Category: General

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General Love

The Voice of Love

In my first year of 12 Step, I couldn’t get through one single day without calling multiple people in program for support. Grappling with the task of being a normal(ish) person on the outside, while feeling deeply unfit for life on the inside, required so much of me that I could barely breathe. Sometimes it was right in the morning, sometimes later on in the day, but at some point I would hit such a wall of pain, such a sideswipe, such an inability to move forward, that I would need to call someone and give voice to what was happening to me.

What was happening to me ranged from long bouts of intense crying, to paralyzing, nameless grief, to explosive fits of rage, to vicious panic attacks, to the longing to die, to urges to return to addictive behavior.

The person on the other end of the line mostly listened. Sometimes he or she offered soothing, nonjudgmental affirmations, like “That’s all right, sweetie”. Occasionally she helped me correct my thinking, by temporarily lending me hers, interrupting the momentum of my vortex of psychological agony to say something like, “That thing you can’t forgive yourself for – all of us have been there before. It’s human. It’s not your fault. It doesn’t define you. You are lovable and good.”

People in program gave me my first taste of unconditional love, spiritual perspective and hope of transformation: “This is a normal part of early recovery. It will get better. You will come out the other side. I can’t wait to see who you become.”

Program people had the ability to deeply understand, from their own personal experience, what I was thinking and feeling. Owing to the priceless wisdom that usually only arises from time spent personally suffering, they had the rare ability to let me be exactly where I was in my process, without any need to hurry me along.

At the same time, they were able to hold a higher perspective, the perspective of my potential. They could look at the wretched caterpillar version of me and calmly see the likelihood that I would become a butterfly (as long as I stuck with the process, which they also encouraged me to do). They were not afraid, like I was, that the caterpillar stage would last forever and that was all I’d ever be. They understood metamorphosis – that the process of spiritual transformation, if sincerely sought, is real, inevitable, natural; something we can trust in.

The combination of compassionate witnessing, allowing me to be exactly how I was, while at the same time believing in how I would be, guided me along, slowly but surely, to relief, recovery, and a life of magnitude and meaning far beyond what I could have imagined at that time in my life. My spirituality, my authenticity, my ability to be a good friend, my instincts for healing, my capacity to love deeply and yet hang onto my sense of self, even my calling in life, are all gifts which ripened in the warm “sunlight of the spirit” that circulates throughout the network of recovering people.

After a good long while of being lovingly heard, accepted, cheered on and validated by this group of truly unconditional others, I discovered I could also be the carrier of healing, loving thoughts. Program is a complete lifecycle, with the elders caring for the new ones, and the new ones relying on the experiences of elders. What activated me in my capacity as healer and channel for the voice of love were the desperate, raw needs of the newly recovering. Even though I was just hardly stable myself, when newcomers reached out to me with their enervating pains, with their oceanic needs, I found to my surprise that a healing, loving force spoke through me to them, with the same types of words that had been spoken to me: “It’s human to suffer, it’s not your fault, it doesn’t define you. You are lovable and good”.

With the spirit of kindness moving in me, I felt such tenderness, such a desire to relieve these new ones of their burdens, such a longing to soothe, comfort, and protect them. In fact with that love speaking through me, I said the things out loud that I had always longed to believe. The wounded parts of me heard the authority of the love in me, and began to feel safe for the first time in my life.

The voice of love is shared around the group, and does not belong to anyone in particular. No single person is the keeper of recovery or insanity – we take turns in the needy wounded role, and we also take turns speaking in the voice of love. Inspired by the aches of others, we channel a loving spirit whose words come to our lips when we see suffering.

The power of the recovery community entrained me to a vibration which I can still feel into, to this day. This vibration spirals upwards and outwards, towards more and more life. It reaches for more and more love, joy, and connection, for acceptance, for more claiming of all of us, more allowing of it all, more valuing of all people.

I will always be indebted to my disorders for leading me to get into recovery, where I discovered how love flows in a group consciousness that is tuned to the right station, and how I can be a channel for love too. I learned the value of our wounds: wounds are holes in our ego fortresses, places we can see through to each other. When we peek through those holes, when we see the real, magnificent, injured Self of the other in front of us, crying out for love, then we become the voice of love that that hurt Self needs.

May the voice of love visit you today. Thanks for reading!

Are you or a loved one looking into recovery? Click here to visit our site for more information. 

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General

The Heart Chakra and the Fourth Step

The Fourth Step of any Twelve Step Program is to do a “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves”. It’s during the Fourth Step that we clean house. We come back to the wreckage left by the hurricane of our addiction and take stock of the damage.

It hurts. It hurts to recognize who we have been while living under the command of our addiction. We realize that we have not been sane, we have not been our intended selves, and that we have been, in one way or another, a source of pain for others. If we do our Fourth Step right, we will meet a challenging feeling: remorse.

Remorse burns. Remorse blazes in the heart. But remorse is a healing, cleansing, purifying fire. If I could send a blessing to anyone on this planet, it would be the power to feel remorse.

So many people push remorse away, and I understand why – I do it too. I do it when I am afraid of feeling shame about who I am, when I am frightened that if I let in even a tiny bit of regret, I will be swept into an undertow of self-hatred. Since a large part of me already believes that I am not worthy of love, I am scared to acknowledge any further evidence of my imperfection.

But without the gift of remorse we remain at best narcissistic and at worst psychopathic: not able to feel the harm we are doing to others. Narcissists and psychopaths also can’t feel what they are doing to others, and that is the key reason that they are difficult to treat.

People with addiction, luckily, don’t stay narcissistic and psychopathic once they get into recovery, provided that we go through the whole process of spiritual alchemy that sustainable recovery generally requires of us.

When people with addiction get into recovery, we develop a beautiful, flowering heart that is even more empathetic, kind, and open to loving than it was before the addiction. This flowering heart is born from our remorse. People in recovery have broken hearts – hearts that broke open.

Before recovery, addiction took all higher heart qualities, like tenderness, unconditional love, and empathy, and sucked them down into the more instinctual realm of impulse and satisfaction. There is nothing wrong with the beautiful, animal, instinctual realm, don’t get me wrong. But it becomes distorted under the influence of addiction. The hungry ghost of addiction hijacks the second chakra, where we would normally experience healthy pleasure and comfort. The addiction then governs us by running everything through that energy center. We get cut off from our higher chakras, including the fourth, or heart chakra.

When we do a Fourth Step, which we might think of as a Fourth Chakra, or Heart Step, it can be painful to realize that we have not been acting from heart, that we have been out of touch with love, as all of our life force has been directed through the lower, survival-oriented, needs-gratifying parts of us.

The Fourth Step allows us to experience the purifying fire of remorse awakening in our heart chakra. It is that very painful remorse which resurrects our heart and its unitive, connective nature.

I believe it helps to couple remorse with self-forgiveness and self-compassion. The first time I did my fourth step my inner critic gave me the beating of a lifetime. My shame was only relieved when my loving sponsor helped me see that while in my disease, I had not fully known what I was doing. It was the illness within me that had done those things.

She also helped me see that everyone in the rooms, and indeed everyone outside of the rooms, does things that hurt other people. Everyone has a shadow. Everyone acts in ways that are a sort of selfish, greedy, and even corrupt, especially before they have developed spiritually. This is not unique to me, this is an important and humbling realization, to see that I share the broken condition with all of humanity.

In the spirit of applying self-compassion during the Fourth Step, Heart-Chakra-purifying process, I’d like to offer two little ways of enhancing the journey to make sure that empathy and self-forgiveness are in attendance.

One is to remember and perhaps rewrite the prayer, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do”. Since I’m not extremely into patriarchal slants on God, I reword it as something like, “Forgive me, God Source, I did not see and feel what I was doing, but now that I can see and feel what it was, I intend never to do that again, please help me to live up to that intention. I am sorry for any pain I caused anyone, anywhere in the Oneness.”

Another twist is to include the classic “Just like me…” formulation when reviewing the items on your Fourth Step. The phrasing is originally taken from Buddhist practices for expanding heart, and is expanded upon in Kristin Neff’s beautiful work on Self-Compassion. Here I say to myself, “Just like me, all over the world, people have been sucked into addiction. They have helplessly hurt those they love without even realizing it. May all of our hearts open to awaken from addiction, to heal ourselves and others, to remember our power to choose what forces we serve, to remember our sovereignty, our freedom, and our goodness.”

As I practice these attitudes, my remorse for what I have put out into the world expands to include compassion for myself. My remorse opens heart qualities that benefit and extend forgiving love and a desire to do no further harm to me, too.

Sending good luck for passage through the healing, alchemical fire of remorse!

Are you or a loved one looking into recovery? Click here to visit our site for more information. 

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General

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of “The Soul’s Code”

In James Hillman’s beautiful book, The Soul’s Code, he describes a way of thinking about symptoms and disorders that restores the dignity that Western medicine takes from madness.

He claims that our symptoms are not coincidental, and suggests instead that the particular curses we bear are related to our specific soul’s code, or destiny. The deepest and most painful challenges we face are related by inverse proportion to who we will become when we are completely unfolded and activated. In that sense, our destinies are tied up with our symptoms and would not be possible without them.

I have found Hillman’s discoveries to be not only beautiful but true. I have no doubt that my own experiences in madness are inseparable from the gifts that I bear for this world. I have also found this to be the beauty/truth when working with others. If I bother, I can see in each symptom, especially the truly horrible, awful, devastating ones that almost annihilate a person, a precious and life-force-studded seed that holds the full potential of their soul’s code.

The writers of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, in creating that hefty catalog of human woes, traffic with the idea that humanity’s diverse ecology of subjective inner-world experiences can be observed, described, sorted and named. Just as the naturalists once decided upon the phyla, kingdoms, families, histories and names of the flora and fauna of our outer world, psychologists have imposed scientific order on our inner world.

The different families of psychological suffering that psychologists have discovered are more or less distinct from each other. Each disorder has discrete experiences with distinctive features that are shared amongst all the people who grapple with that same category of struggle.

I acknowledge the value of this undertaking. The phenomena that the DSM aims to catalog have an undeniable reality, and I believe they are described accurately enough to help practitioners understand more about patterns they might not personally relate to.

The DSM’s naming of these patterns can be helpful for validation. Finding ourselves more or less reflected in a description we may be able to say to ourselves, “Wow, my suffering is real, look, there’s a name for it, and it really is as bad as I feel that it is.” There is a time and place for this type of validation, in my experience – and it often helps family members take our troubles seriously. I love the DSM for this, because in a society where nothing is real unless science says it is, it’s helpful to have science say that my experience really exists.

In other moments, the DSM’s way of holding the psychological phenomena they observed as signs of being disordered or sick leaves me with a feeling of disregard for my experience that denies its beauty and value. I’m not sure why they did not choose to group their observations according to the more common and predominant phenomena of our inner world –types of human joy, psychological health, strength, spiritual experiences, and resilience.

The DSM was birthed by the Western medical model, which is notorious for its negative slant and its interest in excising. Western medicine loves to isolate and cut out an infected area of the body or soul as though the presence of that symptom were not deeply related to the rest of the person who produced it. In contemporary psychology with an overly DSM-heavy take, the attack on “infected” areas of our souls creates a lot of problems, not least of which is the fact that practitioners miss the real origin of the problem (usually not located in the exact place that you find it, but usually in some deeper, more causal place).

The even more problematic fail in my opinion is that overly DSM-happy practitioners may forget that the infection is just the messenger. By shooting it we accomplish nothing other than shutting down the conversation! And if working with the soul’s code has taught me anything, it’s that if our souls don’t succeed, you can bet they will try, try again to get that message through – sending as many symptoms as it takes to get our attention. Not only is it violent, it’s fairly pointless to keep cutting off the heads of our disorders – symptoms just grow back unless you stop attacking and see what that hydra was trying to tell you.   

For that reason, it might be nicer to see the DSM as start but not the final word in the discussion of our psychological patterns. As I said, the DSM is a great tool for realizing, “Wow, this pattern of experiences I am going through is a documented phenomenon – it really is a thing that other people have dealt with as well – what a relief to know I am not alone!”

What we say, think, and do next with that information is very important too though: How do we interpret the presence of this pattern, and how do we personally choose to relate to it? Is it an enemy to be stamped out, or a kind friend come to tell us some uncomfortable but valuable truth?

Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, and someone who managed to find love in one of the darkest pockets of humanity’s heart, maintains that it is, in the end, the meaning we make of our lives that improves them more than any other factor. For some, the meaning of having a disorder may be as simple as concluding, “I have this genetic disease and I must live with it, but it does not determine me, and I will not let it decide my whole existence.” A person whose soul is interested in a different story might say, “I have this pattern showing up in my life – I will use it to create deep and powerful artwork that touches all of mankind. It is part of my soul’s code.” Another woman may say, “This disease will be my greatest teacher. I will learn everything I can from it and have it make me grow strong in character and love.” In other words, you could say it’s all in the interpretation, which is up to the nature and choice of the person with that disorder.

One meaning that I like to make of the DSM is to see each catalogued item as a call to activate a special and specific potential destiny. I would love to someday see a radically new edition sitting on the shelves of every practitioner’s office – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Soul’s Code.

 

Are you or a loved one looking into recovery? Click here to visit our site for more information. 

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General

Sustainable Recovery: Right Actions in Surrender-Based Spirituality

I have tripped and fallen many times over the same knotty root, that bulges up from time to time in the path of my sustainable recovery: how to find the right balance between action and non-action.

In some moments of pause I’ve reflected and concluded, “I see, it’s all about right action – right acting my way into right thinking!” (as the AA slogan goes). At other bends of the path, the truth seems to be the opposite. I find myself thinking that at the end of the day, the true success of recovery is nothing more than the simple-but-not-always-easy art of surrender. Not doing, not planning, not acting, but rather learning to receive – in the spirit of a bumper sticker I’ve seen and liked: Don’t just do something, sit there!

Normal people may have the dubious privilege of continuing to direct their lives from a mindset that favors self-directed and willful action over surrender. They might enjoy the (I would say illusion of) mastery, control, and dominance over their life’s unfoldment. People of this orientation may pride in being masters of their own destiny. But those of us in recovery, through the curious humbling awakener of addiction, have learned to be wary of the perils of running our lives from our small, limited, and at times, quite corrupted egos.

Living life from the ego, or the small self, doesn’t fit with sustainable recovery, and yet there are still times when, as I said, heroic, willful action is required, when it seems that we are being asked to battle, fight, and be strong to protect our recovery from the menacing return of a spirit of addiction, and to maybe take some of our destiny into our own hands. After all, God helps those who helps themselves, and so on.

I believe that both are true: Success in recovery hangs on the ability to move into action when everything is lined up for action, and sometimes we even need to get out the inner warrior and fight tooth and nail for our sobriety. At the same time, there are many spiritual rip tides which may overcome us, where the key to passing through them alive is to “let go and let God.” The question of when to take which actions, and in which spirit, probably perplexes many of us recovery sojourners as we pick our way along the path.

A metaphor I’ve been finding useful lately is to think of the relationship between a gardener and nature. Nature is the larger force, both kind and fierce, to whom the gardener is attuned, dedicated, and ultimately submissive. The thought of this relationship allows me to hold a conception of “right doing” that is anchored around being proactive about taking those actions which will actually facilitate and allow growth of recovery. In other words, to be like a nurturing, wise gardener who can feel through the rhythms of nature what actions are required, when.

In tune with the many messages of light, season, warmth, and the cycles of change, always taking her cues in surrender to the laws of nature, a good gardener is able to see that the window for action is now, and understands which type of action to take – is it time to prepare the soil, to add nutrients? Is it time to start seeds, to transplant, to thin? Is it time to water and wait, having patience and faith in spite of no outward sign of progress? Is it time to see that fruit is coming, and to do everything in the world to protect it against corroding forces? Is it time to harvest and share? Or is it time to accept that harvest is over for now – is it time to call something done and cut it back, bury it, let it rest and decompose?

With this mindset the question isn’t whether it’s me-generated action or total surrender that fits, but rather how I can join these – how can I, little me, take actions which arise from a larger surrender, in acknowledgement of the fact that I play only an assistant role to the life force within me that is driving my sustainable recovery. With this frame I see that recovery, like nature, grows on its own in spite of many obstacles, and was always there, growing, even when I was completely in its way. Imagine how much it might thrive if I don’t interfere, if I listen to it, if I align myself and my actions to it, instead of throwing myself against it.

There are actions which facilitate, support and enable the guiding spirit of our recovery, that life force to which we surrender our lives, to really have space to grow and expand here in this world. With this idea my job becomes simpler: it is to understand what my recovery needs every day, and in every season, and give that to my sustainable recovery.

What might my recovery need? Like organic life, my recovery needs a combination of things: exposure to sunlight, water, air, and nutrients in the right amount at the right time. Time overwintering in the dark, as well as time in warm moist nutritious soil. It needs different things at different times, depending on what’s going on in the environment around me as well as my own developmental stage.

A key ingredient for supporting our recovery is light, which may be analogous to how much exposure we are able to give ourselves to the “sunlight of the spirit”. How can we arrange our lives so that our recovery has enough transformative exposure to spirit? Can we go to meetings that have many spirit-filled old timers in them, can we listen to sacred music, read texts that open up the spirit inside us, expose ourselves to people and places that carry higher frequencies and vibrations? Are we placing our recovery enough in the light, or are we in the shadow of someone or something in or outside of us that blocks out our ability to receive?

Likewise, is there enough fluidity, succulence, and “wetness” in my recovery? Is there enough emotion, enough yin, enough female principle, or have I become too rigid, bossy, or dry in my approach? Action steps to support my sustainable recovery with enough “water principle” may include letting myself participate in yin yoga, tai chi, to be in and near water, to drink water, to learn from it, to allow myself to get slow and receptive enough to savor, to not be rushed.

Plants also need space and air – this may be analogous to the breath, and whether I am giving myself enough space. Am I letting my recovery “breathe”, do I let a gentle breeze touch its leaves, or am I in an overly stagnant, too-sequestered space? Or am I expecting myself to thrive in an overly challenging gale of forces my recovery is not rooted enough to withstand quite yet? Do I need more protection?

Am I nourished? Am I making sure that I add to, give increase to, give back to, and enrich my recovery, feeding my sustainable recovery nutrients which cause me to feel that I am satiated, that I have enough? Do I insist that I be around people and places that are genuinely nourishing, whatever that means to me?

Finally, do I let my recovery “overwinter” sometimes? Do I allow the death and decomposition principle to work in peace, to take from me that which is no longer vital and alive, which needs to be dropped off and allowed to become something which is fed back into the soil?

With a gardener’s mindset, I can focus on which actions will support the life of my recovery to thrive. Nourishing the ground of my recovery so that its roots are fed, defending the space around my recovery so that it can breathe, moisturizing the ground of my sustainable recovery so that it can grow succulent and supple, exposing myself to the sunlight of spirit, and finally, honoring the cycles of death and life, understanding that death of outdated and done parts of me and my life creates nutrients my recovery needs in order to continue to grow strong.
May these words be beneficial to you today.

Are you or a loved one looking into recovery? Click here to visit our site for more information. 

Categories
General Wellness

Baked Curried Bananas Recipe

Enjoy this healthy and delicious baked curried bananas recipe from our Chef and Nutritionist Anne Masri! It’s easy to make, not too messy and takes less than an hour! If you’re looking for a good vegan recipe and would like to branch out your taste buds, this is an excellent sweet and savory curry dish you can make with just a few ingredients that you might even have on hand. This tasty curried banana dish can be served as an appetizer or a dessert!

At Villa Kali Ma, we like to use organic ingredients to make sure our dish is free of chemicals and pesticides or other additives that our body recognizes as toxins. Toxic ingredients can trigger an immune response by the body. One theory as to why autoimmune disease is becoming an epidemic in this country is because of the toxins added to our food. So if you want to make a healthy dish, start with healthy ingredients that are free of chemicals and toxins.

Look for extra virgin unrefined Coconut Oil for the greatest Coconut Oil benefits. Coconut Oil not only tastes good, the medium chain fatty acids are said to improve memory and brain function, which makes it an excellent ingredient to bake with. Apricot Jam, made with fresh locally grown apricots, can usually be found at your local health food grocery store or farmer’s market and tastes fantastic! Curry Powder, which can be found at any grocery store, gives the dish a golden yellow color and adds an abundance of rich, delicious flavor.

Coconut Sugar is becoming a fairly mainstream ingredient and can be found at most grocery stores, however you will definitely find it at specialty health food stores such as Jimbo’s, Whole Foods, Lazy Acres or other natural food markets. Coconut Sugar is an excellent replacement for cane sugar due to its low glycemic index. The main ingredient, Bananas, is probably already in your kitchen and if not, I’m sure you know where to find them. The ripeness of the bananas is up to your liking. If you would like the dish to have more of a savory flavor, I would start out using bananas that are just turning from green to yellow and still quite firm. If you want it to be more of a sweet caramelized dessert dish, then go with ripe bananas. Or you can try both and see how you like them.

Happy baking!!!

Ingredients

  • Bananas
  • Coconut Oil
  • Apricot Jam
  • Curry Powder
  • Coconut Sugar

Directions

  • Set your oven to 375 degrees
  • In a saucepan, melt oil, jam and curry powder.
  • Pour over bananas.
  • Sprinkle with coconut sugar.
  • Bake until caramelized, about 30 minutes.

Let cool for 5 minutes and…

Categories
General

I Am Already All That I Need

I love this quote by Nisargadatta Maharaj. This is such a great reminder of how beautiful life can be if you live by these principals.

I used to have an attitude or belief that my problems were all that mattered. I was always thinking about my problems, my life, my wants, my needs, my stuff, my lack, my suffering, etc. I was very busy trying to get things to be the way I wanted them.. the way I thought they should be. I was always a victim and something was always happening to me! Everything that happened in life that didn’t fit with my set of personal preferences was a problem, so I had lots of problems. I had an attitude that I deserved a better life and it was not fair when things didn’t go my way. One of my frequently used phrases was “why does this always happen to ME?!!” All my bad choices and circumstances (alcohol, drugs, abusive relationships, etc)  were because somebody did me wrong, either in that instant or at some distant time in the past, and It wasn’t my fault!

Through my process of recovery, I was able to change my attitudes and beliefs and realize that most of my suffering was caused by my own self-importance and misguided sense of what life was all about. Once I started practicing yoga and meditation I started to see everything more clearly. I began to have the insight through the practice of self-inquiry, and I was able to see the truth in each situation and how my attitude about it could change everything! If I practiced having an attitude of gratitude, my life looked much better than if I had an attitude of entitlement. Slowly, I got down off my high horse and began to live more humbly. One of my favorite quotes is from Rick Warren’s book “The Purpose Driven Life” which says:  “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less”. I found this to be profoundly true in my own life. I had been thinking about myself and my perceived problems constantly. I was making unimportant things important and leaving behind the most important things; like my children.

Once I began practicing humility, I became willing to see my own neurosis. The more I lived from this place of humility, the more real and honest I became, and the better I felt about myself. I had to stop pretending to be someone I was not and accept myself just the way I was, a train wreck, which would take a long time to clean up and get back on track.

Eventually, through continuing to practice gratitude and humility and by letting go of self-importance and entitlement, I began to see myself in a better light. I began to love the real me. I finally found the love that I had always been seeking, and it was right here inside me. I had been seeking love outside myself for decades, living the life of the “hungry ghost” that Gabor Mate talks about in his book about addiction and trauma. He describes the hungry ghost as “the domain of addiction, where we constantly seek something outside ourselves to curb an insatiable yearning for relief or fulfillment. The aching emptiness is perpetual because the substances, objects or pursuits we hope will soothe it are not what we really need.”

What I learned from my own experience is that what I really needed was to love and accept myself. Love is knowing I am everything…already! There is nothing I need to do, be, acquire, aspire to, perfect, etc. I just needed to be me, and love who I am. So now, years later, the train of my life is flowing pretty smoothly along the tracks to wherever life is taking me. The things I thought mattered most, the things I thought I had to GET in order to be HAPPY, I still don’t have them. Life still happens without concern for my list of preferences. Life is still life but I have changed my attitude about it. Now I practice acceptance and gratitude, which gives me FREEDOM from wishing that what has already happened were different than it is.

Now, instead of thinking about myself all the time, I think about how I can make a difference in the lives of others. How can I help another person find the love inside themselves? How can I help others to find FREEDOM from suffering?  How can I show up in a way that inspires and uplifts everyone I meet? Now I know that life is not about getting…It’s about loving and giving and connecting to others in a meaningful way. Turns out, if you align yourself with love and humility, life is beautiful, and you don’t need anything to make it so.

Wishing you all love and happiness!

Namaste

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General

Rise Up Warrior Women

Be yourself and love who you are! Don’t judge, don’t compare, don’t worry! That is your mission! To boldly go out and be yourself!

I know this is a daunting mission. It took me awhile to get there. But don’t give up! Don’t give in! Make a commitment to this mission of loving who you are. Loving who you are right now, not who you will be someday if you do this, that and the other thing. You are a divine spiritual being who is perfect exactly as you are right now! The only problem is that you have not taken the time to get to know this being and fall in love with her. Instead you have spent all your time judging and criticizing her. So get to know your real Self and start looking for the things that are right and good and great about yourself!

MAKE THIS YOUR MISSION and you will find out what a miracle you are, how powerful you are, how beautiful you are, how amazing you are, how loving you are, and how blessed you are!

“If you look for the bad, you will find it. If you look for the good, you will find it. We always have a choice between two realities: the positive and the negative. The reality we invest our energy in is the one in which we exist.”  ~ Yehuda Berg

You will know you are making progress when you find yourself being more tolerant of others, more compassionate and less judgemental. When you catch yourself putting others down, stop and forgive yourself for that bad habit. Judging others is a sure sign that our inner critic is alive and well, and it judges us more harshly than it judges others. Just becoming aware of this is the first step toward conquering it. Catch yourself judging and re-direct those thoughts and inner comments into something positive.

Rise up warrior woman! Take on your mission! Conquer the negative mind! Train yourself to think happy thoughts. Find peace within yourself. I did it, and I am no different than you. You have the power….should you choose to accept it  :))

Peace & many blessings,
Kay

Are you or a loved one looking into recovery? Click here to visit our site for more information. 
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Break the Cycle of Karma

“The Idea of Karma is that You Continue to get The Teachings You Need to Open Your Heart” ~ Pema Chodron

Before my recovery from substance abuse and love addiction (dysfunctional relationship addiction), I always blamed everyone else for all the things going wrong in my life. I was the perpetual victim and everything was happening “to me.”  I always felt like, “Why is this happening to me? Why do all the men in my life cheat on me, lie to me, put me down, call me names and abuse me?” Through my recovery process I came to understand that nothing was happening “to me,” it was all happening “for me.” These lessons kept coming for three decades, until I finally got it.

The great Law of Karma states, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” This applies directly to what I was experiencing, even though I felt I was the victim. My Karma was that I would continue to get the lessons over and over until I learned from them. I was unconsciously choosing to continue this cycle of suffering by not learning from the lessons that were being presented to me. These lessons were trying to teach me that NO relationship, except the one with myself, was going to give me the love that I needed to heal. I was not going to heal my wounds by finding the right man to love me.

Yes, I had been a victim when I was an innocent child, but that was long ago. The situations that I was participating in as an adult were happening because I had not healed from my childhood trauma, which had left me with insecurity, shame, guilt, and lack of self-love. Because I had not healed, I kept getting into relationships that would ultimately cause me great suffering. I would then blame the other person and make myself “right” and them “wrong,” which kept me stuck in that never ending cycle of blaming and justifying.  I could then justify my coping mechanisms, which were self-sabotaging and kept me stuck in the proverbial “vicious cycle.”

The lesson that life was trying to teach me was that I needed to heal from my childhood trauma and open my heart to the love that was buried under the layers of fear. The love that was hidden under the fear was the love for myself. Once I truly faced my fear, I was able to tap into that deep well of love that was there for me. I was able to see clearly that life was not happening “to me,” it was happening “for me.” It was trying to teach me the ultimate lesson. That there is nothing out there to “get” that would provide me with the love and happiness that I was seeking.  All that I needed and wanted was with me all along, all I needed to do is look within.

Looking within is not something that happens overnight. It is a process of healing, forgiveness, self-compassion and self-inquiry. It takes time and perseverance, but it has the biggest reward if you do it! It is the Hero’s Journey. You become the hero of your life when you get tired of being the victim of your life and become willing to face your fears. When you learn to love yourself unconditionally, your whole life heals. You break the cycle of Karma.

Dive deep into your own heart, discover your own true self, and you will find everything you were searching for “out there.”

Peace and Many Blessings,
Kay

“We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who’s right and who’s wrong.” ~ Pema Chodron

 

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Who Am I Really?

Who am I really? I am Consciousness. I am pure love, light and beauty. I am infinite and unknowable. I am the unmanifest experiencing the illusion of human form in order to know myself as love, as you, as the earth, as the sky, as the ocean, as the animals, as the stars, as the universe. All of this is the Divine Play of life. Life is amazing and beautiful.

Kay White is not just who I am. I am not just the Ego-self with the story that goes with that identity. That is just something I am making up as I go to help me “fit in” with society’s rules and expectations, but it is not who I am. No, this Ego person that I am making up has had many personalities and many different bodies over the decades. I had the 5-year-old body, the 12-year-old body, the 30-year-old body, and now I have the 50 something-year-old body. Each of these bodies had its own Ego. But throughout all of this, the consciousness, the pure awareness of being, has stayed the same. I have learned that I am not the circumstances of my life or the things and people I get attached to. If I make those things who I am, if I identify myself by these circumstances, then I will feel annihilated if I lose them.

I am not the voice in my head that tells me I am not good enough. That is just what the Mind does when it has been trained by society and implanted with false judgments, expectations and rules passed down from parents, teachers, communities, cultures, and religions. We don’t choose our beliefs, they are programmed into us depending on where and with whom we grew up. The Mind can be programmed to be your enemy. It can go against you your whole life if you let it. No, my Mind is not just who I am. I have the ability to separate myself from my Mind. 

This ability was not available to me before 5 years ago. I didn’t know about it yet. I had no spiritual life or beliefs. My life was painful because I was identified with my thoughts.  My thoughts were the brutal gatekeepers that kept me locked inside feeling hopeless, alone, ashamed and broken. I was constantly sitting in judgment of myself, and my belief system was programmed to make me suffer. I was a victim of my past and my thoughts about myself. I didn’t know that I was a powerful creator with my own Free Will that could be used to create beauty and love in my life instead of fear and self-doubt. I didn’t know that I could reprogram my Mind to see beyond the veil of illusion to the truth of who I am. No, I was lost in the fog of my Mind and could rarely see the beauty of life.

I learned to reprogram my Mind through the principles and teachings of Yoga and through the practice of meditation. Yoga is an 8-limbed path to self-realization. Anyone can learn and practice the path of Yoga. It is a step-by-step guide to reprogram and train the Mind to allow happiness and joy to come into your experience and to let go of all that negative bullshit you’ve been telling yourself. I learned to use my Mind to create and manifest positive emotions like love, joy, peace and contentment into my life. I can flow with life now instead of suffering it. There is no purpose for negative thoughts except to create fear and project it into an imaginary future situation that doesn’t exist. The daily practice of the Path of Yoga has taught me to live in the moment and focus on the good in each day, one day at a time.

I learned to control my emotions. I still have them and feel them, but they don’t take over my life. I can experience a wide range of emotions and then let them go. I do not have to judge myself and I do not have to judge others. If I slip into judgment, I recognize it immediately. I know it is a choice I made and I can choose not to do it. I no longer feel like a victim, I don’t feel sorry for myself, and I don’t blame others for any of the circumstances of my life. I left the old body and the story the Ego was telling, behind. I am not my thoughts and I am not my past circumstances. I am the conscious presence here in this moment writing these words and right now, I am happy, joyous, and free!

Yoga has given me choices. I can choose happiness now. I can choose love. I can choose forgiveness for myself and others. I am no longer programmed to be my own enemy. Now I am my best friend. I love me, I love life, and I love you. I love you because you are me. Yoga has helped me to see beyond the veil, beyond the illusion that we are all separate and we must compete to survive. There is nothing to get outside myself to make me lovable and acceptable. I just needed to look beyond the veil, to the truth of who I really am. When I got a glimpse of that magnificence, that undeniable truth, I loved myself instantly and I instantly knew that this was the truth for all beings. Yes, you and I are the same. If I can learn to love myself, so can you!

“The most important relationship in your life is the relationship you have with yourself”  ~ Diane Von Furstenberg

“You are searching the world for treasure but the real treasure is  yourself” ~ Rumi

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Yoga Is Not About Being Bendy

I knew nothing about yoga therapy five years ago. I started practicing in rehab at 48 years old with sciatica down both legs and degenerative disc disease in my back. Within a few months, I was healed. I can tell you countless stories of transformation by following this path. This thing called yoga is much more than being able to bend over and touch your toes (which, by the way, is not necessary). It transformed my body and mind and introduced me to my true Self. To my Soul. It taught me how to love myself and others. It taught me how to live. It taught me to believe in myself and become the woman I am meant to be. Yoga is a spiritual path to discover your Self! You don’t even need to do a single downward dog! The hardest thing about this practice is to show up for yourself every day. You don’t need to go to a yoga class for an hour and a half. You can get ideas and create your own practice by finding videos on YouTube or on Yoga Journal’s website. Practice your own breathing (pranayama), moving (asana) and meditation ritual for 20-30 minutes every day. This is when the magic happens. When it’s just YOU doing YOUR PRACTICE. It’s like a ceremony that is calling your best self into being. It will transform your life in ways you have never dreamed possible.

 

Are you or a loved one looking into recovery? Click here to visit our site for more information. 
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