I have been fortunate enough to be embraced by the sea, as her daughter.
I have always loved her and felt so deeply held and loved by her.
With Mother Sea
She had impregnated me with the seed of birthing “The Sea is My Mother” retreat which not only brings us home to our own selves but also teaches us all about the Sea as a healing methodology.
At the recently concluded part 2 of sea healing retreat
The planted seed gestated in me and finally in 2016, the seed come to fruition when I birthed and delivered my very special baby, “The Sea is My Mother.”
This baby kept growing through me year after year. But then, suddenly, after 2020, I went through deep death myself.
As the dark night of the soul began to lift its darkness, the desire to share the fruits of the sea with everyone was born again.
When we gathered in August 2024 in Kerala, we realised that the baby had grown so much in me even without me nurturing or mothering it consciously, that 3 nights 4 days just were not enough for fully embracing her MAGIC AND GIFTS.
The students who participated in August were hungry for more. I was passionate to birth more and offer more and more fully not just of myself but also of the Mother Sea.
And so Sea is my Mother part two was born.
While making my teacher’s notes, I felt that this time it will not be as intense as always. And yet, a part of me kept saying, “your notes will get thrown aside and something else will come up.”
Well, I was not worried about that because spontaneity and teaching as per what the group energy demands in that moment is very much my wheel house. And yet the mind was curious and obviously keeping me on tenterhooks as to what might come up.
What came up was so intense and such a deep cleanse.
The sea waved her magic wand and the mermaids and mermen came welcoming us too.
We realised where we have tamed ourselves, our voices, our beings, our bodies, our expression.
Sea is my Mother part two was a deep immersion which my words fail to describe. And the best part? We all are still hungry for more!
What this hunger will lead to? Only time will tell.
In some of us pain often leads to numbing or masking of the Self. When it feels too much to feel pain or when the underlying belief is that pain makes us weak, we often distract from feeling it. We hide behind our ambitions and addictions. We use several distractions to deflect from feeling it.
We use our courage to project that we are brave and that we are letting go and moving on. We project that we are leading busy, active, happy lives. We find our anchor in being busy or in other distractions.
Source: Facebook
In this case, we may often go about living our life as if nothing is wrong and every thing is alright. This often comes across to everyone as being healed and moving on. It may not really be so and it may only be an illusion that every thing is alright.
Just like everything and everyone else, pain too, needs an “acknowledgement.” It may take time but it often finds its way through.
Sooner or later pain does find its way and screams out loud so that we may pay attention. Sometimes it strikes as mental illness, sometimes as physical symptoms and sometimes as a different crisis like an accident or some other life threatening situation or a deep personal loss.
Sometimes it projects as strife with family members. In many cases, our children often project our own buried stuff. If we pay attention, we see the presence of our own pain in some of their behaviours or even in their rebellion. Sometimes pain screams through our outbursts.
Pay attention to what your body is saying.
Then there are some of us, who feel everything quite intensely. Pain cuts us deep and tears us open. Feeling it and processing it feels like a never ending roller coaster ride. Often it breaks us or leads us to a deconstruction. Rebuilding from there, feels more energy consuming, tiring and simply impossible.
Because of the intensity of the pain, we may unconsciously wall our hearts so that we may not be hurt again. We block our receiving. And, we might keep circling back to the pain over and over again inspite of numerous healing attempts. The rebuilding feels scary and here we may find our anchor in the safety of the known, in this case our pain.
Pain has the capacity to not just break our hope and spirit, but it also has the capacity to open our hearts and break down our walls, if we allow. In this case, we realise that pain is a messenger and it has a lot to teach us. It draws our attention to aspects of self we tend to bury, mask, deny or ignore because of fears – fears which spring through our upbringing or past imprints.
There may be some of us who may allow pain to be an initiation. I am not saying that pain is or should be a pre-requisite for growth or spiritual evolution and healing. But pain can be a mirror reflecting deepest aspects of the self – aspects of the self we are afraid to own, look at and dive into.
This approach to pain that it is not here to destroy us but actually reconstruct us may take a lot of patience, courage and inner resilience. It may feel tempting to look the other way than understanding its wisdom and work towards integrating and embodying it.
A deep acceptance of what is, in spite of volatility and uncertainty, becomes the need of the self. Deep pain, often propels us towards deep surrender. In this case, the person often finds his/her anchor in the Self and in the Divinity and Magnificence of all that is.
What is your anchor? Where do you naturally levitate towards?
I was invited by Karan & Shokhi of the Happily Whatever After podcast on their episode of Sacred Connections. In the conversation, we dived deep into the power of spirituality to transform relationships. I shared insights into why we often attract the “wrong” partners and how this is linked to unresolved patterns within ourselves. You can listen to part 1 of the podcast on YouTube here.
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 a negative comment by someone or a perceived dislike of theirs or a comment on some aspect of our being disturbs our peace of mind, then it is a straight co-relation to our lack of “self-acceptance.”
When we have accepted ourselves deeply, then the labels, expectations, judgements, comments, dislike of others to our being stop affecting us. The deeper the self-acceptance, the lesser the pain that the outside world “perceivably” flings at us.
Then we feel less awkwardness in being who we are and move deeper to our owning of the Self.
To the extent we worry or are bothered by others’ labels, titles, expectations, comments, likes or dislikes, to the extent their approval matters, to that extent our self-acceptance has not deepened yet.
Of course it is not a one day, one month thing. It is always a work in progress and it gets deeper by the day, provided we are aware it is an issue around self-acceptance. The co-relation between these aspects is not even subliminal. It is so direct. This is also a part of Self Love.
Here are some words we can repeat to ourselves to begin our self-love journey:
✨ I choose to leave toxic spaces where my Being is not accepted, valued and respected.
✨ I choose to let go of those people and spaces that are not in honour and integrity of who I am.
✨ I choose to let go of spaces where there is no freedom to BE ME.
✨ I choose to not fight every battle. It’s ok to leave without explaining and expecting a different treatment.
✨ I choose to leave and not return if there are no apologies in the form of changed behaviour.
✨ I choose to be with myself than with people who violate my integrity, trust, respect and freedom over and over again.
✨ I choose to forgive but not return to spaces that violated me or ostracised me.
✨ I choose not to prove my worth or my significance by martyring my well-being repeatedly.
✨ I choose not to seek validation for my presence or essence.
✨ I choose to honour my anger and all my emotions and acknowledge them fully.
✨ I choose my freedom over false acceptance to fit in.
✨ I choose to wait for the right people to walk in and fill that space.
✨ I choose to surrender my pain of not being included but I also choose to breathe and believe that I cannot at any cost undermine the journey of the SELF.
✨ My unbecoming journey is painful but I choose to grow despite unconscious resistance if any.
✨ I choose self-love and self-acceptance over acceptance by others.
Healing doesn’t happen by avoiding what we are feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by desperately trying to release what we are feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by pushing away vehemently what we are feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by smartly numbing or conveniently suppressing what we are feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by unconsciously masking what we are feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by braving that feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by smiling through that feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by shopping, eating or drinking through that feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by working and making oneself busy while feeling what you are feeling.
These FALSE paradigms of work through it, push through it, rise through it, eat through it, forget about it, learn through it, seek through it, move away from it – all these have eaten us away from inside.
All our UNDIGESTED pain and sorrow is what IS the “sum total” of what we today see as the violence, abuse, insecurities, jealousy, competition, greed, control, mental illnesses, physical illnesses, etc.
We want society ills to end. But we continue violating our own self, we continue abusing our own self, we are continually either numbing pain or escaping pain and if there is someone who shows courage to live their pain, then we are continually shaming and judging their pain or journey. OR we perpetually advise them to brave their pain or work and forget about their pain.
Introspect an area of your life when you might have unconsciously done this to yourself.
Has it resulted in illness, despair, complaints, victimhood, mental breakdown later?
Has it led to stagnation?
Has it made you feel like a piece of shit within while the world continues to glorify its outward glamour while feeling empty and full of ruckus inside?
Has it made you question your existence?
Have you felt fulfilled by brushing it inside the carpet?
Has your seeking ended?
If not, then PAUSE.
Today, BEFRIEND your pain.
PS: Befriending our pain takes more courage than avoiding our pain. This is why the feminine teachings are not for the faint of heart. There is a reason Durga Rides the tiger.
Foundation of Shamanism workshop is returning on April 27-28 2024. To learn more: ✉️ neelamnanwani@yahoo.in 📞 9979901933 🌐 shamanic-vision.net
