a unique way and how that staid the same or shifted in unexpected ways. 

The first one I dismissed out of my life without any further communication or attempts at repairing because I sensed the impossibility of it and my total unwillingness to accept that in any of my relationships. If he crossed my path now I would be polite but I would not be open to a reconciliation. Maybe if he led with an embodied apology which expressed in all of his words and actions. And even then, he would have to re-earn my respect and trust which I willfully would not make easy for him.

The second one I unfriended after a period of trying to see them in person and process together what happened and repair the sudden disruption. It was his unwillingness to show up that made me choose to unfriend him although I still loved him deeply and ending the friendship hurt me like little in my life ever managed to hurt me.

The third I didn’t unfriend, I chose to divest my energy and engagement to equal hers and reframe our connection as an acquaintanceship, which is its own kind of ending a friendship in my universe. Though she wanted to repair and work on the friendship, after having gone dark for a long time, I was no longer interested and willing to invest more of my energy. In the grieving process of observing the changes in our connection in the period of her silence I realized a fundamental imbalance in our connection and its inherent limitations. I understood we could not travel into new lands of friendship and connection that were calling me and emerging in my other friendships and connections. And here a rather ruthless aspect of me emerged to insist my energy kept being invested in what was blossoming and not in what has become a part of the past. 

In the past years of tending to my core woundings, confronting my trauma and its distortions to my perceptions and most of all to my relational system I had to get very clear, honest and intentional with how I define relationships, how I am willing to show up and invest in them, where I am unavailable or outright unwilling to engage and where I am willing to extend myself even if it is challenging and painful. These have been years of reclusion and hermiting, pulling back from almost all real life social engagements apart from a select few that made me come out of my shell with their love and persistence. Years of deep contemplative inquiry, shadow work, self love and internal consolidation, while holding my remaining inner circle with as much love and care I could muster.

Now I look back with gratitude and see the immense gift these endings have been, each in its own way was a portal into healing the most armored and tender woundings of my past, initiations into a major part of the integration and healing I needed to bring to my being. The anger and resentment I felt have been transmuted into a changed inner landscape and wonderfully forged, nurtured and cultivated close friendships on whom I know I can rely and lean  and who have been my light in the darkest passages of this journey. The disappointment has been balanced with compassion for their humanity and storylines of trauma and wounding. All that is left in my wounded child and protectors is compassion, love, gratitude for them and a clarity on my needs, wants, desires and boundaries for friendships.

And with that a fundamental shift in my relational system has come about that fills me with amazement and awe as I observe its unfolding and blossoming. 

For most of my life my system could only conceptualize, feel and allow people to be in my life if the connection aligned with my wishes and expectations and if we had a huge falling out it was impossible to repair or reconnect. Now there is a spaciousness in me which can accept and adapt to the shifts of relationships and allow for others to weave in and out of my life within my internal framework of sovereignty and self love. Which means that I need not create strict boundaries and walls to keep people out or in, I trust myself to respond adequately or repair where I stumbled and allow others to do the same as long. I no longer lose sight of my sovereignty, wellbeing and self love in my friendships.

Another gift of this painful cycle is my ability to fully surrender to the leadership of my higher self or soul. A surrender and total trust which allowed me to fully be present and open-hearted with the second friend when he crossed my path a couple of weeks ago. This synchronistic event allowed me to experience the healing of residuals of the above mentioned themes of this cycle with full consciousness in the slow and measured pace of my soul, body and heart. To witness the grace of liberation of past pain and limitations is beyond words. All I verbalize is that I feel a depth of humility and awe for the becoming I am gifting myself, for the blessings I now can fully appreciate in unison of all parts of my being, for the excitement of the possibilities that are opening up and a warm welcome and receptivity for what wants to be born from this.

I have no idea if the reconnection is a process of closure before parting, or if it is the beginning of a new friendship, which may be based on a more conscious and heartful foundation, or whatever else it could be. All I know is that I have grown and get to taste the beauty of freedom and wholeness in sweeter ways than I have ever tasted them in this incarnation. For this I give thanks with all of my being!

So my loves if your friendships break, if people fall away, love yourself into wholeness and sidestep best you can any temptations to frame them as toxic, unworthy or similar. 

See it is our dearest soul kin who will volunteer to teach us our most painful and lessons, not out of negativity but their souls generosity and love toward ours. They avail themselves to enter the field of trauma and take the karma upon themselves of hurting us for our consciousness and soul expansion. I bow to these souls in gratitude and in the knowing of the costly gift they have given me, even if their human expression is unconscious and not capable to show up in the love of their soul essence or if my human decides they no longer have a place in my life.

May our human family evolve into a state where we can co-create our lessons without utilizing pain as the messenger and pathway of learning. And may we be gentle with each other and hone our skills of healing self and our relationships until we get there.

And may we hold the ones who stand by us in loyalty and love with the gentlest and most nurturing embrace and keep showing up for them in all the ways they need. I bow to my beloveds who carried me through this time of pain and healing with their love, presence, compassion, humor, being and radiance. 

The post Friendships, Betrayal, Abandonment, Neglect & Healing into Wholeness appeared first on Venuskind.

At my core I hold a hypersensitive, loving, gentle and guileless little girl believing firmly in the goodness of humanity. These very qualities singled me out and attracted many forms of subtle, overt and pathologically cruel abuse and heaped shame on all of these traits beyond anything I could bear. To the hurt and confused younger versions of my self it felt at as if life was teaching me to drop these aspects of self and so I developed a seemingly powerful outer persona that numbed the sensitive in me to a degree my mind could handle, learning and expressing the ways of unlove like a new language I had to gain fluency in, practicing delighting in harshness and derision of others, cultivating a cold unfeeling capacity for ruthlessness and hyper-vigilant distrust.

In my healing journey of reclaiming said little girl a new layer of shame began to be heaped on all the traits and behaviors I adopted in my survival and moving on from the fear-inducing past. As I reclaimed what lay at my beginning, external voices, once again, shamed the parts of me who helped me survive. Another layer of burden and drama to work through thanks to the ‘good girl’ and ‘love and light’ bias I surrounded myself with in this phase of my life. A growing unease and restlessness kept me looking for the next step of my journey because this felt equally unhealthy and unbalanced as the phase of survival did before.

Enter shadow work and mystical studies to blow dualities and more importantly preferences to smithereens in my mind, then in my emotions and now successively in my body. Nothing about this chapter of healing was and is exactly easy or painless, and yet the pain was ‘just’ the pain of having to let go of lies and misperceptions that had endeared themselves to me and to welcome the unknown in their place. 

And the deeper and more visceral pain of facing the accumulated shame, the pain of titrating in and out of it until I could hold more of it and for longer periods without giving in to the habit of fleeing it, read compensatory avoidant behavior. It took some time to make my peace with a reality in which I can feel shame, around certain things, and can be lovable and beloved to myself and others. To not judge shame or only perceive its corrosive effects and to see equally its natural and helpful manifestations and functions. To end dualities held in the depth of my subconscious, non-verbal conditionings and belief systems.

The Unknown – the ultimate fear fed by the orthodoxy of beliefs, the illusion of knowing what I haven’t experienced, researched, explored or deeply contemplated myself and the fear of ego death. Who would have thought that the unknown has always been my best friend, a space of blissfulness veiled by the nonsensical lies of my conditioning?

I like to think of the Unknown as another word for the Field – the Dark Mother of all that is in form, sound, geometry and light. The first step of the One becoming the many and the last in going from the illusion of separation back into oneness. I like to gender the Unknown as a HER: mystical, nurturing, creative, playful, surprising and loving from a non-dual perception and manifesting vantage point. 

When I allowed my mind to explore many a rabbit hole or alternative narrative about reality (which some like to label as conspiracy theory in their varying levels of cognitive dissonance), she sat by my side and watched me get drawn into dark and light narratives, snagging here getting entangled there, struggling to grasp the reality of multidimensional concurrent realities feeling my human captivated by some and their strange effects on my biology. When it got intense she would tap on my shoulder and let me gaze deep into her luminous darkness as she smiled at my slow disentanglement and transformation. 

I owe her my freedom from energy sucking entanglements and the clarity that arose with blinding light from the depth of her darkness and I delight in the laughter we shared about my slowness and blindness to fact that fear of the unknown was what allowed for entanglement and entrapment in limiting narratives about life. 

She taught me to dance through and across narratives, to dip my feet, to swim and dive deep into them without losing my perspective or anchored vantage point of not knowing. To entertain ideas which align or contradict with no attachment but with all the more joy and creative playfulness. To be free from the egoic need for certainty, absolute truisms and setting myself apart from others by virtue of illusions of absolute knowing. 

She reminded me to enjoy this ‘soul playground’ and helped me develop new skills of engaging and interacting with it from spaciousness and with bliss.

I bow to the plentiful gifts of embracing the unknown, of letting the dark mother hold me and inspire me through changes and evolutions, to her gifts of expansion to my consciousness and to her mysteries that shall remain untouched by me in this timeline. 

In gratitude to all that is unfolding as I dance with my fellow travelers across timelines, dimensions, incarnations, narratives, system and cultures with lightness, ease and grace!

Art: “Ms. Universe” by Jessi Jumanji

The post Hello from the Other Side appeared first on Venuskind.

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

The post Laughing and Reflecting appeared first on Venuskind.

My (small) self has come a long way in my healing journey utilizing therapy as much as self work in order to achieve inner peace and wellbeing. I am grateful for what I did eventually achieve and learn along the way. Yet I also had to concede that psychology had its limits, that deeper set distortions as well as the unconscious patterns necessitated the tools of spirituality. And as the years progressed intuition guided me to more and more powerful modalities, tools and perception changes. Making me often wonder where I could be today if said tools would have been available to me in my mid or late twenties and leaving me feeling grateful that younger generations will be able to heal faster and better for it.

For the past year I have been in a sublime internal dance of love, care and surrender which deepened my primary relationship with my own being. I observe the way my Self is teaching and healing my self whenever she surrenders and makes space for her to take the lead. Life has slowed down to a crawl internally as the Self illuminates and helps the self figure out the patterns and futilities of patterns to inspire the self to experiment with novel responses and derive joy from this newfound playfulness and ease. There are moments that trigger thoughts and feelings of “I can’t do this!” or “This is too much!” and my Self simply smiles and asks “Are you sure this is not your fear or trauma speaking? Do you know who I am? Do you know what I am?” And my whole being relaxes, leans into the knowing of the Self as the illusions of smallness and fragility fade into historic memories.

Coached by the Self into more balance and inner peace more consciousness and wisdom keeps coming into my knowing. The inner Guru is making every breath and every moment a teaching opportunity which leaves me feeling contemplative and appreciative of the vastness and complexity of life. An inner radiance arises from this dance of love and wisdom, a light that renders my being unshakable yet deeply compassionate.

As I was in deep meditative writing today I realized how things that once would have triggered all sorts of trauma and shadow responses simply make me laugh within. And I think to myself well met old friend, thank you for alerting me to the quality of my frequency which invited you into my experience. Then I recalibrate, rebalance internally while not paying the external event or trigger no mind. I have finally understood what the eastern masters mean when they say “There is nothing to do” when my Self showed me the ineffectivity and waste of energy of the constant toiling and activism of the self. I no longer feel the need to respond or sort things out externally unless intuition clearly nudges me to. Otherwise I am practicing my default of sorting things out in the subtle and energetic realms by sorting out my vibrational state. At first I felt like all kinds of drama and pain might ensue if I did not follow the desires of the self to engage, respond, act upon what had happened. But I chose to trust my Self and practice self composure and containment even if my emotions were in a turmoil and it was rewarded with less and less turmoil and a calming down of the hyper-reactive triggers I used to have. 

I have been living in the experience and knowing of my wholeness for years now but this experience is adding a whole new layer of feeling safe, content and powerful to my inner state of being. Where once co-dependency made me feel existential fears of abandonment and losing another, I feel spacious and complete enough to speak my truth, be myself and dare to lose another. Not from a rebellious or avoidant energy, as part of my trauma let me respond in certain circumstances but from a deep feeling of being whole, loved, cared for, abundant and part of a magnificent universe of love. 

Another realization that made me laugh and shake my head is this:

I used to think that self-realization was about experiencing and knowing one’s Self. Now I see that it can only be the beginning, as self-realization, if it is not a sudden and sustained state of enlightenment, necessitates the self to surrender and hand over the rains to the Self while aligning itself with her and serving her. 

This is where I find true freedom, a freedom which is based on universal truths and truths of Self leadership. And this is also part of the vast magic of love, which I have only begun to explore.

I bow in gratitude and awe to Life, my greatest and most benevolent Guru!

Photography by Venuskind

The post The sweetness of being loved by Self appeared first on Venuskind.

The Heroine’s Journey begins with an Initial Separation from feminine values, seeking recognition and success in a patriarchal culture, experiencing spiritual death, and turning inward to reclaim the power and spirit of the sacred feminine. The final stages involve an acknowledgement of the union and power of one’s dual nature for the benefit of all humankind (Murdock, 1990, pp. 4-11). Drawing upon cultural myths, Murdock illustrates an alternative journey model to that of patriarchal hegemony. It has become a template for novelists and screenwriters, shining a light on twentieth-century feminist literature.

The Heroine’s Journey is based on the experience of fathers’ daughters who have idealised, identified with, and allied themselves closely with their fathers or the dominant masculine culture. This comes at the cost of devaluing their personal mothers and denigrating values of the female culture. This occurs for both men and women if not on a personal level, then certainly on a collective level. If the feminine is seen as negative, powerless or manipulative the child may reject those qualities she associates with the feminine, including positive qualities such as nurturing, intuition, emotional expressiveness, creativity and spirituality. On a cultural level, the Separation from the Feminine results from a reaction to images of the feminine presented by the media that are impossible to identify with or because of a lack of feminine imagery in religion.

Gods and goddesses are often seen as diverse ways of being in the world and the ancient goddess Athena symbolises the second stage of the Heroine’s Journey. This Greek goddess of civilization sprang full grown from the head of her father, Zeus. Her mother Metis had been swallowed whole by Zeus, thus depriving Athena of a relationship with her mother. This stage involves an Identification with the Masculine, but not one’s inner personal masculinity. Rather, it is the outer patriarchal masculine whose driving force is power. An individual in a patriarchal society is driven to seek control over themselves and others in an inhuman desire for perfection.

The young girl may see men and the male world as adult and becomes identified with her inner masculine voice, whether that is the voice of her father, god the father, the professional establishment, or the church. Unfortunately, masculine consciousness often tries to help the feminine to speak; it jumps in, interrupts, and takes over, not waiting for her body to know its truth.

The next stage, like the hero’s journey, is the Road of Trials where the focus is on the tasks necessary for ego development. In the outer world, the heroine goes through the same hoops as the hero to achieve success. Everything is geared to climbing the academic or corporate ladder, achieving prestige, position and financial equity, and feeling powerful in the world.

However, in the inner world, her task involves overcoming the myths of dependency, female inferiority or deficit thinking, and romantic love. Many females have been encouraged to be dependent, to disregard their needs for another’s love, to protect another from their success and autonomy.

We live in a society dominated by a masculine perspective where the feminine is perceived as less than the masculine. The Mother Tongue, the language of experience and body knowing is not seen as valid as the Father tongue, the language of analysis. In some families, cultures and religions, being born in a female body is second rate; the female child has therefore failed from the beginning and is marked psychologically as inferior solely because of her gender. In this century the foremost moral issue, from third world countries to the leading world powers, is the abuse and oppression of women and girls around the globe.

The myth of romantic love is that the other will complete her life whether the other is a husband, lover, son, ideology, political party or spiritual sect. The attitude here is that the “other” will actualise her destiny. This stage is symbolised by the myth of Eros and Psyche.

The first part of the heroine’s journey is propelled by the mind and the second part is in response to the heart. The heroine has been working on the developmental tasks necessary to be an adult, to individuate from her parents, and to establish her identity in the outer world. However, even though she has achieved her hard-earned goals, she may experience a sense of Spiritual Aridity. Her river of creativity has dried up and she begins to ask, “What have I lost in this heroic quest?” She has achieved everything she set out to do, but it has come at great sacrifice to her soul. Her relationship with her inner world is estranged. She feels oppressed but doesn’t understand the source of her victimisation.

At this stage, she is afraid to look into the depths of herself and clings instead to past patterns of behavior, old relationships, and a familiar life style. There’s a fear of saying “no” and holding the tension of not knowing what’s next. In Leaving My Father’s House, Jungian analyst Marion Woodman (1992) writes, “It takes a strong ego to hold the darkness, wait, hold the tension, waiting for we know not what. But if we can hold long enough, a tiny light is conceived in the dark unconscious, and if we can wait and hold, in its own time it will be born in its full radiance. The ego then has to be loving enough to receive the gift and nourish it with the best food that new life may eventually transform the whole personality” (p. 115).

At this point, the heroine is faced with a Descent or dark night of the soul, a time of major de-structuring and dismemberment. A descent brings sadness, grief, a feeling of being unfocused and undirected. What usually throws a person into a descent is leaving home, separating from one’s parents, the death of a child, lover or spouse, the loss of identity with a particular role, a serious physical or mental illness, an addiction, the midlife transition, divorce, ageing, or loss of community. The descent may take weeks, month, years, and cannot be rushed because the heroine is reclaiming not only parts of herself, but also the lost soul of the culture. The task here is to reclaim the discarded parts of the self that were split off in the original separation from the feminine – parts that have been ignored, devalued, and repressed, words and feelings swallowed in her quest for success.

Dismemberment and renewal is a key feature of the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna and Ereshkigal. Inanna, the Queen of the Great Above, journeys to the Underworld to be with her sister Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Great Below. Ereshkigal’s consort has died and Inanna traverses seven thresholds and seven gates to be with her sister in her grief. At each gate she divests herself of symbols of her power. When she reaches the Underworld, Ereshkigal fixes her with the eye of death and hangs her on a peg to rot. Inanna sacrifices herself for the earth’s need for life and renewal. Her death and subsequent return to life predates Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection by three thousand years.

At this stage in the heroine’s journey, a woman seeks to reclaim a connection with the sacred feminine to better understand her own psyche. She may become involved in research about ancient goddess figures such as Inanna, Ereshkigal, Demeter, Persephone, Kali, or the Marian mysteries. There is an Urgent Yearning to reconnect with the Feminine and to heal the mother/daughter split that occurred with the initial rejection of the feminine. This may or may not involve a healing with one’s personal mother or daughter, but it usually involves grieving the separation from the feminine and reclaiming a connection to body wisdom, intuition and creativity.

The next stage involves Healing the Unrelated or Wounded Aspects of her Masculine Nature as the heroine takes back her negative projections on the men in her life. This involves identifying the parts of herself that have ignored her health and feelings, refused to accept her limits, told her to tough it out, and never let her rest. It also involves becoming aware of the positive aspects of her masculine nature that supports her desire to bring her images into fruition, helps her to speak her truth and own her authority.

The final stage of The Heroine’s Journey is the Sacred Marriage of the Masculine and Feminine, the hieros gamos. A woman remembers her true nature and accepts herself as she is, integrating both aspects of her nature. It is a moment of recognition, a kind of remembering of that which somewhere at the bottom she has always known. The current problems are not solved, the conflicts remain, but one’s suffering, as long as she does not evade it, will lead to a new life. In developing a new feminine consciousness, she has to have an equally strong masculine consciousness to get her voice out into the world. The union of masculine and feminine involves recognising wounds, blessing them, and letting them go.

The heroine must become a spiritual warrior. This demands that she learn the delicate art of balance and have the patience for the slow, subtle integration of the feminine and masculine aspects of her nature. She first hungers to lose her feminine self and merge with the masculine, and once she has done this, she begins to realise this is neither the answer nor the objective. She must not discard nor give up what she has learned throughout her heroic quest, but view her hard-earned skills and successes not so much as the goal but as one part of the entire journey. This focus on integration and the resulting awareness of interdependence is necessary for each of us at this time as we work together to preserve the health and balance of life on earth.

~ Maureen Murdock

Photography: Reflections by Tom Hussey

The post The Heroine’s Journey appeared first on Venuskind.

The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.
~ bell hooks, Outlaw Culture

My journey of self-integration and healing can be narrated as a journey of commitment to love for my inner tribe of selves.

I have come through many stages of committing to loving aspects of myself, building habits and practices of self love and care, and slowly and gently acknowledging, facing and loving shadow aspects back into a more whole and hale self. This is an ongoing journey, as it is all too easy to fall into unloving thinking, feeling and acting towards myself when I am low in resources and energy.

And yet I have come a long way on this challenging road to freedom.

Of course that was only half of the commitment to love journey I have consciously committed to. The other half is equally important and challenging in its own ways. To learn to love another in all their aspects, light and shadow, to extend compassion, kindness and generosity even when they prick and pain me, to protect them from unconscious hurtful expressions and actions from me and to do all this from sovereignty feels quite daunting at times.

To balance self love and love for another, to let it flow in a circular system of reciprocal nourishment, inspiration, joy and compassion is the holy grail for a fractured and traumatized self. A goal that can only be achieved by the alignment of self, higher Self and consciousness for more and more extended periods of time until it becomes our default setting. At least in my perception and experience.

This year I am called to teach my wounded and shadow aspects, which were created as per our soul contract with my mother, to CHOOSE to be loving, act with kindness and compassion even in moments of triggered CPTSD while being true to my own needs and boundaries. I am not saying this is what everyone has to do, nor that you are not entitled to your emotions of anger, resentment, hate and whatever else might arise for you in your primary wounding relationships. This is what I have been called to do after years of expressing openly my anger, sadness, grief and hate, a new stage, a new way of relating opening up for me now that foundations for self nurture and self love are firmly set.

Embracing on a mental level the commitment to love and choosing to be loving to others as an expression of my core being and not because their behavior deserved it was easy. For it is comparatively easy to disentangle from the concept of giving people what they deserve and drop the distorted concept of deserving/undeserving on the mental plane. Doing this on an emotional and physical plane is a decidedly different dimension of challenge to my self leadership.

Higher Self and consciousness lead the way to more equanimity in the mental/emotional which allows me to gently magnetize the emotional/physical into a state of homeostasis or balance. It is an excruciatingly slow progress for the mind, as the wounded parts and shadow feel like running towards old soothing strategies and reactivities at the slightest discomforting trigger and I observe the old scripts play out with all their negative ramifications for my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing. It takes many repetitions and regressions as well as the unswerving love and support of all other aspects of self and higher Self before the wounded and shadow parts can acknowledge the futility of their go-to-solutions and concede to trying something else. And much cheerleading, loving reminders and celebration of small wins is necessary in order for them to stay on course. Especially when their first attempts and steps are not reciprocated in kind.
Another layer of learning lay here for me: We (inner tribe of selves) are not loving to others in a game of barter or in expectations of getting our needs met by them. We are loving because this is our true nature to which we choose to return. Being loving is all the reward it needs.

It will still take a while and many repetitions of consciously choosing to be love and act as love in a variety of relationships until I can even remotely say that I have laid a foundation similar to the one I have built for self love. And yet I am already reaping the rewards of this work by virtue of the feeling of alignment within, the joy of oneness within and embodying integrity and love in relating whenever I wholly choose to act from love. It feels good to extend myself in love to others knowing that I can and will do my best to show up, be accountable and responsible, caring and mindful in my relationships. No longer having to fear being helplessly highjacked by my shadow aspects into painful catastrophizing abysses or loops of hurtful behavioral patterns towards others. Knowing that I have what I need to see and stop these patterns, and if they manage to bypass my awareness, knowing I have the tools, knowledge and commitment of my inner tribe to repair and make amends best we can in cooperation with another.

This is what empowerment through love feels like to me.

Grateful for the selves, people, lessons and experiences which help me anchor more deeply into my nature and lighten the heaviness of trapped distortions in my field.

May we all be free from suffering,
may we all be love.

Photography by Brenda Del Rao

The post Commitment to Love appeared first on Venuskind.

This is where I can most powerfully and totally undo the oppression I witness all around: within. The dismantling of systems of oppression begins with me:

Mental
With reflection and weeding out of the language, thinking, beliefs, concepts and culture I use and am attached to. By contemplating what the oppressor in me is fighting, where the internal division has happened

Emotional
By feeling what the oppressor in me flees and fears, honoring these hidden feelings as intrinsic part of my experience, undoing the compartmentalization in emotional awareness which allows the oppressor in me to lack empathy and knowing of another’s emotions when she acts out in her blind and unfeeling violence.

Physical
Releasing the stuck energy, memories and patterns of oppression held in my body and subconscious. Inviting and empowering my body to release these burdens and move towards balance and healing by anchoring more deeply into the knowing of my true nature.

Spiritual
To free my spiritual practice from cosmologies and energies (gods/goddesses/archetypes) which are distorted with the frequency or seeds of oppression. Supporting my being to heal the divisions and wars on all dimensions (mental, emotional, physical). Focusing on practices which nourish and strengthen love, loving-kindness, peacefulness, wisdom and unity consciousness to resource myself and lay a strong foundation for kind and sovereign interactions.

Until the oppressor/ victimizer is fully disempowered and integrated into the wholeness of my being I remain prone to unconsciously distort towards this poisonous dynamic in all of my perceptions and actions and an easy pawn in the game of illusions and enslavement. Allowing my being and actions in this world to remain fodder for multiple systems of oppression and victimization and the controller matrix.

May all beings move beyond the evil of oppression within as without and may all beings be at pace.

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Hungry ghosts

Some of the parts that operate in the shadow of our unconscious I call “hungry ghosts” as they are residues of our past (own, other lifetimes or ancestral). They are seeming black holes of need which are masked and keep replaying the same patterns to try to haphazardly fulfill their unacknowledged or repressed needs. When still weakened they only haunt our minds but if they gain strength or find a weakness in the repression that held them down they come out with a vengeance. And in their hunger and pain they will ransack, destroy and sacrifice anything standing in their way. Relationships, livelihoods, homes – everything is up for grabs when they take the wheel of selfhood.

I was able to observe a hungry ghost in action and learn about its ego-centric if not narcissistic logic at play. What was most fascinating to observe was that the person who houses it remained wholly blind to its nature as their identification with the thoughts and expressions were complete and they lacked the distance to question where the thoughts expressed came from and how they align with their values, previously expressed wishes, their wellbeing or the person they are speaking to. It is always easier to observe it in others than in ourselves as we lack identification with the ghost but it necessitates to be dis-identified to whatever counterpart in us is triggered by them.

Hungry ghosts are the parts of ourselves we have split off and starved of our acknowledgement, attention, consciousness and love. They are geared towards getting their needs met externally and focus all their energy and dramatic play on external engagements to take, get or manipulate others into giving them what they want. But no amount of external love, attention or care will ever be enough – this black hole of extinction can only be filled and transformed by our own love, attention, forgiveness and making amends with the gentlest of care towards that part.

Appeasing and reigning in our hungry ghosts is a journey, it takes disciplined mindfulness, self-compassion and self love – lots of love to balance out the neglect and violence perpetrated by us in decades. No half-hearted attempts or dishonesty will do here, they are acutely aware of these and need us to show up in full integrity or with honesty as to our current state. It is truly an art to listen to their needs, worries, beliefs and integrate them into a balanced tribe of selves in a healthy and enriching way. Yet feeding and healing our hungry ghosts is non-negotiable to living a conscious, prosperous, creative, healthy and joyful life with thriving relationships and spirits.

Another’s hungry ghost

I will listen to expressions of wishes, wants, needs, dreams and goals others share but I especially look out and give more weight to the pattern of choices, actions, slip ups and other expressions of unacknowledged parts of their selves.

When faced with a hungry ghost in most people I try to simply be a calm witness to them and their underlying story. Acknowledging them energetically without feeding them my energy or enabling their harmful patterns by engaging them. I sometimes fail in this and catch myself in an entanglement with them but I am working on getting better at it.

Depending on the level of consciousness or dearness of the other to me I will gently or fumblingly put questions to them that might act as a disruptor in the identification with the ghost. Seeding awareness and curiosity in the most light-hearted and non-judgmental way I can muster and making the observation and analysis of the ghost pattern a fun and playful dance. What is the value of our relationships if we are not in service to each other’s awakening to self limitations and unconscious patterns?

With some, who not only consent to but are also capable of having a meta conversation and reflection of their dynamics and mine, I will be acting as a mirror and share impressions, bringing their blind spots into their range of vision to inform their self work. 

With the right people these can be magical moments of sharing impressions that trigger cascading domino effects of reflections, realization and knowing of the driving motivations, thought forms, beliefs, old wounds, effects of the behavior on self and others in both or all participants. Such are moments of blissful value even if they may be painful to our ego and its game of hide and seek. The unraveling, the ripping of a veil and the light of spirit in their eyes as they take back more of their power and freedom to embody more of their sovereignty is a magnificent sight & sense. To me this ranges amongst the peak experiences we can share with another being!

Of course it doesn’t mean that we won’t lapse back into behavioral patterns after such revelatory insights but we will no longer be able to blind ourselves fully to the dynamic and its cost anymore which is an important milestone in the journey towards freedom.

The impersonal self

There are of course the painful moments where we have to accept that another is not ready or capable to face his hungry ghosts or hasn’t cultivated enough self-compassion and self love to feed and heal themselves. Nothing left but to accept it and trust and honor their soul’s path to be perfect as it is.

It often leaves me a bit at a loss when the person with the raving hungry ghost is new to my life. Typically two selves in me will take the stage, one arguing for complete disengagement as I have committed to give my energy and service primarily to those who are already in my life and dear to me and those intuition explicitly guides me to and no longer waste it where it will have no positive effect. My service self argues that I would not want to deny another the service of having a compassionate witness which he needs and this part thrives on giving. As both sides discuss and other selves chime in with current priorities in need of my finite time, energy and attention this might come to an impasse necessitating my impersonal self to save the day. 

I am so in love with this part of my being which has awakened last year to full power and action and has brought peace to my inner tribe wherever fault lines had kept conflicts going for decades.

She is a dispassionate and impersonal (read as non-ego-driven) assessor, weighing the experiences shared with the other and looking at the dynamics, personalities from all sides available to her, listening to all selves participating in this conversation, calling in other selves to give their input and calling in communion with intuition to discern if this connection is necessary to my soul’s path or theirs… once all is said, heard, seen, felt, sensed and weighed she makes a decision all other selves align with and peace leads my being back to love and harmony. 

She is the only one that can talk sense to my hungry ghosts in their most triggered state as they know her as an unswervingly loving and fierce ally, she is beloved to all in my tribe of selves and acts in service of all that is to the best of her knowing. And even if at times she feels cold and heartless to the more dependent or co-dependent selves they surrender to her in trust as they keep learning from her that love doesn’t mean self-sacrifice and martyrdom and that loving others tempered by self love is a gateway to vaster love and blissfulness than their patterns allow for.

If I walk away from people these days it is no longer a reactive response from fragility, even if that may have played into it, it is a harmonious decision of my tribe of selves which has taken the other’s wellbeing into equal consideration. And I am grateful for this process of integration of all selves by nourishing the hungry ghosts back to life and the feeling of more integrity in my actions and words which result from it.

Aligning more with my essence… a beautifully messy work in progress that fills my life and heart with wonder, adventure and gratitude!

Photography: The ghosts of my past by Mrs-White via DeviantArt

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