To transform the lenses of unworthiness, shame, and self-doubt we must go into the tender and reorient in ways that we cannot know ahead of time. It is not possible to know how reorganization will affect our relational lives, emotional experience, and embrace of the mystery.
If those familiar reference points are no longer available, what will we organize around? What will be the central image or vision by which we will navigate? Unworthiness, fear, and unintegrated feeling have become such close companions that we cannot know ahead of time what it will be like to make the journey without them by our side.
There is a certain excitement in this, but it can also generate a lot of anxiety and disorientation. The invitation is to be kind to ourselves during times of transition, honoring the actualities of what it truly means to heal. To slow way down and soften as we are asked to provide sanctuary for the wounds, grief, and unfelt joys of a lifetime.
To offer a temple of rest where the inner travelers can gather and unfold, to retrieve them from a lonely forest. We do not rid ourselves of unwanted material by locating it into shadowlands, which will only create the conditions from which it will erupt in less than conscious ways.
We will never heal by means of self-aggression and self-abandonment, which will only reinforce pathways of early empathic failure and the shame which arose from the deep sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. Awareness and clarity are critical; necessary, but not sufficient. We all “know” what we need to do and have seen that “knowing” is often not enough.
At some point it is only a turning of the heart which will heal the exhaustion, wounds, and pain of unlived life, where love is revealed to be the ultimate medicine. It is this that can penetrate the deepest layers of our conditioning and felt sense of separation.
May we do whatever we can to help our sisters and brothers along the way: hold them, listen to them, ensure that they feel felt. Speak words of kindness, provide contact and space. Share a soothed nervous system and softened heart where they can rest, where they can see, where they can know this love and the majesty that they are.
My latest book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available
My next two events:
The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado
Stay tuned for details regarding a five-day winter retreat January 23-28 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado
