Tag: awareness

The Greatest Secret

I love manifesting and I’m pretty good at it, with non attachment ideals. And I also have work to do on my limiting beliefs. I read Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, a manifesting bible, in the early days of my marriage (I believe it came on honeymoon!) and was interested to read The Greatest Secret, wondering where it would take me next.

Well to a whole other level is the truth of it. And not comfortably so either. Because really I know what she’s saying in this book is absolutely true and I’m also attached to my very human experience of the world so stepping up to this feels daunting. Shall I explain a little more or leave you cryptically dangling?

Succinctly, it’s about remembering our eternal energy that has been in existence forever, that has experienced and knows all. And by remembering we can view and live our human journey with the reassurance of the bigger picture, enabling us to disentangle from dwelling on the challenges as negative rather allowing just what is.

There are moments when I have touched this place and have sat in the flow of awareness and life with blissful appreciation. But I have not sustained that by virtue of being pulled back into one drama, one trigger, or another.

This book is the guide to inhabiting that place more consistently and consciously. It’s a practice that requires consistency and effort to become habit, with the photographed affirmation a clear link to that. I’m not there yet but I have certainly stepped out of some dramas with ease and Grace by utilising the methods prescribed and how wonderful it will be to continue down this trajectory.

I just have to remember to breathe.

First published on social media on 30th May 2022

Seeing Love

I advocate passionately & reverently for the resurrection of our ancient wisdom supported by modern research of neurological development; together these detail how responding to the animalistic, biological and psychological needs of our children is integral, not only to their own solid emotional, spiritual & physical health, but also to forming the foundations of a healthy society.

Everything I write about, read about, talk about, dream about draws back to this core. The requirements that reach beyond basic survival and into the depths of humanity and soul.

So I am hyper aware of the impact of my own behaviours and ancestral baggage on myself as a parent, friend, wife and therapist. I could read nuances into each word or facial reaction; I could demand that the circle around my family be restricted to only those conscious of their own wounds; I could attempt to micromanage each and every influence that enters my domain. This would all be very understandable when my heart understands the subtle ramifications that can come from the slightest tremor.

Of course this would also likely lead me to the edge of insanity, trying to control the world and environment to a place of perfection; on top of which it is hardly a good model for my children, friends or clients to ape resilience, compassion, growth, personal choice, understanding and a gazillion other amazing qualities that come from meeting conflicting ideas or ideology.

But what really hit home to me today, was that most of all I would miss seeing love in all its forms. It’s so easy to believe love comes in the form that I feel and express it in, but love is offered in a myriad of weird and wonderful ways that can only be found by opening our heart to the intention with which things are brought.

When I read articles detailing how one is supposed to be a ‘true friend’ or a ‘modern partner’, for example: don’t offer advice unless it is asked for; respect my boundaries at all times; don’t use emotionally sensitive language without first checking for permission; don’t use physical touch without explicit approval….

This…. this drives me batty. If I took all this on board I would be have to be the worst ever friend. Except I’m not. I’m a good friend and I frequently offer advice without first checking because that is one of my primary ways to show and express my love (Acts of Service). I am able, mostly, to perceive if my advice is unwanted and shut up, but not everyone is and yet they might still be offering the very depths of their love. Other people might smother people with hugs and kisses when actually space is wanted; perhaps there are friends that come and tidy up your house leaving you feeling a bit slovenly in their company; others can be effusive with their words, showering you with compliments and affirmations that to you feel hollow and meaningless; another might buy you a gift when all you really wanted was them not to cancel the plans.

It is so so so easy to see the worst in people rather than the best. It is so easy to miss love.

Do I want my world to be a microcosm of connected, joyful and loving intention? Absolutely. Is that going to be reflected if I limit that to just those that follow my form? Boundaries are important, safety is important but should they come at the expensive of seeing the true depths of someone’s heart and intention? Isn’t this world crying out for more love not less?

Today I offered my love to someone and it was utterly rejected, it wasn’t in the right form for them and they reacted to it negatively rather than positively, and I thought of all those people in the world that are getting shouted down, shut down or ignored for showing love in the ‘wrong way’. Awareness, consciousness and growth are beautiful potentials that bloom more powerfully when wrapped in compassion, forgiveness and understanding.

Yesterday, I told off my eldest for yabbering to my youngest when he had so clearly asked for space and quiet, today I see how she was just offering love….

Today I am seeing love.

Me, Myself, The Snob

I was brought up to be a Snob. Not with any real conscious intention, but just because that’s the way my family’s beliefs lay.

I believed that people who said ‘hay’atch’ instead of ‘aitch’ for the letter H were intellectually inferior; I believed that those who called supper ‘tea’ were common, likewise if napkins were called serviettes. I believed there were strata in society between humans and that our family was thankfully nearer the top than bottom.

I believed this because generation after generation of my family had all believed something similar for far too long.

At 18, I left my privileged echo chamber of private school (and I say this not without gratitude for the experiences and opportunities it provided) and fell into the real world. Not the real real world mind you. Public relations could hardly be called that, but a more culturally diverse environment than I was used to for sure.

In this world, the two A levels I had scraped were deemed major qualifications rather than the desperate failures by my family and academic peers. I was mixing with people whose backgrounds afforded me a window into lifestyles and upbringings that contrasted drastically to my own (and I, who thought I came from the broken side of the family, the rough edge of posh).

And then I dived further… over the years I waitressed and travelled and met more and more people who showed me over and over again how ridiculously narrow my familial belief system had been; how I had been raised to judge people by meaningless standards instead of learning to look into their hearts and meet them human to human.

I see that my family had no malice in their own judgements, they were products of their own upbringing, a continuation of the lineage of pomp and snobbery and done with as much kindness and love as those beliefs can afford.

But now I am entering a new era, a time and age where my own children are beginning their natural formation of opinions about the world around them and I am constantly checking in with myself as to the values I am modelling. Am I carrying old, unhelpful, unkind, judgmental beliefs that I am passing on to my kids or am I shifting the familial system to compassion, acceptance, difference and diversity? I know what I wish to model, but I’m sure my parents thought similarly too, I bet they thought they were raising progressive kids through their own shifts of self awareness and yet I feel their burden of unnecessary opinion heavy on my back.

I feel reactive and triggered by any form of superiority, be it qualifications, age or otherwise. I know now that the humblest and wisest of voices can come from any direction, without a cloak of ego announcing their arrival.

I wonder how my children will view me in another 30 years, what they will perceive to be antiquated notions and what they will choose to do differently.

As I say to my clients, as long as we are moving forward, no matter how slowly, we are still moving forward.

On, on I step, smashing my institutionalised snobbery, one day at a time.