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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Work in messy but gratitude-inspiring process…

Photography by Caroline Tran

The post Generosity appeared first on Venuskind.

I am fascinated how hard it is for the tender and longing aspect in me to let go of the hope that existing connections can change and take a form that is mutually nurturing and expansive. The naive rationale that where there is sympathy or love there has to be a way of connecting deeper and finding the flow that nourishes and makes our hearts come alive. I have sat in contemplation of what it is that keeps our repetition compulsion going when our behavioral patterns never bring about the desired or needed outcome. How young and vulnerable these aspects within are that engage with life from the limited and magical thinking of a young child.

Teaching this aspect that the connection, flow and love it seeks is already available in my life, even if not in the connection it is focused on. Learning to redirect her focus on where love and affection are always available and flowing, making her realize that she no longer lives in scarcity and can let go of the grasping pattern. Showing her that focusing and fully opening to and engaging in the connections that naturally and effortlessly take to depths and heights more than fills all our cups of love, wellbeing, and joy. No need to make other connections be anything else than what they naturally are.

One of the most challenging lessons is teaching these young and tender aspects within to let go of their grasping, their asking for reality to change, for others to be different to who they really are instead of accepting reality as it presents and finding creative ways to fulfill needs and find joy in circumstances as they are. On a mental and cognitive dimension this is a simple thing to understand but the emotional and physical are slow to embrace changes in perception. Maybe this is the reason why it takes long and repeat periods in the ‘hanged man’ position, to speak once again in tarot, for us to shift out of old survival or adaptive patterns. There is something to these periods of suspension in the in-between that works on the subconscious and emotional body in healing and integrative ways.

Nothing compares to the massive feeling of relief and peace that take hold when said aspects embrace reality as it is and find they not only survive in doing so but begin to live and thrive for it. Even though it is accompanied with a depth of grief that may surprise and challenge us to be present and gentle with ourselves as it makes itself felt and known. Yes, there is a deep sadness, a feeling of loss and deprivation that wants to be felt as a message from years long gone and a self not allowing and capable of feeling these truths of experience.

When my adult eyes and mind surveyed my connections from this new inner state of healing I was able to let go of connections, which used to trigger this aspect in me as they ‘starved’ me emotionally for various and individual reasons. I let them go in love and gratitude for showing up in my experience as teachers and healing lessons and with wishes of goodness and blessings to them. 

Similar to the hopeful self-torture of keeping clothes that no longer fit our bodies in our closets as ‘motivation’, my subconscious patterns kept connections in my experience which were not aligned with my being. Now I could see the connections in their emptiness, their anachronism, and incompatibility with effortless clarity and no longer felt a need to stay connected.

Disconnecting and moving on brought on a feeling of ‘rightness’ or better alignment and flow into my experience of my relational field. Though not all connections that remained are connections at the depth of bonding and flow I prefer, they all feel good and aligned with me as they are. 

I celebrate depth where it is available and everywhere else I show up in a mirror of the depth, presence, affection, and care or from whatever level my authenticity wants to engage with them.

Instead of unconsciously trying to futilely deepen connections beyond their natural capacity and form, I consciously accept them for what they are from wholeness and emotional abundance within. Given my acceptance of the reality that what my heart seeks may be rare and not available in relating with the majority of people, I am even more appreciative, grateful, protective and nurturing of the connections which show up in said form.

I remain open to more beings meeting me in the depths and heights of heart and consciousness and the possibility of shared magical and transcendent explorations and experiences. Committed to compassion and acceptance with all the other relations which lack the glitter of stardust and droplets of the water of life.

And I bow to life as it unfolds in it multidimensional form, to the breadth of experiences available to us on our planet, and to the ability of consciousness to direct our path through this wild, magical and messy playground.

I bow in gratitude to the lessons that taught me the sweetness of yielding to life.

Art: Blanc Arctique by Sophie Wilkins 

The post The Unmet Yielding into Wholeness appeared first on Venuskind.

How do I explain that my mind is reeling while trying to differentiate and keep apart timelines, feelings and persons?

How do I own and express to him that I know it’s unfair that he is affected by my childhood trauma and that I choose to protect and love my inner child even if it means hurting his feelings in the process?

How do I hold space for his hurt without collapsing into abandoning myself  while gently advocating for my wounded child?

How do I express my gratitude for our meeting because it revealed an unconscious effect of my past and helped me avoid hurting myself and others in this way again now that I gained an understanding of this trigger?

~ June 2016

Art by Unknown

The post Questions from the Void of a Flashback 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.

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.

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.

It has been an enchantingly romantic idea of my inner child that every relationship (familial, intimate, friends) and hurt can, and will, be reconciled, if you love each other and try hard enough. Of course life’s experience has proven that idea to be mostly unrealistic. 

Humans often prefer to gloss things over or fall into unhealthy bonded patterns of attempts of resolving it (aka fighting) without truly confronting the underlying issues and bringing about a true resolution that growth all parties. 

To effectively reconcile and heal a relationship takes more than forgiveness, which in itself is challenging enough, all parties need to drop their judgements, self-righteousness or self-deprecation, blaming or shaming, and find constructive ways of communicating and healing the dynamics, misunderstandings, hurts, and pain underlying it. Repairing the damage done to our trust and the relationship takes unflinching honesty with self and other, a capacity of confronting and owning our part in the dynamics that had part in the demise and the dedication to see the process through to its end without giving in to the egoic games of resistance and deflection. Otherwise resentments and dysfunctionalities will linger or worse fester in the underbelly of the relationship only to explode and cause more damage down the road.

Most of us say we want to work things out, and we probably do on a conscious level, yet in our subconscious we rarely wish to get too close to our shadow, wounds and mistaken beliefs that need to be addressed to truly do so. And so while we say one thing we will unconsciously, yet clearly, signal the other in our wording, actions or lack thereof that we are not fully committed to reconciling but slyly sidestepping it. Hello shadow play.

In my experience humans tend to act cowardly or aggressively when their actions or experiences have triggered deeply embedded patterns of shame or guilt. We would rather avoid, deny or rather gloss over whatever triggered those feelings than have to feel the pain of facing them. We try to bargain, deflect, distract or delude ourselves and others instead and thereby block the pathway to true reconciliation and freedom.

With all that said I am not generally averse to the idea and reality of reconciliation, awareness of its scope and cost does not make me shrink back from it, to the contrary. I am willing and committed to work on repairing my relationships and invest my time, energy and effort into those who are dear to me. And thankfully in closer relationships or with smaller issues it has become easier for me to overcome the resistances within to address and repair where damage has happened. Easier, not easy, mind you! 

When it comes to reconciling relationships that ended my few attempts at reconciliation were not very successful for lack of tools or lack of equal investment of the other. Which definitely added to the resistance and unwillingness I feel at the thought of it.

Observing the effects of trauma has taught me that ongoing unresolved and unaddressable issues in relationships put me in an intensifying state of stress and anxiety which eventually floods my system rendering it nigh impossible to attend to life in the way I want to. In my self love I chose to walk away from situations and relationships where resolution is not attenable and reclaim peace. Therefore I am extra cautious and wary of taking back people with whom I had such an experience.

Though my feelings towards reconciliations are rather reserved in view of the above there are a couple of connections and people from my past I would be open to reconcile with on some conditions. As I keep saying for nigh two decades my love may be unconditional but my relating is not. I am open to my relating evolving and being unconditional one day yet until then I shall honor my boundaries and conditions.

If someone came to me with a wish to reconcile I would surely listen to them, accept or give an apology, intuit their honesty and capacity to put in the necessary work, reflect on the value the relationship once held for me, feel into what the person means to me now and then decide if I choose to put my effort, time and energy into reconciliatory work. This is my choice, and my choice alone. The other cannot try to cajole, convince or negotiate in this otherwise they are expressing their disregard for my sovereignty. 

We either have a mutual, passionate and committed YES or all else will spell a NO in my book.

I give myself full permission to say lovingly no to an offer of reconciliation without any explanations or justifications and I honor and champion everyone else’s right to do the same. 

Photography: Jean Pierre Karenzi & Viviane Nyiramana by Pieter Hugo “Portraits of Reconciliation”

The post Reconciliation 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.

“Our thoughts are mainly controlled by our subconscious, which is largely formed before the age of 6, and you cannot change the subconscious mind by just thinking about it” ~ Bruce Lipton

Most of human actions (some estimate about 95%) are driven by the subconscious, which is the recording of our first 7 years and an ongoing replay and reaction from other people’s beliefs, principles and words. Only few of us manage to live from their conscious mind as the majority is constantly hijacked by the thinking of the subconscious and its automated responses. 

Don’t get me wrong we need our subconscious, it is exceedingly helpful in its speed and ability to take care of things while freeing our conscious mind from having to deal with complexities like regulating our body. Problems arise wherever the subconscious lures the conscious mind into being busy with the flow of thoughts arising from the subconscious while the subconscious takes care of our every action and engagement with life, rendering us unconscious and disconnect from reality while steeping us in the past.

To be present and conscious therefore means to know the way the subconscious operates and takes over and to cultivate a practice of keeping our conscious mind trained on the moment, creating and engaging instead of being focused on the internal flow of thoughts. 

Meditation is a wonderful tool in developing the awareness and distinction between the conscious and the subconscious mind. But to gain true freedom we need to take it off the mat or our meditation time into everyday life and make it an ongoing practice of awareness or mindfulness otherwise our progress will be slow and the ego will have no problems playing us.

From my personal experience and observation consciousness remains lacking if people do not invest their time into learning about psychology and neuroscientific research on the mechanics, biology and dynamics of our body mind system. Equally knowledge of those without the knowing of the teachings on the nature of consciousness, energy and the dimensional realities we live in and are surrounded by will limit one’s progress and possibilities of expansion and transcendence.

“The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.” ~ C. JoyBell C.

My self work journey began with the first psychology book I bought when I was 13 years old. Ever since then I have been increasingly committed to knowing myself and transcending behavioral and thought patterns which limit or hurt my wellbeing or that of others.

The first part was defined by my explorations of psychology, neurobiology, communication and relationship sciences, a slow progression of changes along with therapies to help me grow past my blind spots. Years which informed my mind to understand behavioral patterns of the ego, dynamics in relationships, things that feed dysregulation and dysfunction and those that help us step into healthier, more peaceful and joyful experiences.

The most exciting part of the journey began with my exposure to eclectic spiritual teachings and technologies like yoga, meditation, mindfulness and the different consciousness models various schools work with. In the practice of meditation and yoga I managed to transcend more patterns and behaviors I had been aware of thanks to my forays into all about our psyche. 

The spiritual cosmologies and perceptions of life helped me to rebuild the foundations of my perceptions and beliefs to be better than the ones my childhood and cult upbringing had given me.

“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.”~ Bessel A. van der Kolk

In the past 2 years I have revisited the childhood trauma I experienced and focused on healing my nervous system. Reading on current research on the manifestation of trauma in the body mind system and understanding the negative effects of a nervous system constantly set to hyper-vigilance made me commit to use all available tools in calming and resetting my polyvagal system. And what is fascinating is that the work of these years has created more changes than anything I did in the decades before. But alas then knowledge of childhood trauma and its treatment wasn’t as evolved then as it is now.

Being close to one of my primary caretakers and confronted with our trauma colored relationship allows me to measure my progress and failures with accuracy.

Another way to look the past two years is to see them as a massive purge and cleansing of the emotional and physical body of the stuck energy and memories of trauma while concurrently strengthening and nourishing my whole being to expand in resilience. 

This healing process necessitated a hermit life, limiting and avoiding social interactions as much as possible. Being closer and feeling the core wounds and vulnerabilities, I had tried avoiding for too long, was exhausting. In the exhaustion I realized a heightened sensitivity to certain energies, energies that had a similar vibe as the predators of my early days — people who give off a manipulative, dishonest, domineering, codependent, victim mindset, fundamentalistic, ignorant but self-righteous, etc. vibe would set off my defensive reactivities and repelled me. Isn’t it amazing how energy works to support our healing?

While working on calming my nervous system I needed to keep my mind engaged and delved deeper into mystery studies and happened on the 7 hermetic principles.

And the principle of polarity helped me get equanimity viscerally.

Principle of Polarity:  Everything is dual; everything has poles; like & unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree, extremes meet, all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.

In reflecting on the sameness of all dualities — identical in nature — and understanding they are different states of the same — just like water, ice and gas are the same just different in degrees – I realized the absurdity of attachments, preferences or opinions on any subject from a higher vantage point.

In my trauma research I understood that the true issue was the stuck emotional charge not the experience itself and in my self work I experienced the peace and power surge whenever I released the emotional charge. And so I chose to let go of the belief that I had to have a preference, opinion or attachment to one aspect of the duality and to be in the zero point instead. This sounds like a little thing but it proved to be a fundamental shift for my internal experience of life.

Living in equanimity without lasting emotional charge on any subject is still an ongoing practice but even the few areas that I have been able to clear from the burden of the charged responses have created an inner peace and wellbeing that my body had to live without for many decades. Choice is a powerful aspect of freedom, to have the choice if and how we want to engage with life in a way that serves our wellbeing and growth is a precious gift and achievement.

I do not allow myself to be baited into heated, emotionally triggering debates, and should I have slipped and find myself in one I thank the other and the experience for alerting me to a subject I need to disarm to expand my freedom. 

I had grown up feeling that being emotionally engaged equals being passionate and caring about something and that people who responded from cold detached logic were heartless, now I see that both approaches are lacking and not serving life and our personal growth. 

Equanimity (Latin: æquanimitas, having an even mind; aequus even; animus mind/soul) is a state of psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind. The virtue and value of equanimity is extolled and advocated by a number of major religions and ancient philosophies. ~ Wikipedia

There is another way of being in the world. 

Observing and experiencing things from equanimity as your default allows you to preserve more of your life energy, which now can be fully invested in the service of your dreams, life and loved ones instead of being wasted on useless repetitions of old dramas. Equanimity doesn’t mean a negation of joy, pleasure, sadness, anger or any other emotions but it creates a calm set point where these can be welcomed as passing visitors without creating unhelpful intensity or stickiness which holds the visitors until they become burdensome and potentially toxic.

Equanimity is a gift I give to my body in the knowing how much it is taxed by hyper-vigilance, reactivity and the scripts of old narratives and their emotional charge. 

For now it works like this: feeling the emotional charge, acknowledging it ideally without acting on it, reflecting on the situation and responding from my values and visions instead of the pain of the past and creating inner harmony as the emotion is gently released from my body mind system. Eventually it turns into: the acknowledgement of an old story without any emotional charge and being free to respond adequately to the experience from knowing and wisdom.

All of my self work serves the goal of freedom, the freedom to think, be, act and create from my ideals and visions without the impediments of the past and the distortions conditioned into my sub-conscious.

And the more I delve into esoteric and occult teachings — now that I have finally shaken off prejudices and vague fears — the veils of programming are falling and I remember and know with an unprecedented clarity how to be and what to do in the moment. 

I can live life from a conscious trust and knowing that I am in benevolent Universe, loved and supported immensely with nothing to fear.

Art: Equanimity by Jalai Lama

The post Self Work, Trauma and the Gift of Equanimity appeared first on Venuskind.

Titration includes two things:

1
Titration is the act of slowing down your response, be it emotional or physiological, to a VERY VERY slow pace. You become the director of the pacing of your processing, making it extremely slow, in effect opening up more space for the settling and integration of numerous activation/arousal responses and all associated information coming at you at once. Titration is the skill set that involves managing the speed of processing.

2
Titration is the act of taking only a tiny piece of your response to deal with – a VERY tiny piece – and leaving the rest for another time. You become the director of how much you process at one time. Titration is, therefore, also the skill set that involves managing the amount of content to be processed.

..

Titration / Slowing and Portioning tells the nervous system: “You now have all the time you need to process what happened.”

Slowing and Portioning tells the innermost deeply held emotions: “You now have the time to come out one at a time rather than all at once. I have slowed down enough now for you to go through your natural processing.”

Slowing and Portioning tells the states of shock and paralysis and helplessness: “I will no longer shock you with introducing anything – be it good or bad – too soon when you are not ready yet. I won’t stack shock onto shock anymore. I am here to allow you to unravel tiny bit by tiny bit. I am protecting you because I am competently managing the speed of integration. I promise not to let anyone or anything override your internally generated and essential process of re-integration.”

Slowing and Portioning tells the mind: “The emotions are important. Stop and listen and wait. Listen longer. Make space, make room, make time for the emotions. The body is important. Stop and listen and wait. Listen longer. Make space, make room, make time for the body.”

~ The Art of Healing Trauma, see the whole post here 

Photography: Black by Kenji Aoki

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