Sunday is a good day

Sunday. Often my best opportunity to spend time in reflection that also can include writing.

I am continually amazed with the awareness of how my internal experience of the moment so fully defines my mood and my capacity to navigate life and it's various challenges. Really, it pretty much determines what feels like a challenge and what does not. If my insides are in discomfort I tend to lose my flexibility for flowing with the externals that I can't control. I'll be more specific so that what I'm referring to is clear.

When I am physically in pain everything going on around me - -other people, traffic, loud noises in restaurants - - becomes something that feels intrusive and unmanageable. When I am not in pain everything going on around me feels separate from me and just part of the symphony that is accompanying my solo performance. There is a really nice interweave of sounds and feelings and energies. And when something is off balance outside me (like loud music in a restaurant) I am not thrown by it. I may feel dislike or frustration with it but it is a simple experience that doesn't make me feel like I want to pull into my shell or run away or beat someone with a stick.

I have come to understand in a much clearer, deeper way that these times of pain are a trigger for me of unresolved trauma. We all have certain experiences that when we are in them we get triggered into reactions that don't particularly fit the present moment. Physical pain is one of those for me. Some people are much more resilient when they are in physical pain. They don't get triggered into wanting to run away or beat someone with a stick. As I have been working with my nervous system and the stored trauma from earlier experiences in my life I am becoming more resilient. Pain doesn't limit my options to the degree that it used to. I still get triggered but with less severity.

What are the experiences that are your "trigger" places? I invite your awareness to identifying those times when your reaction to something in the present moment might not actually fit what is occurring. They are hard to wrap our brain around sometimes because we can so automatically go to what has become a familiar, characteristic reaction. It so totally feels appropriate and fitting to be reacting in the way that we are in a relationship, or in traffic, or when a sales person is not helpful in a way we wish for them to be, etc. To be able to step back and begin to recognize that our reaction seems bigger than the present situation might call for can be our first place of shifting some stored stress or trauma.

I feel tremendous gratitude for finding my way along this path. Healing not only gives us a richer, more meaningfully experienced life, it also sends us along the path of the evolution of our Soul. The bigger picture of what we are doing here. We are all weavers. The texture of the fabric deepens in color and feel with our consciousness brought to it.

Movement can occur when immobilization begins to resolve

I have been away for a long time. Away from my writing. The blink of an eye and children are grown with children of their own and wrinkles and lines betray the passing of time that is not fully registered by the brain. I'm stunned that my last entry was over three months ago. Sometimes writing calls to me and in my recurring place of immobilization I can't find the voice to respond.

Christopher and Michela, of my last entry, are doing well. Examples of the miracles of our modern technology combined with their Spirit's ability to mount the obstacles that can befall one's path beginning with birth. It also didn't hurt to have a mother and grandmother who persevered with their continuous welcome and care over many, many weeks in a preemie ICU.

I wanted to speak to immobilization today. It is something that so many of us can relate to and tend to experience with frustration and distress. It is something that can be stored or set in our physiology due to a multitude of events, beginning with in utero or birth experiences or from any number of events that may have occurred in the years since. I believe that understanding this can be a tremendous relief. We humans typically tend to find fault with ourselves when something is a struggle for us. To know that feeling stuck, or immobilized, or like we are spinning our wheels and going nowhere is a state of one's physiology and not an example of one's flawed character or motivation can be both relief and the beginning of being able to address the real culprit(s).

The primitive part of our brain and our nervous system sometimes remember things that the more evolved part of our brain dismisses or categorizes as routine or unremarkable. And sometimes we do recognize something as having had a big impact on us but don't really understand that our physiology is storing what has not yet resolved from the event.

there is meaning to our presence here

Healing is a journey. We all come to it in different ways with different perspectives. I think that the particular path we choose to pursue our healing is less important than the intention we bring to our evolution. Healing, for me, is synonymous with growth. I feel that the path of healing is my purpose. My healing. Your healing. It satisfies my Soul's need to achieve my purpose when I navigate the river's current along the path of growth and transformation. It gives me a sense of honoring my calling when I have the opportunity to guide and witness the growth of other's. It so often is not smooth and then there are those moments of sweetness and purity and alignment that are palpable signs of the divine being present.

There are two babies who are about to enter the world this evening. Their journeys will not be one easily begun. It is the kind of time when one hopes for perfection and prays for possibility. I do believe that life is about healing. We choose to incarnate because the lessons afforded us in this physical dimension can facilitate the evolution that is the destiny of our Soul. These two new little beings have chosen a path that will provide much opportunity. They will benefit from the love that will come their way and challenge themselves through the obstacles they encounter. A big one begins tonight. Birth at 31 weeks.

We are all faced with our challenges and obstacles and these each bring tremendous possibility. Sometimes we take up the gauntlet with consciousness and conviction. Sometimes we miss what is before us because we are blinded by what is still waiting to be revealed as the path of our growth. It is all as it should be.

I believe in these things. They are my understanding of the bigger picture of why we are here. I don't know that I am in fact right. I only know that this sense of life as journey is what makes all that I have encountered and witnessed coherent and real and substantially grounding to my heart.

Blessings and love and support for these next places on your paths, Michela and Christopher. As well as to your mom.

is it real, or is it Memorex?

The body memory of experiences that are incomplete or unresolved can become triggered into our mode of operating in the present moment by things that are happening today. Sometimes the current happenings are reminiscent in some way of the previous unresolved events. Sometimes the current happenings are the catalyst in ways that can seem irrelevant and unexplainable. If it's stored in our nervous system and unresolved it can be triggered. That's the bottom line I'm working from here.

I had a reminder today of the importance of listening to the language we are using when talking about our internal experiences. When something that happened at an earlier time in our history is triggered, or opens up, into the present moment and we are filled with the feelings of that time, sometimes, we revert to talking about our self from that earlier age - -as if we still are that age. A simple example is the use of the phrase, "________ is going to kill me!" We might be referring to a friend, or partner/spouse, or employer. It is a very "young" phrase. Spoken as if one is still a child - -a time when parents' wield a feeling of authority and power and their rage can feel as enormous and threatening as a killing force to us. In using this phrase when adult there is a sense of less empowered, childhood reality (my mother's going to kill me) still operating within us and being expressed with our adult mouth. If we aren't listening to the language and noticing that we are feeling that small and vulnerable and unempowered, we might actually believe that we are that small and vulnerable. Right now. This can limit our actual current day options and leave us relating to other adults as if we are not one among them.

Sometimes it takes more processing of the unresolved experiences to find our footing again and feel our self to be the adult that we now are. The nervous system doesn't necessarily relinquish what it has been holding onto by only listening to our language. But listening can be a significant piece of the whole of what will help us finish what our body is still remembering and storing.

I might want to work on this one some more. Later.............

we do it over and over again because we are trying to finish it

I learned something from one of my teachers in recent years that has been one of the most profoundly significant pieces of information that has ever crossed my path. It has moved me both personally and professionally into a perspective on healing that is perhaps deeper than any single piece of information I had previously discovered. I know that I have been to many deep wells of understanding of Life and The Bigger Picture of our presence here as humans. My quest has taken me to a vast breadth of wise people, creative thinkers, scholars of great intellect, guides who have acquired profound spiritual acumen - - teachers, all, whose gifts have shaped my vision and the bits of knowledge I can claim at this point on my journey. I feel tremendous gratitude for all the lessons that have graced my path in the many configurations that they have presented to me. And there is this moment in time, now, of feeling so moved by one particular understanding of what directs the "stories" we find our selves in over and over again.

That was a really long intro to this one thing that I realized that I wanted to write about today. I guess there were some things I wanted to share that weren't there in my awareness when I started that first sentence. Writing is a mystery that unfolds sometimes and surprises me when I see what my fingers have to say. Back on point.........

My (above mentioned) teacher's name is Yiri. Yiri has taught me some fantastically exciting things about pre and peri-natal psychology and trauma. What I wanted to talk about today is how we recapitulate, throughout our life, the unresolved shock trauma that is carried (remembered) in our nervous system from events that occur in utero and during our birth experience. The memory gets set in our nervous system because of our inability to complete, or process, the distressing events or circumstances that occur during these times. Developmentally we just don't have the equipment fully in place to deal with distressing or threatening experiences. It becomes embedded in our physiology. Something distressing produces an impact and we can't respond in a way that will resolve this. There are many things, some we typically consider routine and uneventful, that occur during this time in our development that are actually profoundly significant.

What I now understand and keep recognizing on deeper and deeper levels is how these places that are so deep in our physiology are the underpinnings of so many issues that appear to be relevant to much later events in our lives. To be able to slow down enough to touch into the sensations that indicate our earliest places of distress brings a power to the possibilities for transformation that is profound.

Every step I have taken in my life to heal what has needed healing within me has brought me more into my body and ultimately connected me to my Spirit. I believe that there is a time in utero when our Spirit enters our body and we begin this next place on our journey through learning on the physical plane. It is a time when Soul and body unite in alliance for this miraculous trip that we call our life. We will learn from what feels good and easy and we will learn from what feels painful and challenging. For me, the path of healing is an incredibly exciting part of the schooling along the way.

As Rumi once wrote, "Be grateful for whoever comes, for each has been sent as a guide from beyond."

it's all practice; it's all good

I have a fresh reminder today of the way in which change occurring will sometimes produce what can feel like "going backwards". A new beginning. A shift into the direction that feels positive and forward moving. A realization that seems to plant us more solidly inside our own be-ing and feels empowering. A deep sigh of relief and gratitude. In one moment we are nearly flying with the feeling of excitement and energy that comes with healthy changes - - and then suddenly (or maybe upon waking the next morning) a frightened, vulnerable feeling place surfaces. It's not a new feeling. It feels familiar, like an old worn out shoe that has gone on many a journey with us over the years.

This is the kind of place that could easily be interpreted as regressing. Falling into the belief that the change was an illusion and not something substantial. An understandable fear. We all do it. And what seems to be true, also, of something we all do is that we take a step, risking what has felt frightening, or has been mired in stuckness, and then whatever fear that is not fully resolved yet in our system gets triggered into the foreground. It is merely indicating that our work is not done. It is not a statement of the work we felt we had accomplished being false. It is not done.

With any new skill, take learning to play the piano for example, we practice to develop the skill. We have to learn in this way because of the design of our brain. Neural pathway develops. It doesn't just exist in a completed form. We have the innate capacity to do certain things but we have to do those things to establish the pathway and then we have to practice those things to develop the skill. You don't sit down and play Chopin's Polonaise Militaire without years of preparation and rehearsal. The more established the neural pathway becomes the more your fingers just seem to know the exact placement of each chord or note. You no longer have to think it with intention, you no longer have to use visual attention in the same way. The pathway is established. Finally. But along the way you play a lot of wrong notes in between placing your fingers on the right ones.

You never lose your status as a work in progress. Enlightenment is the journey. Maybe we never get there. Maybe the human journey is not about becoming a perfect be-ing. We have this tremendous opportunity to grow because of our fallibility. We get to learn about things like gratitude and humility and compassion and love and often we learn them through experiencing the opposite. Sometimes the opposite is what happens to us and sometimes the opposite is what we do. It's all good. Painful, sometimes. Devastating, sometimes. Horrifying, sometimes. Illuminating, always. Lessons, always.

Consciously chosen or not, we are always on The Healing Path

It can be so easy to dismiss the positive choices we are making sometimes. Sometimes they are obvious and undeniable. These are the times when it is easy to feel good about our selves. We are not in struggle. We feel in control and satisfied with the decisions we are making and the steps we are taking. Perhaps there is even a sense that we have finally evolved, having grown our way through a spot that has been characteristically challenging for us. This feels so good. Life is smooth in this place. It is a simple task to feel compassion for our selves here.

And then there are those other times. There is a goal that is elusive. You can see, outlined in the distance, the product of having achieved the goal but it seems farther than the length of your arm, seemingly unreachable. There is struggle and disappointment in your failing repeatedly to follow through on that thing you intended to change within your self. "I will not buy any chocolate for the next week." (I've not had to reach far to find this example.) And then there you are, again, in the check-out line with chocolates in tow. And already building steam into a well-worn path that is filled with self-criticism and devoid of compassion.

Our places of "the familiar", those well-worn paths that we recycle through, are more than our failure to achieve our intended goals. They are deeply established neural pathway, a deeply familiar groove in the circuitry of our brain. It's not a place of failure. We are truly "up to our waist" in a river whose current is carrying us swiftly along and we've not recognized that reaching the shore is going to require the swim of a lifetime.

I have established the same intention for myself numerous times with various things. Numerous times. Each time I can begin the walk down the new path I'm wishing to create in my life I know that I am building something. Building new neural pathway is a lofty goal. One toe onto the path, before I'm pulled off it again, is a building block for the next time that toe goes down again onto the new path. Two times against a current that is swiftly pulling us in an old, well-established direction is an accomplishment worthy of our most heart-felt compassion.

Developing new neural pathway requires time. Lots of time. We are not just trying to learn something new when we are intending to change something already established within. We are having to build a whole new track while the train is speeding down the one it's always run. Even the desire to do something in a new and different way is part of the laying down of the new track. Each step in the sequence is significant. What may seem like nothing may actually be a profoundly dynamic and integral piece of the change we are seeking.

Healing is what we are doing here - - here on planet Earth. Sometimes it is obvious and easy. Sometimes it is happening when it looks to us like we are undermining our own best intentions. Sometimes it is happening when we're not even thinking about what our greater purpose is while living these lives we have created.

I believe we are constantly growing. It's really satisfying to feel actively involved in the growth process. Sometimes we know we are master of our own destiny. Those are the easy times to feel loving and positive toward that face that is looking back at us in the mirror. Sometimes we're sitting at home eating a chocolate bar that found its way into our grocery bag and is giving us another opportunity to say this is one of the swiftest rivers I've had to learn to out swim.