by Neelam Nanwani | Feb 5, 2022 | Soul Words
Whenever someone in distress reaches out to you, what is your innate natural tendency? How do you respond or react?
Through the journey of my grief and loss, I have observed that more often than not, many begin to unconsciously bypass how the other is feeling in the given moment. We either start correcting them or are propelled to give some solution or advise or we donot know how to respond so we stay quiet or we unconsciously start identifying with that person by saying, “yaa this happened to me too and I did this or that.
The worst thing I have heard is, “Oh.. for you, its been only a year of pain..you don’t know how many years I suffered and remained in pain.”
It made me angry. It made me feel, my pain is not being witnessed and is invalid. Or is not great enough as your pain to be acknowledged. I felt not seen.
Our pain has also become competitive. Oh..my pain is bigger than your pain..so why are you wining?
I have been fortunate enough to be held by my online community of students in my journey of grief and loss and yet I have realised how ill equipped we all are when someone expresses their pain and angst.
We don’t even know what to say, let alone being in pure embodied Presence.
This has led me to write this article.
Something you might consider saying to a person in distress :-
I acknowledge how you feel.
More often than not, we always rush to correct the person who is feeling a certain emotion or give advise or ask them to fix it or release it.
Be brave, move on, how can you feel this way, stop being a victim, brushing aside what someone is feeling, keep yourself busy ..these are some of the ways we address someone’s emotions / pain.
More so, we in the healing fraternity have learnt jargons about releasing, healing, moving on, being positive.
We there by give a signal to the person’s psyche that whatever he/she is feeling IS not ok.
We indirectly bring shame to their experience.
How about re wiring it to say, “I may not fully understand what you are going through, but it is ok to feel what you are feeling”. (This too shall pass). Everything is going to be ok. You are going to be ok. You ARE ok. I hear you fully. Please share/ vent whatever is flowing within you fully. Please don’t keep it inside. I am fully present.
All that a person in sorrow or pain needs is a fully present container.
We all have the ability to find solutions based on our individual understanding provided our sense of self is intact. Having a fully present container creates a safe space within the person to be held without judgement n shame to his / her experience. When this container is available, the person’s sense of Self returns faster. It is then that the person might be receptive for suggestions or possible solutions.
However, the first step is to Not Discard how they feel but acknowledge how they feel.
When a person is in pain or distress, their sense of Self is greatly diminished. By invalidating their experience and pain, we are further shaking their foundation and sense of self.
A person might start internalising, ” something is wrong with me. I am unable to get through this.”
The pain has already broken the person from inside. Invalidating one’s experience can further damage sense of self and self worth.
Every emotion is also a cycle. Just the way one cannot jump from sunrise directly to the night time, one has to go through mid day sun and sunset, similarly our emotions have to go through a cycle of feeling them fully before they fade.
Let’s build our vocabulary to, ” I may not fully understand how you feel, I acknowledge what you are saying. I hear you.”
It goes a long way dear ones in building bridges, bringing a person home from the deep trenches of his/her dark tunnels.
by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 16, 2022 | Soul Words
Are you the “container” or the “contained”??
It was Paul’s birthday, November 8th 2019. His first draft for his book River of Life was ready. He invited a few people at our home for reading of the first draft.
On Saturday and Sunday (November 9th & 10th), a beautiful, soulful tribe gathered at our home for reading the book penned by Paul Hinsberger-Shamanic Counselor “River of Life”.
As we each read the book, a lot of things stirred within each one of us.
The river flowed in our individual container (BEing) rising, slowing down, rushing, flooding, cascading various facets of our own life.
The River told us many stories about our own life. In our life we have been held as a container – holding deep wisdom, insights, experiences, gifts, and uniqueness of our BEing.
In that container, we are also contained by our own fears, shame, judgements, responsibilities resistance and grief.
The river allowed us to see, feel, notice and observe our own container – our LIFE.
In some aspects, we were the container – holding deep truths and deep tears. Holding hope. Holding pain, trauma and grief; holding joy; holding the visions to our soul journeys.
In certain aspects we were contained, not allowing the container to flood the plains of the rivers of our lives.
In all of our lives, as we navigate through our own unique and individual rivers, overlapping the rivers of others who cross our way, aren’t we all the ‘container’ to deep wisdom and intuitive gifts.?
We desire and deserve to share these gifts of our unique container with others. I feel, that makes us the most fulfilled and content,.
What perhaps ‘contains’ us is our lack of imagination to flow through the ‘perceived’ mundaneness of our individual pebble filled wobbly path and challenges or hurdles that we encounter during the flow of our rivers.
We fight the flow. We contract when we need to expand and we expand when we need to pause and contract.
This dichotomy (the dichotomy, which I also call as the feminine, masculine intertwining flow) keeps us on our toes and keeps us entangled in being contained in the container.
Perhaps some food for thought will help us navigate through the river of our life with poise and pose :-
(1) Where are you the “container” in your life?
(2) What does your “container” hold?
(3) How many times do you look inside the “container”?
(4) What do you do to tap into the essence of the “container” that you are?
(5) How transparent is your ‘container?”
(6) Are you proud of your “container” or are there some facets that you are ashamed about ?
(7) Do you often clear the contents of your container or do you keep them stuffed always?
(8) What contents of the container were you born with and what have ‘you” stuffed into it?
(9) Can your container ‘breathe”?
(10) Is there enough space in your container so that what is inside can reach out to others?
(11) What ‘contains’ you in your life?
(12) How does that containment affect the contents of the container?
(13) If you would not be ‘contained’, what / how would you be and how would your life unfold?
(14) How much has the containment ‘contained’ / confined/ tamed you and how much have you tamed /
confined the contents of the container??
(15) How would the river of your life be without being a container or the contained??
Introspect. Share. BE.
by Neelam Nanwani | Dec 28, 2021 | Soul Words
When we embark on a spiritual quest, we have to begin to realise as the quest deepens, that the whole journey is not about the process of ‘reaching’ somewhere or becoming something.
We get to realise that ‘we are already that’ which we are seeking to become or be.
The journey rather and the whole aspect of it is only and everything about “cleaning and clearing” what you are not and about removing the masks that we have worn. The whole journey is all about taking steps to drop those masks one by one.
If I am not this belief, not this mask, not this imprint, then who am I?
The journey is not about finding that Self but simply being aware and willing to drop those layers, barriers, impressions (acquired through ancestors, culture, society, parents, womb, our own experiences & choices) which we have unconsciously chosen to wear and made our own.
There comes a time in our spiritual quest where these layers are either stripped off willingly by us or we are literally ripped apart.
This begins the great death and dying process. Death of old identity, death of the ego self dressed and so mighty comfortable in these layers.
This can be a huge threat to the ego self because for the longest time it has not known who it is beyond these stories, labels and masks.
There is an unconscious attachment to these stories and memories. The cognitive mind has the best intentions to move beyond these. However the unconscious, unknowingly attaches to the pain bodies or these layers and/or masks.
The journey, therefore, is not the learning of esoteric gifts, albeit, only and only of stripping of these layers and being patient with yourself as you either bare your self or are torn apart.
When the resistance to be bare is too huge, this is where Spirit or soul self intervenes bringing forth contrast, challenges (illness, finances, death of loved ones, relationship issues, deterioration or crumbling down of the tower of one’s life held ever so dearly) and one might go through what is popularly known as stress, anxiety, depression or dark night of the soul.
It is a process which can bring grace through our full body presence and surrender. Our connection to our soul (the divine within and without) becomes imperative.
Anxiety, overwhelm, depression, suicidal tendency, inability to feel emotional stuff, running away from feeling grief, health issues could all represent a disconnect between the soul self and the mind.
The bridging point, therefore is to return to the heart. To the space of love and acceptance. Only that could create a deeper allowance and perhaps non resistance.
We are not, however, taught to drop control and come to a space of surrender. Hence what is a huge process of initiation and unbecoming feels to our ego mind as a suffering.
The gap between the soul and the mind widens as we engage in being a victim, why me, what wrong have I done kind of situations there by magnifying the depletion of the self worth and the unbecoming.
The true healing, as stated above, in a manner that we unmask and reclaim who we really are, the “Self” that is not these stories or masks, takes time, some times years, at times an entire life time and most of the times, lifetimes and lifetimes.
If you are in a space of suffering or rather great UNBECOMING, I encourage you to not lose heart.
For, what might feel as everything coming crushing down, may actually be a process of homecoming.
A coming home to the Self.
Dec 27, 9.10 AM
by Neelam Nanwani | Dec 22, 2021 | Soul Words
We all have such a deep need within each one of us to be recognised for who we are.
It gives a signal to our wounded psyches that we matter and that we deserve to exist.
When we are recognized for our being, we feel validated. We feel we matter. We feel we are not insignificant in this vast universe and we try to make a sense of why do we need to continue to live.
This sense of living gives us a meaning, a purpose to our existence. This inspires us to keep going and fuels our healthy ego.
Unfortunately this also keeps us in the loop of continuing to seek validation from others and continue to be in a space of proving our point of view.
The moment this doesn’t happen, our ego self feels threatened and is pained. The result is numbing, disassociation, anxiety, anger, frustration or any other way in which the child self wants to express itself or protect itself from this hurt or pain of not feeling significant or worthy or being unseen.
Yes, it is one of the 6 basic human needs to be seen and recognized.
This need to be seen and recognized keeps us on our toes and doesn’t let our seeking and pursuits end.
We keep seeking from one road to another, one shop to another, one job to another, one phone to another, one home, car, pieces of clothing to another.
The pendulum swings to the other end when we don’t realise that in the process of seeking and why we are seeking it, we forgot WHAT is it that we began to seek in the first place.
At the end of the day, we all wish to feel appreciated, valued and acknowledged for who we are and what we are here to be and do.
But somewhere in this process of feeling significant, we also invite the feeling of being insignificant.
Yes, there are many detours on this earth walk called life.
Before we realise it, we who in actuality desired to be seen, appreciated and validated, also somehow begin to hide and play small. (Various reasons, for this, for sure).
The dichotomy between feeling validated and being seen AND playing small and hiding keeps us ENTANGLED and looped in.
This sometimes projects as over giving (need to be needed and feel valued and important), anger for feeling helpless or violated (lack of boundaries) or totally being self centered (over compensation).
We are wounded adults in some way or the other and our inner child is in constant need for this reassurance that he/she matters and is valuable.
The constructs of society do not teach us that we do not have to EARN this significance. That we matter and are an important strand in the web of life no matter what.
This lack of embodied awareness also keeps us away from our true BEing and constantly keeps us encaged in our doing.
This whole process creates undesirable trauma and imprints and then we keep busy in another pursuit to feel significant by getting obsessed about it through our “healing process*.
What we do not realize is that we are trying to fill something with something whereas the process of Real-I-zation and the true awakening is that we already ARE enough.
And that no external substances like career, job, money, home or healing practice is going to fill that emptiness of the worthiness pot.
And through my own pitfalls while being on this journey of mending the brokenness within, TRYING to fill it up with this or that, I am beginning to realise that nothing I DO can fill this pot.
Not because I am trying to fill the worthiness with something external..
BUT
Because the pot that I thought was empty IS actually already full. However, no one has ever told me so nor have we been taught to Access That which already IS & Exists.
Our living in this earthly walk comes always with conditions attached as emerged through the human construct.
We do not know or perhaps are never categorically taught to
Access That Which Already IS.
We are only fed with conditional worthiness.
I am worthy to be seen only if this happens or I am worthy to be recognised only if I do this or that and so on.
And in my opinion, to be able to access what already IS there, IS the true purpose of healing and our BEing.
Nothing less. Nothing more.
To access I AM is the true journey.
Is there a destination ? Does it matter as long as “I AM” ??
by Neelam Nanwani | Dec 10, 2021 | Soul Words
The more we ‘push hard’ to heal something, the more we defy the core of healing, that we are actually already whole.
This entire push to correct, fix, heal actually takes us away from the simplicity and wholeness which the healing process should induce and bring forth.
If you are with a healer, no matter how great he/she is, if he/she cannot remind you of your own wholeness and simplicity of your healing process, but rather induces fear or rather inculcates complexity, then you should know you are being manipulated to feeling ‘less than’ the whole and complete that you already are.
Healing can NEVER happen from a space of feeling ‘less than’ from within because then we are chasing the same dog who keeps barking at us and yet eludes us.
Neither do we enjoy the companionship or unconditional love of that dog nor does it ever become our ally. It instead remains our tormentor in chief.
And the worst part is, modality after modality, healing after healing, this torment does not cease.
It only perpetuates.
That is why our healing process never seems to end because like a product driven culture we too are in a rush always to fix it, heal it so that we do not feel the pain, uncertainty, anguish and fear of the chaos.
This is where we get exploited into believing that healing requires a LOT from us.
What I am learning and re-learning is that healing is actually very simple. We all need to remember that the universe is not an evil entity chasing us BUT it is a benevolent force partnering with us.
However, sometimes what seems to be working against us, is actually working towards and for us.
How only if we had our wise ones, ancient ones, elders, true loving guides in the human realm they would so profoundly re-iterate this wisdom to us.
This is where our connection to the Divine/creator/to our own SELF/Great Spirit is wholesomely encouraged to be developed.
After Paul left, my sense of self has been extremely diminished. And the repetitive and the only message I could trust coming from Paul was, “Develop your connection” to Spirit.
This statement in its entirety is only opening up its various petals, now, as I reflect upon my illness (mental, emotional, spiritual and physical).
The healing journey though feels endless and painful, is and can actually be simple.
All we need to learn is to just BE with our self, understand the SELF and reclaim the SELF.
Rest everything automatically falls into its place. Even the pieces of the puzzle which so often befuddle us always.
