The more I retreat from socializing virtually
The more I am unavailable
The richer my remaining encounters and relationships are

A lovely paradox to live, navigate and experience.

That is one way of putting my latest experiment in relating in a nutshell, of course the experience itself is much more nuanced and the insights gained multidimensional and manyfold. Retreating from social media and its temptations in staying connected with those, who in times before internet would have been lost to my experience until our life paths crossed or aligned again, has been a source of deep contemplations, emotional and mental integration and a fundamental reset to my relational system.

There is beauty in the possibilities of virtuality, the multitude of information and knowledge available to us in our increasingly digital realities. And in the glaring light of infinite possibilities, distractions and temptations it is easy to remain blind to the costs of living our relational lives to a high degree within digital instead of analogue realities. Which points in part towards the loss of exchanges in form of tones of voices, micro-expressions, body language, chemistry and energy and goes much further than we are aware of until we make ourselves change our experience.

There is a massive loss our relational system encounters in engaging too much in the virtual and not enough in the real. A loss in nourishment, calibration, and co-regulation with others, which are essential to our wellbeing and health. Unfortunately the habituated behaviors and communication styles that arise from being too much in the digital have a way of bleeding over into the real and disconnecting us further when we remain unaware.

Have you noticed how little REAL encounters you have with others these days? 

In a real encounter all participants are present, open hearted, ready and capable to attune to each other, listen, share and express from their essential nature. There is a marked absence of the machinations of the ego, mind games, automatisms, and mindless chatter or replay of patterns. No matter if people are spiritual or not, the majority do not take the time to be fully present and attuned to an exchange as their being is way too exited, vigilant, minds racing, emotions chaotically overflowing or ebbing – which only allows for personalities and minds to meet but no deeper meeting of souls and beings to be possible. 

The engagement in the virtual has furthermore robbed many of several layers of trust, which once arose from feeling safe to express who they are in contexts of friendship or acquaintanceship. The experience of safe spaces where everyone gets to express freely and healthy discourses on the matters shared (not on the validity of another’s feelings, experience, or worse person) is possible, has become a luxury hidden behind paywalls of therapy, workshops and retreats. And even there the corrosiveness of current trends is undercutting a true and prevailing acceptance of ALL that is present by only allowing for what aligns with the given groupthink. If we do not consciously create such safe spaces for each other we are becoming part and enablers of this toxic patterning that cuts us off from each other and renders egos ever more fragile, violent and dangerous.

Real encounters are also more prevalent when people have enough time to themselves, to integrate experiences, to self care and nurture, to know themselves and their inner universe and have the spaciousness and willingness to open to the vastness of another in their unique complexities. They cannot be easily had by a relational system that is being drained and exhausted by non-stop information overload, emotionally manipulative content, and the rise and intensity of fanatical and manipulative language, and disappointing social encounters and experiences in the virtual sphere.

They can happen wherever one person is willing and ready to hold space for realness and invites the others into presence. It takes only one person to open the door, and equally only one to bar real encounters. I sense there is more here that wants to be explored and known by us…

The past 3 months have been incredibly nourishing and delightful to me as I had more real encounters in that time than I recall having in years. My awareness was focused on the quality of relating, energy exchange, reciprocity, and my body’s responses in order to learn anew what works for me and serves my wellbeing. It was surprising to realize how important fairly short exchanges with strangers or near-strangers can be whenever we are fully present to them and the others follow our invitation into it. Amazing how a short conversation, smiles, and meeting of beings can uplift and nurture the relational system for days to come – if experienced and reflected from a space of open hearted presence, playfulness and gratitude.

What a gift to reset to the real and get new insights into my relational system and its workings.

~ August 2022

Photography by Tatsuo Suzuki

The post Resetting to Real appeared first on Venuskind.

What is transparency in relationships?

Transparency means to be open, honest and truthful.In the context of relationships, it is vital to the evolution of the partnership. It shows trust in our partners and our ability to be vulnerable and let someone in to what we are experiencing. Without transparency, there is no sharing and it shuts down growth.

Lack of transparency or openness can cause issues in relationships. Deflection can occur which gets us nowhere and keeps us trapped in a never ending cycle. Keeping someone in the dark and treating them like they have no right to care or to information breaks down communication and leads to the erosion of the partnership.

Why is transparency in relationships so important?

Transparency is important as it sets the depths in which the partnership is able to penetrate. If there is constant deflection, avoidance, excuses, or games there is no way to move deeper. Trust is broken. Communication becomes impossible. The party that is being deflected stops trying. Intimacy is shut down. It closes doors and builds walls. The relationship is effectively frozen.

Relationships are never easy, but they are built for two. If you’re constantly having to beg for someone to let you in, it’s time to walk away. Yes, sometimes we have to spend time alone to figure things out or deal with things. It’s important to have space in relationships in order to figure that out. But if someone is always leaving you in the dark or deflecting when you try to reach out, you need to decide if this is the kind of relationship that really nourishes you. Open, honest communication is vital for the continuation and expansion of relationships. Without this cornerstone, the pillars crumble. The more we open, the deeper we are able to go.

The truth is some people are happy in the shallow end of the relationship stream.

They don’t want to travel the intricate levels of the spirit. They don’t want to open up or have a soul deep connection. And no matter how hard you try to pry them open, you can’t. The important thing in these situations is to acknowledge your own need for greater depth and move on to something that provides that. You deserve someone who is open and willing to let you in. Life is too short to spend begging for someone to open up to you.

~ Ara Campbell

Photography: ‘White Gauze’ by Robert Mapplethorpe

The post Transparency in Relationships appeared first on Venuskind.

This is how I deepened my love relationship with my body, feeling more attuned, healthy, stronger, energized, balanced and peaceful.

This year Spirit has stopped me in my tracks and made me contemplate where my preference for diversity and desire to connect with a variety of people, energies, mindsets and lifestyles was serving my wellbeing and where it was detrimental to it. In the process I had to release some unconsciously held beliefs and fears, change what I expose my mind and being to, become more discerning and reflective of the energies I experience and the feedback my body gives me about them. I had to discard another layer of good girl programming that used to override my own needs in service of useless ideas or principles. Within the same lesson Spirit guided me to choose the reality, timeline, story I want to live in and release my attachment to being connected to all other realities, timelines and narratives in unhealthy and ego-driven ways.

This is how Spirit healed my mind and spirit and revitalized my being.

This year I am wrapping up a long karmic cycle of unbalanced, unfulfilling, unloving and disheartening relating and relationships. I was lead into extensive self-observations, deep introspections, reflections and knowing of what in me attracts, co-creates, enables, nurtures and holds on to these painful experiences. Another layer of how the ego abuses and tortures me was revealed to me with the gracious help of an external catalyst who artfully combined all the tones of my ‘core woundings’ to trigger the unraveling of what still remained hidden to my awareness.

Parallel to it I have been exploring new dimensions of relating and communing with my innermost circles of friends and family, tasting new states of oneness in diversity, joyful embracements of similarities and differences alike, new frequencies and tones of blissful co-being. My heart is opening to more love and experiencing a delicious multitude of subtleties and nuances to love, friendship, affection, tenderness, support, nurturing and care. I have been learning to show up in my relationships with more vulnerability, playfulness, discernment and self love than I would have been capable of or even dreamt it possible just a year or two ago. I am being met in kind, with effortless reciprocity, appreciation, compassion, joy, playfulness and love that exceeds my most daring dreams. And yet I know it to be just a beginning…

This is how my heart and emotional body have been purified from the dark tendrils of karma, ancestral patterns and trauma and infused with luminous rainbow colored threads of love’s potentiality and soothing.

It has been a year of refocusing on my dreams, of manifesting my heart’s desire for a life filled with a multitude of loves, for a community of like-hearted dreamers, magicians, alchemists and creators, for creating spaces of potentiality, transformation, the magic of being and the effervescence of life. A year that allowed me to witness these dreams begin to take form in the physical dimension and nurture their unfolding with eyes of awe, glittering with the light of age old galaxies. This year has shown me the change of the tides-the time for my visions to take form has finally come. It has been a year of answered prayers of old, a year of my consciousness visioning in the realm of the unknown, touching the impossible wanting to be manifest through me and us.

This is how my trust has been nourished and expanded, this is how my dreams have been resurrected into a higher vibrancy, free, fluid, playfully and creatively shapeshifting with the flow of conscious harmonic resonance.

I release what cannot be part of my becoming and unfolding with heartfelt gratitude and blessings and welcome whatever awaits to teach me, enrich my life and expand my consciousness and love with open arms and heart.

And I bow in gratitude to Source, life, 2020, catalysts, teachers, students, friends, beloveds, family and Self for a subtly yet profoundly transformational year. 

Art by Marcel van Luit

The post 2020 Hindsight 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.

“The waves hit the cliff with more intensity than the shore, because the ocean knows the cliff has that masculine intensity which won’t complain about her feminine energy.” ~ Nityananda Das

If I would have seen the above quote years before I would have laughed and asked to see such a man. The only people I had ever experienced meeting feminine energy in her wild and intense emanation with strength and awareness were a few exceptional women. 

Most people I have met, regardless of their gender, would have complained and fought or denigrated the other even if the feminine energy flowed in a rather mellow way. After all there is a conditioned brittleness and fragility in the way masculine energy in all of us expresses and meets the feminine energy until the energy has been freed from the distortions effected by culture and programming. 

I will admit freely that it takes mastery and a conscious equanimity to stand in the storm of another’s intense energy. And especially so if it is the dark feminine in its intensity. I myself cannot handle it at times and therefore cannot fault anyone who feels overwhelmed or momentarily incapable of dealing with it. These are the moments where we need to own our momentary limitations in meeting the other and self care, not moments to blame the other and/ or project our made up ego storyline on them. That is a messy work in progress.. and challenging.

Last year I learned that what I has taken to be as a “strong man” in my still conditioned/ blind spotted mind was another fragile expression of the masculine energy which in turn had a darkly fascinating way of triggering quite unhealthy reactivities from a distorted feminine energy in me. A loud and clear pointer to the inner work I still needed to do in order to free my inner feminine energy from distortions and to disarm her trigger-happy dysfunction.

I have been immersing myself in deep shadow work and not specifically addressing the above therefore I was quite surprised to witness myself having an inspiring new experience with masculine energy which the above words reminded me of.

Being aware of the distorted egoic game between a shadow-ridden masculine energy and mirroring feminine energy (and vice versa) seems to have created the space for another possibility of relating. It sure helped to have met someone who effortlessly matches my intensity, commitment to self work and who is grounded and stable in areas I am not (yet). A gorgeous mirror and complementary being, a wonderfully passionate and playful partner in this dance of souls, bodies and minds we call relationship.

I was amazed how in one of our conversations the above mentioned energies were triggered and present yet there was a decidedly different quality to this experience. He had the capacity to hold space and meet me with openness, compassion and wisdom even though he felt the intensity of my reactive intensity and wouldn’t let himself be baited into reactivity. He stood calmly in the storm of my emotions and helped me stay connected with him while allowing my emotions and thoughts to move through me. Did I ever mention that I have a massive weakness for guys capable of conscious meta dialogues in the midst of emotional fires and storms? Oh my heart, even sensing the possibility of observing together what unfolds as it happens is amazing but truly experiencing a man capable of holding space and standing up to me… I was floored.

To have a passionate discussion and weaving in and out of the dimension and knowing of our union and observing patterns playing out with equal compassion and self compassion is so precious to me. What an epic moment of self mastery and so much sweeter by sharing it with a beloved!

This is huge for me. Having had to deal with multiple layers of trauma laying siege to my nervous system and an intergenerational familial culture of heated debates and fights instead of calm discussions… every moment I can move beyond all of that and get closer to acting like the loving and caring essence of my being is beyond words. 

I feel so much gratitude for all who helped me get here, my teachers, guides, ancestors, the hard work I have put in, the beautiful man that is taking me and my nervous system to a this new dimension of trust and safety and allowing me to experience my expanded resilience and all the people who came before and showed me how unhelpful and wrong my protective patterns have been. But most of all I thank Source for guiding me along this wondersome path of integration and self leadership.

And I need to point out that this experience wouldn’t be possible if the man I shared this experience with had not tempered his energies and ego with self work and met me equally in his masculine power and feminine receptivity. I feel grateful and honored to learn from this gracious soul. 

It is fascinating to me to observe how quickly my system began to mirror his temperance and open to more vulnerability and trust “simply” by him holding that energy so well. He wouldn’t even know or say that that was what he was doing because to him it probably is just what he does. Sometimes we can be blind to the extent of our greatness and the gift our being is to another.

A beautiful moment of possibility and connection in-midst of the intensity of pain, vulnerability and love.

A moment which gives me hope that this raging ocean in me might have found a veritable cliff after all and not a sandy shoreline masking as a cliff… enabling the vast possibility of a truly passionate dance in all of our forms, allowing all aspects to play and be free flowing as we live and love one another.

Only time will tell… but even if this one moment was all there is to this connection, I would already be immensely grateful. Fortunately there is much more and it seems that way more is meant to come our way and I cannot wait for my next lesson from my personal love guru.

Photography by Unknown

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“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.” 

~ C. JoyBell C.

Photography by Unknown

The post Wings 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”

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“A good apology is like antibiotic, a bad apology is like rubbing salt in the wound.” 
~ Randy Pausch

I used to think of apologies as the panacea of healing or an adding of insult to injury depending on their delivery and subsequent actions. As I operated from the idea that people “made me” feel one way or another that was a logical. The more I learned to take responsibility for my emotions, as my choice by virtue of reverting to habitual perceptions and scripts my subconscious keeps reenacting and buying into, the less this idea aligned with my felt and sensed reality.

The presence or absence of an apology and its quality no longer had total control of my wellbeing. They affect it in moments of triggering or in close familial relationships but they lost their strangling hold on my emotions. I have developed more spaciousness in me to pause, reflect and choose my response consciously.

These days the quality and form of an apology is an expression of another’s state of consciousness, awareness and an (unconscious) expression of the value of our relationship or my person to them. These things I observe, take in and reflect on before responding. 

The absence or form of an apology does not define if and when I forgive someone. I choose to work towards authentically forgiving everyone and everything as a gift of love and freedom to self and other.

“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.” 
~ Benjamin Franklin

Often an apology will be accompanied by an excuse or a worse a string of them and my response will be a knowing smile as it tells me they are not taking full responsibility for their actions, not quite honest and/ or are avoiding touching on wounds of shame or guilt they hold around wronging or hurting another.

Repeated apologies lacking a change of actions or more enlightened awareness are often an expression of a lack of true understanding or acceptance of the wrongness of their action and show a lack of internal alignment of all parts in pursuit of change.

Apologies and changed behavior without a verbal or behavioral expression of a willingness and active participation in repairing the damage caused to other and relationship are the well meaning acts of people who haven’t contemplated, intuited or cared to researched the dynamics of relating and beingness.

Different to earlier years, I tend to accept all types of incomplete apologies because I have no wish to hold them hostage to their misstep and I take full responsibility for my feelings in response to the situation and right things internally. 

Understanding that I have the power to affect or define how to perceive, think and feel about what happened by choosing my thoughts and paradigms has gifted me with more peace and less feelings of powerlessness and helplessness due to external control over my wellbeing. 

But none of my shifts has  lead to making myself a doormat or being accepting of abusive or denigrating behaviors by others to the contrary. I have become more perceptive and deliberate in choosing what kind of people or relationship dynamics I want and allow to remain in my experience.

Every incomplete apology, that is any apology that doesn’t entail all of the following:

• fully taking responsibility for one’s perceptions, thoughts, actions and behaviors
• clearly owning and admitting failing
• genuinely asking for forgiveness
• changing awareness and behavior
• willingness and efforts to repair the relationship (e.g. trust)

will have me step back, sense my intuitions, reevaluate the relationship, person, shared history and decide if and in what way I want to invest in keeping, up-leveling or letting go of the relationship.

Relationships built on a long or deep history of trust, loyalty and kindness often don’t need more than a simple “Sorry.”and yet they are the ones in which I experience the most complete apologies. 

In my experience it is in new or superficial relationships that I most want to see complete apologies as part of building trust and experiences of good and effective repair in relating. And it is often in these that people overestimate the substantiality of the relationship and believe that a simple “Sorry.” will resolve things.

I am increasingly opting out of connections with people who show themselves unconscious and uncaring of the needs of friendships and relationships, the ones who are highly fragile while expecting others to be thick skinned, the ones who whine that they cannot help knowing less about relationship dynamics and consistently choosing to ignore chances to learn about them.

Interestingly enough the most challenging kinds of apologies are not the dishonest or even insultingly transparently fake ones. No the most challenging apologies are given for being yourself, for existing, for having an opinion, for breathing, for a different in preferences or tastes – apologies as expressions of painfully low self esteem and lack of self love.

I am well aware that my heightened sensitivity and reactivity to them is owed to the fact that I am unlearning patterns of unconscious low self esteem and unlove. And I know that I attract such encounters as an opportunity for growth and movement towards neutrality. But I dislike them immensely nonetheless! 

In the end it all depends on the energy with which an apology is offered, if it comes from love and/ or feelings of remorse even an incomplete apology will be accepted by me without loss or change to our relationship. If my system detects any trace of deceit or artifice in it though, I most likely will distance myself and change our relating until a full repair and restoration of trust occurs.

Photography: Unknown

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“One of the biggest fallacies in our society is that people fall out of love. Love changes and shifts, sure, but people fall out of respect, intimacy, and trust. They don’t fall out of love.”
~Christine Arylo

Photo: Drop by Alex Stoddard

The post Falling out of Love appeared first on Venuskind.