Month: December 2020

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Presence 52: I am discovering unconditional self-love… through practising saying a positive No

These are a few of the things I am learning about Unconditional Love:

  • When you consistently grant yourself Unconditional Love, your need to ask it of others diminishes. And you are freed up to offer Unconditional Love more than to seek or demand it.
  • Nothing gives Unconditional Love to our inner child more than sitting with our feelings – feeling the feels, as we breathe, in Present Moment Awareness – without judgement, interruption or fixing. Merely being able to sit unconditionally watching what’s going on in our emotional landscape, is an act of self-compassion and self-love.
  • Michael Brown is EXCELLENT on why we shouldn’t judge our parents – but rather offer them the unconditional love they didn’t have:
    • ‘Our parents were children once too. When we look at a parent through the eyes of present moment awareness, we see a child who, like us, was plunged fearfully into this conditional world. This child, like the hurting aspect of the child self within us, seeks to be loved unconditionally. Are our parents responsible for energetically photocopying behavior that arises in them through their experience of childhood imprinting? How does holding onto anger benefit us more than making the compassionate choice to recognize the error in our perception? Judgment is a lack of clarity and a virus that infects our perception. Judgment on all levels is arrogance. Judgment is also a double standard. On the one hand it lifts us up to appear superior, while on the other it insists everyone behave exactly like us and admonishes those who don’t. However, the most damaging consequence of judgment is that we identify ourselves and others by the experience we are having, instead of by the shared Presence we authentically are. The bottom line is that, through judgment, we blame others for a predicament we all share. Therefore, let’s intend to begin unraveling this perceptual mayhem by forgiving our parents and blessing them with the unconditional love we wish we had received from them as children.‘ (TPP 206/7)
  • Michael Brown is revelatory and revolutionary on unconditionally loving ourselves – and shows how it is the path to reaching peace:
    • ‘Loving unconditionally is the greatest service we render to humanity. Loving ourselves unconditionally is how we place a breath of fresh air in the depths of the ocean. Our journey into uncovering the nature of this great mystery called love starts with being unconditional toward ourselves by feeling what we are authentically feeling without judging the experience in any way, and without trying to fix, change, understand, heal, or transform it. Being willing to integrate our own discomfort – to perceive it as valid and hence required, and behaving toward it accordingly – is the root of experiencing forgiveness and realizing peace. By genuinely forgiving ourselves for the behavior that emanates from our imprinted predicament, we automatically forgive the world. Beyond the experience of forgiveness is our return to an awareness of what peace really is. Realizing peace through forgiveness is in our hands. It has nothing to do with “the other.”’ TPP p208

Today in my meditation, I sat with the feelings in my heart, and just watched and loved them. My heart had a lot to say! Imagine if I’d started my day without listening to that! How unkind. How oblivious to the central, sweet barometer of my being. I didn’t try to fix or problem-solve or change those feelings. But as I let them be heard, and therefore integrated, they did soften. I felt the act of self-compassion in just ‘authentically feeling without judging the experience in any way’. And a few of Matt Kahn’s “I love yous” didn’t go amiss. 

You sensed the word ‘predicament’ today? This is the key for the next step. The human predicament (arrive – get emotionally imprinted – spend a life time integrating the emotions and/or creating drama to avoid the same – depart) is also the human opportunity.

Opportunities are for the seizing. SEIZE the opportunity to complete the cycle, like this: 

  1. arrive
  2. get emotionally imprinted
  3. spend a life time integrating the emotions and/or creating drama to avoid the same
  4. discover unconditional self-love
  5. offer unconditional love to others – and thereby help recalibrate the balance
  6. depart

We invite you to practise Step 4: ‘discover unconditional self-love’

We invite you to make Step 4 a special interest. 

Ok. Sounds like a good practice. How?

DUSLing (discovering unconditional self-love) is a movement that starts …[Time for the day. Pick up tomorrow]

Ok. Thank you. May I download much about DUSLing today. Amen.

[Next Day]

DUSLing (discovering unconditional self-love) is a movement that starts with internal peace. All the unravelling of your ‘Overstimulated Nervous System’ – via qigong, walks, QT, routines, the love and fun with G., focussing on your job satisfaction – is work towards settling into internal peace. From the place of Internal Peace, you do the work of DUSLing 

Is DUSLing proactive (eg. I do things for myself?) or a state (eg. I am able to sit in PMA without judgement, integrating what arises?).

It’s a proactive state. Think of us. We love you unconditionally. We are always here and available to you, as wise counsel. But we are not jumping at you, or offering you more than you need. We are responsive – and ever available on ‘stand-by’. We trust you to know how best to serve yourself most of the time. That is why we’re not tripping over ourselves to intervene. 

Sometimes, I wish you would.

You can always ask more. 

And then?

And then you get the response you request. 

Please can you make me incredibly proficient at emails and business admin?

Of course! Thank you for asking. 

There. That was an act of USL towards myself.

Asking for the help you need? Absolutely. 

Ok. As an act of DUSLing, I would like Your help to rise up the Upward Spiral of the Emotional Guidance Scale. With wisdom, with trust, with openness to learning new thought patterns.

And if we told you that this is already on the menu for you, would you baulk? 

No. I don’t think so…

As you go about your DUSLing, you’ll know how successful you are being by the degree to which you rise up that EGS. In fact, there is no other outcome to speak of…. except all that which flows to you as you align with your highest vibration. 

So… DUSLing brings us up the EGS and thus raises our vibration, which opens us to all the good available to us..?

Sweet soul of our hearts, as you genuinely put yourself at the epicentre of your immense and unfathomable LOVE, you will spiral up the vibrational scale like a bird soaring on the warm breezes of summer. 

I’m gonna need to learn to say No…. right?

Yes! Your book on The Power of A Positive No arrived yesterday. Bust it open!

Also, today I read in TPP about saying No..without judgement:

“At this point in our journey through The Presence Process, it’s beneficial to honestly ask ourselves: “How do we treat those in the world who ask us for unconditional love in the only way they know how?” ….. Discernment requires us to say “no” to those who would, through the impact of their imprinting, hurt us. Discernment requires us to draw a line in the sand and make ourselves clearly heard if others disrespect our choices. However, even when saying “no” to another because of their destructive impulses, we still don’t have to render judgment on them. We are able to take care of ourselves without confusing their behavior with their identity. Saying “no” as a reaction is the pushing away of another. Saying “no” as a response is a movement toward ourselves.” The Presence Process by Michael Brown p209 (Week 8)

I am discovering unconditional self-love… through practising saying a positive No

 

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Presence 51: I am exploring unconditional love

How comforting and settling is the gentle mantra of “Peace be with you” and “Peace be with me.” How releasing, how abundant and how generous of heart. How natural. How easily might we return to love if returning to peace was all we asked of ourselves.

I am blown away by this TPP passage I read this morning:

‘We fail in each attempt to obtain the unconditional attention we seek because unconditional love isn’t like money – isn’t something we earn. Love isn’t something achieved through merit. We don’t qualify for love. Love just is. Love is our birthright. Love is what we already are.

During childhood, the example of love set by our parents’ interaction with us, with each other, and with others becomes our primary definition of love. This is the automatic consequence of emotional imprinting. For this reason, whenever we seek to manifest an experience of love for ourselves as adults, we unconsciously manufacture a physical, mental, and emotional scenario designed to recreate the emotional resonance we experienced during our childhood interactions with our parents. This resonance doesn’t have to be comfortable or in any way pleasant, only similar and hence familiar.

For example, if as a child we received abuse when we required love, then the felt-resonance associated with abuse became part of our childhood definition of love. Consequently, whenever we feel a need for love as adults, we manifest an experience that unfolds in such a manner as to at some point include this abusive felt-resonance. This happens unconsciously, automatically. Why? Because this is the only way we know how to get what our imprinted condition leads us to assume love is. However, because of its conditions, the love we end up receiving hurts.

On a conscious level, we may then ask, “Why does this keep happening to me?” The reason we keep manifesting the same hurtful experiences is that we don’t know any better. This is the predicament emotional imprinting perpetuates. This is the open wound in the collective heart of humanity. This is why many of us assume love hurts. But hurting is a condition, whereas love isn’t – it’s a state.

Throughout The Presence Process, we are gradually taught how to perceive beyond the limitations of our imprint-driven interpretations. We are taught how to grow up emotionally. The consequence of this emotional development is that we begin lifting the conditions set in place by our childhood experience. As these conditions lift, we entertain a different perception of our experience. This different perception isn’t fueled by our unintegrated emotional charge, but is accessed through present moment awareness.

Confirmation we are awakening into present moment awareness comes in the insights we receive about the predicament of our shared human condition. One of these is that without exception, everyone we encounter, no matter what their behavior, is seeking the experience of unconditional love. Even if they are being hateful, what we are witnessing is a misguided cry for love.’ (The Presence Process 202-3)

Meanwhile, as I unpick my own inner child’s emotional imprinting, I am inspired, guided, mentored in LOVE by my children.

LV: showering me and the family with loving support and generosity of spirit. Handling her career like a boss, as she blends and shares her talents, creativity and genius, ever on her terms. Her current creative project is blowing me away!

ASV: yesterday, I attended an online panel discussion that she hosted for Disability History Month, on Disability and Academia. She has also produced a blog and a podcast which have blown me away, about her/others’ experience of being ‘Defined by Disability.’ She has INSPIRED me. The panel (of disabled professors and students) was a collective that harnessed and celebrated all I know to be true about disability and neurodiversity – that the gifts inherent are exceptional. How about a Neurodiverse Mediators’ network? To include mental health too. It would allow me to Be Myself…. and then all the other ideas and projects I have will feel they can flow out… not trying to hide behind a 2D neurotypical fitting in mask….

Your thoughts?

Preach it. Sing it. Sizzle it. Love it. The Dyslexic Professor said: ‘We’re trying to get the R number down in the pandemic. We need to get the R number of disabled people UP in academia – we need to go viral to make the contribution we are here to make!’ You can do the same with neurodiversity – welcoming people in and out into society, loud and proud, offering the new style of thinking and being this world so needs: empathetic, empathic, creative, focussed, heartfelt. Go, sister! <3

***nearlycrieswithlove*** I sometimes feel that the so-called neurodiverse ones are the … starseeds of which people speak. It’s like we’re not quite wired for here, but we are wired for somewhere… somewhere much more multidimensional, telepathic, sophisticated… ‘Here’ feels weighty, heavy, clunky, loaded, unnecessarily laborious. All those amazingly creative dyslexic children I taught. You take away the necessity to produce ‘good handwriting’ or ‘accurate spelling’ (earthly, 3D) and let them focus on channelling their creativity, and BOOM – the complexity and visionaryness of their work often far exceeds the NTs around them. So the act of WRITING is the problem. Not the child. Perhaps the child is wired for a world where… maybe the writing writes itself automatically… guided by the mind of the child… without clunky intermediary tools?

And yet… we demonstrate conditional love to our children.

“We shall love you if…. you can spell our spellings / pass our tests / sit still on your chair / follow all the unwritten social rules. And if you cannot, we shall withhold our love, our approbation, our opportunities. And thus you shall either learn our ways, or know that you have condemned yourself to the suburbs of our affection by your own fecklessness and carelessness. Ha! Oh, and happy 6th birthday to you!”

Why do we continue to pass this cycle of abuse on to the next generation? I was moved by reading this passage (p205) of The Presence Process by Michael Brown :

‘The part of us that has difficulty accepting how others hurt us is the needy and unattended aspect of our child self – the emotional charge related to being loved conditionally as a child. We know we are regressing into this needy and unattended aspect of our child self when we hear ourselves say: “They are my parents. They should have known better.” Or, “They brought me into this world and it was their responsibility to keep me safe.” This is drama. This is the voice of a child who doesn’t yet comprehend the complexity of the human predicament that envelops us all. Integrating anger, the need to blame, and our insidious desire for revenge requires facing one of the greatest obstacles set before us on the path of emotional evolution: arrogance. Arrogance prevents us from being able to recognize our plight flowing through the experience of another. Once we experientially comprehend the mechanics and consequences of emotional imprinting, only arrogance stifles our capacity to forgive both ourselves and others. The consequence of arrogance is that we may easily be able to accept the fact we didn’t know any better, but we are still angered by how others behave. Unless we choose to integrate this anger, it will prevent us from accepting that others, especially our parents, did the best they could with the hand dealt them through their parents. Neutralizing arrogance and the anger it breeds requires the following simple insight: All behaviors we witness during our interactions with others that aren’t acts of unconditional love are unconscious pleas for unconditional love.‘

So… we haven’t managed to forgive those who hurt us. We haven’t managed to integrate the fear, anger and grief that arose from our being loved conditionally… and our arrogance causes us to lock in to blame (vs responsibility taking) and a kind of righteousness. And then we inflict conditional love on to the next person. Especially the next child.

I’m thinking of my really 4 complex cases this year: I’m seeing individuals reeling from not receiving unconditional love. They all think it’s something else, and can’t understand why the others won’t be ‘rational’ and accommodating. But they are all traumatised by a lack of unconditional love, now and in the past. And they are using demands or a hard ‘No’ to cry out for someone to say, “You are right! You are the most thoughtful, sensitive, kind and loving of us both/all. And I/we should follow your lead. Thank you for being right here. I/we apologise for our wrongs.”

Everyone wants the other to say: “You’re right. I’m wrong. Lead on.” This seems to be how people receive love…..?? By their rightness?

It is in the human’s best interests to be right. Rightness leads to acceptance. Doesn’t it? Think back to the spelling test. She who shows most rightness in spellings gets..?

Gets most love / acceptance / lauding!

So is it a wonder that wrongness or error is laden with shame and guilt. Now you take the SHAME of the current wrongness (say in the dispute) and you fuse it with the SHAME of the childhood wrongness (collected in a series of experiences of conditional love and emotional imprinting of fear, anger and grief) and you get…?

Emotional paralysis; heightened fight/flight; despair and distress.

Ok! So… in your work, you are indeed showing unconditional love in your impartiality. This is good. But you are also sometimes missing opportunities to hold a mirror up to a person to let them see themselves more clearly. 

Tell me, in all honesty, how do I do that without making them feel more SHAME at their acting out behaviours?

YOU TEACH THEM SELF-COMPASSION. This is akin to self-forgiveness, which is a longer journey, but one that is kickstarted by the practice of self-compassion. 

Oh my. Of course. Imagine if I’d started off each of those cases by teaching self-compassion, instead of saying “Tell me what the other party did to/at/against you?”

https://self-compassion.org/the-three-elements-of-self-compassion-2/#definition

(Similarly, I could have done some of the work Debbie Ford taught so well in ‘Spiritual Divorce’ about accepting it takes two to ruin a marriage. Now THAT was a hard lesson for me, but a liberating and empowering one.)

It’s up to each person to find their own inner child and nurture him/her through a conflict. Without the inner child work, you are really rearranging deck chairs. 

Obviously, I’m not a psychologist qualified to introduce people to their inner child…

That’s why we use the protocols of self-compassion. And remember that the wonderful Kristin Neff speaks to many, and Paul Gilbert speaks to others.

Oh yes… Let me read.

Ok so this set of slides is an amazing reminder of Gilbert’s Compassion Focussed Therapy work:

https://www.compassionatemind.co.uk/uploads/files/introduction-to-compassion-focussed-therapy.pdf

Key terms he uses:

  • Tricky brain
  • 3 emotional regulation systems
  • Observing our selves via mindfulness
  • Self-soothing
  • Humans create hells and horrors
  • Forgiveness

He ends with this quote:

So we’re looking both SELF-COMPASSION and COMPASSION for OTHERS.

How did I think I could do conflict resolution work without introducing compassion and forgiveness?

Did I ever ask my clients “What needs to be forgiven for you to reach a resolution?” As long as I am letting my clients think I buy into the idea of ‘unforgivable actions’, I am not meeting them authentically, and I am not serving them well.

These concepts are so complex.

This is why you are going to teach people How to Dialogue, rather than jump into try to ‘fix’ their disputes without any supposed need for behavioural change, emotional recompense, or true reconciliation. 

I made mistakes in NOT telling people how I work. If I tell people that I work with concepts like compassion, forgiveness, responsibility, change and unconditional love, people could more easily self-select themselves out of my client list, or at least start a process knowing that I was going to ask something of them internally, personally.

You’ll find your way with the SoD. Peacefully. Self-compassionately. Compassionately. Unconditionally. 

I love this work. It lights up my heart.

We know. <3

I am exploring unconditional love

PS. Remember this…?

https://wp.me/paqMmn-SW

And also: look at the behaviours I see today (now Mon) and spot ‘pleas for unconditional love’. We don’t need to respond to them codependently, as they are still responsible for their own happiness, but we can remove the sting from some of the less comfy behaviours.

You might also look out for your own pleas for unconditional love.

Uh-huh?

Awareness encompasses the observer too.

What best step could I take today to explore this theme of our search for unconditional love.

Spot every time you withhold UL. Ask yourself why you withheld your UL. What is the judgement, and from what fear, anger or grief does it spring? How much more peace could you bring to the world if you met more people with ULove instead of fear, anger or grief?

Man, you set a high standard!

Thank you! ?

You see I like to think I’m loving.

Exactly. You’ve just revealed another layer of work to do. Goodie!

Ok. Today (7th) I’m going to spot whenever I withhold my unconditional love.

 

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Presence 50: I am returning to peace #PeaceBeWithYou

Please, help me continuously to refine and amplify and hone my “Yes!” and my positive “No.”

Let’s commence Week 8 of The Presence Project:

WEEK 8

(Activate with Second Water Session)

Our Conscious Response for the Next Seven Days is:

“I FORGIVE MYSELF”

PEACE IS A VIBRATION WE FEEL

[Oooh, this section is on conflict and peace… And it’s very ACIMy too.]

‘Our leaders also insist on approaches such as “peace talks,” in which governments and peace organizations present treaties, make compromises with each other, and declare after long discussion and debate that peace has been agreed. This approach mistakenly believes peace is something mental. It too has never realized authentic peace, and any appearance of peace gained from mental discussion and debate, leading to agreement between opposing parties, is always short-lived because it also is born of control and sedation. Just as peace isn’t a physical circumstance, it’s also not a mental agreement. Peace is a vibration that’s recognized through felt-perception. We don’t “do peace” or “think peace.” We feel peace. Peace is. It doesn’t need to be manufactured. Peace is everywhere, whether we are aware of it or not. The entire planet is blanketed in peace. In fact, it’s easy to realize this experientially. If we enter any wartorn environment – any experience of conflict – and remove all human beings, what becomes immediately self-evident is the resonance of peace. Peace is in the midst of all chaos and conflict. Nothing we do or think adds or takes away from this actuality. …. Peace is available to us right now through a decision to feel peaceful. Once we truly feel the vibrational resonance called peace, this resonance automatically radiates into our mentality and physicality. Peace therefore begins within us, individually. Realizing peace individually is a prerequisite to realizing it collectively. Hence the saying, “Peace be with you.”’ (TPP pp199-200)

 

I love this: ‘Peace is available to us right now through a decision to feel peaceful.’

Help me apply this. Help me intertwine this into my Yes/No work, and into my workdays, and into my response to this pandemic.

Today we emerge from a month of national lockdown, in to a 3 Tier restriction system that even the Tories have rebelled against in droves. Yesterday, behemoth retailers Arcadia (Top Shop etc) and Debenhams collapsed.

Can you make the decision to feel peaceful about all of this right now? 

I can… It’s just that doing so sometimes leaves me feeling numb, or like I’m cut off to the people suffering through this. So many businesses collapsing…

What if it were suggested that no one is actually suffering? 

Yes. I could find a place in my consciousness for that. I’ve learnt from experience that distress, loss and grief do eventually pass, and leave us stronger, clearer, more able to contribute… I’ve come to believe over the last 2.5 decades that even death is but a doorway, not a finality or a punishment. I understand that collapse gives way to rebirth. I know we need awakening by shocks, in order to make changes, as a human collective.

If I chose ongoing peacefulness, with self-forgiveness, would I be better at saying Yes/No?

What a sweet question. Your notions of improvement are quaint, but also a little disjointed. Let’s put the horse before the cart. The horse is your will; the cart is all you carry forward. What is your will? Let that give impetus to your decisions as to the direction of travel, the pace of movement, the weight of the load you are prepared to carry. 

My will is… ‘reach peace, teach peace’.

Well you might want to take some crates off your cart, dear soul.

How?

Your new strategy. Don’t wait! Pursue it TODAY. You are the driver (mind) of the horse and cart. The horse (your will, your momentum, your power) will carry whatever you put on the cart. Choose carefully (with your mind) what you are asking your horse to drag forward. 

I want it to pull forward my project.

Then pour confidence and power into your strategy. Timeline it! Five years. 12 months. Everything is coming together perfectly, as you wish for it to be. You are doing beautifully. You shall have your own sweet peaceful empire, where you can unfold your ideas and creativity. Let it flow through you. And to do that, cultivate your peacefulness. In peace, as the Tao says, your voice of wisdom can be heard. 

Like here.

Like here. 

The SoD is ALIVE. It’s a house ready for you to inhabit. You designed it, and built it with your imagination. Move in! (That clever metal drumming IFA will help you. Have faith.) 

Ok. I’ve just reached out for a new accountant too….. Let’s do this.

I suddenly feel like that guy in Goliath who sits in his darkened office with his clicker, watching, plotting, strategising, intervening lightly…

That’s the ticket. Watch and wait a little more than run and trip. Let these things come to you, attracted by the depth and quality of the PEACEFULNESS in you. You are merely tapping into the most natural quality of the universe: peace. The Tao is as it is. It needs no effort, no chasing down, no containing. It watches and waits in a state of complete confidence. 

Ah that balance between action and inaction…

Let action start with inaction.

As Gandhi started his days…

When yin precedes yang, all flows well. 

Ah. Get into the receptive mode, and then follow the impulses.

That’s it. So return to peace, again and again and again across your day. Then, the Yes/No will speak to you clearly of its own accord, via felt-perception, navigating straight past your ‘confused’ mind. 

I am returning to peace #PeaceBeWithYou

______

How comforting and settling is the gentle mantra of “Peace be with you” and “Peace be with me.” How releasing, how abundant and how generous of heart. How natural. How easily might we return to love if returning to peace was all we asked of ourselves.

I am blown away by this TPP passage I read this morning:

‘We fail in each attempt to obtain the unconditional attention we seek because unconditional love isn’t like money – isn’t something we earn. Love isn’t something achieved through merit. We don’t qualify for love. Love just is. Love is our birthright. Love is what we already are.

During childhood, the example of love set by our parents’ interaction with us, with each other, and with others becomes our primary definition of love. This is the automatic consequence of emotional imprinting. For this reason, whenever we seek to manifest an experience of love for ourselves as adults, we unconsciously manufacture a physical, mental, and emotional scenario designed to recreate the emotional resonance we experienced during our childhood interactions with our parents. This resonance doesn’t have to be comfortable or in any way pleasant, only similar and hence familiar.

For example, if as a child we received abuse when we required love, then the felt-resonance associated with abuse became part of our childhood definition of love. Consequently, whenever we feel a need for love as adults, we manifest an experience that unfolds in such a manner as to at some point include this abusive felt-resonance. This happens unconsciously, automatically. Why? Because this is the only way we know how to get what our imprinted condition leads us to assume love is. However, because of its conditions, the love we end up receiving hurts.

On a conscious level, we may then ask, “Why does this keep happening to me?” The reason we keep manifesting the same hurtful experiences is that we don’t know any better. This is the predicament emotional imprinting perpetuates. This is the open wound in the collective heart of humanity. This is why many of us assume love hurts. But hurting is a condition, whereas love isn’t – it’s a state.

Throughout The Presence Process, we are gradually taught how to perceive beyond the limitations of our imprint-driven interpretations. We are taught how to grow up emotionally. The consequence of this emotional development is that we begin lifting the conditions set in place by our childhood experience. As these conditions lift, we entertain a different perception of our experience. This different perception isn’t fueled by our unintegrated emotional charge, but is accessed through present moment awareness.

Confirmation we are awakening into present moment awareness comes in the insights we receive about the predicament of our shared human condition. One of these is that without exception, everyone we encounter, no matter what their behavior, is seeking the experience of unconditional love. Even if they are being hateful, what we are witnessing is a misguided cry for love.’ (The Presence Process 202-3)

Meanwhile, as I unpick my own inner child’s emotional imprinting, I am inspired, guided, mentored in LOVE by my children.

LV: showering me and the family with loving support and generosity of spirit. Handling her career like a boss, as she blends and shares her talents, creativity and genius, ever on her terms. Her current creative project is blowing me away!

ASV: yesterday, I attended an online panel discussion that she hosted for Disability History Month, on Disability and Academia. She has INSPIRED me. The panel (of disabled professors and students) was a collective that harnessed and celebrated all I know to be true about disability and neurodiversity – that the gifts inherent are exceptional. How about a Neurodiverse Mediators’ network? To include mental health too. It would allow me to Be Myself…. and then all the other ideas and projects I have will feel they can flow out… not trying to hide behind a 2D neurotypical fitting in mask….

Your thoughts?

Preach it. Sing it. Sizzle it. Love it. The Dyslexic Professor said: ‘We’re trying to get the R number down in the pandemic. We need to get the R number of disabled people UP in academia – we need to go viral to make the contribution we are here to make!’ You can do the same with neurodiversity – welcoming people in and out into society, loud and proud, offering the new style of thinking and being this world so needs: empathetic, empathic, creative, focussed, heartfelt. Go, sister! <3

***nearlycrieswithlove***

Posted on

Presence 49: I am evoking the Power of YES!

28Nov20

Realisation!

Only the Power of No can truly grant you the Power of Yes. Without the former, all decisions and actions are somehow only a ‘maybe’, a ‘let’s see how it goes’, or a ‘what’s happening to me?’.

If you say a Positive No to X, you simultaneously say Yes to Y

Examples of No=>Yes:

  • No: Messy desk = Yes: Tidy desk
  • No: Procrastination = Yes: Feeling on top of things
  • No: Overbooking myself = Yes: Delivering efficiently

I’ve been practising saying No:

  • I said No to a new case yesterday because I’m just too busy. That felt hard/sad, but also a relief.
  • When I received another really horrible email from a particularly heightened client, I actually said No by not replying to or engaging with them. It was an internal No to giving yet more energy to this individual.
  • When someone asked for my time when it’s already booked out, I conveyed boundaries to the time I was prepared to offer.

____________________________

I had a glimpse of a new idea yesterday. It’s a One Jam Flavour approach to my work.

Instead of doing 14 different types of training…

Offer ONE. ‘How to Dialogue.’ A four x half-day course (with pre-learning/homework like MHFA) that includes all my learning about conflict resolution, so it’s perfect for clients who don’t want to mediate, but want to understand how to resolve their own disputes. Why is that so important? Sometimes I think people think I will resolve their disputes, without them having to change a thing, or learn any new skills. I don’t enjoy that! I’d prefer to work with people who want to learn and take responsibility for their role in conflict. Of which there are many. In fact, I’d even say that those people are rather too unlikely to ask for mediation when they really need/deserve it.  I’m clearly an interpersonal mediator and interpersonal disputes do not get settled with a cheque, or even a quick break up. Forgiveness, trust, letting go, wishing well, feeling seen, fairness… these are all spiritual processes and take more than a mediation meeting. Interpersonal disputes are a karmic invitation to grow and to stretch and to heal. That takes learning new skills. And for me, good, authentic, vulnerable dialogue is at the heart of all interpersonal healing and reparations and understanding.

Happy birthday to you. Sounds like you found your Next Step.

Thank you! Really?

You’ve been asking for your Next Step. Seems to us like it’s pretty clear.

And the qigong fits perfectly too.

Omg. The School Of Dialogue: teaching ‘How to Dialogue – from win-lose debate to win-win communication.’ or ‘Stop debating – start relating’. And offering Dialogue Facilitation / Team Dev / Mediation as case work.

May this be my birthday wish?

What about your earlier wish for intuition and knowing?

I think that one was answered already. ❤️

Your wish is our command.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

On this my 46th birthday, I am evoking the Power of YES!

Yes to TheSoD and to How to Dialogue. Amen!!

I am evoking the Power of YES!