It Was The Water, Not The Soil: The Benevolence of Receptivity

Thinking on my last blog, and how it touched on the topic of loving people the way they need it in order to build connection, understanding, and intimacy... in this blog I want to touch on the opposite side of the issue: receiving. And this is for you and all people in your life who are struggling to have their needs for love, care, and connection met at this point in time even when it seems we are all trying our hardest.

Even when people give us love in forms we are not most apt to receive them, there is a love inherent in knowing that they are trying to love us the way they best know how. Knowing that they are doing their best in this way leads to instant reception of love in the form of forgiveness, appreciation, and humble acceptance. 

This doesn't dismiss your deeper needs in how you best receive love, and this isn't a critical voice saying, "You're just not receptive enough to other's love, so be grateful." It's simply acknowledging the benevolence and understanding that others mean well, even if they cannot deliver perfectly. It is forgiveness in the form of understanding that they are doing their best to accommodate you when you have walked into the "store of their heart" for something they either don't carry yet, or are still waiting to stock. Perhaps the manager is just tending to other things momentarily.

When expect people to be anywhere other than where they are, and other people expect you to be somewhere you're not, each of us walks away from the "stores" of each others hearts disappointed. But, if we can build the understanding that the attempt to supply and help with what is available in that "store" is in fact an effort of love, we can accept their generosity even if it is not what we technically need.

So many people end up disappointed that others cannot provide what they need either because of where they are in their life, or who they inherently are as a person. They walk away from the store disappointed that it does not carry what they want, when they either need to make do with what that person's heart store supplies, learn how to order something for their own supply, or visit another's "heart store". (I know it's a little strange to refer to hearts as stores since it involves "money" and "transaction"... but instead, think of it as a kind of store where love is the currency, and needs are the items, and everything is given and accepted freely.)

There is a patient acceptance, and reception of the love that is available to you, when you accept people for where they are and what their "heart store" carries. It's ok to feel upset or angry that they don't carry that thing, or don't carry it yet... especially if these are people you are close to, love, and care about! It's natural, especially if you feel that you carry that item in your own "heart store". Don't suppress your emotions, and instead seek to understand them as signals to understand yourself more deeply. But if you can embrace emotional patience through the recognition of love, care, and support in the ways their heart store can provide it, you will sense the emotion behind the action. And that alone leads to a deep receptivity and appreciation of their love and care in ways that were previously inaccessible to you. There is also always the patience that they may grow to carry that item within their "heart store" as well.

This reception becomes like the moistness of the soil that allows nutrients to come up through our roots. It is not the nutrition itself, but awakens the ability for absorption. And so, it was the water, not the soil.

Understanding: Love As A Felt Answer

I once got into an argument with a family member about the topic of understanding. This family member had a sister who was gay. Their mother had a very hard time accepting this as a reality of the sister. She couldn't accept it, because she couldn't understand it. One day, the mother decided to come into the sister's space, and take down her posters that were homosexually oriented, throw away her things, etc. Having had enough of the torment, the sister finally stood up to the mother. She stood up for herself. And, the mother, still not understanding, but wanting to maintain connection with her daughter, finally let well enough alone.

As we discussed the idea of understanding, my family member came to the conclusion that you don't need to understand someone to connect with them. This may be true on a more physical and intellectual level... we can talk to people we don't understand and therefore maintain what we think of as "connection", or we can live in the same space as someone and on a physical level maintain what we think of as "connection"... but in a way, I posed the idea to this family member that this was not true connection. To some degree, sure... we are sharing space, perhaps intellectually, mentally, physically... but, sometimes we forget that the heart of connection is emotional. Connection that is not based in understanding is transactional.

When we cannot understand something, we are not emotionally connected with that thing. We cannot perceive it as part of ourselves, or how we're the same as that thing. That thing which we do not understand we cannot take into us as a part of ourselves. In order to truly love someone or something, we must acknowledge that person or thing as something within us. What does this mean? If we take something as a part of ourselves, we must first be connected to do that. That connection is understanding. Connection, and therefore love, is to take it within us to caretake, nurture, hold space for, and understand.

We have sometimes a vast misunderstanding of the nature of love in our world. People are raised with different familial, social, and cultural beliefs that give rise to our "concept" of love. Often times, these concepts of love are abstract in nature and we forget the feeling love. We hear all the time that love is an answer, but we often forget it is a felt answer.

Emotions and healing are like water, and the nature of love should flow similarly as a felt experience. The resolution to all our difficulties in life occurs on a feeling level. When we heal, so does the world around us. Our connections, relationships, finances, sex, everything. And when others around us heal, it brings us both into a state of understanding and love that is a felt answer.

In this way, our individual experiences in our early lives also inform the ways in which we can feel and receive love from others, as well as our own abilities to give love. But because we have this idea of what love is, and "love" is such a general word meaning different things to different people, we have the potential to project our ideas of love onto others. What does this mean?

We have forgotten the meaning of true love. True love as a felt answer and experience.

We need to learn that connection is the condition of love. And that a huge part of that connection is understanding. It is the kind of understanding that fosters compassion.

If we love a fish, we may try to love that fish by hugging them. But what happens? The fish dies without water! We felt love for the fish, but we could not perceive that the reality of the fish is that hugging it can kill it. We would need to understand that fish and it's individual needs to make it feel loved the way it needs to feel loved.

Parents at times can traumatize children, unintentionally, this way. Children are unique, individual beings with their own goals, desires, needs, wants, etc. But when parents project their ideas of love onto them, they know their parents love them, but they become really confused why they can't actually feel that love. Or why they grow up with a feeling of emotional starvation. We can know people love us, but the deep knowledge that people love us comes from our ability to feel and perceive that love. Whether this disconnection was on a minor level (such as a simple misperception by the parent of a child's needs) or major level (deliberate abuse or neglect of a child's needs), so many of us grow up with the shame that we cannot receive love in the ways it mattered for us. We perhaps even adopted the idea that because we could not receive it, we were not worthy of it.

We cannot perceive that love, attachment, care, and connection from others in our lives because we have not felt worthy enough within ourselves to be loved in such a way to actually see that others are attached to and care about us. If we believe we aren't worthy of love, happiness, belonging, care, and connection... we won't be able to receive it even when it's present because we cannot see it as true. Because of this, we also cannot caretake our connections with others. Our inherent disconnect with ourselves mirrors onto our disconnect with other people and our struggle to understand their own emotion spaces give to them the ways they need it.

To receive love, ask others to help you on your journey as perceiving yourself as valuable and worthy of happiness, care, and connection. Know your needs, and allow yourself and others to caretake and love them as such.

To love someone, become an expert on their needs, their personal individual experiences and being as a whole. Come to understand them, deeply, to connect with them. Connection is not only an aspect of true love, it is the condition of it. We love that which we are connected to, and that connection is a great warmth.

Ask yourself today: What are ways that I can actually feel myself feeling loved by myself or other people, and how do I go about creating this in my life?

And ask yourself today: What are ways that I can actually feel myself feeling love by giving to other people, and how do I go about sharing this in my life?

Sky High: The Air of Independence, It’s Benefits, and It’s Detriments

The empowering philosophy that you can create your own reality, and that you can live happily regardless of your surroundings... are both ideas that can be immensely beneficial. I would say that to an extent, we all need this self-empowered momentum to feel an understanding of the positive states we want in life. When we feel empowered in ourselves, we feel ready to take on the world, able to deal with the stresses in life, more objective, and confident in the steps we take. We begin to understand, "Wow, I really do have the power to influence how I feel and interact in the world because I can be a strong, independent individual." We do not feel powerless to our emotions, and life feels lighter and easier.

It feels amazing to people who've felt helpless, powerless, or anxious to perceive oneself grounded enough to be an individual and positively focusing in an independent atmosphere. You feel the ability to care about yourself more than anyone, and even the ability to stop caring what people think. It is a positive momentum...

...to an extent.

Why do I say this? I can attest to both the benefits and detriments of the positive focused, independent, "everything you need is inside you" philosophy. This is because I can see the very reason anyone is drawn to this philosophy. Anyone who's turned to these empowering philosophies did not have anyone else there to offer them the love, connection, security, and care they so badly needed in their life.... that they decided to become everything for themselves. We felt so helpless and powerless to trusting others, cultivating connection, and finding understanding that we decided the only way we could obtain those things was by becoming empowered enough in ourselves.

This is where positive focus and empowered independence can become a true issue. It feels so good to be empowered, that why would anyone ever look back? Why deal with negative emotion when you can create something better, or just focus better in the situation you're in?

We are human and naturally want to feel good. When a philosophy provides that for us, we can resort to it as a way of being.

Because it feels good, positive focus can convince us that it is the way we should live our life, in every second, every interaction...

It is dangerous in this way, because at some point, positive focus can be used to ignore real issues in your life, real traumas, and go into denial. Taken too far, it can blind us from the traumas we have and truly addressing them. It can blind us from changes we need to make. It can blind us from feelings we need to accept and understand. We mistake positive focus for loving ourselves, when a huge part of loving ourselves is acknowledging the totality of who we are and what we feel.

Because we cannot acknowledge the realities within ourselves, we also don't fully recognize or validate them in others. We become insensitive, because we had to do so with ourselves since no one else was willing to be sensitive or empathetic with us. We lose the ability to see, feel into, and understand other people... desperately wanting it for ourselves on some level, too. Or, we try to obtain connection by becoming people-pleasers, trying to be good so people like us, doing what we've learned was acceptable or right to guarantee connection in any way we can. We abandoned ourselves at some point. Deep down, the person trapped in the "positive focus loop" is really afraid. Afraid of their own emotions, and fear of other people's emotions because we experienced boundary violations whether it was through neglect, enmeshment, withdrawal, or invalidation. We don't trust others with ourselves, and we don't trust ourselves with others because we never could. This causes a huge rift between us and other people. We feel worlds apart from them. It is an epidemic.

What happens? At some point you can focus as positively all you want, but it does not take away from the other realities of who you are. Many people experience a reality crash because of this. Being that so many of us were driven to these philosophies from lack, we still experience the helplessness, powerlessness.... and it is the helplessness and powerlessness of feeling completely alone in our realities. Isolated.

What's more? Since who we are is reflected in our life, we will continue to create these isolating experiences and lack of connection through the people we interact with, the places we live, where we work, etc. It looks like everyone around you having a connection that you don't, even though they may not be deeply connected either. We see the lack of understanding and connection mirrored by people in our reality who are not ready for the depth of it.

You can use positive focus as a means of loving yourself in a way that you can become more embracing to your total self, but some of us continue down the positive focus train without turning back our hand to our wounds. This manifested in my own life by learning how to do everything for myself. Traumas and a lack of secure connection or attachment led to an "air of independence" where I came to rely on myself in many ways that I could not on others. You learn to do almost everything yourself, and because of that... in a very beautiful way, you can change your life. But, at some point you learn that independent self-sufficiency is not the end-goal. You learn that it's important to address your deeper emotions of fear, anger, helplessness, powerlessness, loss, grief... And, as a result, you learn the innate connection between you and other people. You learn that all humans struggle with the same things, and there is a profound compassion for humanity, which includes you.

To give good news, if you are feeling and understanding this rift between you and others, it means you are on the horizon of deeper self-understanding, awakening, and connection with yourself that will soon be mirrored back to you. Right now, you may be looking at the evidence, manifestation, or reflection of your previous self that had not developed this awareness in the people, places, or things which which you interact. The gates of awakening are often suffering. It may be a rocky road as it requires confronting what prevents you from being present with, holding space for, and accepting emotions within yourself and others. And the opposite... trusting others with yourself. But one thing is certain:

Finding your way back to the security and trust of connection will lead to warm acceptance, understanding, fluidity, freedom, inspiration, and many other things.

The time has come for some of us in the self-help movement to stop relying solely on ourselves, positive focus, and self-sufficiency. Although beneficial to an extent, in excess we block ourselves from our deeper feelings, truths, and realities. And it is by allowing these aspects of ourselves to exist, be heard, and understood, that we foster true connection with ourselves and others. When we unite the truths of who we are, we know the answers right for us. We know the changes we need to make. We feel ourselves within others, and others within ourselves. We ultimately do not connect with people over similar interests, styles, or appearances... but because we are able to take them as a part of ourselves and love them as ourselves. Love is beyond reason. Connection is felt, and felt connection involves emotional acceptance and understanding. The time has come not for dependence or independence... but interdependence.

We feel like water when the love has thawed the frozen ice of fear. This is heartfelt connection. This is compassion.

I sense much more on this topic to come.

You Are More Than You Do (The Metaphor of the Seed)

Yesterday, I woke up with a pit in my stomach. As so happens when the demands of daily life are in contradiction to our needs for self-care and reflection during times of transformation. The shame arises, the shame of... I'm a bad worker or student, I'm not doing enough/being enough/working enough. These thoughts can cause us to really feel like we're losing control, and cause great anxiety... even when we're doing just fine. And even if we know everything will turn out ok. But when did this judgement and pressure on ourselves begin?

When we were children, babies, we were entirely helpless to the world and our parents. We are born dependent on our parents for the earliest years of our lives, and would die without them. During this time, we cannot do much of anything. The love we needed was not displaced onto any external things, and nothing was expected of us in order to deserve love. We were just… loved. But, soon enough, the world required us to grow.

I want you to feel with me for a second. Imagine yourself now, all the things you feel in your current life. Then, remember how you felt and perceived the world as a child. Do you remember the softness of it? How malleable, and at times, vulnerable, it was? Think about how many hours there are in a day to experience emotions, how many experiences occur that teach us certain meanings and understandings of the world. Not always good. The emotional distance, although you are living in the same body as that child did, is immense. 

Adults, and parents, often treat children from a place where they cannot truly feel and understand them because of this emotional distance. They cannot vividly recall how the things they say or do feel to children, even when they think they’re doing the right thing. They cannot truly understand, because at some point, they went through the same thing that we do… we are distanced from ourselves by people and external environments telling us what makes us lovable or not lovable, good or bad, right or wrong. We were all babies at one point in our lives. But we become a collection of experiences that inform how we act, and because it is in our nature to want happiness, love, and belonging… the actions we take, and things we try to do are always us trying to obtain happiness, love, belonging, connection, etc. And because the actions we take to try and obtain these feel-good states are informed by our childhood, we learn that there are certain ways to be or act which will get us love.

But true love, of self, of other people transcends this. It is the full acceptance of self, presence with it, and loving care for every aspect, every experience, and every emotion it experiences. It is a great softening to ourselves and others when we experience this type of love. It is a coming back to the state when we were loved because we simply “were", and not because we “did".

Although there are many important branches to explore in this very simple dynamic I have outlined, I want to talk about one specifically.

It is the displacement of our worth onto productivity. 

Being productive takes the places of where our self-worth should be. While actions can indeed build self-worth when they are taken from an authentic feel-good state, since we have learned that only certain things earn us love, our worth becomes displaced by our ability to meet these expectations and thus feel loved. But true self-worth is more like the process of growing a flower. I'm going to quote (or possibly re-quote here) a very important perspective by W. Timothy Gallwey:

"When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as "rootless and stemless." We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, ,we don't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is." 

At all times, we are perfect exactly as we are, as we continue to bloom. And blooming at times is a painful process, blooming always causes us to become aware of new parts of ourselves to understand, transform, and love... often through times of intense transformation. We must recognize ourselves beautiful in the process of blooming itself, allowing it to occur naturally and reach higher levels of love for ourselves and all people. We must love the parts of us that are so afraid, ashamed, hurt, etc. when and how they appear in order to truly allow transformation.

In using the metaphor of the rose, I would ask you to think about nature for a moment. Is a plant judged as right or wrong because of how it grows? Are any things in the natural world bad or wrong because of the way they innately are? Nature just flows, it lives, it moves, it goes after needs, it dies. Animals do not worry about there being water when there isn't, try to make water appear, try to become water themselves... they simply go find it it. Nature doesn't worry about fulfilling needs or taking care of itself in opposition to an outside world, the way we often do with productivity.

1. Listen to yourself truthfully and deeply. Prove yourself that you're there for yourself.

This does not just go for your productivity, but for every aspect of your life. Once you start to prove to yourself that you are willing to listen to your emotions, and what you really need, you prove to yourself that you're there for yourself. Make a commitment to listen to and love yourself no matter what comes up. This can cause anxiety in the beginning, because we often lead busy lives. We are used to abandoning ourselves individually to acquire outside validation and gain other's positive perception of ourselves. And we think, but if I don't then.... Or, but I still have to...

But you must listen to yourself first, and choose to listen to yourself first. You will carry out the energy of the particular activities that "must" be done once you're in a better state anyway, and if they are authentic to what you want to create, do, or make, then they will flow naturally as they feel good to do. Committing to self-love and caring for yourself is not easy. And at times, once people have committed to loving themselves in a true way, and started to feel a true sense of worth, it has required them to make drastic changes in their lives as they start to uncover their own inner light and authenticity. But if you plan to lead a fulfilling life one day, why not begin today? The future is made in the moment.

2. Nourish the seed at every stage of development.

When you begin to listen to yourself, start to give yourself the love you need, and ask others to meet the needs for you that you cannot meet yourself. Many people don't realize that others are as much a part of this process as we are, and relying on other people is something we need to relearn as ok. People rely on and help each other, and being interdependent and accepting of one another is a basic human need. We must not only nourish ourselves, but feel nourished in our connected bonds with others through good and bad times.

What does the part of you calling your attention away from what you've associated with "productivity" really want or need right now? What does this aspect of yourself need to feel loved as it is. Be honest with yourself.

3. Offer true presence with yourself.

If you approach the aspect of yourself that feels it must be or do certain things to feel productive and therefore loved with the attitude "Ok, I'll be present with you until you feel better." you are not truly being present with it. Anytime the phrase "I will be present with you so that....", no matter the end to that sentence, it is not true presence. True presence is developed both out of the willingness to feel your emotions, and the willingness to love them unconditionally, no matter how often or how long they stay.

If your emotion, or part of yourself really needs true presence, but you are only offering it so that you can feel better, you keep yourself stuck. That part can't feel you really being there for it, and thus does not shift, because it knows that it is only doing so with the intention or idea of doing so to "move on and get over with it". We do this to ourselves as well as other people.

It's the same with productivity. You can't truly take a vacation and be stressed the whole time, because some part of you never went on it! In a way, be willing to let yourself relax and need what you need completely. Only then, will you find actual recuperation and make space toward inspired action, and therefore, authentic productivity.

4. Face your shame.

Face the shame of what you believe will be a consequence as a result of doing or not doing a certain thing. Question that shame or guilt, and when the question of "should" comes up, ask yourself "Why should I?"

Be honest with yourself about where this shame comes from, and what exactly you are trying to fill in the void where a sense of innate worth is supposed to be.

5. Practice inspired action.

Practice feeling an inspired energy, which is truly productive, and notice when it differs from the worth you gain by "completing" or "doing" things. I have often said: Authenticity is the reward of loving action. Inauthenticity is action then the award of love. When we do the things we love as a career then it does not feel like "work". It does not require effort and struggle because we innately want to and are inspired to do them.

I hope this blog has lightened life for any of you struggling with these ideas (which so many of us are). Remember, you are love, loved, and loving.