Why does the one person who doesn’t value or appreciate us become so important over all the others who do see us, value us and appreciate us?
I guess our mind has a tendency to go to the source from where we need love but don’t often get it. And we keep running to get it from that source only to retraumatise our wounded rejected inner child.
Why is it so difficult to retrain our minds to appreciate the sources of love and support present in our life rather than keep running for the one source from where we need it but keep coming back disappointed over and over again?
The source that disappoints could be our parent, our child, our partner, our lover, our friend or someone else who the mind attaches importance to.
Why do we often loop in our traumas even though many aspects of our life seem to be moving ahead and yet some parts of us attach to the pain, and keep inviting traumatic experiences again and again and again.
Re-parenting the fragmented parts of our psyche is hard. Feeling loved when our childhood experiences have been of feeling unloved and unwanted is harder.
Saying no to those who make us feel rejected is hardest because we are so afraid of letting them go, we are so afraid of feeling empty, miserable or alone again.
We often put up with breadcrumbs knowing fully well we deserve a well laid out lavish platter.
Old wounds come gushing back no matter how much healing we do. That’s the cost of childhood trauma that we pay as adults. And if we are married and have kids, we leave that trauma for our future generations too.
Breaking free from these entanglements and old patterns of behaviour within the self may feel miserably challenging and painful.
But this is what self love demands. If we truly love ourselves, would we allow ourselves to be re-traumatised again and again?
When old hurts resurface, wouldn’t it be wiser to become aware and do a reality check instead of wallowing in misery, “Is this hurt/person/incident/situation really worth killing my self love and causing me mental, emotional or physical distress?”
I am not saying we should not acknowledge our pain but if the pain is a repetitive pattern caused by some internal wiring and faulty stories that we have kept feeding our inner child, isn’t it time to become aware of this inner chatter and consciously, over and over again, rewrite this inner dialogue and keep feeding a New Story to the child self within?
Don’t we all deserve better?
We are love and we are loved…no matter what the internal and external stories project.
Let us all remind each other this very simple and yet profound truth that we are indeed not unloved but very deeply loved not just by the universe/divine/our guides and power animals but also by many many earth angels.
Maybe it’s time to feed a new story to our inner children.
Will we at least try?
The Empowerment Circle is coming back in October 2024 with a new topic of discussion: Magic of Menstruation. It is open for MEN & WOMEN and is on 2 October from 6 to 8 PM IST.
When we embark on the journey of our spiritual healing, we often ask, “What is within me that has brought this to my doorstep?” This doesn’t mean that if someone abuses me, its because something is wrong within me and hence I have attracted this situation or challenge.
The premise simply is that we take full responsibility of and for our lives.
When we view life from this perspective, we stop being a victim of our situations. We introspect, what within me (thoughts, beliefs, emotions, imprints – karmic/ancestral, womb, birthing, society, religion, upbringing or any other) is bringing this to my doorstep.
What can I do to shed these imprints or beliefs or fears within myself?
More often than not, we desire that the outward situation (be it relationship, finance, health) changes. But the outward situation merely reflects our own hidden buried subconscious unconscious state/psyche.
We often (if not always) attract on the outside what we ARE on the inside. The contribution of our subconscious mind is 90% in what happens in our lives and the conscious mind just plays a 10% role. Our subconscious mind and what we store in our unconscious psyche is a sum total of our past lives, ancestral stories, stories we pick up inside the womb of the mother, our birth scenario and our upbringing.
All of this is formed through the journey of our soul in its evolutionary process from one life time to another.
The lessons and karmic imprints accumulate over a period of time and the challenges (if lessons not learnt) become harder.
We also tend to get influenced by the thought process and emotional makeover of our primary care givers. Whether we have had a functional relationship with them or a dysfunctional relationship with them, we tend to become like them out of our innate unconscious sense of loyalty towards them.
As lifetimes go by, we move farther from our own innate truth and Essence and we become someone who we are Not.
Lifetimes could go by until we realise what we have done to our own self. This immense loss of self, in a given life time stares at us, screaming for owning who we ARE.
We often do not know, how. But the soul is now ready to reclaim its innate power and truth.
And with this begins the journey of self realisation of the soul – realising who it truly IS and its innate Divinity and essence. However, for a soul to know itself, it has to first shed what it has become or the imprints and masks it has acquired through thousands of years during its evolutionary journey.
This descent of the soul begins the process of deconstruction. This is often known as the journey of the underworld or at times a dark night of the soul. It feels like every thing is breaking down and coming to an end.
The human experience feels full of misery because breaking down of what felt safe and familiar once, is all going away. We cling (at times unconsciously) and feel that the misery is not ending. We feel patterns are looping and we push harder and harder for things to improve.
What is perhaps needed is to not push but to pause and allow the process of deconstruction. Yes, it takes courage and this “Unbecoming” is an art. An art that we have not been trained into.
We have been trained to “Become Something.” What we need to perhaps learn and be in allowance of is this Process of Unbecoming.
Nature dies and nature is reborn. We are nature personified and should we desire to rebirth our Being, we have to allow this deconstruction, shedding and UNBECOMING – just like nature does.
Neelam Nanwani is a midwife to the soul and conducts talks, lectures, workshops, mentorships and retreats in this Sacred Art of Unbecoming. Join the WhatsApp Group for staying updated on free talks, circles and events.
If I live every moment from the space of being my true potential and my true nature, from my true centre, then I would realise that everything that triggers me about the other is my own aspect deeply hidden within me, looking for validation and acknowledgement.
Slowly and gradually, what others do, will not matter. What I AM, is what will drive the heart always. And that realisation will keep bringing me back to my own centre, to my own truth.
The closer I move to my own truth and the more I live my own true self, what others do, will cease to trigger and bother me.
If someone or something on the outside is bothering me and if a reality exists within me which feels unjust or unfair to me, then I pause and know that it is my own wounding screaming for attention and perhaps even a simple acknowledgement.
During my homestay at Binsar, many such wounds and triggers reared their head again. Aspects that I thought I had made peace with, came crawling up my sleeve, all over again.
For the first three days, the home stay was graced with a large group of 16 people, most of them were students of Vedanta. They were treated with a lot of care and respect and all of their needs met, whether they asked for it or not.
When the group left, a part of me started observing a change of attitude and a certain degree of misogynistic attitude in the owner of the home stay. Simple things I would request would be denied or over looked while the group was treated quite differently.
This started happening repetitively that brought up an unrest in me and the old wounds around “This is unfair or unjust” and “Am I not equally important, so what if I am not with a group” , triggered again. My anger, amidst the stillness of nature was palpable.
We all struggle with our unique place in this web of life, we all ache to feel significant and we all aspire to feel in this scheme of things , “we have a role to play and that we matter.”
The child self in us aches to be seen, to feel that it matters and that it’s important. When this sense of self of the child is threatened, a sense of unrest and often unsafety starts arising in the child. And this then, gives rise to all the chaos and the drama on the outside.
Thanks to my dreamwork and the dream I had the previous night and thanks to the stillness of nature which spoke to me in myriad ways, it made me aware that my own wounds around “life is unfair” or my past family history and karmic history around having experienced “injustice” (or even causing injustice) was rearing its head again.
This awareness induced a pause button to my reactive nature and propelled me to breathe through this pain, again and just be present to it.
I sent love to my child self, spoke to it and I deepened in prayer and surrender. I also sent blessings to the perceived perpetrator.
My unrest settled and although I stayed present to the instances which were seemingly unfair, I also felt compassion for the man and could empathise with his wounding which made him behave in a certain way.
As I communed with nature, I could find my way back to my stillness and in the subsequent days the stay came with a sense of ease and acceptance of the given moment.
The Nature Spirits and my dreamworld were kind enough to show me where I was still holding traces of my pain and gave me an opportunity to accept it, not fight it and yet surrender it.
Returning back to my centre brought me back, home to my true nature.
Celebrate your true nature and Mama nature. Join us for a Full Moon Celebration Drum Circle on 22 June (Saturday) from 7 pm to 8.30 pm (IST). You can add yourself to the WhatsApp group here to get the Zoom link and other updates.
I have been receiving questions on what I will be teaching during the sea healing retreat. What modalities – shamanism or something else.
The sea healing retreat is not about “modalities.” It is as the name suggests all about the SEA and working with the energies of the sea for healing of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.
Unlike other retreats, where the name suggests “X” and the contents are x, b, cx, a…the Sea Healing Retreat is going to be focussed fully and only SEA as the theme.
We all love the ocean. We feel so relaxed at the sea beach. We feel a magnetic pull towards the sea. We feel we can unwind and be stress free.
At the Sea Healing Retreat, 2019
But we do not know WHY we feel stress-free or relaxed when we are at the beach. Little do we know that just like the sea is deep, vast and treasure-filled, so are the healing abilities of this mother of all mothers – The Sea.
So no. There are no modalities. There is no shamanism (albeit everything you see, feel, hear, breathe is Shamanism).
This Sea Healing Retreat is open for ALL and gives you an opportunity to “retreat” from your daily hustle and bustle and go within your own quiet self. Dig deep into your core. It allows you to be who you are without any masks. It gently holds your hand and like the sea embraces you unconditionally and takes you into the depths of your great unknown treasures and strengths.
It unlocks you. It deepens you. It expands you. It moistens you. It untames you. It makes you cry. Makes you laugh. Makes you want to fall in love with yourself and your life all over again.
If you feel you would like to rediscover the child-like innocence again and embrace the sea as your mother, want to be nourished and nurtured, and want to dive into the great unknown, COME! The Sea Mother Awaits YOU.
A glimpse from the Sea Healing Retreat, 2019
Sea is My Mother – A Sea Healing Retreat in Kerala. August 1st to 4th. For more details and to register, click here. You can also call 9979901933 or email neelamnanwani@yahoo.in to know more.
