This “you” is our deepest defenses- our most loyal protector, our devoted guardian- both at the existential/soul level and in the everyday, strategic, practical, self image-based level. This “you” is most likely so much part of your personality, your choices, your profession, your intimacies, your lifestyle, your spirituality, your relationship to money, that you don’t know who you are beyond this version of yourself.

This “you” is given all the support of societal and social conditioning. It is groomed in an educational system that emphasizes achievement and conformity. It is nurtured in a family culture that expects obligation, duty, sacrifice, and withholding of truth. It is initiated into spiritual and religious systems that promise salvation and eventual enlightenment, promote transcendence, pledge allegiance to middlemen priests and gurus, and continue to support that truly intimate and personal connection experiences with God/Oneness/Source are not possible. This “you” is encouraged to enter into romantic relationships that allow for security and comfort in the long term over aliveness and intimacy that arises only from moment to moment.

We call this version of us a “daemon”, which was a term used by Socrates initially and many others over time to describe the inner guiding voice and presence that comes through during moments of need and urgency. Others, including some major religions, describe this as a guardian angel or the holy spirit. New Age spirituality has become more fascinated and drawn to angel work and connecting with our spirit guides. I don’t know if the primary daemon that I’ve experienced in myself and others is just one of many spirit guides (which maybe all will eventually need to communicate and heal with us) or if we are only assigned one or if all of us are even given a daemon to watch after us. Some teachers, including Socrates, have suggested that those souls who have incarnated with a sense of purpose, leading a spiritual offering or teaching, would be given the “help” of a daemon to follow what they’ve signed up to do in this lifetime.

It seems that somewhere along the way, as human consciousness developed and yet we become more and more separated from God, each other, our planet, and animals, our daemons were forced to become overly invested in our journey and our lives. As they became overly invested, they began to feel more and more separate from Divine Source and more involved in human struggles, pain, and emotional wounding.

The daemon itself started to carry a legacy of pain that moved forward with every incarnation and with every human that it was assigned by the Divine to incarnate with. The daemons have become fairly helpless to assist us in our human emotional pain and wounding, in addition to being unable to heal their own pain, feelings of isolation and abandonment, and often violent and tortuous experiences from past lives. They are torn between their own needs getting met (for the first time even realizing that they have needs!) and their “mission” from the mysterious Divine (which they feel disconnected from) to meet the needs of the human they’ve been assigned to protect.

It seems now (which I have discovered through the exploration of a years-long relationship with  my daemon who calls himself, “Sebastian”,) that they need us. They need us to connect with them, to feel them, help them heal, and to trust life is safe enough for them to share with us the past life experiences and legacy that they have carried. They need the human heart and its capacity for compassion and love. They need to feel us holding and healing our own human emotional pain and young childhood aspects of ourselves that are hurting. They need to feel that there is a centered us there that can respond to them, be in practical daily life as a sacred practice, and connect with the Divine in a grounded and intimate way without turning it into a belief system, paradigm, or fundamentalist religion. They need to feel the invitation to rest and surrender that the Divine is offering to them and can only seem to accept this if they feel us getting what we need and if we are actively negotiating with them.

There seems to be an expression of the daemon that interfaces with daily life, practical concerns, and particularly with family members- an expression that we feel is what is called, “Ego” or “Self Image driven personality.” This expression of the daemon is sometimes so prevalent that the “soul expression” aspect of it has been almost completely buried and covered over. Or, the soul expression has formed into a spiritually identified person perhaps lacking balance in navigating practical life and intimate relationships. In our work with people, we respond to whatever expression comes forward, and guide you in feeling and communicating with this daemon aspect of yourself (along with any other parts that come up.)

Over time, you’ll become more fluid and comfortable with this communication and a relationship based on mutual respect and negotiated needs develops between you and this beloved guardian aspect of your being. We help to identify the expression of your sacred self from the expression of your daemon and its defensive reactions. We discover and uncover with you why it has developed the strategies and coping mechanisms that it has; we’ll listen to the past life stories that it becomes increasingly more trusting to share with you and with us. The primary ground of the relationship is between you and you; we are here to support, guide, and model for you along the way.

You are sovereignly in charge of your own process, even as there may be moments where we challenge you and your daemon to feel something difficult, painful, and invite you into deeper levels of surrender to God/Oneness/Divine Mother. You will be offered choice points along the way that invite you to feel into all aspects of your life, including your personal and family relationships. This invitation is from the Divine and can be accepted, negotiated, or rejected.

The deepening of this relationship with you and daemon can lead to profound changes in your life- in an internal way that opens up inside of you, yet also externally related to your professional and career choices, family and personal relationships, habits and coping mechanism, and even your physical appearance. The depth and level of change is up to you (and your daemon), yet the amount of transformation seems to be limitless, and also paced at a rate that you can move through without overly suffering.

The “you” that is currently, mostly subconsciously, at the helm of your life may be ready for this kind of change; for life to become more in flow and less resistive. May be ready for the love that flows in abundance and the alive and joyful frequencies that are possible in any moment. May be ready to connect deeply and intimately with the Divine in both feminine and masculine frequencies.

How do you write from stillness? From stillness that asks you to communicate nothing; that requests nothing of you; that is indefinable? How do you write about nothing and the invitation of the ever arising moment that is both nothing and everything? How do you write about the invitation to be and not to do?

The words I’ve written in the past (many which are no longer published) have tried: the effort was in every syllable and every sentence. The effort was in the collaboration of them into a book form; the effort was in needing others’ to read them in order for them to feel real; the effort was in the need to inspire and to influence without being fully authentic to how I was really feeling about the people I was serving.

How do you write of process without the alluring promise of attainment and enlightenment? How do you write of the process that is being with the feminine aspect of God in the moment where the future is unknown and the past is being asked to be let go of? And beyond writing about it, how do you offer this process to others as it is; as it is a state of being and not doing? There is nothing to attain here; nothing to gain as an achievement. How do you offer something that promises nothing and yet asks for so much to be given up? How do you offer the divine feminine aspect of God to a world which is so dominated by patriarchal male god frequencies?

These have all been pressing questions for me. Yet, lately, the question for me is deeply personal: What is BEING with her? This is new, it feels like, being with this question in a way that is not about doing anything, defining anything, making a paradigm out of anything, needing to prove anything or give up anything, teach others anything, or attain anything.

She is made of veils; She is mystery. Her face is shifting, arising, and familiar all at the same time. I can’t stand in absolute truth behind what I’ve written before about Her in the past. I can’t state definitely that she appears only in four faces and which of those faces is associated with which season. She will not be paradigmed or systemized; this is all I can seem to know about Her. She is like ash slipping through any fingers that try to contain or hold Her.

I thought I was to light incense; I was to pray; I was to learn and receive and give “Reiki”; I was to write about Her and how to be with Her and Her four faces; I was to hold circles and “workshops”; and I was to hold other people in this process too. As much as I resisted a paradigm, I felt pressured and compelled to make one out of her. I have no desire for doing any of that in the same way. I cannot find or experience her in any of those things or in any doing other than responding in the moment to what is offered without needing to carry out a ritual or to wrap my experience of Her into a mental bubble of understanding.

I cannot define anything beyond calling it, “love” that She is holding the possibility for in every single moment. A “love” that is organic, natural, real, and not as separate as it once felt to me to be. A “love” that moves between the wondrous man called Wayne who has linked his life and journey with mine. I feel her hold the container for the exploration of this love in every moment.

As I let go of understanding and defining her, I have surprisingly begun feeling her lately in people drawn to our meaningful connections group. Her essence flows in their association with Her, in their past experiences in other lifetimes, in their religious conditioning. I felt her in the tender relationship of a young girl part raised Catholic living inside of a vibrantly intuitive and spiritual woman. I felt her in the powerful energetic frequencies of a sensitive and beautiful man. I felt her catalytic force rumbling possibility through the defended layers of a marriage. And, I feel her in the steady invitation to Wayne and me to transparently lead with our hearts open, our boundaries set, and our desires flowing.

She is the canvas that holds the picture of life and the womb out of which life is created. I accept her without a name or a story or a creed or a cult or a gospel or a paradigm. I accept her as a feeling, as a deeply personal experience, as related to intimately by every soul whether they are conscious of it or not. I accept Her as the invitation to love.

There are many practices and teachings which offer a model of identifying parts of ourselves in order to gain space from our reactions, to heal deep emotional wounds, and to build a centered adult part of ourselves. We have personally and professionally experienced the gift of self love that engaging with this type of work can bring.

We are not currently affiliated with a specific teacher, paradigm, or practice as it seems to be the phase of us offering our gifts from our own autonomous hearts and from our passion for the healing power  that intimacy with self/others/God offers people. However, what has remained from our years of dedicated self-to-self practice in which we paid a facilitator to hold this space for us and in which we received multiple years of training and practice in offering this work to others, is a core belief in the experiential reality of “parts” inside of people.

Each part inside of someone is a different age and has clear likes and dislikes, preferences, values, hurts and wounds, fears, and desires. There seems to be a core young part, popularly referred to as “the inner child,” which is a young version of us that is often stuck in immature (yet reasonable considering their age!) reactions, victim feelings, strong hurts, and sometimes deep attachments. There is an older part, the crone or male equivalent, which is negotiating life from often a cynical yet wise perspective, world weary and tired, eager to teach and be heard. There is a guardian part of us, sometimes judging of others and self, always protective and eager to keep us safe. There is a higher self, the seat of our soul, holding our connection to the Divine, our soul struggle, and the reason we are here. We call this our “Daemon” or divine guide- a name that Socrates gave to his inner voice of guidance. There can be many others which ,again, are often at cross purposes from each other with different goals, desires, and fears.

In the identification and negotiation process, you would begin a journaling dialogue with a part, which is then shared with us in (typically) a paid session where this part’s needs are met if possible, their desires, fears, preferences, and pains are felt. It’s about tenderly getting to know a part of you and differentiating that from what you’ve been previously assuming is “you”. The results of this process are a growing adult center of yourself that embodies reasonable reactions, a sense of peace, joy, goodness, connection to the Divine, capacity to inhabit intimate relationships with others, and, if reactions do come up, a means for which to navigate your emotions.

Your growing adult center embodies your actual age, is emotionally mature, and living from your soul bigness, expressing from your seat of humanity and healthy gender expression. The younger (and older) parts integrate into this center, their frequencies not being lost but rather flowing into the personality qualities of the adult center in an integrated way.

We feel this process is an ongoing one with ebbs and flows of intensity and focus depending on where you are at in your current life phase. In the beginning of this work, the feelings and reactions from the initial parts that come up and make themselves known can be very strong, disorienting, and even quite resistant to the process. Or the beginning phase can feel like a beautiful honeymoon of self discovery and deepening self love. This self to self intimacy is what allows and draws a deep and loving intimacy with others. It is what draws us external circumstances, including passion work, that reflects this love for ourselves.

The parts identification process is a powerful and beautiful one that we feel honoured to offer to others and with ourselves. Through multiple years of engaging with this process, we both now communicate and negotiate with one main guardian part of ourselves (the daemon). Rather than experiencing young part reactions or deep emotional states that are unexplainable or just feeling numb most of the time, communication with this one core part seems to move most reactions and open up our hearts to ourselves, others, and in our relationship.

There doesn’t seem to be a state of attainment with this work, yet rather a deepening sense of the core goodness of yourself and of life itself. And rather than create a fractured person, it produces an integrated and holistic person able to navigate practical life, emotional reactions, intimacies with self and others, and experience a personal and deepening relationship with the Divine.

So, it’s here….2012. The year that prophecies and predictions, both modern and ancient, claim will cumulate with a world vastly transformed from the one that we live in now. During 2011, this transformation was already in process with widespread outbreaks of protests, governmental upheavals, devastating weather events, social unrest, and economic collapse. Many feel that this will continue, escalate, and accelerate during 2012; leading not to the destruction of the planet or literal end of the world, but still to a significant change of it.

Cycles in nature are seasons of birth, death, rebirth, and arising from the ashes. This process of birth-death-rebirth are woven into the fabric of our species; an imprint from the Divine in our DNA. Over and over again in our human history, the civilizations we have built, the beliefs we’ve attached to, that which has given our lives meaning, has been taken away, forcing us to let go.

We feel that surviving this current cycle of change is about feeling that which you are being asked to let go of, seeking intimacy and meaningful connections with yourself/others/the Divine, and surrendering to this overall process of birth-death-rebirth. There is no real way to prepare for this kind of change; there is only seeking the heart and grace for which to respond to it.

We are a society out of balance with more emphasis on our masculine expressions of achievement, doing and image-based progress, and action. Coming back in balance with our feminine expressions of heart and being-based leadership, compassion, connection to each other and our earth is a transformational process, experienced not without growing pains, loss, and the letting go of what isn’t working for us anymore.

Hate, fear, and greed have been the signatures of this “iron age” and the golden age feels to offer us the opportunity to heal these shadow aspects of our human nature. There is much hope and love in this offering, even as there will be loss and pain in the process.

This is the first part of a four part series about the 2012 Mayan/Inca/Aztec prophecies and what they offer about this process:

War on Syria has been in prep for months and is starting immediately. This piece is from RT, the female interviewer and guest are refreshing.

Where Next For Occupy? This is the latest inspiring and wise blog post from Charles Eisenstein about the Occupy Movement’s evolution. Charles’ book ‘The Ascent of Humanity’ really helped me locate myself in seeing humanity’s draw to religions and spirituality of all kinds in his writing about the split between spirit and matter.

The ache for closeness. The ache for family. The ache to be known and connected to. The ache to be seen and visible. The ache to be cherished. The ache to be acknowledged. The ache for a sense of purpose. The ache for romance. The ache for love. The ache for realness. The ache for joy. The ache for celebration. The ache for being in the moment. The ache for rest. The ache for aliveness. 

The ache for intimacy. With ourselves. With others. With God.

This time of year, the holiday season, the season of celebration and gathering; this time of year seems to push up these aches in us in a way that is more poignantly and urgently felt than the rest of the year. We feel pressed to connect, to consider each other, to gift each other with appreciations, to spend time together, and to take space and rest away from our professions and busy daily grinds. We feel called to seek and search for a connective sense of God, a higher source, the Divine. We feel called to honor in contemplation and in joyous song whatever our sense is of God.

The tension of this season of ache comes when these desires, which have been mostly suppressed the rest of the year (which is the reason they are experienced as aches), are unable to be met and fulfilled due to defenses, fear, and stuck places in the intimacy ground of our relationships with ourselves, others, and the Divine. These built-up clogged places block our desires from fully dancing, moving, and flowing. Plus, the pressure of conforming to expectations, confronting the back pressure built up from the clogged relationships, and experiencing the compartments that we have created between each other and inside ourselves gets in the way of love’s flow and, ultimately, can leaves us quite frustrated.

Ask most people and, in their vulnerable and open moments, they will admit that they are left disappointed and frustrated by the holiday season. They may attribute it to the stress of finding gifts for people, to worry over spending too much money, to dramas of their extended family, and to the busy pace of the holidays. And, yes, these are contributing factors.

Yet, also, there is the unspoken angst that the deep ache that they had to connect, to be in joy, to feel intimacy with their family and themselves and God….there is the deep pain and frustration that this ache did not get met. That even with all the effort, shopping, and visiting, they were unable to get these deep needs answered in an effortless dance of love, joy, connection, and realness. This is particularly hard on our defenses, who are tasked with suppressing our desires most of the time and so are deeply disappointed when their rest in vigilance is not rewarded with us receiving what we most passionately want.

Ache is desire that has been suppressed and wants to come up and be felt and given room. The holidays bring up a poignant call as they are accepted by the mass consciousness, yet, these aches are always there and are part of the hurting part in us that feels “fallen out” of grace and love with the Divine, and therefore essentially unworthy to feel and have desires. This part of us feels estranged, lonely, and separate from others/itself/God even as it aches for closeness and intimacy.

Perhaps during the busyness of this holiday season, you might take a moment to feel your own ache for connection and desire. To feel this part in you that is aching to feel held and loved again, enfolded in the arms of the Divine. And, in whatever way you choose to connect and celebrate your relationship with the Divine, that you would ask the Divine Mother especially to gift you with a sense of your own qualification with Her, for an acceptance of your desires (even if they can’t all be met right now), to feel a trust in Her grace of timing, synchronicity, and alchemy, and ask Her help to surrender the outcomes of your desires to Her.

In this growing vulnerability and more room to feel your own desires, you’ll discover the true gift of the holidays and the authentic joy of this, and all, seasons!

What is it that draws us to another person romantically?

Attraction and body chemistry?

Value resonance about the domains of life that are most important: spirituality, family/friendships, professional passion expression, money, etc?

Friendship and companionship?

Soul resonance and perhaps past life history;  the couple is drawn to each other to complete a sacred contract from the past?

These all may be the more conscious factors that draw two people together to explore their “usness”- the third alchemical energy that is created when two souls come together in relationship.

The more unconscious factors (and often deeply buried reasons) that draw two people together can be childhood wounding resonances and parental projections/imprints (the other person energetically and emotionally “matches” the parent of the other for which there is a hook up/need to heal from past wounding); mutual need for safety/predictability and fear of being alone; and unspoken agreement that neither partner will change the dynamic of the usness.

Often people are drawn together because of the mirror that they see in the other- the potential to feel and see themselves more clearly and at more depth due to being in relationship. And others are drawn to mates who seem to be the opposite of them- this too can be felt to be an opportunity for them to experience themselves in contrast to their mate. There may be limits to the depth that is possible from this relationship, however, because a relationship based on contrast may just have too many non-resonant feelings, values, experiences, motivations, and desires to really sustain lasting love.

Our defenses seem to be most afraid for us to draw a relationship with a mate that would mirror to us how qualified we are, how big we are, and that we are beloved children of our Divine parents. If we embodied our own bigness in this way, we risk drawing to ourselves risky, challenging, and even harmful experiences. We risk losing that love someday and potentially facing great pain which our defenses would like to help us avoid. And so, our defensive protectors prefer for us to settle into safety, into security, and often into a silent agreement between partners that neither will change nor grow too much so that the bond would have to change too.

Journaling with our defenses and healing childhood wounding/parental imprints can help us to feel the unconscious reasons that we are in a relationship, especially one that seems more toxic than healthy or is resulting in a looping pattern of suffering and push/pull.

I engaged for years in a self-to-self healing process with an outside person to facilitate this process to uncover these reasons in myself that were keeping me drawn to relationships that caused more suffering and reflecting my lack of self worth. People around me could so easily see that I deserved more and to be with men who really wanted me physically and emotionally, yet I continued to be compelled (it seemed beyond my control!) to be with men who struggled to want me after an initially intense mutual desire and attraction. Through my own internal discoveries and being felt by my facilitator, I felt how this pattern was a reflection of my childhood experience in which I had been abandoned by my birth father and later two step-fathers. My defenses/ego/guardian part were providing me with more of the same experience (men who couldn’t commit) because it was known and less risky and because I needed to heal this wounding in myself. Going through this pattern and connecting with my defenses around it and advocating that I was ready and wanting a committed relationship with a man who really wanted me was what I feel led me to draw my soul mate in Wayne.

Additionally this push-pull pattern with previous relationships also reflected my push-pull relationship with the “male God” and my soul’s history with patriarchal religions and wounding from persecutions. I was able to feel the dual applications of this life wounding from my childhood and soul wounding from multiple lifetimes. This dual application allowed my defenses to rest even more and allow the relationship with Wayne, our usness, to offer healing to me.

Powerful questions to ask yourself if you find yourself drawn to a relationship that isn’t as nourishing as you want can be: What is good about the “bad” things in this relationship? How is my partner similar to my mother? My father? How is a pattern of suffering in relationship familiar and, therefore, safe? Why are you (my defenses) helping me to draw this relationship rather than helping me to draw one that will nourish me? This last question is essentially: What are you afraid will happen if I draw a truly nourishing relationship?

The sacredness of relationship is the mirroring potential that it offers us to deepen our intimacy with ourselves and others, develop our strengths, and heal our wounds.

We are living in MOST interesting times, and yet it doesn’t feel like it most of the time. By nature, we don’t want change to come at us unmanageably, We want life to remain mostly constant even if that constant is a less than pleasant or even crappy.

Why is it we fear change so much? Could it be that just the very reality of being human is a much more vulnerable thing than we’ve been given space to feel? Is it possible that we use everything from bravado to depression as a means to not feel this vulnerability? Being human, I feel, is about hunger and desire, and the negotiation with ourselves as to how much desire we will inhabit and how much we will suppress. In other words, how dead or alive we will let ourselves be in life.

I’m sharing the links below while feeling the masses (by far the majority) of people who are disinclined to take in the world changes unfolding right in plain sight. I can only say that I share some of the disbelief that our culture is so entrenched in. The change doesn’t seem real in a profound way, particularly for those of us living still living in plenty.

And my overall sense is not alarm, but a deeper sense that something needs to and must die. Though that’s painful, it is deeply meaningful, and guides us all back to what is truest about us.

Prosecuting Wall Street, Part 1 Two high-ranking financial whistleblowers say they tried to warn their superiors about defective and even fraudulent mortgages. So why haven’t the companies or their executives been prosecuted? 60 Minutes.

Post carbon video – last 200 years overview. The next 10 Years will be very unlike the last 10 years

In one of the last facilitation sessions I attended over three years ago through the previous spiritual/emotional healing group that I was deeply involved in, my facilitator offered (in quite an accusatory and judgmental tone that was her standard one toward most of us) that I was in the group because of the social needs that it fulfilled in me, not because I was truly serious and dedicated to attaining emotional enlightenment.

I resisted this reflection initially, arguing that I had surrendered to the group for close to five years, spent thousands of dollars on training and healing sessions; and had been devotedly focused on my enlightenment process, healing my emotional wounds, and becoming as authentic as possible. Although I could also admit to myself (even if not to my facilitator at the time) that what I really got nourishment from was the friendships I had formed through the group, the deepening sense of belonging to my “soul family”, and the anticipation of the next social seminar and weekend events led by my former teacher.

I had few friends in my college-prep high school in California. I was an overweight, acne-prone, rebellious (I changed my hair color every few months and only wore black for years), and yet very sensitive, shy, and creative teenager. The friendships and relationships I did have were intense, intimate, and often blew up with both of us moving on to others. I experienced in the couple of years I attended college that I had a kind of uneasy popularity- based primarily on my partying capacities and my intensity. I met my future husband there and we had our daughter when I was only 22. My twenties were spent going through phases of jobs where I was underpaid, under-appreciated, overworked, and at the same time trying to raise a daughter when my relationship with my own mother had been a conflicted and unhappy one.

I wanted to feel like I belonged somewhere and I did for a time feel that in my first marriage and in my career pursuits, even as I could sense that I wasn’t expressing the full range of my passion, intuition, soul gifts, and creative abilities. I was divorced before the age of 30 and a few years later found myself drawn to the spiritual/emotional healing group that would offer the soul family atmosphere where I could express my soul bigness (within the container of the group and limited by the paradigm values enforced by the leader) that I had always longed for.

After I was given an ultimatum by my facilitator and the group’s leader that was unacceptable to me, it seemed the best choice was to leave the group and all the friendships I had through my association with it. This decision felt devastating and had a traumatic impact on me for a long time. And, as it turned out, what I missed the most about being in the group was the social aspects of it, the sense of belonging to something, being able to have someone else define and enforce my values (some of which were resonant with me and some of which I conformed to) and the cushion of being in a community – even if the community was based around not being in one.

After leaving, my own emotional and spiritual growth process (which I no longer associated with achieving enlightenment- emotional or otherwise) deepened because life became so quiet, so reflective, so bare bones, and uncompromising. There was no group to conform to, no teacher to please, no rules to break, no social standard to uphold, no truth to withhold out of fear of retribution. In this, Wayne and I answered only to each other and our relationship and our “usness” thrived and deepened under this freedom from others’ expectations and social conformity. In this, I heard and felt the voice and energy of the Divine for the first time without outer validation (other than Wayne’s mirroring journey with mine) and experienced Her  in powerful and very intimate ways that required no one else to facilitate them – a new and empowering experience for my soul.

In the last three years since leaving this group, I have become acutely aware of the pressure and also the appeal of spiritual groups (especially fundamentalist, religious ones) being used to fulfill social needs. Our current culture is mostly a superficial, achievement-based one with emphasis placed on a positive self image as reflected by how others think and feel about us. Our worth is measured by the quantity of our relationships rather than the quality of our intimacies. An obvious example of this is the need to track how many “friends” people have on Facebook or how many followers on twitter. Most people seem, in fact, to avoid intimacy in their relationships and instead develop a persona (with their defenses’ help) who can maximize their ability to fit in and conform to others. Most people’s defenses (as I could feel in my own once I left the group) are afraid to be alone; avoid being in an intimacy that really exposes and challenges them; resist completing unhealthy relationships; cannot dare to risk being controversial or go against the prevalent culture (whatever that may be- even the alternative ones); and refuse to set boundaries with others, esp. if there is a chance of offending them and being rejected.

Living now in a way that neither requires nor elicits suppression, conforming, or withholding has given me an intimate sense of myself and the voice of my higher guidance that has created a profound sense of self acceptance and self love inside of me- whether I am painting, cleaning the house, writing, being intimate with Wayne, or offering healing space to others. I cannot advocate enough for how profoundly this changes the sense of oneself and our experience of the Divine- much more profoundly than hours of meditation, prayer, doing yoga, memorizing paradigm premises or passages, attending group healing circles or having peak spiritual experiences during seminars and retreats. Or, at least, this is what it has offered me.

I recently experienced a difficult phoenix/change cycle related to others where a deeper layer of wounding inside of me was still trying to please, overly holding other people, and giving more than I was getting with both clients and in friendships. This created feelings of frustration, resentment, and passive aggressiveness in me at times. Even though I had learned a lot from my experience in the group, I needed another round of getting the need for setting boundaries with others, taking space from relationships when it is necessary, claiming the relationship with myself first, and yet still being open to see what could arise between us with this new criteria in the future. This recent experience has left me even more clear that I cannot sacrifice quality for quantity in the relationships in my life; that I want to offer healing and guidance to others in a receptive and responsive way not outbound, overly marketing way on Facebook or other social networking sites. I desire to be open and not withholding my instinctual and intuitive reactions just to hold on to a relationship, keep a client, or to not hurt someone else’s feelings.

In this uncompromising place that still yearns for connection with others, Wayne and I began our meaningful connections group exploring connection beyond social circle, shared activity and interest, and with the desire for intimacy that invites vulnerability, truth, and even conflict with and from others. Our experience with those who have  been drawn to the group and to us has seemed a beautiful miracle so far, a blessed one and a confirmation of the trusting way that we went into offering it. And, a confirmation to me that if I continue to hold what I most deeply want, it will come to me, just not necessarily in the way, shape, and form that I originally expected it to.