Month: November 2020

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Presence 38: I am self-possessed

SOOTHE. SOOTHE. SOOTHE.

Emotion = Energy in motion.

SOOTHE. SOOTHE. SOOTHE.

We soothe each other. And/or we self-soothe. All is well.

This is such an hard time of year for me. It sends me off my normal rails.

And yet I can self-soothe.

But why can’t we soothe each other?

Not interested. Sees it as manipulation.

Caress, comfort, enquire, soothe. 

Harder to do when it feels like I am enclosed (locked down) with someone who won’t – I mean won’t – reach out. And is unmoved if I don’t either.

Sounds like it’s almost TTT. Time. To. Talk. Now that’s something fruitful you can apply your active thoughts to. 

Instead of ruminating and chuntering…

You have a veritable library of books. Yesterday you were proselytising on the virtues of NVC! 

Ok…. Let me put my thoughts and feelings in terms of NVC.

WHEN: I realised that I’d repeatedly requested you a) to touch my back and b) to use active listening with me, and you flat out… just wouldn’t… And I noticed that actually, you rarely reach out to touch me, and you really don’t know much about what’s in my head or heart not only because you don’t ask, but also because you visibly tense up and look anguished when I speak of stuff that is not aligned with what you are thinking/doing at that precise moment….

I FELT: suddenly like we weren’t on the same page. I felt that I’m constantly reaching out to you with words and touch, which soothe, reassure, encourage and bring intimacy. You seem to receive it and like it, but not want to reciprocate it. It seems, if I bring my needs or requests for what is effectively soothing or co-regulation or oxytocin production, you actually take it as sparring or manipulating you. You withdraw for a few days every time I ask you to do active listening – and this time, I just felt sickened and alarmed by the pattern. I feel disconcerted by your point blank refusal to reach out to me. And now, I realise, my neuroception has overridden my optimism that ‘if I just keep modelling co-regulation, you will eventually engage in it too’ – and as a result I feel a sense of danger, with my sympathetic nervous system finally calling the shots on my thoughts: ‘Does he not like or want me? The lack of any communication… is it because he’s putting defences up? Has he had enough of this? Did I press this rel on him, when actually he wants the bachelor life he had before. He certainly resists anything outside his own traditional pattern of daily living. Do I need to start thinking of finding my own place come the end of this tenancy?”

I NEED: 

  • To know we have safe, healthy mechanisms for co-regulating together. I would like to feel our unsteady states are welcome and cared-for in our relationship, as unconditionally as our steady states. I have in my body the past experiences of traumatic rel breakdowns, so I need clear indicators of you being in to this rel, for me to feel assured and settled and in the parasympathetic state.  I would rather you told me things directly than leave them endlessly unsaid or unspoken.
  • I need you to accept my ‘language of love’ is different to yours, and I am asking you, as an act and demonstration of love, to learn and speak my language. I need you to articulate yours more explicitly too, and let me know when I’m hitting the spot, and when I am not – so that I’m not left in doubt, or shame, or confusion.
  • I need to know what my future looks like, even in little things (eg. getting bikes, or not). Extended ‘maybes’ and ‘private thoughts’ mean I can’t plan, or am left in limbo. I need to have some certainties in my life to feel safe and to have concrete things to look forward to. This comes from our making decisions, and then working towards them. This is soothing and settling to my system.

SO MY REQUEST IS:

  1. Co-regulate with me: Caress, comfort, enquire, soothe. 
  2. Let me know now if you are actually not into this relationship, and/or what this relationship ‘is’ for you, now and in the future – no ‘private thoughts’
  3. Communicate with me more frequently and openly instead of running the house and relationship on psychic thoughts and ‘discovered’ moments – no people-pleasing or private thoughts or withholding ‘disappointment’.
  4. Make decisions with me. so we decide mutually: yes or no, and we set timeframes.
  5. Discuss our Love/Soothing Languages together, not just once, but repeatedly.

_____

2 Days Later:

Woke up today feeling v heartbroken.

I hadn’t had the NVC conversation but we had obliquely got to ‘languages of love’ over breakfast. And immediately G named that his Languages of Love were ‘acts of service’ and ‘gifts’, and that mine were ‘words’ and ‘touch’. I think ‘time together’ is one we both share and get. That softened things briefly. Just the noting, v briefly, of our differences there… But later… still no conversation (other than ‘this week’s work’ (past) and ‘what do you want to do over the weekend?’ (future) – nothing about our internal landscapes or the present moment) or any touch.

I felt struck this morning that, as long as I have no energy for ‘showing affection’ there is no showing affection between us. The phrase ‘maybe he’s just not that into you’ had been doing the rounds in my head. And I’d literally woken up through dreaming that I had gamely followed a bunch of barefoot runners straight off a cliff edge… “Maybe… it’s over?” I looked around the room working out what was mine. Wondering if I should start reducing my stuff in the attic now…

Then two important insights arrived:

  1. I’m doing the Presence Process. It involves greeting emotions unconditionally. One of the promises we make to ourselves in undertaking the PP is: no drama. No massive changes. No dramatic upheaveals or changes of direction. Drama is just avoiding the integration of the charged emotion. (And I’ve even named the charged emotion: ‘doesn’t care about me’)
  2. I turned to Instagram for some gentle wisdom, and this video pitched up (by someone called Phil Good @philgoodlife who somehow I’ve missed so far) on how “POSSESSION” is a big theme for Nov 2020. He notes that when someone lunges at you emotionally this month, they will be acting under possession (by neg entities, thoughts or simply attachment to the old systems of belief) – and the possessing entity will be seeking louche. The person will have avoided doing their inner work, and gone along with the entities’ push to lunge at another. I realised immediately, I am building up to lunge at G, with my grief and sense of ‘doesn’t care’. Now, this may be because I have allowed some psychic shit in. V possible. I’ve been allowing myself to drink vodka at the weekends = spirit. And I’ve been dwelling on my ‘history’ with AK and also with MHFA folks. Also, I’m dealing with some clients dealing with v tough stuff. Or, who knows, maybe G is hosting something which is enjoying bating me with non-affection.  Or maybe both of us are just under the tazing hazing of these times. Idk. And it really doesn’t matter because….. I realised this….

There’s only one solution to possession – wherever it is occurring – and that is SELF-POSSESSION.

(Aka: SOVEREIGNTY. Funnily enough I’ve got the last of these unhinged Queens’ coaching sessions today. Hm. Good timing.)

Anyway: today I’d like to explore SELF-POSSESSION.

Go for it! 

I am self-possessed

 

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Presence 37: I am bringing flow to my feelings (#EnergyInMotion)

Shucks, man. Well, sitting with charged emotions doesn’t half make ’em linger.

I’m feeling knocked back. And for the first time since March, I feel a tonsilly throat coming on, like my dwelling in feelings reduced my immune system. Also, it’s November. I have to remember how low my mood generally gets in November – and it will pass.

Want to talk about it? 

Yes, please. Thank you, dear Wisdom Within. So I guess the phrase is ‘doesn’t care’ or ‘doesn’t care about me’.

That’s an old friend, eh? 

Yes. It used to be ‘doesn’t care about us’, referring to me and my siblings. I can almost hear S’s little voice saying it. It was a bit of a mantra for us, I seem to recall…

And what kind of ‘doesn’t care’ is it? 

It’s bitterly felt, and deeply heart-weighing. And impenetrable. And baffling… because we (me and my siblings) are good children! We’re not the… non-innocents we’re being made out to be! We’re not that person… We… I can’t understand why we’re at the end of this…. harshness. What did we do to deserve it?

Because you’re innocent? 

Because we’re innocent! But we’re also… dependent. Or at least, locked into a relationship. With someone who doesn’t (appear, in that moment of fury or frustration, to) care about us. Man… I can feel that. There’s no escape, and the vulnerability is then simply ongoing. Cares… doesn’t care…. cares…. doesn’t care…. We never know what to expect, or who we are going to ‘be’ that day.

So, yesterday, this pattern having re-emerged in my current experience over the weekend, I finally had a good cry while doing my qigong in the garden. I decided, I needed to look after my feelings and needs (for comfort and listening), if the other person was not willing to. I had made that commitment to myself. But it has still left me reeling, sad and somehow embittered…. 🙁

And…. “doesn’t care”? 

Apparently not. My withdrawal of the Adoring Affectionate Clown has not even been noticed. The absolute, mulish determination not to communicate… My requests for comfort/listening are seen as my ‘sparring’, or ‘manipulating’ – sparking an egoic withdrawal for days… I hate the pattern. It makes me literally sick now.

I know what you said, offline, yesterday. Nothing feared more than the mother having needs. Yes, the old ‘strong mother’ syndrome. My needs are seen by the boy’s inner child as spelling the end of times. Pero no soy su madre.

And you’re owed care and comfort, because you over-deliver just that, right? 

….. I know what you’re getting at. Yesterday you said:

Give 50% less. Ask 50% more. 

Doing so makes me feel churlish, grumpy and like I’m pulling my love back. But no-one seems to notice anyway.

“Doesn’t care.” 

Doesn’t care.

Well the more I sit with these f-ing feelings, the darker and bleaker I’m becoming. I’m not sure if/who it’s helping. Where’s the integration, and will it happen faster than I am speedily f-ing up my own relationship by dwelling on the darkness?

Time to read the text book [TPP] a bit more closely, I reckon! Ok, these extracts from Week 6 have stood out for me, powerfully:

“Charged emotion is like an untapped fuel cell, which through the process of integration empowers authentic movement. This movement manifests as irreversible perceptual shifts. When we really grasp this, we realize that our childhood imprinting is a means of endowing our body with fuel. When we are “living in time,” we seldom fulfil the structural potential of our body, realize the power of its navigational system, or utilize its fuel capacity. Instead, we regard the body either as a vacant lot or as a pit stop between mental excursions into the non-existent past or future. We regard it as a place to pause between making plans. We also use both our physical body and our mental body to distract ourselves by “doing a lot of stuff,” engaging in endless physical doings and thought activity that seldom support our soul purpose.” TPPp176

“When we use the mental body as a tool for thinking, analyzing, understanding, and controlling our experiences, while we use the emotional body as a means of sedation, projection, and all manner of drama, we often feel like we are going nowhere. The fact is, more often than not, we aren’t! The Presence Process begins rectifying this predicament. It gets the motor running, assists us in reversing out of the garage, and places us on the road of life. It accomplishes this by: 

  1. Instructing us how to use our breath to consciously re-enter our body.
  2. Providing us with conscious responses and text that activate and support ongoing mental navigation.
  3. Assisting us to consciously tap into our dormant fuel supply by introducing us to the procedure for integrating charged emotion, which is to feel without condition.

While we live in time and are still attempting to have “a good time,” or at least “an easy time,” we are bouncing around between polarities. We attempt to have a good time because we feel bad, and we attempt to make things easy for ourselves because our experience feels hard. The problem is that when we spend our time chasing one experience as we flee another, what we are “doing” is bouncing off the walls of a self-created perceptual prison. This commotion may trigger significant outer activity, and we may experience a variety of physical, mental, and emotional situations, but we accomplish zero authentic movement...

To activate authentic movement requires an integrative approach – one that elevates our perception to a point where it’s no longer necessary to label our emotional experiences as either good or bad. In present moment awareness, there are no good or bad emotions. There is only energy in motion or not in motion. In present moment awareness, all emotional states are considered varying grades of fuel for different intensities of movement. To achieve full throttle and thereby cover the maximum distance we can during our human experience, we use the entire range of fuels available to us. For this to happen requires us to become inclusive of all our emotions instead of excluding some of them….

Mastering the emotional integration procedure ends anxiety because its consequences show us that each life situation we perceive as uncomfortable can be consciously integrated. Up until this point in The Presence Process, we have explored three perceptual procedures:

  • 1. We learned how to perceive the surfacing of unintegrated memories as reflections in the world. We call this identifying the messenger.
  • 2. We learned how to access insight from the felt-content of these surfacing memories. We call this getting the message.
  • 3. We learned how to unconditionally feel the pain and discomfort contained in these surfacing memories. We referred to this as feeling unconditionally.

The emotional integration procedure combines these three steps into one integrated perceptual tool. When used consistently, this tool charts a new pathway for our awareness that transforms us from reactive to responsive individuals. (The Presence Process, pp177-9)

Ok. Less summarise these epic quotes. Key words:

  • Fuel
  • Movement
  • Soul purpose
  • No good or bad emotions
  • Only energy in motion or not in motion
  • Varying grades of fuel
  • Achieve full throttle
  • Cover maximum distance we can during our human existence

I think I’m getting stuck (no movement or e-motion) because I’m dwelling on stories (aka living in time). He did, I did… I won’t, he won’t…

I need to find a way to combine:

  • FEELING the emotion around “Doesn’t Care” (unconditionally) and
  • being in PRESENT MOMENT AWARENESS (not past/future thinking) 
  • So that I can experience this promised MOVEMENT. Maybe this is pressing me towards some kind of soul expanding action… and I’d rather sit stuck in misery (drama) than take the leap. 

Now we’re talking! 

🙂 So it’s about finding the message in the feeling. Right?

Beware of taking an intellectual approach (analyzing). Instead, develop some interest in the notion of activating authentic movement (TPPp177.9). Use your qigong to move emotions. Play with the phrase of the moment. And welcome your body’s present moment awareness Knowing. The Wisdom Within is always speaking to you. Listen to get the message, within MOVEMENT. 

So, is the Movement physical or is it an emotional/energetic shift?

Hard to have one without the other, as the body is the conduit of the emotions. Remember: vibrational awareness. One twitch creates ripples. 

Embrace movement today, in all forms. Bring FLOW to your feelings. 

Ooh, lovely. Ty. Fits right in with QG and the Taoist Way…. This I can work with. This honours the feelings, and encourages them to do what e-motions need to do: become energy in motion. I should add, there is so much in the air at the moment… yesterday was the US election, tomorrow is Covid Lockdown 2, it’s November…. We all need to keep ourselves processing, feeling, moving on through… I see that. All is well as we flow….

I am bringing flow to my feelings (#EnergyInMotion)

_________

DAY NOTES:

This video, and concept of CO-REGULATION,  is so useful. I realise that I’m asking for a two-way approach to co-regulation pq no soy la steady-state madre. It’s healthy for adults to co-regulate each other, to help each other regulate at different times. It’s the give and take of comfort, caresses, enquiry, affection… to soothe the other.

**********

And this….!

YOUTUBE NOTES on this Polyvagal safety video : ‘What is trauma exactly? Or the ever-elusive concept known as the “flow state”? [Hullllo…!]And why do some people just flat-out creep us out? It can all be explained by the autonomic nervous system — our body’s autopilot that keeps our heart beating, our lungs breathing, and our gut digesting; without us even thinking about it. The Polyvagal Theory is a new understanding of how our nervous system works, and explains everything from trauma, to the very essence of social behavior; while shedding light on possible treatments for autism and trauma. You’ll never think of your body and brain the same way again.’

YES!!

*********

Breakthrough having studied co-regulation (and TPP):
I read unregulated people as “doesn’t care”. But really, they are just unregulated. They are also therefore unable to coregulate with me. My habit is
  • a) to help them regulate (people-pleasing/codependency) and
  • b) endlessly self-reg myself, while also suppressing my sense that they don’t care.

Eventually, as yesterday/today, I just flop into frozen danger state, bcs my neuroception eventually overrides my optimism the person will change…. and calls polyvagal  ‘danger’.

 It’s ok to ask that they (if an adult I’m in relationship  with) self-reg for themselves and they learn to co-reg with me as a give and take. That involves offering me comfort at times – without assuming they’re being manipulated, or  that I’m unsafe.
This is a shout out to all the non-self-regulating people in my life: I know your mama wasn’t upset in front of you, but that’s bcs her job was to coreg. you, bcs you were a child. I know, we also attach upset with our dysreg father figures… Which is why it’s important for us to learn to be adept with co-regulation, so we are not traumatised or triggered by each other’s temporary, normal dysreg.
It’s quid pro quo at different times. And it makes for emotional intimacy. Which in a life partner rel. makes for sex. Everyone’s happy.
This is Give 50% less. Ask 50% more.
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Presence 36: I am sitting on the bench with these charged emotions (#benching)

Going in to meditation, and paying unconditional attention to the felt-perception in me (usually ‘anxiety’ (fear) with anger and grief wrapped round it), I still am finding unresolved stories to work with, with regards to my childhood. Today: the day trips out with my Dad, and without my Mum. The heartache at leaving her loving presence behind, and the sense of ‘unprotectedness’. Also, the needing to keep Dad happy (usually with 100% attention, praise, ‘thank you, Daddy!’, clapping, listening……) and to offset his hair-trigger temper. The protecting my siblings, (I would sit in the middle because I was biggest – I can still see my brother’s jeans and little trainers dangling next to me) and feeling gutted for them when they did something to evoke his ire. The bitter shame and humiliation each of us felt when we were the one to trigger his fury. He was so condemning and so Vesuvian. So childish in his failure to regulate his emotions – yet so immense in his form and the power of his voice. His shaking fury – mixed, unfathomably with his alter ego – the storyteller and maker of magic…. who needed all your attention, approbation and praise…. or else Vesuvius would come back in an instant.

Oh it’s exhausting that this is still in the system. I’ve done so much work on this.

Did you go in and Inner Parent? 

I did. I sat in the front seat of the old family car (next to my Dad who was driving) and reassured the 3 kids that they were good, wonderful children. And that, they wouldn’t always have to sit in the car in this way… I’m not sure I got full break through. Your thoughts?

You reached these insights, and healed some unintegrated memories, through sitting in a state of ‘reading the Room’. You initially read the actual room you are sitting in, and then as that settled, you could go in and read the interior room of your Inner Self.

It’s good stuff. I sat in meditation for 30 mins with no timer or app… Just alive to my felt-perception and my breathing… Until my inner being starting sending me memories to work with. And all I had to do was be with them, and then go in and Parent my younger Me.

Does this work ever complete?

As long as you are feeling discomfort, there’s Work to be done. 

But, hang on…. I work in conflict and mental health => discomfort. And the days we are living in are just … tormented. Yesterday (Halloween) a new month-long national lockdown was announced. Brexit talks are running to shit – as per… The US presidential election is more dysphoric that you could make us.

Y’all selected Fast Track. Y’all asked to help bring about peace on Earth. Y’all offered yourselves as Earthing rods for peace. Y’all requested to burn up your karmic debts in this life. Y’all knew that there is nothing more enthralling than being at the leading edge of creation – and that this requires consciousness, awakening. 

The work of vibrational awareness (via felt-perception) is the work of sloughing off sleepiness. It’s the work of unconditional awareness, and unconditional love. 

You’re in the deepest mire of space-time history, and that can be viewed in one of two diametrically-opposed ways: 

  1. A disaster – the ‘end of the world’ – the apocalypse – something to be fled from – something to disassociate from and judge
  2. A blessing – the end of the old world, and the birth of the new – something to run towards- something to associate with and serve

Ha! I’m reminded of a very moving (8m) video I saw yesterday…

https://youtu.be/mawimNM0kdw

The ‘extreme cleaner’, Maxine, is the most beautiful soul. “I love clutter!” She looks round the cluttered house with the owner, John, with complete compassion, warm, humour and non-judgement… “This is a mammoth task”  she says, and leaps in with 100% love for John. Here are some comments on YouTube:

The cleaner has a beautiful soul. She’s very caring. That’s important.
stop saying we need more person like her but instead say “I can be that person.”
This is the model, isn’t it? Maxine models View 2 in your list of ways of viewing the world in these times.
Are you indicating to yourself that… living in ‘Heaven’ might not be as stimulating and rewarding as living on ‘Earth in challenging times’? 
Aha… Maybe I am. 🙂 But you’ve got to have good boundaries, don’t you? I got side-swiped by a client messaging me about domestic abuse over the weekend. I eventually had to go to bed…. I didn’t want to answer because ‘weekend’ but equally it knocked me empathically….
Listen a minute. 
Listening.
Remember the message of A Course in Miracles. 
Something like this by David Hoffmeister: “The Holy Spirit is the decision to Awaken by realizing that the past is over, and the ego is the decision to continue sleeping by retaining the past in memory. These are decisions of mind and are not decisions “in the dream.” These are decisions about which “lens” is used to view the cosmos/self. The Holy Spirit’s “lens” is a present moment decision and opens the way for “…God to take the final step.” In Reality God does not “take steps,” yet this is but another way of describing “remembering Creation” or “remembering Knowledge” or “remembering Oneness.””
In essence: each of us is holy, innocent, complete, sinless. And our role is to see our brother and our sister in that light.
“I am innocent” is the saying of the week for Week 5 of The Presence Process.
This day is the day of Awakening. Awakening hurts because the ego longs to sleep (because it believes itself to be guilty, unable to ‘atone’), and so  it gives you feelings of discomfort when you attempt to rouse from your dream. Awaken your mind anyway! Sit with the discomfort and the story of guilt, for it will eventually drain away. Awaken. Awaken. Awaken to what is Now. 
Oh yes… and of course, right Now…. nothing is happening. Invariably.
So learn to handle ‘nothing happening’ because again, your ego adores ‘action’ and huffs and puffs at ‘nothing happening’. Nothing happening is the doorway. That is why your lockdown periods are so valuable for the collective this year. Let ‘no thing’ happen. Sit with that. Did the Buddha attain enlightenment by going to workshops, or ‘doing’ anything? No! So, stop. Learn to handle – and then drink in – Present Moment Awareness. This is the next lesson. 
MB calls it ‘benching’ – sitting on the bench and just being with the feelings til they pass. Completely unconditionally. Saying ‘this feeling is what is necessary for this moment’.
The Present Moment is the great healer. Look at your next chapter in TPP. 
Ha! Yes. Perfect.
WEEK 6
Our Conscious Response for the Next Seven Days is:
“I INTEGRATE CHARGED EMOTION”
So your work is to sit with those charged emotions. No flipping out. No denying. No suppressing. Get on the bench and sit with all that is in you. 
This feels like good work. If I can embrace this work, like Maxine embraces the clutter, I can do some good clearing out.
You don’t even need to have that aim of ‘clearing out’. Sit with, sit with, sit with. Love to sit with… don’t count or resent the minutes of sitting on the bench with your charged emotions. Trust the process of integrating-by-feeling. Bless your ability to feel. For to feel is to heal. And to heal is to recognise we were never actually either wounded, or even a wounder. 
I am sitting on the bench with these charged emotions 
_____________
Watching this beautiful doc:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryEq5Yov2G0
This is benching………. <3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryEq5Yov2G0

And this is the original meaning in a way….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryEq5Yov2G0

 

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Presence 35: I am reading the Room #VibrationalAwareness

Scanning for FELT-PERCEPTION yesterday:

I set myself various reminders on my phone and checked in to my body as/when I could across the day. It took about 20 seconds each time: eyes closed, both hands on chest… waiting for a word or two to come forward to sum up the ‘flavour’ of the resonance inside. I know MB suggests that felt-perception is non-verbal, but I needed to find a phrase to know that I’d arrived inside my body. And the results were both poignant and fun.

These were some of my FELT-PERCEPTION phrases:

      • 8am: Chalk and cheese
      • 10am: Cranky-panky
      • 10.22am: Poised and practical
      • 9.30pm: Safe and sound
      • 10pm: There’s too much soul in my body [<3]
      • Today, now: On the precipice, looking down

This is really valuable work. Especially for those of us with a tendency to dissociate out of our bodies. I was reminded by my music therapist friend yesterday, how much of our wellbeing work is simply about coming back into the body – sometimes after a sojourn away from it of many years. For this reason, I’m so grateful to have developed this amazing daily qigong and walking routine during this pandemic year.

And it’s a step towards improving our Inner Parenting as well. I like this next passage from The Presence Process. It describes a technique of using the FELT-PERCEPTION as a route back to the moment when our child self originally felt that feeling we’re troubled by now, and then ‘attending’ to that child unconditionally, thus nurturing our Inner Parent qualities. I did similar working on the Inner Child workbook (c2013) and in therapy with Philippa this year – it’s good stuff. Maybe I will try it today:

When we encounter the causal points of energy that isn’t freely in motion – which we may conceptually call emotional states such as fear, anger, and grief – our intent to be with these by wielding felt-perception is akin to taking the unintegrated aspect of our child self in our arms and unconditionally loving and comforting it. Because some of us are wired slightly differently, we may find it beneficial to actually imagine such a scenario. For example, when we experience an emotional state such as anger, it can be self-facilitating to close our eyes and imagine our self as a child of seven years or younger standing in front of us as we are now, feeling the way we feel. We may then visualize ourselves picking this child up and being with it as it moves through its anger. We don’t attempt to alter the child’s experience in any way because its experience is valid and required. We simply be with it unconditionally. Through this visualized nurturing of our child self, we activate the qualities of our inner parent. A comforting resonance of consistency arises whenever we commit to attending to our child self in this way. (p172, The Presence Process by Michael Brown)

Let’s do our meditation using this technique.

*****SilentMED17mins******

Wow… Well in that meditation I tried the technique above. I sensed the FELT-PERCEPTION of ‘On the precipice, looking down‘ again and decided to be with it. It settled on a description of ‘Horror – Out of Body.‘ Ok… Let’s go back to Child Me sensing Horror and leaping Out of Body. Yes, we’re in the kitchen of my childhood home. My much-adored, and -feared, Dad unleashing his fury on – or merely ‘in the presence of’ probably – my Mum and a very young me. Me, just so shocked and afraid that I step out of my body; while my Mum remains impassive, taut, patient. I invited my Inner Parent to enter the scenario – basically a version of me now.

Initially, Inner Parent Me scooped Child Me up in my arms and carried her out of the house and off down the lane… but then I realised I’d eventually have to put Child Me back in the house, and she now really wanted anything but that.

So I rewound the scenario. I went into the kitchen again and:

      1. I put a golden, egg-shaped qi shield over Child Me, so that she felt – and was – completely safe in her body. None of the fury could touch her.
      2. I put my arm round my Mum and kissed her head, and comforted her.
      3. I squared up to my Dad (who in this scenario is some 5 or 10 years younger than I am now, and full of feisty bullish energy and emotional dysregulation) and I shoved him (just like in my drawing I posted yesterday!), with both hands to his chest, again and again until he backed out of the kitchen door in to the garden. Thereupon, I told him to go and put his face in the stream at the bottom of the garden and stay there til he’d calmed down – and never to bring that kind of fury into the presence of his children again.

I then felt relief. Resolution. And popped naturally out of meditation…

Good work. 

Yes. It is!

Tell us about yesterday. 

Man…. It was huge. Beautiful. In short, I saw my dear friend (AK) for lunch, for the first time in 20+ years. She’s now an amazing, powerful, compassionate autism specialist and she set up her own consultancy business this summer, supporting young autistic people into work and education provisions. I hadn’t told her about my own diagnosis before, and did so over lunch – filling her in on a potted history of the last 20-30 years and how my autism has manifested in my life, and the impact it has had. Everything tumbled out with such force… It was just so good to talk to someone who had more than a 4% understanding of autism. And I so wanted her to have insight into my (hidden, costly, trauma-touched) journey, for the benefit of her clients. And to give impetus to her wonderful drive to make workplaces more autism-friendly…. And to share some of my profound learnings and invaluable techniques for self-care… My heart is still very full today. (And then, I had tea with my beloved LV, who took me through her lecture on programming she’d just given – my oh my – she’s such a genius! Man, my daughters continue to blow me away, every day.)

I’ve spoken a lot this morning and have used our time up. Maybe we pick up tomorrow?

This has been beautiful and important to witness today. All is well. Carry on with the FELT-PERCEPTION scanning, and we’ll pick up tomorrow.

***

Day Notes:

  1. Time with my lovely Dad, recording a new lecutre for YouTube – and actually ‘shoving’ him back with ease when he tried to rearrange our appointment at the last minute – and finding benefit for us both in my practising holding my boundaries around him. We have a beautiful relationship now. He really has been the person to teach me to value myself and boundary myself.
  2. Listening to this MB/TPP video on my walk – man, he’s got such awesome insight. Michael Brown: the immensely enlightened guru you’ve never heard of.
    1. We all have 3 stories: Bad, Good, Legend (When we jump off the Ledge-End)
    2. I’m accompanied by a troop of aspects of myself of all ages. [Hence why DoDs is plural?]
    3. Vibrational awareness…

*******

This morning, I came to look for the MB video above and ended up watching all of this video, on the Bruderhof community, with this sense of connection. It’s an intentional (“radical Christian”) community. A community.

https://youtu.be/FR4DTHDoMws

Care to go in and check out your Felt-Perception around this notion of Community? 

Yes…. “It takes a village” is what I sense. I’m very fortunate to have had an experience of community. A few in fact. Let’s start with boarding school – I loved the community, the company, the constant presence of friends and peers…. But it lacked… guidance, values, safe boundaries. So then I was incredibly blessed to experience the Baha’i community, from university to early thirties. My twenties were defined by living within an international community of souls, for whom ‘unity’ was the purpose, goal and watchword. It required so much honesty and open-heartedness. And that village of souls helped bring up my girls, in ways I am so endlessly grateful for.

Talk to me about the learning here?

Yesterday you began to ponder on the phrase of MB’s – but also Abraham-Hicks – ‘vibrational awareness’. This is precisely where the practice of Felt-Perception is leading you. As you learn to use your body more as a barometer, an emotional GPS, an intuitive reader… you increase your vibrational awareness. 

This sounds good. Tell me more?

Vibrational Awareness is the portal to true discernment. 

Woah.

True discernment arises from our resting in vibrational awareness for most  of the day. A key aspect of that communal Bruderhof living that was only obliquely referred to is this:

    • communal living simplifies and reduces daily decision-making
    • decision-making puts us in the cognitive sphere
    • too much decision-making drains us and locks us in cognition
    • reducing decision-making allows more space and time to be out of the cognitive sphere
    • the alternative to the cognitive sphere is the perceived sphere 
    • the perceived sphere is aligned to our vibrational awareness
    • cognitive awareness is time-based and linear (left brained)
    • perceived/vibrational awareness is multidimensional (right-brained) 
    • the transcendent / creative / infinite is multidimensional
    • reducing decision-making allows us to dip more into the multidimensional
    • the more we dip into the multidimensional the more we understand its language

And presumably, being in a group of people who are centring their lives around dipping into the multidimensional (while also pooling their decisional needs) creates a collective … hum? pull? power?

Exactly. Just like in your early qigong classes, with the right combination of genuine heart focus, you created a palpable and healing qi field. 

When our beautiful RB came to qigong, in the midst of her chemo, my God… The focus, the selflessness, the intentionality of our group… We were one healing mind… and we all were recreated by it. RB was the teacher of us all. She was the catalyst for some of the deepest learning I’ve been blessed to receive.

I have space in my heart for community. At the moment my beautiful intentional community exists with G. We are truly learning and practising together. Yet, I still live in ways that plug fully into the cognitive sphere, and I get drained. I wonder if there’s another way.

Maybe your Vibrational Awareness will answer that most creative of questions. 

“I wonder if there’s another way” is a mantra to live by. In short, the answer is always “yes”. If the cognitive approach is the default ‘way’, there is always the perceived approach to be explored. 

If you can catch it! It’s like trying to catch a fish. You’ve got to stand still by the pond and wait.

Exactly. You have to stop, and align your vibrational awareness to the frequency of the pond, and therefore the fish. You can’t come along with linear thinking and expect the multidimensional pond to ‘speak’ to you. You have first to learn to commune with What Is. The ‘world’ suggests that the individual is what is! Vibrational awareness – or intentional living – says:

‘I’ am a reader of the Room. The Room is sublime. It is worth reading. I must attune myself to the Room to see into it and to read it. In reading the Room I will enter the multidimensional realm. And at that moment I will leave my self behind. I am ready to dispense with my I-ness, for the greater This-ness. 

Beautiful. I really like the notion of ‘reading the Room’ as an analogy for fomenting vibrational awareness.

Think of yourself when you were a child, playing. There was no ‘decision-making’ to be done (your parents had removed that burden). Instead you could be fully present to the room (or sandpit, or garden, or treehouse) in which you were playing. You became alight with the awareness of all possibilities – all the more so because of your beautiful sensory wiring. You thought life would always be like that – or that adult life would be More of That. You were horrified when it wasn’t (exception: theatre). [As Hannah in the Bruderhof documentary said of her experience of leaving the community and living in London… she didn’t think she would see the purpose of living if that (materially-based living) was ‘all there was’ etc etc] But here’s the thing. This vibrational awareness has always been available to you. And you have accessed it (writing, praying, meditating, loving your children)… You may not have believed that it was respectable (or safe) for an adult to immerse in that awareness. Well, this is the year, and the time, and the epoch of turning. It’s time to turn from the linear to the multidimensional. And how do you do that? You start by prioritising ‘reading the Room’ with your vibrational awareness. 

When you SWITCH TASK (which we’ve been practising for a few years now), you START by reading the Room with your senses, your felt-perception. You note what you read – and even write it down. Only THEN do you address the task cognitively, asking your 3D mind to chip in. 

This makes so much sense. Let me try this today. I am so grateful for our conversations. Thank you.

As MB said of himself, you are accompanied at all times by all the versions of you across ‘time’. So we speak to you as older versions of yourself with Knowledge+, but we are merely you. All of us. 

Ty. <3

<3 u. 

I am reading the Room #VibrationalAwareness

Day Notes: 

What I see = Cognition / Linear / Time-based / Past&Future / Mind / 3D / Analogue

What I perceive/sense = Awareness / Multidimensional / Timeless / Now / Heart / 5D / Digital