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 | Feb 3, 2022 | Soul Words
We ask people, “how are you?”, but are we really prepared to RECEIVE the answer fully?
This does not mean our intention about asking about their well being isn’t genuine. However, equally true is the fact that most of us feel befuddled and don’t know what to do or say when a person genuinely shares what he / she is going through (challenges / pain/ feelings/ situations). The part within us that deeply wants to support and help, feels lost. What can I do? How can I help? And we sort of realise that there might really be no way to help and that brings helplessness and a deep sense of inadequacy or feeling of unworthiness within.
This is a very difficult space to BE in and feel that unworthiness within the self, to be intimate with that innate sense of helplessness that creeps in during these situations.
Our human brain or mind works very fast. It wants to so deeply help and support in order for the person’s pain to go away that it starts conjuring solutions or statements. It starts giving ideas , suggestions, plans of action -say this, tell them to do this, do that, da da da da da ……and this inner programming is so quick that before we start realising, our mouth has opened or our hand has typed suggestions, solutions, or indulged in situations where we start doing or saying something that we feel might help or support the person.
This addresses our concern that we might be feeling. It helps with our own helplessness or deep rooted sense of unworthiness.
But, what about the person at the receiving end? Did we check what he / she might need?
Is he / she just sharing ? Is he/ she just venting or ranting? Does the person need solution or does the person just wants to feel needed, validated or acknowledged in that moment? Or simply witnessed and held?
Agreed that online spaces make this process immensely difficult. But simple statements like “I am listening”, “I am present”, “I see you” while controlling our own inner impulse to advise or suggest solutions without asking if the person needs any suggestions can go a long way in not invalidating the other persons pain and experience.
Allowing ourselves to BREATHE through our own innate discomfort and helplessness of not being able to do much, learning daily about BEing rather than slipping into Doing, these are the things which would, in my opinion go a long way – for ourself and the person that we desire to support or be there for.
We want to take away the pain of others and support them. We desperately do what we know best. We are indeed coming from a place of support and love.
However, in that moment, what does the person really need??
Can we ask, “How can I support you today?” Can we simply listen from our body and not just the mind?”
Can we breathe through our own unconscious helplessness that keeps coming up when we really aren’t able to do much ?
And yet can we realise that pure presence IS everything?
Holding space IS everything. Gentle nudges ARE everything.
Listening IS everything.
Do we realise that the other person’s sharing might also bring up “our own pain & helplessness” and it is our own inability to feel our pain that provokes us to offer solutions or suggestions that haven’t been sought yet?
Do we realise that simply sitting with that person may make ALL the difference in their field??
What bigger need do we humans have than being witnessed for who we are and what we might be going through? This doesn’t mean encouraging victimhood. This simply means, for now, being present to them fully and may be when the wave has settled, ask “Do you need a suggestion or advise?”
Do we realise that pain, loss, trauma and grief is such a roller coaster that the person going through it may start feeling “I am not important, and that during the grieving or traumatic period, their sense of self is HIGHLY diminished. They already are questioning their existence and their state of being; they are already feeling that something is inherently wrong with them for them to feel what they are feeling or what they are going through.
By giving our solutions or healing suggestions, don’t you feel, we might not only be diminishing what they are feeling but also indirectly conveying a message, that they might not doing enough??
And that is the least that we want them to feel, isn’t it??
Do we realise that they might feel that the whole world is going on enjoying life while all they feel is pain ? Is something wrong with them or about them that they have manifested so much pain in their life?
And when we advise, we further might enable this state.
Do know, that solutions are welcome too. But it depends how actively engaged you have been in their healing journey. If you are just a passer by or have been a mere spectator, then please check if your suggestions would be welcome or is it the need of that moment.
More so, is it YOUR need or THEIR need?
No one can lessen the pain that the person might be going through. All we can do is to walk, may be a few steps with them without invalidating their experience and pain and there by not denying (but aceepting) our own pain.
What we honor, honors us back.
This is the biggest act of kindness, in my opinion, to the other and to your own self.
by Neelam Nanwani | Feb 1, 2022 | Soul Words
Many eastern practices have made way to the land and heart of the western land and vice a versa.
Many indigenous practices have become cross cultural.
Man has traveled to different indigenous lands, met teachers, learnt different practices and shared it or sold it to the people of his native land and other regions.
Indigenous practices across the world have first flourished, then suppressed and annihilated.
Indigenous wisdom past many years is also reviving and rebirthing across the world in a cross cultural manner.
Sometimes it is genuinely absorbed and passed, sometimes it is exploited or commercialized and some places it is mixed with one’s own understanding n practice.
The bad thing is things have become corrupted, exploited, misinterpreted.
The good thing is indigenous wisdom and ways are reviving big time, more than ever and each is learning and unlearning, Remembering and Re-membering as per their own exposure, understanding and appetite.
It’s all a part of the game.
In an existence where we learn and understand things through polarity, the grey and the good co exist and feed on each other.
Each serves a purpose and plays a role.
In an intricate web, where, we might feel, we are against each other, we might actually also be enabling each other in ways our cognitive minds may not even be able to fathom.
When we look at things from this perspective, we will learn to simply see each force as a contributing force in and to the microcosm and there by also affecting the structure and texture of the macrocosm.
All spiritual practices, through their own unique way, ultimately, are leading us to the oneness that we are and the oneness that we seek.
by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 30, 2022 | Soul Words
I have always had a problem glorifying God or any divine beings, for that matter.
A part of me cannot put anyone on a pedastal. Yes, I love them, honor them, respect them, can also worship them, but I cannot over glorify them.
Precisely why, I run from places and people where a cult gets formed.
Wherever there is a cult, there is no Self. Every one follows someone rather than one’s own sovereignty and Self.
I hate to put myself on a pedastal too.
When I talk about dieties or guides or gods or goddesses, I feel a ONENESS with them.
They can be my mother, father, brother, sister, guide and yet my pal, my buddy and yet a little girl (like my Kali) and a little boy.
I feel a resonant oneness with them. I don’t put them UP. I don’t put myself DOWN.
There is a presence which I acknowledge and honor.
My presence is not below it either.
There is a unity. There is oneness.
I have often questioned myself whether this is me denying the god/ creator.. whether it is my ego.
I have felt like this for years. Yes, I am a rebel. I question all stereotypical things.
I question my own thoughts and muse.
And yet, I am finding this radical courage to put it out in the open for the first time, I am not less than God.
I am not merely his / her / Divinity’s spark.
I AM THE DIVINE.
We often worship or glorify that which we think or feel we are not.
One of the reasons, many spiritual practices were given to us, like chanting 108 /1008 names of a particular diety, it was simply to glorify and embody THAT vibration within and Remember it and Re-member it.
In this journey of Becoming some thing, seeking something, how did we forget who we ARE??
Many spiritual teachings talk about, “Remember you ARE God”. How much do we really understand its meaning and true essence?
Jung said, people we admire are a part of our golden shadow. It means we have that part within us, but, we have hidden it, suppressed it or masked it.
Even if we think purely from a psychological perspective, if we glorify a particular person or a master or diety, doesn’t it also imply it is our golden shadow, waiting for us to own it, embody it and integrate it?
The more I deepen within my own journey of grief and loss, of death and re birth, all teachings, all truths point in one singular direction.
Unbecoming.ReclamationRemembering. Re-membering.
The disconnection from this sovereignty of who we truly ARE IS the root cause of so called contrast or evil, including illness.
Aham Brahmasmi. I AM. SHIVOHAM. True Self love.
by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 22, 2022 | Soul Words
We value success by the money we make.
We value productivity by the number of hours we work.
We value relationships by the expectations being fulfilled.
We define success by the goods that we can buy.
Who gave us this definition of success?
From a heart based living, how did we become a product driven culture?
How did this come about?
Why is a relationship a failure if it has conflicts and turmoil ?
Why is a person a failure if he/ she is unable to live / fulfill some of his / her dreams?
Who taught us that the more we work the more we toil the more successful we will be?
How did money become a barometer for fulfillment and success ?
And how did our spirituality become a tool for MEASURING / Rewards / Calculations??
If these are not systems of dysfunction then what is??
What is true achievement? And why is the focus only on achievement??
Why inability to make a living is considered a failure? Why and when will we stop using and abusing our spiritual gyaan for our own escape and hiding??
Why is failing and falling, ailing and aching, NOT normal in our society??
Why are these barometers of self worth and self esteem??
Why does no one talk about soul based living from the heart?
Who made these definitions of good and bad? Success and failure?
Why do we forget everything is relative? Why is everything black and white?? What happened to grey??
If you and I don’t question these systems, who will ??
Humanity cries and yet we continue with same rotten mindsets, behaviors and paradigms.
What are we waiting for?? Are we waiting for one more cycle of earth based life to END??
Time to reflect upon these is NOW.
You matter. Your choices matter. Your words and voice matter. Your decisions matter.
