Author: Dialogues Of Discernment

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Presence 44: I am learning that clearly-defined processes support relationships

Informational Impressions => Intuitive Knowledge.

It was good to do TRE yesterday. I had so much trembly shock lodged in my body. This morning I do feel more at ease in my self, and I had a good sleep too. And I’m reassured to know that AS is steady and self-caring as she passes through CV19. {Sending love to you, my precious.} And LV joined me in my webinar yesterday. She was amazing!! And my beloved Dad is getting good care for his current health concern too. All is well. All are well.

I’d like to reflect this morning on the topic of RELATIONSHIPS. For two reasons:

  1. In the Presence Process, we are ’embracing physical presence’ and…  ‘As we become proficient at responding to surfacing charged emotions, a sense of safety gradually seeps into our overall human experience. This means that as we step into the role of taking responsibility for the quality of our experiences, our child self starts feeling safe again.’ (TPP p190) Our child self exited the body largely because of challenging relationships…. so this renewed safety is surely linked to how we are feeling in relation to others, as we learn to respond to emotions arising in our relationships.
  2. I saw a clip of (gifted intuitive) Teal Swan which really resonated yesterday. It spoke to my previously unarticulated knowing about why I hadn’t come ‘out’ about my beliefs and experiences on a spiritual level over these years (certainly since leaving the Baha’i community). Because in a sense those experiences ‘through the veil’ are incidental to why we are here. Why we are here is to navigate human life, and talking about our own metaphysical experiences generally sets us apart from others in our actual life, and makes it harder to do the human ‘thing’. As Teal beautifully explains,we are here to live the human experience, and the human experience meets its peak meaning and richness and challenge and resolution via….

our RELATIONSHIPS

Teal Swan on relationships

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CHo9S_xH-jN/?igshid=bkr8oa8zlgc2

And this quote and video of Teal’s made me reflect that THIS is why I became a mediator – to help repair relationships. Why? Because I know how hard – and how vital to our spiritual journey, whether conscious or not- interpersonal relationships can be. According to many accounts I have read, many a lifetime is largely a journey towards having our relationships settled – and our forgivenesses made/received – and our emotional sobriety mastered – and our ‘love-over-ego’ in place – before the end of our life, to complete the lessons we have set for ourselves in this life. That’s where the peace lies. That’s where our human self unites with our soul self – and that’s what allows Source to know itself through human consciousness.

And as long as we feel ‘unsafe’ in our body and/or our relationships, we are tripping over our own beautiful feet. It’s beautifully complex, nuanced, delicate stuff!!

What say you? [Argh! Time to stop for today. Fill me in tomorrow? xxx]

NEXT DAY

You are holding space for several relationships at the moment. 

It’s nearly finishing me off! I’m exhausted. And ever astounded by how far people will withhold themselves from ‘negotiation’ with their loved ones!! Do they not see what they are doing when they mulishly refuse to engage in exchange, but doggedly expect the other party to do all the giving?! I’m so tired. I’ve got 3 cases that have lasted months – partly due to the pandemic. But mostly because the readiness to exchange requests and offers is not there.

Walk away. 

Que?!

You are learning [aka… not there yet!] how to let people know what it is you do. You don’t ‘make the pain go away’. You don’t make ‘the other party see sense’. You don’t persuade and cajole. As a mediator you are a NEGOTIATOR. You need to be much clearly to people that negotiation is your offer. That means both parties bringing their requests and offers to the table. 

I have this one person and I have managed to secure a range of beautiful offers for them from their (traumatised) loved one. And when I make a request this person accuses the loved one of seeking to exert control. I’m so pained…

Do you see how you centralise yourself in that story. Who ‘managed to secure a range of beautiful offers’? 

Yes… I see what you mean.

If you are really process-driven you will say: in the first round of exchanges, one person was able to make offers; the other wasn’t. If you are modelling a process, you will not feel ‘pained’ because YOU will not be in relationship with the parties. You will be in relationship with the process, which is perfect and wholesome and faultless and inanimate.

Imagine you were a dance teacher. A teacher of tango! Can you imagine if you got hooked on lamenting how poorly your students danced? That would drain you of love for the dance rapidly! But if you kept your focus on the wonders of tango, and spent time watching accomplished dancers, and dancing well yourself… you would be less attached to the proficiency/in-proficiency of your students. You would be comfortable to watch some to rise through to the advanced class, and others to drift away if they lost interest. 

You need to be prepared to let some of your parties drift away if they are not really interested in negotiating with the other party. 

Hence ‘walk away’.

Yes. It is not an act of compassion to keep people in mediation if they do not have the will or capacity for it. The kinder thing is to stop the process and let them come back to it afresh if they want to. 

I guess I am needing to get much clearer about what this mediation work is and is not. Right?

In essence, your empathy draws you very close to the parties. We would urge you to cleave closer to the process. Design the process with the parties, from start to finish and get their commitment to that process. Show them the END POINT, very clearly. Here’s our template Mediation Agreement. Here are your names – and this is where you will sign. Here is the box where we state whether this document can be shared or not. Here is the section when we state if or when we will review this decision. This is the bit where we talk about what will happen if someone does not go by the terms of the Agreement. 

Oh my word. A whole new pro forma. It’s brilliant. Thank you!!!

Here is the bit where we talk about the relationship with the mediator coming to an end. Here is the bit we discuss when this document becomes or became final. Here’s the bit where we discuss how other supporters may or may not use the document… Here is the bit we note what will happen in the event of an extreme event, like illness or death. Here is the bit where we talk about how we will communicate together going forward..

Yes!!! Now we’re talking. I know this will make all the difference with the family case I’m working on. Ty.

You are learning that clearly-defined processes support relationships. 

Like ‘monthly Zooms for xyz loved ones’ – so no one is left hanging. And feeling hurt or alone. Or ‘in charge’ of driving the rel.

Exactly. 

This is not what I was expecting after the Teal Swan inspiration. But it’s definitely what I needed. (My dear Aspie heart…) Thank you!

I am learning that clearly-defined processes support relationships

 

 

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Presence 43: I am embracing physical presence

My beloved youngest was notified of a positive Covid test result yesterday. She’s 4 hours drive away at university. I am calling upon all perfect wellbeing and complete recovery for her – and her housemates who tested positive, and for all people and beings across the planet. May all beings be well, and be healed, and thrive. May all beings know they are safe in their beautiful bodies. May all feel safe now.

<3<3<3

“I FEEL SAFE NOW”

EMBRACING PHYSICAL PRESENCE

Embracing physical presence is the first step we take toward accomplishing a permanent shift from reactive to responsive behavior…. During childhood, we began the habit of mentally leaving our physical body and departing full awareness of our current surroundings to enter the illusory mental experience called “time.” We did this as a fearful reaction to what was happening in the present. It’s this simple: we lost our awareness of Presence through fear. Fear causes evacuation from the body. Through fear, we trade Presence for the mental armor of pretence…It’s now not so difficult to embrace the possibility that the challenging, fearful experiences that have shadowed us from the past are all disguised opportunities for growth and gain. They are emotional fuel cells yet to be tapped. We may not have the capacity to perceive this while still perceptually bound by the effects of these causal experiences, but this possibility becomes available as we enter present moment awareness.

(The Presence Process, extracts from p188-9)

In meditation today, I worked with the Continuous Conscious Breathing and a good solid Audible Out-Breath (AOB/dragon-breathing), to open up Present Moment Awareness. It was like I could sense old memories defrosting and floating up to the surface of my awareness. As they came in to view, I could catch the old ‘felt-perception’ associated with those difficult experiences. These were from when I was 21/22 – complexities around the ‘reaction’ of friends and family to my becoming pregnant. It felt good to note the feelings that had been lodged frozen in my body…. and to do so with fresh Present Moment Awareness. I was able, I think, to integrate them. This felt like ‘sloughing’ off the emotional charge. Like the older, wiser me was saying: ‘Yes, that was tough at the time. And now we’re here.’

Thoughts today?

We want to talk to you about ‘downloads’. 

Sure.

By downloads we mean the fragments of intelligence you scoop from the etheric field as you make space in your self. The more you integrate old charged emotions, the more space you make for such downloads. 

Ah. I’ve been wondering about ‘downloads’ re certain changes and decisions ahead which have been taking time to ‘materialise’ in my head. So… it’s about making space in the system?

We’ve spoken before about ‘defragging’ the system. That’s what you are doing as, more and more successfully and consistently, through meditation, breathwork, qigong and walking, you ’embrace physical presence’ – as Michael Brown puts it so well. 

That’s encouraging to hear…

You are clearing space in your RAM and your desktop in this way. This allows more space for downloads. 

What is a download? These ‘fragments of intelligence scooped from the etheric field’? Tell me more?

The receptive mind attunes itself to infinite intelligence and meets it ‘on the high flying disc’ plane. On that plane, information is multidimensional. That means it consists not of linear ideas or statements, but of bundles of informational impressions. Does that make sense?

Yes.

So these bundles of informational impressions, when fully downloaded into the still mind, then translate into intuitive knowledge. 

That is so beautiful. I hear you. There is so much hear… haha typo, here. So, the still mind is my responsibility.

If you like. But it’s fairly incidental what you intend to ‘achieve’. The good stuff is pouring in all the time. 

Ok… But do I translate it in to intuitive knowledge?

As you feel safe, you will better enter your own body, and that is where you pick up and translate the intuitive knowledge. There is no rush in this work. But yes, you could enjoy ’embracing physical presence’ even more. 

I’ve got a TRE session booked today for the first time in … months?! Sounds like a good place to launch ’embracing physical presence.’ Ty – and ty MBrown.

Love and blessings to my girls, and to all upon this planet. May we all embrace our physical presence, and download perfect wellness into our systems.

I am embracing physical presence

 

 

 

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Presence 42: I am safe in this body

The dragon-breathing is so good. You really feel the emotional burn, and at the same time, the elongated out-breath triggers the parasympathetic response. I employed it a lot yesterday, and overnight… It also showed me how short and shallow my breathing often is. The deal is – in order to relax, I need to be able to hear my outbreath. The AUDIBLE OUT-BREATH (or ‘AOB’): that’s my takeaway – and the new habit to develop.

I also want to share I had a sweet moment yesterday – a tiny, new insight in to what it is to love and to be in love. G was jokily teasing me that I love time on my own (away from him)… and I replied with: “I prefer being with you than being on my own, and that’s actually amazing because I really love being on my own.” Maybe that’s one simple, sweet indicator of how we (introverts or autistic beings…?) know that we love someone and are in the right relationship for us? 🙂 <3

Ok. I have a question about this ‘rising above’ notion that came up in yesterday’s dialogue – it was my beloved Mum’s wisdom. So the example is that in a Whatsapp group I’m on led by a coach, one person shared a picture of herself looking beautiful and people chimed in with words of love. The coach leading the group took a swipe at the OP when she made the comment ‘I clean up well’ – the coach accused her of coming from the masculine instead of the Queen self. The OP replied, “Ouch”.  I am torn between just adding my love for the OP, or actually replying to the Coach, and saying: “Putting a fellow woman down – in front of the friends who are celebrating her – feels more ‘Queen Bee’ than Queen to me…”. Given our conversation about not reacting, or shooting the messenger. What’s your advice? I want to stand up for the OP, who is continually being side-swiped by the Coach. But also I don’t want to get embroiled… or get any closer to the toxicity of this coach. What are the insights to pick up here?

What’s your overall aim? Is it to dispense and serve justice? Or is it to model love? In the face of rabble-rousing (aka reactive, emotionally-unintegrated, charged) behaviour from another, does the true Queen say, “Off with your head?” or “Mercy be upon you.” 

Suddenly, I see a new perspective. Rather than ‘sparring’ (aha! that word again) with the charged Coach, I could ‘model’ an uncharged response – as a conscious act of ‘mercy’. (‘But what if she doesn’t get the message?’) Que sera sera. Her loss!

It is an act of magnanimity to see someone’s faults and weaknesses and not point at them. The Coach was not magnanimous towards your friend when she perceived her as not receiving the compliments in a gracious way. Batting back an equally un-magnanimous reply (to put the Coach in her place) is an example of down-regulating to the frequency of charged person in front of you. 

We suggest you read the next few pages of The Presence Process. It’s the pre-read for Week 7. 

Ok. This has been helpful. Ty.

_______

INTO THE WATER

Read Before Commencing Week Seven

We activate weeks seven, eight, and nine by submerging ourselves in a bathtub of comfortably warm (not too hot) water for 15 minutes. If a bathtub isn’t available, we may enter a comfortably warm shower for 15 minutes. While in the water, we aren’t to focus on consciously connecting our breathing. Instead, we place our attention on the felt-aspect of any experience that surfaces in our awareness as a consequence of being in the warm water. As soon as we exit the water, we dry ourselves off, then attend to our regular 15-minute breathing practice. (TPP p186)

 

So we’re having a bath?? Interesting. It’s true that I haven’t submerged in water much in a long time… Not since the couple of swims this summer… And I know it’s really good for me. Hm… I also feel a bit resistant to it. Maybe because our water/bathroom is a bit cold for a comfortable bath? I’ve become v accustomed to showers. But I used to love my micro-baths. Maybe I could try it again…

Carry on with the book. Pick up the phrase for Week 7.

Ok, hang on… [page 188]. Aw…that’s so nice. Yes. I hear ya…

WEEK 7

Our Conscious Response for the Next Seven Days is:

“I FEEL SAFE NOW”

Why does someone sideswipe at another? Because they don’t feel safe. 

Why does someone spar with another? Because they don’t feel safe. 

Why does someone lunge at another? Because they don’t feel safe. 

 Why does someone act in an unfair/unreasonable manner? Because they don’t feel safe.

Why does someone act as though they don’t care? Because they don’t feel safe. 

If and when I really stand back…

and hold yourself in complete safety…

then I can see that the other person is just responding to their own sense of feeling unsafe. Understandable if they are carrying around charged emotions from unintegrated childhood experiences.

In fact, people’s lunging behaviour is frankly the normalest thing in the world! Because in general, we aren’t taught how to integrate the childhood experiences. So everyone is walking round with bags of charged baggage attached to their belts.

We used to have Church/Religion/Manners to cause us to conform to certain behaviours to make us reasonably capably of entering society… but we were split in half by acting well, while simultaneously suppressing/repressing the charged emotions. And the outcomes were NOT pretty. For any of us bifurcated beings… And the ensuing shame, grief and loss – when our charged emotions overcame and outmanoeuvred  our societal mask – was real.

So, how best can I work with this now?

Work with your sense of safety, today and all week. Count all the ways in which you know yourself to be safe. Just as you discerned the truth of your love for G by observing the balance of your pleasure in his company… discern the signs of your complete safety in this world. And dwell upon them. With full embodiment. Let your body know you are safe. 

I’m doing TRE with Deborah tomorrow. That’s good timing for all this…

If you could see how held, how protected, how safe you truly are in this world, your relief would be so immense, that your long out-breath of release would create ripples of peace across the world. 

This is all so different from ‘rising above’ what’s going on, though the effect is the same. It’s just taking a different route. ‘Rising above’ feels risky, like you might fall in the broiling waters at any moment. Affirming your sense of safety is like standing on firm ground and feeling the sun on your face. 

Dragon-breathe this: I am safe in this body. 

Interesting. Ok. I’ll work with that. Thank you.

I am safe in this body

 

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Presence 41: I am dragon-breathing

Oowwee, ‘I am Alive to Myself’ got right through the cracks into some invigorating places! It was such a vivid practice. So centering, and enlivening to each moment.

So yesterday… I got tumbled over by a client email, right at 9pm on a Friday evening. They were sparring with me. over a case their party has purposely prolonged over months. Ergh…. ‘Sparring’ again… But I’m the ‘healer’ MBTI type and want everything/one to be ‘nice’! It troubled me, the email. And it interrupted my sleep. And it had me getting out of bed early today.

So I brought the feelings to my QT and to my reading of TPP today:

THE EMOTIONAL INTEGRATION PROCEDURE (TPP p183)

STEP ONE: DISMISS THE MESSENGER. Whenever we become emotionally upset, the first step is to acknowledge that the person or event setting us up has nothing to do with what’s happening. They are “the messenger” (mess-ender). The messenger reflects a memory that’s currently surfacing from within our unintegrated past. “Shooting the messenger” is futile because Presence has an unlimited supply of such messengers! The first step in the emotional integration procedure is therefore to dismiss the messenger. Internally, we may thank them for their service and let them be on their way. Instead of reacting to and venting at them, we might say, “I could use a little time alone right now.” In the beginning, this step of gracefully sidestepping our urge to react takes courage because it requires dismantling our lifelong habit of knee-jerking into drama.

Ok, so it’s not about this client who has ‘upset’ me… I’m not going to ‘react’ by emailing back over the weekend. In fact, even when I do write back on Monday, I don’t need to react to their sparring words. I have side-stepped the Urge To React (UTR :)). I might even thank them for their service internally at this moment.

STEP TWO: RECEIVE THE MESSAGE (insight). The second step is to get the message. To accomplish this, we turn our attention inward and, through wielding felt-perception, encounter the underlying energetic resonance of the emotional reaction we experience through the setup. We know we are succeeding when our body resonates. When we engage the felt-aspect of our upset, our face may flush, our hands may buzz, or we may feel a downward movement in our solar plexus. Whatever we feel as a consequence of our intent to feel is valid.

I sat with the feelings swirling inside me when I thought about this person. Eventually the felt-perception spoke to me:

  • “He’s UNFAIR! He’s not being FAIR!”
  • Which then revealed early childhood incidences of my shock at people being UNFAIR:
    • eg. Caroline stealing my marbles from my school bag, and none of the grown-ups making her give them back because she flat-out insisted she had “brought these marbles to school” with her.  – UNFAIR
    • eg Dad having a meltdown and chucking away our belongings in black bin-bags, and no one holding him to account, or making him apologise – while we had to apologise for trivial childish errors. – UNFAIR
  • Mum saying “No one said life was going to be fair.” And that grating so hard on my little Aspie-child sense of right and wrong.
  • Then a more adult-orientated perspective: “They’re being UNREASONABLE!“

STEP THREE: FEELING UNCONDITIONALLY. Instead of externalizing our discomfort by resorting to blame, we now consciously contain and digest the uncomfortable resonance of the upsetting experience. We feel it as it is, without agenda, without manipulating it, and without trying to fix, heal, or understand it. Through this particular step, we trade projection for integration, which we accomplish through unconditional containment. Containment isn’t to be confused with suppression. Suppression is the act of “pretending it didn’t happen” or doing whatever it takes to wipe our awareness clean of the experience. Containment is a declaration that “this is happening,” and that what was initially perceived as happening “out there” finds its cause within our energy field.

Containment is a responsive mode through which we accept complete responsibility for the quality of our experience. It’s an active realization that the emotionally triggered discomfort we feel as adults is a cry for help from our child self. Containment is our way of answering this call. It’s our response to our child self – a response in which, through our unconditional felt-perception, we declare: “I know you’re hurting. I know you’re feeling fear, anger, and grief. I’m now choosing to acknowledge this. I’m choosing to give you my unconditional attention by consciously feeling this discomfort, and to consistently respond this way for as long as it takes for the awareness of peace to be restored.” Through feeling without condition at the causal point of our discomfort, we initiate integration. Integration is the conscious digestion of the unintegrated aspects of our childhood.

It was really good to sit with the intense, physical discomfort of ‘UNFAIR/UNREASONABLE‘. There is/was a lot of dismay, sadness, confoundedness associated with my past experiences of ‘UNFAIR/UNREASONABLE‘. My Aspie being, and my ‘mediator’ self, wants everyone to bring reason and fairness to the table! As I sat with these feelings and contained them compassionately, I started to see what would make a person act in an ‘UNFAIR/UNREASONABLE‘ manner: fear. A spiked amydala. The ego aka Overstimulated Nervous System (Matt Kahn.)

So…… what is my best response to someone being in an ONS state? Well, either I can co-regulate down to their state – maybe the simplest reaction as I’m highly empathic…. OR….

Another phrase of my mother’s arose: I can rise above it.

But this came to me in a new way. Before I’d seen it as ‘ignoring’ the ‘UNFAIR/UNREASONABLE‘.  (shrug your shoulders, Mum would say.) But here I saw it as being ‘REGAL’. Like the portrayal of the young ‘Queen Elizabeth’ in early episodes of The Crown, holding her head high and maintaining her composure and boundaries, when Churchill and the cabinet were being ‘UNFAIR/UNREASONABLE‘… and seeking to undermine her authority.  She simply wouldn’t descend to their rabble-rousing. She super-imposed a queenly RESPONSE where an emotional personal REACTION might have been emerging. What dignity. What self-composure. What self-sovereignty. Talk about emotional boot-strapping.

Nu?

So you are saying: “I am fair and reasonable, even when others are not.”

Heavens… Maybe?

This appears to be the RESPONSE you are offering yourself. When the other is ‘UNFAIR/UNREASONABLE’  you can be FAIR/REASONABLE. 

I can feel the reaction arising in me: “Why should I be fair if they won’t be?!” I guess this is the definition of growing up……….!?!

You could certainly say so. The ability to hold your self as you would wish to be and to feel, even in the face of someone who is unconsciously emotionally charged – and lunging at you – is a sign of your integrating this Presence work. As you integrate your own charged emotions with breathwork and conscious Present Moment Awareness, the charged emotions of others are no longer acting as lit matches to your internal fuel. Because YOU have burnt up that fuel yourself, through your own containment and digestion of the stuck childhood emotions. Beautiful work!

Thank you. This is so helpful. I did also notice that, if work is seeping into my weekends… I can counteract that process, by consciously enacting the Five Ways to Wellbeing (aka CLANG: Connect, Learn, Active, Notice, Give). I talk of this a lot… but need to practise it more consciously. So, after the meditative work above, I made a flipchart to list my main activities across the weekend, and then to note how/if they hit one or more of the 5 Ways. This is good counter-action for some intense work this week, and a good way to redirect my beautiful, vigorous,  intense, attentive mind.

And so, any more thoughts?

Your ‘dragon-breathing’ of last session was a really valuable practice. This is how breathwork coincides with burning up the fuel of trapped and unintegrated emotions. The out-breath is ‘purging’ in qigong terms, as you know. This burn, burn, burn of charged emotional fuel is really sacred work. And it dissolves the pain body so well, largely by keeping you in the present moment, which is entirely where the  integration is received. 

Man, when I practise it, I am astonished at how much ‘fire’ there is! So, I just sit and feel the feels as I breath out, and imagine I am breathing fire through my nostrils… and that does the work? 

Think about the FIRE element in Qigong. 

5 elements of qigong

Fire = Heart = Joy/Hatred

It’s also enhanced by ‘summer’ and ‘heat’… environmental factors naturally reduced now. So it’s for you now to feed your Heart. Fan the flames. Burn the fuel. 

Autumn is also seen as the time for the METAL element, when we sense GRIEF/LOSS – represented by the trees losing their leaves, and the sun retreating…

The METAL element is seated in the LUNGS. So your breathwork processes the GRIEF/LOSS… and restores JOY to your HEART. The heart wants to feel hatred for another when there is not joy. But joy is restored by LETTING GO and RELEASING that which is no longer serving. Like the leaves on the tree. 

So, yes, work with this ‘dragon-breathing’ you have developed for yourself. Discern its power to rebalance you internally. Once you are rebalanced internally, your external mirror will reflect your shift. 

Lovely. Tysm. xxx

I am dragon-breathing

______

It feels a bit like the retreating factions setting their oil wells on fire so no one else can benefit from them…

You mean: burning up the charged louche inside you so there is nothing for others to pilfer or trigger? Excellent. 

_______

Googled ‘dragon breathing’. It’s a thing!

https://www.yoremikids.com/news/july-strike-a-pose-dragon-breathing

Dragon Breath

How to Use Dragon Breathing to Calm Anxiety

I had sensed it was nostril fire breathing vs mouth fire-breathing, but you can do both obviously. Maybe I should work with both. Ty for this work.

Interesting to be evoking the dragon archetype/element. Breathing exercises have often left me cold…. but this dragon element makes me think about how these exercises are not only ‘relaxing’ me, but also helping me embody my strong, powerful, boundaried self.

Bingo. 

<3

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Presence 40: I am Alive To Myself

That phrase, “I am in charge of myself”, has felt so powerful these last few days – like if I just quietly repeated it over and over til the end of the year, I would be doing myself a great service. As if taking healing daily medicine.

When we are in charge of ourselves, we are able to re-charge ourselves at will. Your qigong is a ‘charging’ practice. As is your meditation practice, both sitting and walking. Any time you plug yourself in to the Now moment, (and hop out of Time) you are ‘charging’ yourself. Only You, and your Freewill, can conspire to get you to tear yourself away from the comfortable ‘Dream Time’. 

November’s so dark… And after the clocks change… (June solstice = 16 hours of daylight vs. Dec solstice = 8 hours of daylight!) It’s hard to energise my healthy practices… I know, I’m looking at my phone a lot. Scouring for ‘news’. We’re in Pandemic Lockdown 2 this month! Yesterday was 11/11. I’ve been in once place a great deal. I’ve left the village in a car maybe 4 times in the last 6 weeks…?

Dear soul, all is well! You are doing the work! We see you – daily, running the gauntlet of Presence. We see you, watching emotions arising in your felt-perception, and staying with them, burning them off. 

Yes, this morning, in my meditation, I felt with every out-breath like I was blowing fire out of my nostrils, like a dragon! I could feel the stress and distress of yesterday [major tech issues as I spoke (about my own mental health) at the national conference of my industry’s main professional body] being used as fuel, like Michael Brown describes. Look… [We’re on Week 6 of TPP. My emphases.]

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.

With each application of this tool, we integrate charged emotion that was imprinted in our emotional body during childhood. As the heat – the discomfort in our emotional body – becomes integrated, those mentally entrenched belief systems that arise out of our emotional charge are dismantled. In turn, this decreases our need to gain attention and hence reduces the drama we manifest. It also unplugs the cause of self-medicating behavior. The consequence of this is that the quality of our experience is transformed. (The Presence Process, p178/9)

So a major lesson for me across this lifetime is that of: learning to FEEL the FEELINGS. I’m sure this is common to many, particularly in… ‘affluent’ societies? It was good over the last week or so to work with that ‘Doesn’t Care’ charged emotion. I started by aiming it at another. In the end, once I’d sat with the emotions, (rather than lunging them at another), I got the message: Does Care…. and it had to start with me caring enough about myself to take the remote control of my own life, and be ‘in charge’ of myself.

Tell me more?

Your efforts in this monastic year of silence, of non-movement and of emotional burn-up, are of significant value. This goes for all of you Locked Down in place. Do not underestimate the amount of emotional burn up that is going on globally this year as people learn to sit with themselves rather than wheel-spin,  react, create drama and avoid integrating that which is there to be integrated. Know in your Heart that you are all on the right track. This is a year of reckoning, and the souls of this planet have shown themselves to be Alive to themselves – and to each other. Your work today is to be Alive to Yourself. This means bringing a sense of Alive Awareness to your moments. Just as you affirmed your being In Charge of Yourself this week, now affirm this: 

I am Alive To Myself

_____

The Presence Process on emotions as ‘fuel’ for transformation – further reading – my emphases:

The highest application of the mental body is when it serves to navigate the focus of our attention, while the highest application of the emotional body is when it fuels the momentum of our intent. The mental body is the navigation system of our capacity for being, and the emotional body is the fuel tank containing the various emotions, rather like different grades of fuel, intended to activate varying intensities of movement. This means that our charged emotion doesn’t require healing, as if it were broken. To imagine our imprinted emotional charge as something that requires healing or fixing, instead of integrating, would be no different from a can viewing a can opener as something that requires healing. The can opener simply needs to be put to use, as does our unintegrated energy-in-motion. In other words, dormant within our charged emotions is the potential to “open us up” to unrealized possibilities. 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. (TPP p176)

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Presence 39: I am in charge of my self

I am self-possessed: Can we talk about this?

Of course. 

What is self-possession?

Self-possession is the state of being whereby your own inner being is holding the reins of your thoughts, behaviours and speech. 

You mean the Abraham-Hicks meaning of ‘Inner Being’?

The only meaning of Inner Being. Your inherited self. The self you inherited from your soul at the moment of your conception. 

Like a kind of Mini-Me Soul you get to take into the physical plane?

Better said, the part of you that holds the walkie-talkie to your soul throughout your life. 

I do know that Abraham says if we feel out of sorts it’s because we’re basically in cognitive opposition to our Inner Being. So… what is my mind resisting and opposing to create this current drama? Is it ‘Doesn’t Care’? FWIW, G just came in and gave me a kiss… and he made a lovely fry-up this morning. He may say not a word about my obvious heartache, but he is trying to express that he cares, I think. And then I doubt. And then I look out of the window and I see my farmer neighbour (E.) who lives on his own at getting on for nearly 70, and I pull myself together. Now… that walkie-talkie. What are you hearing it say?!

The Walkie-Talkie to your Soul says:

Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobblestones
Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy

Aha, the easeful receptive state…

‘Less thinking, more feeling’ right now… That ‘felt-perception’ – what’s there? 

……. Rage. Old rage. It’s trying to come out.

Ok! Now we’re talking. (And you were going to visit that emerging rage on G instead of letting it integrate? Cool stuff to notice all this!)

It’s uncomfy! And I thought I was done with all this, which is why I thought it must be G’s ‘fault’ if I was feeling this bad. :/

We hear you. It’s ok. You’re doing really well. But there’s further to go. What kind of rage is it? [Listening Space clean language question]

Bolstering? Bolstered? Something about bolsters.

Inside or outside? 

In my ribs.

Does this rage have a shape? 

Spiky ball, like one of those medieval balls on a chain on a stick.

Does this rage have a sound? 

Aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh

Look around the room. Is there an object that you would like to explore with regards to this rage? 

The TV remote control. It’s like I’ve been at the wrong end of the remote control – reactive, bossed around (not by G btw – more, work), uncontrolled, not self-possessed! And now I’ve had enough. I want to grab the remote control…. and start to use it on other people. That would have felt like the words of a megalomaniac to me before, but I’m feeling it’s not so much about bossing others around as…. knowing what I want, asking for what I want, staying in place rather than running towards. Grounded. In charge of my own freewill. Lead by intuition.

And if you had that remote control in your hand, what would you know?

That my mind has power, is creative. That I have options. That I can tweak and amend my life, until I see what I want on the screen in front of me.

And what difference does knowing this make? 

It tells me that I should take more advantage of the ‘remote control’ in my hand/[heart], instead of complaining about what’s on the ‘screen’ in front of me.

It reminds me that though the ‘programming’ is strong from the mainstream ‘channels’, I don’t need to be locked to them. I can choose my own channel, my own programmes.

In fact… I can even scroll through the media channels and programmes until I find the one called ‘Does Care’. And engage with that. Where is the channel/programme/community which ‘Does Care’… about the reality/timeline/[heartspace] I am living in?

This [heartspace] business you’re inserting in…?

We are reminding/informing you that the reality that is your locus of remote control, is in your [heartspace]. Thus, ‘self-possession’ occurs not in the head but in the heart. 

This morning I was internally keening: ‘But I opened my heart up to him!…. If that is unreciprocated, then I can/will/must close mine again!’ Show me how this fits.

When you gift ‘control’ of your life/happiness/wellbeing to another, you vacate your heartspace, and have them unwittingly inhabit it instead. When they don’t perform to give you the love you failed to give yourself, you feel ‘heart-broken’. That is giving someone else remote control of your heart. 

When you inhabit your own heartspace, and hold the steering wheel of the vehicle of your own life/happiness/wellbeing, you can not be heartbroken. Now you hold the (not-so-remote) control for your own reality. 

Heart-centred and self-loving. This is the definition of self-possession.  

Beautiful. It’s so intangible. How can I work with this?

Play with the tangible notion of the remote control. You’ll remember earlier in the year you played with the notion of the sound engineer’s switchboard, with tweakable buttons. Use the remote control to play with your reality. Start to learn the power of directed thought. This is the heart of self-possession. 

Have an effect, rather than be affected…

Nicely put. 

——-

Day Notes

Holy moly, this Phil Good video is spot on for me today!!

And I mean… ffs…today we used the term ‘walkie talkie’ for the first time today and look what he says of the Arcturians:

Ooh, fancy that! 

Stappit! No, don’t stappit!! Continue it. ❤️

_____

Next day:

Can we just pick up and finish off? Yesterday, in the video above I noted PG receiving the message he needs to clear out and align the lower chakras, as that is how he will make contact…. Feels v aligned to my sense of holding my own remote control, right?

Your lower chakras are all about home: where is home? am I safe in my home? Survival… Shelter… Rootedness… Who do I let into my home, and who is my home designed to keep out? The Door of your House is Key. Do you sense that? The Door of your House, refers to who you let in and who you don’t – psychically, sexually, emotionally, intellectually. You will always know if you’ve let in a ‘Space Invader’ by the way you feel: closed, cringey, angsty, resentful, impatient. You will know you’ve let in a Friend by the (sometimes overwhelming) feeling of relief, connectedness, mirth, uplift, joy. We are talking about leveraging a new degree of discernment – or at least harnessing the time-old empath’s Knowing, and acting upon it. The child can not keep the space invaders out of their psychic space; the self-parenting adult can. 

And clients?

Clients need to stay outside the Door of your House. We’re sorry about this, but you have tried letting everyone in and ‘hosting’ them [ouch] but it is too draining. They leave the Door open behind them and let all the warm air out of your house. They burn up the energy you need to do your work. So if you really want to be a good practitioner, you need to have stronger boundaries. 

Noted. I hear what you say about ‘hosting’. Not so nice…

You are a kind and thoughtful host. But you have not always been a discerning host. The Door to your House is sacred. Notice it more, and who/what you let in. Hold the keys, and the electronic remote control to that door. You will benefit from this. You will feel more In Charge of yourself, which also means more ‘charged up’ and energised.

This is sovereignty: being in charge of yourself, solely and completely. THIS is mastery of the lower chakra. 

Ty. I will work with this. Beautiful, beautiful – and so helpful.

I am in charge of my self

 

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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