working with our parts
working with our parts
how Love always comes for us, even when we don't know it + an exercise
Thank you for your support, dear one! I marvel at your presence here, in a space where voices abound and attention is a priceless gift. As my direction becomes more defined, i will be announcing a new sacred project that will partially unfold in this space. If you’ve not become a Subscriber yet, i hope you will consider supporting my work in whatever way feels aligned for you, and share it with other wild souls who may resonate with and/or feel challenged by these ideas.
dear wild and vibrant Soul,
I know i wake up some mornings and feel the opposite — my state a general foggy fatigue, thoughts rushing in as soon as the contours of consciousness begin to appear, usually of all the things i must do. It’s always the pressure of doing that gets us. Often this pressure is undergirded by a few internal stories about worth and performance, fears of being seen and judged, impostor syndrome, and these protective layers that have built over years, sometimes decades, mechanically purring their internal engines ad nauseam.
A lot of this can come crashing upon me in the mornings, often causing yet another narrative about how i am not healed enough, or have not done (there’s that word again) enough spiritual work. A protector in me that is hypercritical wants to go blah, blah, blah, we’ve heard this story before. Another one who is the queen of efficiency buys into it immediately and formulates a plan for how we will do better in the future. An exile or inner child part simply feels guilty, hangs her head, replays the message of i am not enough. And all this internal clamor may take less than 3 seconds because they are well-worn pathways in the brain.
You have yours, dear friend. You might be keenly aware of them, and notice the thought patterning immediately, though the feelings that come with it may be overwhelming. Or, you might not even be aware of the messages that just zipped through you on nervous system highways, but you feel off, or perhaps you go a step further and realize there is a knot in your throat, or tightness in your stomach. Some of us perceive the sensation first, others hear the thoughts.
Any of this awareness is amazing. Take a moment even now and celebrate your noticing. That even when you’re feeling off kilter, you’re tuning in. I bow to you. So many of us have lived swaths of life not noticing, not listening inwardly, that capacity to witness mute or dormant.
If this is you, that’s ok too. Any radical shift in operating begins with an act of noticing (i.e. wow, i don’t seem to ever hear my internal voice) followed by acceptance. In time, the hope is that the acceptance turns into curiosity, and then into love. To transform, i.e. unwrap the hidden and exquisite gifts of our shadow parts (the ones we want to reject or secretly hate; the ones we’ve judged unworthy) without loving them into oblivion.
Love is the most potent alchemizer. Love, which is more than a feeling, rather an Energetic Principle, a consciously flowing river of life that endlessly creates, nourishes, and elevates. Its goal is joy and flourishing and potentiation, which in my definition is an amplification of one’s unique qualities and radiance of being.
This Love comes in from that central place — the Self, the Soul, the Essence. We are born with this inviolable, radically good, whole Self. And, we experience fragmentation through wounding, trauma, harm, ancestral patterns, etc. which leads to a kind of forgetting of who we truly are. Re-membering the Self is an awakening. A return. We don’t need to work to have a Self. We simply are.
Ooooff, let’s take a moment and rest in that.
When we pause, and breathe, fully tuned into the Present, the Self is right there. You will know it by its energy of boundless compassion, its confidence, its creativity and unabashed truth, its capacity to abide in presence and the present (moment) unhurried and without agenda. This frequency within is always curious, moves with shimmering aliveness, lives in deep joy even as it is feeling it all. In that sense, the Self is kenotic — feels all, welcomes all, doesn’t shy away from the fullness of human capacities, and let’s it all pass through in a current of energy and wonder and appreciation.
There are many ways to cultivate abiding in the Self, for the consciousness to keep dropping back into this place of oneness and connection to All that Is. My path there has been through the body (somatics, yoga, and breathwork), through IFS (you can read more here), and through contemplative practices as well as exercises rooted in the Fourth Way and the perennial wisdom tradition.
It is the the sacred unfolding in my client work, which connects the three intelligences of 1) intellect/spirit, 2) feeling/emotions, and 3) body/intuition.
And, side note of appreciation and glee, i am in a wonderful creative incubator currently working on revamping my site to reflect all this and make my offerings more visible and accessible. If you wish to join my waiting list for one-on-one work or are curious about my offerings, you can go here and sign up, and don’t mind that things are a little under construction! 😜
Yesterday morning when the thoughts i shared at the beginning of this essay encroached almost immediately, i remembered a different kind of energy that had flashed right before the mind started to hum. It was a sense of being that felt like cascading light, tender, and awake in its own delight.
From some years of experience (let me tell you, dear one, it took a while!) i recognized the Self, so i followed the thread back into that large place, while witnessing the small and painful patterns that were unraveling. I didn’t numb them away, or try to argue with them. I merely sat in the center and witnessed. Felt a compassion and dignity spread toward the disquiet like an ocean wave. It wrapped itself around all the noise, and i breathed into it, submerged in its embrace. I let it usher me into the day. It was Love that came for me, that comes for each of us. Breathe and pause. It is right here.
an exercise + note about the art in this essay:
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