Soul Sanctuary.

.... One day when I don't live in this physical place anymore, I'll miss this spot in my living room the most. 

Because I have made this space sacred with my own intention, 
and then delighted myself by spending countless hours alone here. 

It's been right here that I've slowly learned how to listen to my whole Being most carefully. 

And from within that silent observation, I've discovered this new kind of intimacy:

Conversation with my own soul. 

Learning how to meet myself in this way feels like coming Home.

As if I could find a feeling of family reunion inside my own body.

Or rest inward towards my own exquisitely tender embrace.

I now wish everyone could find a way to get this close to themselves -- or hopefully, even closer.

Because I know there is even more than this too.

Namaste,
Whitney 

Freedom

The other day, a stranger in my local grocery store approached me and announced that I was “born a queen, remain a queen, and will die a queen".  I was surprised and confused, and I’m pretty sure I simply stared at him for 30-60 seconds before I decided he wasn’t dangerous or crazy.  He then continued by telling me that he felt compelled to remind me of my own absolute Freedom.  He told me that I needed to look up the definition of the word ‘sovereign’, and understand that it applied to me.

So I looked it up right then: "sovereign: one that exercises supreme authority within a limited sphere".

He went on to tell me about his brother, a doctor, who went to medical school to learn how to help people heal themselves, and wound up working in a hospital where he saw 30-40 patients every day. And then there was this moment when his brother realized that this medical model wasn’t aligned with his values as a ‘healer’, and quit his job a few weeks later.  Apparently, this man’s brother now feels that his soul is significantly more ‘free’.  He concluded, “we don’t have to be any more bound up by things than we want to be.  You can always choose to set the soul free when and if it demands this".

Curiously, less than 45 minutes before this strange interaction at the grocery store, a very wise friend of mine was attempting to share with me what he knew about the hero/heroine’s journey re: the soul’s liberation from self-imposed fundamentalism of any kind.  In a different way, he was also encouraging me to remember my own ultimate freedom and sovereignty within the limited sphere of myself.

These two strong voices - both echoing the others’ message - got my attention.  The Universe seemed to be gently encouraging me to consider (again) how the psychological prisons I often feel held within might be self-imposed constructions.  Of course, the work of liberating ourselves from our habits of thought is no simple task, but I imagine it’s one that others might relate to, and figured I’d do my part in offering both solidarity and support to everyone else on the same journey toward true (shall we say, "inner"?) Freedom.

The Gift of Fear

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”  ― Eleanor Roosevelt

Welcoming Rejection.

"The gift in rejection is that it can become the new face of liberation".

I've been silently repeating this to myself for several days now, hoping it will stick.  Turns out, I'm weeks away from being 30 years old, and the possibility of rejection is still a big, scary thing for me.

Perhaps too early in my life I suffered from an incomplete initiation into this particularly devastating kind of pain, and have subsequently been trying to avoid it by learning to be "likable enough" in most situations, most of the time.  Today, I'm hoping that these nearly 30 years of life experience have finally allowed me to decided that the price one pays for that comfortable "likable" status is way too high.  Every effort to avoid this experience on the outside, the searing pain of rejection becomes internalized instead.

All too recently - despite years of therapy and other healing interventions - I have discovered that this inner ridicule is still wreaking havoc on select parts of my psyche and bodily systems.  Fortunately, I also know -- largely as a result of all those same years of therapy (etc.) - that many of my initiations into the bitterness of rejection have also carried with them an elixir of healing far beyond any kind of suffering I had feared before.

So, to expand on my original mantra: I'm thinking that the gift in a conscious approach to any experience of rejection is that it may become a powerful teacher on the path of liberation.  Exactly what that teaching will be teaching 'you' is unknown until it's endured, I suppose.

May we have the courage when we need it.

Namaste.

What Are You Running Away From?

Suppose what you fear
could be trapped
and held in Paris.

Then you would have the courage
to go everywhere in the world.
All the directions of the compass
open to you,
except the degrees east or west
of true north
that lead to Paris.

Still, you wouldn’t dare
to put your toes smack dab
on the city limit line.

And you’re not really willing to stand on a mountainside
miles away
and watch the Paris lights
come up at night.
And just to be on the safe side, you decide to stay completely
out of France.

But then danger
seems too close
even to those boundaries,
and you feel the timid part of you
covering the whole globe again.

You need the kind of friend
who learns your secret and says,
“See Paris first.”

—M. Truman Cooper

All Relationships Are Sacred

"All relationships are sacred", I said to my friend the other day.  When he asked me what I meant by that, I was happy to A) realize that I did truly mean what I had said, and B) that I might actually be able to explain to him exactly why I felt this was true.

I imagine that most of us can accept this notion when our relationships feel inspiring, supportive, and loving.  We know that those types of relationships feel precious to us, and we are typically willing to work very hard to honor and protect them.  Yet, I was also acknowledging - at least in my own life - that even the encounters that have felt quite destructive may be equally valuable experiences, which deserve some strange kind of honoring too.  

Many of my own most destructive experiences in relationships appear  - often retrospectively - to have been calling me to do precisely that:  destroy something in myself that needed destroying.  (Perhaps something in the other needed to be destroyed too -- but I can't speak for them).

For me, however, it's sometimes been my naivete or idealism that needs destroying.  Sometimes it's my passivity.  Or my sense of powerlessness.  Or my arrogance.  Or bitterness.  Or dishonesty.  Or self-protective emotional numbing.  Sometimes I have needed to destroy unconscious patterns of relating to myself or others that I'd learned from equally unconscious role models (not blaming anyone in particular - just noticing that we all seem to sort of cross pollinate one another... for better or worse).  

And painful as it has been at times, I know that all of this has ultimately been for my absolute highest good.  In fact, it's this kind of 'clearing out' that has subsequently created an ever-deepening capacity to experience true satisfaction in my relationships with others too.  

So it seems to me that the opportunity in any relationship (beautiful or painful or both) is to discover whether we're capable of accepting the initiation it's offering us, and allow ourselves to be transformed by the mutual Mystery.

I suppose I would only only add this addendum to my original statement:  I believe that all relationships can be made sacred.   

Self Reflection

One day you will decide to risk
Sharing your own deep truths about being and becoming

No matter how dark the substance you must sift
You will risk and risk and risk again

Believing now that you're able to survive
The exacting gaze of your own knowing

Because on that day you will have already had the mysterious and good fortune
Of catching a glimmer of Love -
Both strange and familiar to your tired human body

And everything after that glimpse will never be the same again
Now that you know that meeting the gleam in your own eyes
Doesn't require so much stalwart bravery as you once thought

Your gaze now only serves to return you into your own open arms
Where you can finally hear the sound of your own soothing voice
Saying simply this: "I will welcome you in".

Yes.
I will welcome you in, I will welcome you in, I will welcome you in.

How To Get What You Want

A very wise woman once told me that you have to create specific receptivity for the things you want to experience in your life.  If you are afraid to tell you the Universe that you want something, it will not necessarily fall into your lap.  Instead, bravery, perseverance and honesty about our deepest longings are rewarded much more often than self-protective indifference.  To illustrate this truth, this same wise woman asked me to think of a moment in my lifetime that felt particularly joyful.  I thought about it and settled on a moment of spiritual significance I had once experienced on a trip to Mexico.

Her follow up questioning sounded something like this:  "Now tell me, did you make yourself available for that joy?  Did you ask for it?  Did you put yourself in its path, and bravely stand there with your naked longing?  Or did you pretend not to need what you received in that moment?"

I think we're often afraid to ask for what we want - let alone acknowledge it to ourselves - because some superstitious part of us believes that we might be setting ourselves up for unbearable disappointment.  Yet, my own short experience on earth tells me that the Universe is not easily moved to collaborate with us when we're defended against her in this sort of passive-aggressive way. Of course, figuring out how to open our hearts towards our own deepest longings takes courage precisely because it means we have to be willing to relate to the most vulnerable parts of ourselves first.

The habitually unexamined self might think we want a certain job, partner, vacation, car, prestige, or positive recognition when really we're after something much deeper like "love, belonging, meaning, safety, healing, significance, or transcendence".  While considering this, I was reminded of the Christian scripture that says, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you".  Perhaps we have misunderstood this teaching so often because we've misunderstood ourselves more often.

Healing the Ancestral Lines

Recently, I had a beautiful and strange experience called a Tarpana ceremony. Tarpana is an Ayurvedic ritual that combines physical massage with spiritual journeying (or "active imagination") into a timeless, spaceless place in which I was encouraged to have conversations with people (alive and dead) with whom I have established or inherited unhealthy relationship patterns.

The Tarpana ritual turned out to be much more powerful than I expected at first. Combining bodywork with spiritual and psychological sensitivity helped me feel into the places in my body where I was holding onto these attachments. From there, I could then work to release these holding patterns in the psyche and the body simultaneously. I have done many, many kinds of therapy and spiritual healing rituals in my life, but this one in particular brought something unexpected: a new sense of personal responsibility.

Let me explain.  

After the ceremony, I felt myself start to understand - both mentally and viscerally - that my attitudes towards the people in my life (past and present) manifest as inner attitudes towards myself. I could see how all the negative energy I’d been directing towards any of my relationships created the same experience of negativity in my own body! For example: if I was defending against empathy and understanding in a relationship with someone else, I was blocking off the flow of empathy and understanding within my own system. Alternatively, when I allowed empathy and understanding to arise towards this person, those same energies began to flow freely in my body again.

Many intuitive healers talk about the role of psychological or spiritual sickness in the manifestation of physical dis-ease. I saw this very clearly during my Tarpana ritual. It was as if the innate flow of healing energy was being released from behind a dam of my own creation. It became suddenly obvious to me that while the abundance I seek is within my own reach, it is also not freely available if I’m willfully defended against others - alive or dead; present or absent; known or unknown.

As Rumi says, "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it".

May all beings Awaken. Namaste.

Human Consciousness

“Over three decades of systematic studies of the human consciousness have led me to conclusions that many traditional psychiatrists and psychologists might find implausible if not downright incredible.  I now firmly believe that consciousness is more than an accidental by-product of the neurophysiological and biochemical processes taking place in the human brain.  I see consciousness and the human psyche as expressions and reflections of a cosmic intelligence that permeates the entire universe and all of existence.  We are not just highly evolved animals with biological computers embedded inside our skulls; we are also fields of consciousness without limits, transcending time, space, matter, and linear causality.”

-- Stanislav Grof, MD, PhD 

A Sincere Approach to Meditation

While listening to an interview with one of the Dalai Lama's principal English translators, I learned the most stunning thing about the original meaning of the word "Meditation".  Sometimes while "meditating", I often wonder if I might be doing something wrong b/c I don't get nearly as much out of empty mental gazing, as I do from a gentle investigation of whatever it is that arises in my immediate experience.  Of course, I probably wouldn't be capable of the kind of investigation I'm speaking of if I didn't also know how to access the neutral curiosity that gets strengthened by those practices that value this process of "stilling" or "emptying" the mind.

According to this interview, however, the English word "meditation" is being used as a translation of the Sanskrit term (bhavana), and the Tibetan term (gom).  The Sanskrit word bhavana has an alive quality to it that means something like cultivation, like cultivating a field.  While the Tibetan word gom  has the connotation of familiarity, but also suggests a process of familiarity rather than a static state of familiarity.  So, arguably meditation can understood (at least, in part) as a process of discernment that has movement through stages and layers of discovery.  Consequently, meditation is a practice aimed at acquiring knowledge -- maybe the kind of true knowledge that available through sincere contact with direct experience.

The word sincere begs a little translation here too.  Sincere - meaning "without wax", from the Latin words “sin” (without) and “cera” (wax).  Apparently, this phrase "without wax" first became widespread during the height of Roman and Greek sculpture artistry.  When a sculpture had a flaw, artists would often fill cracks or flaws in the work with wax to match the marble, masking the imperfections.  An honest artist would create pieces of work "without wax".  For me, cultivating a practice of sincere contact with direct experience (both inner and outer) means trying to approach the immediate moment without the layers of self-deception, denial, and glossing over that so often cover over the truth that can be found there.

Curiously, a good teacher once said this to me about the practice of meditation:  "Even one sincere breath is a full practice".

The intelligence of 'Trance'.

There is a pain—so utter—
It swallows substance up—
Then covers the Abyss with Trance—
So Memory can step
Around—across—upon it—
As one within a Swoon—
Goes safely—where an open eye—
Would drop Him—Bone by Bone. 

-- Emily Dickinson

There's an incredible book called The Inner World of Trauma by Donald Kalsched.  In the book, Kalsched explores the way self-destructive habits get created in response to early traumas we might experienced.  Essentially, he suggests that these self-destructive habits were ORIGINALLY intelligent because they allowed us to survive what was unbearable at the time.  As we begin find a way to start looking at these painful habits later in life - the gift and burden of consciousness then becomes learning how to forebear what we once could not in order to give up what no longer helps us thrive.

The intelligence of the psyche will not allow us to go there, however, until we feel authentically safe enough to survive this kind of regression into old psychic injuries.  In my work as a therapist, I often realize that the symptomatic 'acting out' that brings people into my office must then be intrinsically linked to an unresolved feeling of danger.  Figuring out how to help people get safe in their bodies, safe in their relationship with me, and safely connected to their own inner reality feels like the heart and soul of what I might hope to achieve with each new person I see.

Lately, I've become convinced that figuring out how to create this safe space for someone else requires a certain reverence for the 'symptoms' themselves.  When we approach our destructive habits with curiosity and compassion, I believe we afford ourselves a chance to learn how to follow their trail into an accurate understanding of their symbolic function.  Once we can see clearly how our own attempts to survive our lives may no longer be helping us to do so, we might be able to forgive ourselves for holding on to what hurts us and begin to let go.  It sounds like somewhat of a paradox, of course, but I truly believe that it's our capacity to honor the original intelligence that created these personal habits that imprison us the most, that then gives us the possibility to begin living beyond them.

Namaste.

Sacred Spaces

Grateful: for ritual, for compassion, for safe spaces to do inner work, for grace, for creativity, for community, and for reminders to approach all of these light-filled qualities with the kind of humility that acknowledges their ever-present shadow.

- CG Jung Institute, 1.6.2013

Hopefulness

"Hope is a function of struggle.  Hope is not an emotion, but a is a cognitive, behavioral process that we learn when we experience adversity, when we have relationships that are trustworthy, when people have faith in our ability to get out of a jam".  

-- Brene Brown

The True Origin of Courage

"From Caring Comes Courage". - Lao Tzu.

I recently heard someone describe the incredible new quality of love they were capable of experiencing towards their newborn daughter.  They went on to explain the ways in which they could tell they had been initiated into a capacity for love that was entirely different from what they had been capable of feeling before: "Before this, I think I simply hoped that I would have the courage to jump in front of a bus or a bullet for someone else.  Now I know I would".  Their words reminded me of the Lao Tzu quote at the top of this post, and also reaffirmed to me what I've been remembering lately:  It takes courage to care about something because we know that any experience of caring will both beget and require more and more courage from us as we continue caring for it.

Getting married was one of the experiences that helped initiate me into a deeper understanding of the connection between caring and courage, as it required me to relate to my intuitive sense that I was signing up for a lifetime of learning how to become both more courageous and more caring towards this person I was marrying.  I did not know what "for better or for worse" could or would look like, and I had no interest in being naive about the vows I was making either.  My willingness to be that conscious about the phenomena of marriage required the kind of courage that could only come from a very deep caring for the man I was going to marry, the relationship I was agreeing to enter into, as well as my own set of personal need-strengths and limits.  I think this honest reflection has helped both of us navigate the circumstances in which we've needed to become more caring and more courageous towards one another.  I don't doubt that this will ever cease, and I'm powerfully grateful for that -- even though I still don't know what "for better or for worse" might look like for us.

Collectively, I believe we value both caring and courage in ourselves and others because it's the pro-social glue that holds the human species together.  Ironically, we have often learned that caring and courage can also be socially dangerous at times.  Maybe you were the child on the playground that cared deeply about the other child who was being actively bullied.  If you let your caring dictate a courageous gesture, you might soon find yourself on the receiving end of the bully's aggression. Perhaps you had the courage to tell someone that you liked, wanted, desired, or needed them, and were consequently rejected or humiliated.  So we become defended against both caring and courage in order to protect what's left of our delicate little egos.  To still appear socially attractive, we may learn how to pretend to care, or how to practice things that look like courage (but involve no real risk to our personal sense of safety).

For example, I notice that I'm willing to navigate intensely difficult interpersonal dynamics and admit my own shortcomings when I actually care deeply for the other person and the relationship itself.  I'm also willing to spend precious time, energy, and resources on the things I genuinely care about.  It should be noted that the word courage comes from latin roots that further illustrates this connection to caring.  In latin, the word means something like "to speak one's mind by telling one's whole heart". If courage is about telling one's whole heart, it also sounds like an invitation for lots of gut-wrenching honesty with oneself and others.  In light of this, I've started to examine the sincerity of my caring by the measure of real courage I experience in relation to it.  If I discover that I don't care as much as I want to care, then I have an opportunity to examine the psychological defenses that are holding me back.  As someone who is devoted to the ongoing process of wholeness, I'm often acutely aware that we have to be first willing to feel the experience of our heart in order to then speak about it.  That's a pretty courageous task in and of itself, which makes me think that even "caring about caring" involves some spark of real courage.

Echoing Lao Tzu's original sentiment, the social scientist, TedTalk celebrity, and author of the Ordinary Courage blog, Brene Brown, says it this way: "vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage".  My conclusion:  I believe the only real choices we have is this non-linear relationship between caring and courage is whether or not we will be open towards our own heart-felt response to things.

Book Evangelism!

The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren
A Little Book on The Human Shadow by Robert Bly
The Deepest Acceptance by Jeff Foster

The Intimate Life by Judith Blackstone

The Bond by Lynne McTaggart

Vibrational Medicine by Richard Gerber
The Polyvagal Theory by Stephen W. Porges
The Ever Present Origin by Jean Gebser

.... Ready, break!

Today's Solar Eclipse!

I used to pay attention to horoscopes in the newspaper or magazines because I thought they were quirky and fun.  Maybe it also gave me a sense of cosmic connection when they were accurate as well.  Over the years, however, I've had more exposure to some very serious practitioners of the art, and any residual dismissive attitude has been consequently silenced.  According to the author of one particular astrology blog I read, these are the potential gifts of today's solar eclipse in Scorpio:

"Information lives in light.  This information comes from the heart of a Star–a star called the Sun. Our Sun holds information from its Creator (most likely the Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy; the Galactic Center; Hunab Ku)… to Imagine what types of information is encoded within these primordial ancient galactic wave forms is mind bending. And light isn’t just information, it’s also energy. 

When the Moon aligns perfectly between Sun and Earth we experience Solar Eclipses.  Divinely infused New Moons meant to catapult us onto the right path.  It is up to us to be good tricksters in this opportune space.  Nobody is going to do this work for you.  It is up to you.  Be quick, be stealthy, and have an idea of what you are looking for.  Without the light of the Sun, we are “eclipsed” and free to roam in the Shadow of our being for a short time, rewriting aspects of our story we have been hungry to edit. 

What is the Shadow?  The Shadow in Jungian psychology is the unconscious dumping ground for undesirable characteristics of personality.  And so, during Eclipses we get to choose what gets released or incinerated in our unconscious dumping grounds.  Only with intent will you experience the stellar magic of these Dragon holes.  Intention and courage will bring you to the moments where you become weightless, carried by Love and nothing else…."

For more moon updates - check out this blog:  Holes To Heaven.

The Intelligence of Play.

"Who knows what makes us play?  The young of very many species, including our own, spontaneously chase, leap, twist, wrestle and cavort, promoting strength and endurance, instinct, social bonding and adaptation.  Complex play with objects and goals is associated with more complex brains.  But playing is also, apparently, just for the sheer pleasure of play.  An aquarium fish will repeatedly leap in and out of a tiny waterfall.  Ravens have been observed sledding on their backs down slopes of snow, and kea parrots toss rocks in the air.  Elephants kneel to equalize play with a smaller playmate.  Cats, dogs and primates, among others, incorporate objects and obstacles in their play and often have favorite toys.  Dolphins invite play with human swimmers.  Play, in fact, is a principal way in which acquaintance is made with another".  -- from The Book of Symbols

Intuitively, we know how important play is for our ongoing development.  We teach children games and give them time to play.  Hopscotch, for example, has it's origins in myths about the soul's journey from earth to heaven through a labyrinth.  I have no idea why we stop valuing this way of learning for our adult selves, but I think it's a grievous error to do so.  As Ramikrishna reminds us, "The divine mother is always sportive.  The universe is her play... her pleasure is in continuing the game".

The Book of Symbols further elaborates: "Psychologically, consciousness and unconscious interact and impact one another in all kinds of play.  The reverie of play unveils feelings, aspirations, impressions, locked up pieces of experience and potentialities.  Play can evoke the affinity and polarity between psychic opposites, and dynamics of exclusion and integration, separation and reunification.  Alchemy described a part of the opus as "child's play" despite the arduous nature of the work of self-understanding, suggesting that psychic process requires an attitude of play and that the imagination was a primary tool of the adept".

Carl Jung played "children's games" of drawing, sand-tray, making models out of clay, and dialoging with unseen figures, all of which are ways of engaging the unconscious energies of the psyche in order to coax them into consciousness.  Physicists, also, play speculative "god-games" with specialized toys that can only be handled safely because of the agreed upon rules of a specific game.  We could conclude, consequently, that play allows for "evolutionary change, self-awareness, scientific discovery, artistic composition, invention, pleasure, good friends of multiple species and the resolution of many questions" (The Book of Symbols).

Do you remember being a young child and enthusiastically ringing someone's doorbell in order to see if they could "come out and play"?  I believe that THIS is a good intention to have with ourselves and each other throughout the entire course of our lives.  Tremendous creativity and learning can come from play in a way that few other practices are able to facilitate so... playfully.  :-)

It's okay to feel things!

My own experiences with intense emotions (both personally and professionally) have convinced me that there is purpose and intelligence inside of all emotional material.  Over the past several years in particular, I've noticed a correlation between the feeling of sadness and the experience of grounding. Often times, when I attempt to slow down and connect to the immediate ground of my being, I also notice that I must allow an experience of genuine sadness to move through me as well.

I've also noticed a correlation between "not wanting to feel sadness", and an avoidance of grounding practices like meditation or deep relaxation.  Yet, I also know that every single time I've allowed this feeling of sadness into my conscious awareness, I wind up with a sense of incredible gratitude for having reconnected to my tender, immediate experience of being.  In fact, those moments of working with this emotion in particular have often taught me that sadness an appropriate expression of grief for having abandoned my immediate experience of myself in the first place.

Consequently, the sadness - or grief - turns out to be the emotional expression that allows me to authentically reconnect with my own wholeness.  My point?  Difficult emotions do not arise to haunt and persecute us, but rather to invite us back into relationship with our whole dynamic selves.

My other point?  The emotional experience is already here whether we acknowledge it consciously or unconsciously.  I once heard a brilliant man express the following sentiment about working with difficult emotions:  "Whatever arises arises.  As a result, we only have two real choices about how we might approach things:  face forwards or ass backwards".  I believe it's precisely this practice of 'facing' ourselves that ultimately reflects our original beauty back to us.

Honest Humanity

An honorable human relationship -- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love" -- is a process of deepening the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

- Adrienne Rich