Fascinating how our healing paths are perfectly individual, giving us lessons and insights that open up doors to resources within us, which later on turn out to be much needed for more challenging lessons and revelations down the road. I see with clarity that I am always cared for on this path of self realization and always, always guided via all kinds of signs, prompts, helpful messages, thoughtful friends giving me much needed wisdom, validation or clarification of vague intuitions.

I have learned that the habits of the mind are harder to change than emotional habits. Even if it may seem to be the other way around on the surface, on a cursory glance or brush with them. 

Emotional habits even if they resort to knee-jerk responses can be eventually managed or even controlled by a disciplined mind. 

Yet who will manage an uncooperative or unhealthy mind?

Consciousness of course. Yet consciousness does not operate with strictness or harshness and often utilizes the mind in engaging with us and this dimension. It also speaks and acts through the heart – but again the feelings and emotions permeating us from consciousness are not the forceful, flooding kind our subconscious creates.

Which makes for a slower pace and more challenges in finding pathways to bring our minds back on track and free them from their bad habits and conditioning.

It has been a relief to find ways of detaching myself or moving out of spaces where my own mind bullied or tortured me. To know that I have the power to rid myself from this experiences of internal oppression has been freeing and a shining tether to wellbeing whenever I lost myself in the artificial realities my thoughts conjured.

My main tools and resources in dealing with repetitive patterns of thinking which would take me into states of stagnation, unhappiness or depression are such that need cultivation and nourishment even in times of ease but also serve me in countless other ways:

Having a strong connection with Source

Being anchored in the felt sense, experience, knowing and feeling of the oneness of all, the love and beauty of existence at my core. To have that inner space of calmness, clarity and love no matter what chaos, storms or darkness might be raging in my mind and emotions is a gift I am grateful for on a daily basis. It is the protector of my sanity, my respite and succor.

Humor – not taking myself and life too seriously

It has taken a couple of years to learn and practice this. Looking for the humor or absurdity in any given situation, no matter how “serious” we are told it is or believe it to be. Allowing myself some ‘comical relief’ is such an important break from my cult conditioning and brings spaciousness to moments! Being serious has often a constricting effect on our mind, body and energy. Humor allows us to breathe deeper, take more space and find our way back to the bigger picture of life and connect with the vast possibilities life holds as it operates outside of the limitations of linear thinking and perception.

Having an actively engaged Healer

Looking back I have always had a part in me that pushed me towards healing and growth. I have consciously amplified this parts voice within me, given it knowledge (book knowledge, education) and knowing (intuition, claires, etc.). And she is the one who engages the mind on its own ground, meaning she reasons artfully with the mind. My inner healer points out irrationalities, logical fallacies, harmful effects, the track record of failure of this line of thinking and while thanking the parts/ thoughts/ mind for their efforts she suggests better and more successful ways of protecting me from disappointment/ rejection/ pain/ shame/ guilt and other feelings it is attempting to avoid. She is strict where she needs to be but otherwise compassionate, playful and inspiring… and she never tires in meeting the parts who stray and bring them back to path of integration and growth.

Create timeouts from thinking and emoting

This might take the form of meditation, yoga, qigong, dance, time in nature or any creativity or expression that gets me in the zone e.g. mantras, cooking (my longtime favorite). Sometimes I just shake the funk out of my body, which appears to be truly stupid to my mind but eventually even my most stuck up aspects give way to laughing and the doorways to ease and grace open up.

Please remember you can be the creator of your experience. You have the power to create new doorways where your mind tells you there are none. Just educate yourself, practice and laugh yourself through the times you stumble and fall.. until you fall less and make a stumble part of your unique and beautiful dance.

May all beings find their golden door to freedom and love!

Photography: The Golden Door by Patrizia Guerresi 

The post When Your Mind is a Bully appeared first on Venuskind.

Before I share my practices let me share a definition of what I mean by compassion fatigue.

Compassion fatigue, also known as secondary traumatic stress (STS), is a condition characterized by a gradual lessening of compassion over time. Scholars who study compassion fatigue note that the condition is common among workers who work directly with victims of disasters, trauma, or illness, especially in the health care industry.
..
People who experience compassion fatigue can exhibit several symptoms including hopelessness, a decrease in experiences of pleasure, constant stress and anxiety, sleeplessness or nightmares, and a pervasive negative attitude. This can have detrimental effects on individuals, both professionally and personally, including a decrease in productivity, the inability to focus, and the development of new feelings of incompetency and self-doubt.
Journalism analysts argue that news media have caused widespread compassion fatigue in society by saturating newspapers and news shows with decontextualized images and stories of tragedy and suffering.  
~ Wikipedia

Everyone who uses social media in some capacity is experiencing and sensing  the overwhelm media consumption is creating, everyone who interacts with people experiences their states of heightened sensitivity verging on fragility and/or the currents of anger and resentment under thinning social veneers. Encounters with strangers feel more tense and draining as people are on edge.

Two years ago, on my return to my childhood home, I felt the overwhelming sensation of stress, tension and grayness in the collective field here. Quite a startling and challenging contrast to the collective field in Bangkok. I struggled to stay centered and not be pulled into lower frequency emotions and thinking simply by being in the field I grew up in.

I turned to a practitioner for a Thetahealing session which ended up in disconnecting me energetically from the collective unconsciousness in Germany. Of course such a disconnect is never total or isolating it asserts our sovereign and free will to engage with the field in a way that serves our awakening and growth. This gave me the respite to find daily awareness practices and form habits which would uphold my energetic sovereignty.

I chose to be more disciplined in unplugging myself from news, which was quite the challenge as my mother is a classic news junkie. I developed the habit of leaving the room whenever the TV was on and set to a news channel or political discussion I hadn’t chosen. See it is not about totally avoiding news or information but being intuitively selective while checking in with our current states. How centered am I? Will knowing this be relevant to my service and path? Which part of me is interested and why?

I chose to up my intake of high vibrational information and information that serves understanding existence, the human experience and pathways to healing.

I chose to make every moment a meditative and aware experience, bringing myself back to consciousness and presence whenever I has allowed myself to be drawn to past or future thinking and other expressions of being in the automatisms of the subconscious.

I chose to expand my self care and self love practices, to do more things with joy as well as more things that bring me joy, to create more space for playfulness to be part of my awareness and doing, to focus on the light, potential and humor of what I observe within and without.

I chose to anchor myself more deeply in my sovereignty, in spiritual laws, perceptions of life and relate all I observed back to these, thereby cultivating equanimity by seeing the oneness of the yin & yang aspects of everything.

I made it my priority to nurture and deepen my connection with Source, especially in times where I felt like I was almost disconnect. I didn’t allow resignation to take over all of me, I allowed for the feelings of sadness and isolation to flow through me while reminding myself gently that I can never be separate from Source.

All these practices and choices of where to put my energy and attention have brought me to a point where I can allow myself to open more fully to pain in the world and sit with it without needing to change it right away (savior) or falling into a victim mindset (resignation/ frustration) and eventually moving away from the pain by directing my attention and energy elsewhere when I sense that I am nearing the threshold of overwhelm.

I know the importance of being self loving and self caring by only allowing myself to feel as much as my system can take and then giving myself the permission to take a break by moving within, or doing something that allows me to feel expansive oneness without a sense of failing or guilt.

I understand now that we can serve best when we know our boundaries and honor them with self love. And as we honor our boundaries our nervous system and body relax into becoming more spacious and resilient in feeling and holding space for what is.

We have not only the right but also the duty to be protective of our more fragile and sensitive aspects. Protective, not from a place of fear and smallness but from the vastness of love – love of self and other.

Pacing ourselves, being mindfully selective of what to read, watch or consume mentally, physically or energetically is key in protecting our capacity to be empathetic and compassionate towards others and self.

When the inner conflict between the parts in us that feel we need to be there for others and to actively participate in life, society, community or family reconcile themselves with the parts in us that want to protect us and see us in our power we will find our individual flow and graceful balance between engagement and recharging.

When we emotionally and physically “get” that self care and healing is also a service to others by bringing more peace to the field (internal activism) and by empowering us to be more present and effective in our external activism or activities.

Though we live in a dimension of dualities, the pathway to lasting change and shifts truly opens up when we find the zero point, when the knowing of the oneness of all things is embodied in our equanimity. 

Remember to be gentle with and take care of your beautiful selves!

Photo: Eric Corton in Malawi by Unknown

The post How I Avoid Experiencing Compassion Fatigue appeared first on Venuskind.

I still cannot quite wrap my head around the fact that we can think we are honest with ourselves and then Life holds up the most unlikely of mirrors up to us and lets us see aspects of ourselves and hear voices within we keep ourselves blinded to. We are truly complex and confounding creatures. What a humbling gift it is to be taught a fuller acceptance of ourselves as Life meets us with unwavering unconditional acceptance and love!

The ongoing focus in my self work has been on shifting my response to things which trigger my traumas or strongly emotionally charged beliefs. I have already come a long way but there are still these moments of defeat when my reactivities take over and I find myself locked into their play. This year I have been given new tools and the most challenging of contrasting teachers to understand and change my approach so I might be more effective in calming my mind body system when triggered and in totally dismantling the triggers one by one or in groups.

It always took a while to get to the root of a trigger or belief and a lot of energy and dedication to soften my reactivity bit by bit. But now I have received the tools to change it in one go, to create equanimity where once was the seed of fear, rage or feelings of unsafety and pain. 

What a gift it is when you find the right key and tools for a current layer of distortion you are focused on releasing and to see them work first once, then twice and then over and over again. 

To see shackles that held you for decades imprisoned fall off your being and breathe into this new freedom is the grace afforded me by this mystical and divine Life… I cannot help wishing with the same breath that the same grace may be given to all beings in all dimensions and timelines. 

May we all find our freedom and peace in the love and light of our true nature and oneness!

How blessed I am, how blessed we are…

Bowing in gratitude to the mystery and generosity of Life!

Photography: At the End by Adrienne McNellis

The post This Year appeared first on Venuskind.