Coming home

  • Coming home

Practicing coming home to myself

Last month I was listening to Lama Rod online as part of the mindfulness meditation teacher training.  Lama Rod Owens is an author, activist, and authorized Lama (Buddhist teacher) in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.  I recommend his book Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger and a coauthor of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation.

Since listening that online presentation and reading his book I am consciously including the 5/7 homecomings he writes about in my practice.

  • silence
  • community i am part of
  • sacred earth
  • ourselves (all our energetic bodies, gratitude)
  • ancestry

    The journey of the soul

    • The journey of the soul

    When the calling comes

    This month I got inspired to return back to my art creations under mentorship  of Katherine Bull. (http://www.katherinebull.co.za/about/).

    It took me couple of months to follow through my intention. I gathered some of collage material in July. This collage  on right was on the art session also supported with connecting to a specific energy of a crystal and my initial material was complemented by blind choosing from Katherine’s materials and I have added in some color with ink.

    Now I am so happy I created space and time to do it.  This is one way of cultivating happiness. Listening to your soul calling you to create something, move, listen…

    What is your soul’s calling?

    green amethyst connection collage

    I am connected

    • I am connected

    "My roots reach deeply, I am connected to the core of me"

    On the morning of my morning walk in the forest today

    My mantra today was

    “My roots reach deeply

    I am connected to the core of me”

    This is part of the lyrics of the “I am connected” by Beautiful Chorus

    For me in singing those lines

    feeling the connection between the nature and myself

    I enter the feeling that enables all other feelings to be

    And still be still like a mountain a tree with all that.

    Feeling of Belonging

    • Feeling of Belonging

    Feeling of belonging and connection

    Feeling of longing familiar to many people. I am no exception. Often this longing also includes a further illusion, fantasy that is a coping strategy to escape even more out of the present and body to the mind. Instead of getting more in touch with the uncomfortable, you go away in something that creates a further longing, desire. Have you ever thought how close are words Longing and Be(longing)? The journey to add Be to Longing is what Michael Singer in his podcast from Fighting to Harmony describes when we stop fighting with “No, I don’t want this, I want that. “ In Enneagram1 word and embodiment practices this means learning more about Willfulness, Will and Willingness. How do we do that? By practicing mindfulness, sitting, establishing true intimacy with self.

     

    A true feeling of Belonging is possible only when we are connected with our bodies. That is the core message of Sebene Selassie in her book You Belong (2020)  Chapter 3 is a great read on how to Ground yourself in your body.

    In the 9 steps to inner peace coaching program we usually start with establish ing a good connection with body. We use the body guidebook that I have gathered from my studies with Hippocrates institute, Mindfulness meditation teacher course, Breath coaching course. The guidebook includes essential topics for  a solid, grounded body. Session 1 of the guidebook is all about body connection.

    I want to share here couple of lines that Sebene writes on belonging (Selassie, 2020, p. 74)

    1. Belonging is: we belong simply because we are alive
    2. Belonging is in the present moment- if you choose to open to it. *My comment: this is such an important point. It reminds us that the feeling can dissipate if we don’t cultivate presence and high frequency in our body. It explains to be why sometimes I totally feel connected to people I meet and some other time I feel like looking for reasons for separation from other people. At the end this is an outer representation of my own quality of being. And as life goes, it is inevitable that we go through challenges and if in those times we do not know how to respond in a skillful way, with compassion we can notice that we are closing off, we don’t want some feelings to be part of us and it’s even hard to recognize them, let alone welcome them and say You belong. You too, are my beloved.
    3. Belonging is revealed through awareness: when we cultivate the capacity to know what is happening in any moment, the we can connect to belonging
    4. Belonging is embodied: We can only experience belonging in these bodies.

     

    People

    • People

    People who need people

    This is an amazing performance of Barbra Streisand classic People. I have been doing a lot of observing and learning on the topic of Belonging and connection. One Wednesday as we were doing our usual group meditation and the feeling was connection and belonging was present, this  song “People” and the feeling of the community and being part of the greater whole came to awareness.

    When i was looking through the lyrics of this song, I found these lines meaningful:

    :We’re children, needing other childrenAnd yet letting a grown-up prideHide all the need insideActing more like children than children”

    “No more hunger and thirstBut first be a person who needs people”

    I guide in the 9 steps to inner peace my clients to first come in touch with their needs, stay in touch with their bodies, without separating their mind, body and soul and prioritize their needs. Yes, there is a mindfulness involved to discern between indulgence and taking proper care of your needs. Often I work with this topic with the Ennea1 and 2 energy. Both energies are inclined to have their own right way of idea of helping others and using mainly their energy to fix, help on the outside, to the other and have difficulty to connect with their own emotions, feelings and needs. Through re-establishing connection with the body, we are putting a new foundation to relationship with self and others.

    Trust

    • Trust

    Trustfall

    by Pink

    Last week we dedicated to explore the topic of emotions, feelings, interpretations and integrity with the AEIOU Breakhtrough women group.

    Beyond all specific names a lot of our live is driven by fear and protection, some from love.

    Fear and protection are emotions: doubt, anger, control, pride, envy.

    Love is joy, peace, content, happy, wonder, bliss.

    In this life it is part of us to feel fear. Sometimes it is there with a good reason and really save’s our life, sometimes it keeps us in the cage of familiar and away from freedom.

    My aspiration would be to recognize the fear, so that I can make a conscious choice to live a soul aligned life. To recognize the saboteur that shows up in the name of fear and protection. So eloquent, so wise, so persuasive. In Buddhist term my aspiration would be to say “I see you Mara” and have the patience and self compassion to sit down with it with the intention of making a choice. And sometimes when we recognize that we have been holding on to something old because of a feeling of security,  the choice might be to let go of that, recognize the fear behind holding on, and taking a Trustfall.

    From Pink’s Lyrics:

    “Go where love is on our sideIt’s a trust fall, babyIt’s a trust fall, baby”

    All of me integration

    • All of me integration

    One of the continuous workshops I attend annually is In Pursuit of Authentic Self.

    When i started this work i thought, why would one do a workshop with same title every year?

    But in consistency, there is growth and taking note of growth.

    We are changing all the time, evolving doesn’t stop.  There is shedding off the limitations and gaining inner power in being more of yourself. Knowing yourself and loving yourself more with all there is.

    On one occasion on this growth I have written this poem. Pls read it in a way of understanding that this doesn’t mean “here brilliant, done that” it means what i was able to process heal, i have integrated and then continue.

     

    What is on the surface and what is in the depth

    Become one

    Integrated in all of me.

    What is it the parts that I am leaving out

    Like someone drawing a self portrait

    And doesn’t notice he didn’t draw his ears

    Or neck or brows

    What I am not noticing that I am leaving
    out

    Which part of me,

    Has vowed to burry so deep that I forgot it
    ever existed?

    Whenever there is a burial

    There is a leaving behind

    There is a sorrow of aolean scale

    “You” brings in the myxolidian scale, the
    joy.

    The new soul, reborn, integrated in true
    nature

    Seeing myself wholly.

    Old stories let go

    Let me see new world and new me in it.

     

    Getting real

    • Getting real

    Getting real

    by Susan Campbell, PhD.

    This book is a must read for topics of being true to yourself, congruency, authenticity.

    It offers the language for the journey back to self as well as better understanding of what we experience when we decide to recommit to ourselves and being real, congruent.

    Getting real requires peeling off the layers of seeking approval, safety or trust to feel safe enough, trusting enough for the essence to come through more.

    When the essence is able to flow more through you as appropriate, one becomes more at peace with who you are.

    This journey is accompanied  with noticing where we are controlling out of fear and protecting ourselves. It requires the willingness to stay with uncomfortable feelings to get to a place of real intimacy. It requires the courage to find your own expression.

     

    Here are some of my favorite parts from Getting real:

    It is part of the human journey to start out whole, then to continually cut off parts of ourselves in response to real or imagined pain, and to spend the rest of our lives searching for what we have cut off, buried, and forgotten about.

    When you know how to notice and stay with an uncomfortable experience, you have true freedom. You are not compelled by your conditioning to need things to be a certain way for you to feel okay.

    When asserting your desires, you′re going to bump up against the other person′s boundaries. You might even push some buttons along the way. By bumping against her with your request, you′re ″calling her out,″ you′re asking her to be more than her limited view of herself. Or you may be giving her practice holding her ground. Either way, it′s not going to do her any real harm

     
     

    I am enough

    • I am enough

    Thursday

    by Jess Glyne

    Years ago we enrolled together with my dear friend Eleftheria to Brene’s Brown online course The gift of imperfection. We did the journaling and challenged and supported eachother. One part was also taking your own selfie and writing on the palm of my hand I am enough. It took many hours of sitting with myself and group to accept a bit more of me, to come to a place of really buying more to the writing on my hand.  Maybe starting with giving myself persmission to just be true me once a week:)

    As the lyrics say:

    Sometimes I’m shy, and I’m anxiousSometimes I’m down on my kneesSometimes I try to embrace all my insecuritiesSo I won’t wear makeup on Thursday‘Cause who I am is enough