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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photography by Unknown

The post Healing appeared first on Venuskind.

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

Men of my age and older

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

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

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

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

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

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

Power differentials

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

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

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

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

Take away for me

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

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

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

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

Photography Karen Williams by Paul Innis

The post Online Dating appeared first on Venuskind.

For letting me repose in and relish desireless EMPTINESS and delight in embodying the void.

For making me ask myself how I can bring more of the qualities of the VOID to my experiences and encounters.

For teaching me to face REALITY as it is and stop fighting, denying, or projecting upon it from fear and a lack of acceptance.

For helping me get crystal clear who ‘my kind of people’ are by correcting my perceptions of embodied and lived SPIRITUALITY and alignment with my being.

For making me read Alexandra Stein’s “Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems” and plunging me into revisiting my past to purge more of the damages incurred by MANIPULATION, BETRAYAL, COERCION and OPPRESSION. A harrowing and dark experience which liberated me and created space for more possibilities in my perceptions and life.

For ongoing and potent DREAMWORK to release past woundings and misperception, inspire new lines of inquiry, and to introduce new emotional and energetic set points.

For deepening my lessons on FULLY SURRENDERING to SELF, teaching me to let go of willing and instead to intend and show up, while trusting deeply in the fulfillment of my Soul’s desires. Releasing more of my identifications with my tribe of selves as well as becoming more compassionate and considerate of them.

Teaching me that the BLISS the mystics speak of is not just to be found in ‘peak experiences’ or ‘peak phenomena’ but also in the elation derived from surrender to Self, heart-centered being (not emotion-centered being there is a crucial difference), the integration of shadow, and the transmutation of the conditioned self through the luminous power of consciousness. This kind of bliss is not reliant on external circumstances or the absence of pain or suffering, its subtle and pervasive nature shines through all of experience and brings levity and joy to the attuned being, which in turn allows for even more expansion into being and blissfulness.

For healing more of my MISPERCEPTIONS and ATTACHMENTS to one of my parents, moving me from the toxicity of neediness and resentment towards compassionate detachment.

For DEARMORING me and teaching me to feel more and cultivate useful skills in navigating life from a more open and vulnerable state by deepening my trust and Self-leadership.

For guiding me to expand into PLAYFULNESS and release limiting thinking and self censorship.

For teaching me to RELATE and LOVE in a new way by gifting me with deeply meaningful and expansive explorative experiences with evolutionary minded Souls. Allowing me to get intimate with all aspects of myself and become clear on what I truly need, want, and desire in relationships and how to manifest it, whilst reminding me to beware of settling for ‘less than’ my being desires.

For giving me the realization that I no longer turn to LOVE RELATIONSHIPS as a panacea for a deficit of love, as that has been taken care of by self and tribe love, but to co-create evolutionary containers for shared magical and extraordinary adventures.

For making me conscious of the unconscious AMBIVALENCE towards men that steeped relating with them into a dualistic dynamic of desire/delight on the one hand and fear/repulsion on the other.

For teaching me about the importance of an internal felt sense of EQUALITY, POWER, and ADMIRATION in love relationships.

For giving me opportunities to practice OPENING FULLY to a man and surrendering to the experience of relating with trust. And also reminding me that having an attraction, great connection, or feelings of love for someone doesn’t imply a need for turning it into a committed relationship.

For helping me remember, reclaim, and update old DREAMS and aspects of my being.

For inspiring me to create a new VISION BOARD from a knowing of wholeness and understanding of what fulfills and grows me instead of the distortions of desires and unconscious scarcity beliefs.

For giving me an opportunity to actively and PHYSICALLY CHANGE what doesn’t align with or serve me, which was unbelievable rewarding and important at this point of my journey. After years of having been taught to be patient and trust the unfolding without physically intervening this felt especially liberating and delightful.

For reminding me what great delight and pride I take in the WORK OF MY OWN HANDS and that it is way sweeter than enjoying the luxury of having someone else take care of stuff for me. And that no matter how tired, sore or exhausted I felt my little bull’s heart was aglow with glee.

For giving me ample opportunities to be sensing, experiencing and seeing the vastness of my STRENGTH, DISCIPLINE, and PERSISTENCE in expression and enjoy how amazing it feels.

For allowing me to discard things, which my mother had held onto without my consent or knowing, and which kept unwanted energetic cords alive with past aspects of my life. And for the delight that followed said DISCARDING as rushes of energy returned to my body and being.

For granting me the knowing that every part of me and the ego mind which operates on adversarial perceptions and narratives becomes a SLAVE to duality.

For teaching me that mastering DUALITY does not mean directing or dominating it but rather knowing its true nature and engaging it from consciousness without submitting to identifications, attachments, and dogma.

MASTERY in the mystical sense is not about domination, as that is beholden to fear not love, it is about being ONE WITH duality and playing with its seeming contrasts in creative, joyful, aligned and expansive ways. Seeing through its appearance of duality and contrast to perceive the underlying oneness.

For teaching me about the need and joy of living from ALERT PRESENCE. Not an alertness in the sense of vigilance (which is mostly rooted in fear) but alertness arising from being fully present, open and in harmonic resonance with the rhythm and flow of life.

For giving me the realization that these times call me to be with WHAT IS without getting entangled or invited into shadow play by narratives and stories wanting to wrap themselves around it. They call for my ability to stand strong in my discerning sovereignty and Self while engaging with the moment from curiosity, playfulness, compassion and love. To be CONCURRENTLY SEPARATE and ONE WITH ALL.

Teaching me to no longer allow my mind/body to be pulled in false dichotomies, meet dualities with a knowing and intent of ‘both/and’ to break the spells of limitations and distortion, and to allow Consciousness to offer new perspectives and pathways to INFINITE POSSIBILITIES from the vastness of its wisdom. New perspectives and solutions which not only help me navigate the challenges set before me but also to thrive and delight in engaging with them.

For sensitizing me to the fact that due to my experience of spiritual trauma and entrainment of a narcissistic God, I have to be mindful that the deep-set distrust and ambivalence towards said deity does not CROSS CONTAMINATE subconsciously my relationship with inner Presence (higher Self) or Source.

For teaching me to reclaim and step into my INNOCENCE and access the immense power and spaciousness it comes with as I consistently love on my inner child.

For challenging me to get past linguistic obstacles and learn to express VULNERABILITY as easily in German as I have learned to do in English. Helping me drop some of the unhelpful cultural conditionings and reigniting my love for the poetry and richness of the German language.

For bringing back old and new MALE FRIENDS into my life and teaching us to relate on higher levels of awareness, authenticity, vulnerability, compassion and love. I appreciate and welcome the replacement of friendships lost in years back and the upping of masculine energy in my circles. Acknowledging the fulfillment of longheld wish.

For ending on a gift and high note, which give me a knowing and positive outlook on 2022’s oncoming magic and gifts.

Photography: Chelsea Jackson Roberts by Francesco Mastalia

The post Thank You 2021 appeared first on Venuskind.

They often took me by surprise, arising mostly in chance encounters that sparkled with a special kind of glitter. But none of these have been as potent and devastatingly glorious as the one I experienced in an old connection teetering between death and rebirth. 

Energy so strong it shook my being to the core, undoing any armoring, blockages and blinders to flood me with all that I had been keeping hidden from my mind. Confronting me with seemingly novel aspects of self, their desires, dreams and passions. Oh their vast passions and depth of strength that arises from them.

Exploding and rippling through me like bolts of lightning, my mind forced into a helpless and confused surrender as the deluge of insights, emotions, sensations and energetic flow, unlocked by this catalytic moment, kept swelling and speaking new truths that held me in numinosity. Not in a religious definition of the term but in the unique quality of feeling that interweaves awe for the beauty of an experience with a hint of trepidation. 

Never did I realize in the headiness of the experience that it was only to be a beginning to a long and confounding process of falling apart in a kaleidoscope of fragments and reuniting into a new wholeness.

Grounding myself and allowing the experience to reveal its medicine, meaning and potentiality took a lot of energy and time as it was but the circumstances and interactions with the catalyst were also meant to trigger old abandonment, betrayal and neglect wounds with a surprising ferocity. And again I surprised parts of me with how well I could multi-task on growing different dimensions of being, perceiving and engaging while ‘carrying water and chopping wood’ as well as most days.

This has to be the most profound catalytic soul connection and activation moment I have experienced in this life. Maybe it has come now as I have developed enough perceptive acuity to know it for what it is, to understand the workings of higher selves and souls enough to recognize their handwriting on this and surrender to the process. A prearranged energetic healing sequence to rip the veils, release emotional hangups, balance karma and free me to walk my path unhindered by limitations and blockages that have fulfilled their teaching capacity. 

The experience has tested my ability to hold space for myself while doing so for another, expanded my capacity of disconnecting old energies and emotions from the reactivity they habitually trigger, and given me an opportunity to practice loving discernment in balancing the needs of another with my own. Making me experience and know the vastness of space within being and the immensity of strength, resilience and equanimity that spring from 

I have visceral knowing of where to draw the boundary when another’s feelings and actions impact my wellbeing negatively without allowing the past to make me feel unloving, shame or wrong in doing so. I know to discern the difference between impulsive self-protection from wounding and boundaries asserted by self love and self care. It has taught me many lessons on the subtle difference between fragility of ego/wounding and tenderness of heart and fed my preference and courage to remain in the latter.

I understand what it takes for me to sustainably hold space for another without causing harm to myself in that process, deepening my commitment to honoring other’s free will and sovereignty with compassion and love and giving me clarity on where the honoring has to be interwoven with justice and standing by higher truths. 

I intuit that this  was also unique in that the effect was not one-sided as previous catalytic experiences had been but a two-way energetic activation. Which makes it even more magical and precious to me. I cannot be sure how my latest catalyst perceived this or if they even have the tools to make sense of it or integrate the effects of the activation as they retreated into silence and disconnection. 

As beloved as they are to my soul and heart their choice to act in ways unworthy of them and myself preclude any contact or connection between us in the human dimension until justice has rebalanced the scales of our relationship. 

Making the decision to uphold the standards of relating in my life towards them was so hard it sent my inner tribe of selves into weeks of inner dissent until the voices of self love managed to unite them eventually in a new peaceful union. Still, walking away was not easy nor something I wanted, in fact it was the opposite of my desire for a deeper more intimate union and bond with them. Yet I know this boundary is part of what I have to embody fully to walk through the portal of ascendence opening through this energetic shift and rebirth. 

“If the full moon loves you, why worry about the stars?” ~ Tunisian Proverb

The Beloved has painstakingly made it visible and visceral to me in the past decade that toxicity often wears the face of family, friends or a beloved and that loving them does not equal sacrificing my heart, needs and wishes to accommodate their presence in my life. He has taught me to prioritize my soul path, wellbeing and visions for life encoded in my being over and over again. It doesn’t get easier to choose me over them as the Beloved ups the ante with every experience. And how else could he make me feel my strength and capacity to be without those who will not stop abusing, betraying, manipulating and disrespecting me?

It hurts me more than I wish to verbalize to have to walk away from those I hold dear, it takes more energy for self-care and healing to get back to balance than I would ever want to expend. But what else is there to do but accept reality as it is and work with it?

There is a deep knowing in my being that this death and rebirth cycle is a quantum leap towards the manifestation of everything my heart desires and I have been working towards for a long, long time. And it is manifesting – with them in the picture or without.

Another precious reminder of this catalytic soul activations is to hold the visions of love, connection and unions with clarity and consistency and to release any attachments to the presence of specific people in it. 

These moments where the Beloved flows through the form of another human to meet me in the physical are some of my most priced jewels of experience, even though they often come with pain and at the price of parts of self and beliefs that I am called to shed and leave behind. 

They are unique and profound moments of enlightenment, treasured gifts of initiation by the Beloved. 

Initiation into deeper union with Self and the Beloved, within as without. 

Therefore I shall keep saying, even when I am down on my knees and feeling the unbearability of death and rebirth, over and over again: 

Unbreak and let me Blossom in Wholeness and Union Beloved

So we may create a higher multidimensional dance of love 

Spiraling and leaping from the heart of consciousness and creation magic

For this is my Soul’s sacred dream and joyful path of the phoenix.

Art: ‘In bloom, not broken’ by Justin Ifill-Forbes, ⁠model: Windela

The post Unbreak and let me Blossom in Wholeness and Union Beloved 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 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photography by Venuskind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Someone may have told you
Perhaps long ago
That you need a man
To complete you
That on your own
You’re only half of what you will be
When you find “The One”
It was implied
By the tragic fairytales
And the Hollywood romance movies
But it was all a lie
Your power comes from no where else
From no one else
But from inside of you
You are here to stand whole
To emanate magic
First, on your own
With no one to save you
No one to rescue you from your own demons
Woman
It is no man’s job to break down your walls
To give you your sense of worthiness
To make you whole
Power like that only exists
Within you
At the very core
So stop asking yourself
Why am I still single?
Why did that man leave me?
Why aren’t I good enough for him?
When does life begin?
Because his absence says nothing about who you are here to become
Conscious
Empowered
Honest
Kind
A Boundary setting self protector
A Self-loving leader who trusts her path
Stop seeking
Conscious love doesn’t stem from that place
The man you deserve
He knows he is not someone’s better or worse half
He is whole too
And he will come ready
To do the work to heal with you
But he is not here to patch your wounds
A man is not a substitute for feeling your own pain
Woman
You are power
Don’t ever settle just to avoid loneliness
Because the worst form of abandonment
Is abandonment of the self
Sister
Do not wait
For anyone to light your fire
That fire within you is ready to blaze
Without anyone else to ignite you
No man, no lover
Can take that away
No one else is responsible for this
Only you
And that is the core of your womanhood
Your connection to the Goddess
The expression of Kali coming through you
The seductress and destructress
Your love and your heartache
Your passion and your anger
Don’t sweep any of it under the rug
Or spare your truth for fear of being rejected
You can walk alone
And be just as powerful
As when you walk in partnership
You are here to lead
So rise up and claim yourself
What message do you have for this world today?
Who will you choose to be
To leave your mark
And make this place better
Than it was yesterday
That is the core of your feminine essence
To teach, to nurture, to love and to heal
And that power is within you
As it has been
All along

Photography: The coldest day by Zhang Jingna

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