Tell me how you get on.

@Susan Tutt

The intensity brought by events in my life over the last year have quietly eroded my concept of being a strong and compassionate person into insignificant particles that no longer resemble my identity.  The grinding factors have been the loss of a dear friend under traumatic circumstances, grief of a relative’s mental breakdown and working hard without enough counterbalancing play.  

Several days ago a strong wind of awakening swept this dust of identity into space.  It felt immediately freeing as when a burden you’ve been carrying is released and you experience a new found lightness.  I saw the burden that had been my identity clearly – a specific way of viewing the world as ‘unjust’ and of my need to ‘rectify justice’.   No replacement view came in … only a new burst of energy and spaciousness. However, a few particles of this egoic view were still clinging to the crevices in my mind, trying to assert the view of unjustness because it feels empty without having a ‘view’ to hang onto.  

Adyashanti, a modern spiritual teacher, describes the dissolving ego as a deflated balloon.  No air, but still a form which is lifeless, yet waiting to re-engage as the driver of the ‘mind.’ Yesterday, my partner and I had an early morning ego-clash and my balloon re-inflated slightly with some hot air of ‘see how my partner is so uncaring, so why should I care?’  I took this attitude into my re-inflated ego and it gave me an altitude that seemed to view the world as ‘a painful illusion’ that I no longer wanted to inhabit.  My weariness about the world comes from my life-long sensitivity to its pain and its beauty, as well as exposure to strong doses of both throughout my life.

Today, after a sleepless night, I sense that this internal shift of ‘no view’ is scary to the last remnants of ego – and in particular the question arises ‘if I lose my ego, how will my life change and will I lose that which I love (especially my partner)?’  As I asked the question, my body relaxed because it was no longer a hidden fear, but out in the open for me to see it as only a question and not a definitive view. 

I’ve been losing my egoic ‘sense of ambition’ for many years now.  It has been gradually replaced by faith in life’s unfoldment – a type of knowing where the egoic will has taken a back seat.  But when the ego isn’t shouting instructions from the back seat, who will be in charge?  That is the question that lurks in the shadows – but I answer back ‘a divine force that you’ve been waiting for so you don’t have to do all the work anymore.’  I sense a ‘sigh’ from the dark and a movement that feels akin to seeing a flicker from the corner of my ‘I’. 

As the nights draw in and we’re back on daylight saving time, we’re making our descent into darkness. For many of us, this is where SAD rears it’s head. We have various scientific explanations as to the cause of this from lower levels of light reaching the cornea, to lower levels of vitamin d. We try to fix it with our typical strategy of trying to escape the darkness by forcibly lighting it up- we have massive daylight lamps and sunrise clocks, all which do help. Anything to avoid the darkness which terrifies us from seeping into our bones. 

We are terrified by darkness in all its forms-  winter, night, difficult situations which happen in our lives, our shadow- all the things we push down and refuse to face. Our shadow tends to raise its head in darkness, another reason why we can feel worse over Autumn and Winter! 

But what if there is another way? A way which involves surrender to the darkness rather than resistance? A way which teaches you to welcome the darkness, to love it and find comfort in it. We mostly are able to appreciate a blanket of snow for how it changes our world- turning everything white, muffling the noise into a beautiful soothing silence- and we make the most of it, going out doing activities that we can’t usually like sledging, making snowmen and having snowball fights. We mostly are able to surrender to a snowy day and accept its presence and a different way of being in the world- we put our life on hold a bit and embrace the new world. That is unless it gets in the way of our hurtling through life, of getting things done, interrupting any plans we may have had and we have resistance to the great hamster wheel of life being brought to a halt. 

In a way, this is what we need to learn to do with darkness. To embrace it and make the most of the opportunities it affords us because although it might get in the way of everyday life or how we want life to be, darkness is holy and sacred and where alchemy happens and it holds as much magic as a snowy day. We need to learn to drape ourselves in that inky black blanket, which softens and smooths out any edges and muffles the noisy world that we live in, and snuggle in it.

Darkness and this time of year is like returning to the womb. Or the cocoon where the caterpillar transforms into the butterfly. Back to rest in darkness, grow and to transform, only to be born anew. It is coming back down to earth just like the leaves do when they fall from the trees, deep down into the soil, sinking down into your roots to nourish them.  This is a fertile time to plant your dream seeds for them to grow when the conditions are right, when the seasons of your life can support the growth of the seeds so they bear fruit later in the year. It’s coming back home to yourself, turning your focus inwards, turning your energy back towards yourself to conserve and renew your precious resources just like a bear hibernating in a cave. It’s a fallow time to rest and restore just like nature does over the winter months. Nature does not bloom all year long so why do we place that linear expectation on ourselves as cyclical beings? This is why many of us struggle because we have the expectation to be the same as we are in summer. 

Let the darkness find its way into your bones, let it seep into all your cells, drink it in like a thirsty nomad wandering the desert and you’ll grow eyes which can see in the dark. With these new seeing eyes, you’ll find a beautiful light in the empty darkness , which lights you up and fills and completes you, like the full moon in the night sky. 

And you’ll find you don’t need that SAD lamp anymore. 

@Susan Tutt

Also appears on California Spiritual Therapy.

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Intuition can seem vague until we define it.  It can seem abstract until we give it a name, meaning, and story.  The intention behind this post is to help you start defining your intuitive experiences by attributing meaning to them so that you can trust yourself more.  The end goal is for you to strengthen your intuitive GPS. 

It is important to define and describe our intuitive feelings because when we give them a story, we can better understand what they are trying to tell us.  When we apply specific details to our gut hunches, we are making them more understandable to ourselves.  When we take intuition out of the realm of abstraction and into the concrete, we are more likely to trust the messages that are coming through.  When we pause to validate our intuitive impressions in moment we receive them instead of brushing them aside, we make them more believable to ourselves.  Of course, there are many ways to do this.  Today, I want to focus on using mental imagery to increase trust in intuition.

Using Mental Imagery to Build Trust in your Intuition
When you know something but you do not know how you know it, you may have a lot of feelings coming up.  For example, it may feel hard to explain yourself to others because you are the only one experiencing this intuitive experience in your head.  For example, you may have a feeling that it would be better to host your cousin’s party on Sunday instead of Thursday, but you do not have a concrete reason as to why.  Sunday just feels right.  How do you approach situations like this one where you have a really strong gut feeling but you are without an explanation that others can understand?  What if you tried this…  Instead of trying to explain or justify your gut feeling to others, what if you instead focused on the gut feelings you are having for a brief moment to explore what they have to say?

Asking your Intuition for more Information:
Here is an exercise I use with clients. 

Gently closing your eyes and allowing any excess energy to feather off of you as you center into the calm stillness of the immediate present.  Breathing in and out softly.

Finding a sense of grounding so that you have a way to release any excess energy down to the center of the earth’s core.  Grounding can mean patience or simply focusing on slow breaths in and out.

Continue breathing, and gently begin to ask yourself: what does hosting my cousin’s party feel like for Thursday?

Pause.

Notice any colors, images, sensations, or feelings that arise in your experience.  No need to solve them, judge them, or try to make sense of them.  Notice and become aware.  If you want, you can write a few things down.

Now, as you continue to focus on breathing, ask yourself: what does hosting my cousin’s party feel like for Sunday?

Pause.

Notice any colors, images, sensations, or feelings that arise in your experience.  No need to solve them, judge them, or try to make sense of them.  Notice and become aware.  If you want, you can write a few things down.

You can end this experience however you’d like, however it can be helpful to say thank you for the information you’ve received before moving on with your day.  It’s okay if you did not receive a specific image or feeling from this exercise.  It’s less about “what you got” and more about your overall experience of learning and growth.

Making sense of Intuitive Information
Say you’ve done this exercise, and you were able to feel into the energy around Thursday.  Let’s say that when you tuned into Thursday, you saw an image of a soccer player shooting the ball into the goal and just nearly missing the goal despite their best effort to aim properly.  Right then, let’s say you remembered to re-read the email you had received from the catering company for your cousin’s party.  When you look back at the email, you start to realize that the company is really “missing the mark” and that you need to call them to sort out additional details.  Right then, you realize that there is no way everything is going to be ready by Thursday and that, thanks for your intuition reminding you to check back with the catering company through this image, you can plan things better for Sunday.

In conclusion:
This is just one example of how intuitive information can be helpful to pay attention to, expand, and unpack.  We all receive gut feelings and now after reading this post, maybe you’d like to go deeper with some of them by focusing on your breath and seeing what emerges from the stillness!  

Here’s the key: Intuition often works in mysterious ways, but intuition itself does not have to be mysterious.  We can demystify our intuitive knowing by pausing and going into stillness to see what we really need to know.  

Now, I know that I have plenty of friends, but it is true that I have very few friends to "break bread" with. This is a particularly harder time of the year because everyone wants you to eat their specially-made holiday foods. 

I'm doing some spiritual digging deep right now to figure out how to enjoy people as they are, and have a fun way to deflect all their judgments of my choices around food and way of life. OR, do I just spend the holidays on a deserted island?

Love, Karin

(PS, I know the headline is wrong, can't seem to edit it!

Over 15 years ago, a Tibetan spiritual teacher was giving a talk on Compassion and he told us that we could fall into the trap of ‘idiot compassion’.  This occurs when we believe we are doing ‘good’ by offering support to someone in need, but in fact we are doing the opposite: our acts are actually keeping them stuck in a negative pattern.

At the time when I heard this, it struck a chord within me and over several years I began to see how my actions – driven by my need to be ‘good’ where not creating real change in others but perhaps keeping them in their own ‘furry rut’.  This was particularly evident in my relationship with my mother.  My role was to be a supportive listener and she thought I could help solve her problems – usually ones that never actually got solved.  An aha moment came when I saw that I was perpetuating her inability to solve her problems by being her loophole – the one who she could talk to about it but it prevented her from engaging with her own struggle – to be intimate with her neuroses.  One day I decided to tell her that I couldn’t play that role anymore and of course she was angry and tried to pull me back in, but I stood strong knowing that it wasn’t in our best interests – her’s or mine.

Now I face a tremendously more challenging time when this ‘idiot compassion’ could arise again.. a sibling who is having severe mental health issues and reaches out for my help.  My love is there .. my willingness is there, and yet there is a condition: he must also have these elements present in himself or anything I do will simply be swallowed in a black hole of effort without reward.  That doesn’t mean I must know the outcome – rather it is that he must be putting in equal effort as he is able - to care for himself and his life.

This must be one of the toughest lessons I’ve been learning in this life .. how to live compassionately while knowing that you cannot be a replacement for another’s compassion and love for their own soul.   

I’ve been feeling within my being a shift coming for the last few months.  It is like a wind from another part of the globe which is making its way to my land.  As it arrives, it stirs up my inner landscape, breaking old tree limbs, and scattering the dry leaves from this year’s growth.  I also know that it brings news – small messages that will also fall like the leaves at my feet – first gently and then more strongly as the wind fully comes to inhabit my world.

As it fills my being, my emotions are stirred up and my mental world becomes reshaped.  I know that what is being pulled away is no longer needed.  As my inner space is opened, cleared and refreshed, I only need to remain still – observing and integrating the changes. 

And as the wind moves through me, it also opens me to new vistas – where I see the world anew.  Perhaps the ‘I that I believe I am’ is changing or evening departing… and in its place is a feeling of lightness - as open as the sky upon which the wind plays.

About 7-8 years ago, I thought I was going nuts.

I told myself there is probably something wrong with me and I started getting a little scared too.

The reason?

I started observing number patterns everywhere and ALL the time.

Back then, I had no idea what that could mean. And I had no one to talk to about it. 

I would see patterns every time I looked at the clock, or get a glimpse of a license plate.

A few weeks of this I started researching it and realised what could be happening.

Fast forward to now, I still see number patterns all the time, but now I welcome them and cherish their synchronicity and information they bring for me. There is always some kind of message.

Our guides have a beautiful way to put these messages in front of us in a way that they can't be missed.

Lately, I've realised that when I'm driving my car, every time someone cuts in front of me in traffic, or when I get frustrated with someone driving close to me, their license plate is always something like 1111, 3344, 5656 etc.

And then I laugh at myself for getting frustrated.

It brings me back to my body and helps me check in with myself and my emotions. 

"Ok, God, I get it, I can slow down and relax. Thank you for the reminder"