I resume complacency
It’s a dagger to my spirit
Friendly it is not
But it feels good.
I muster strength to break it
Or I’m swept forward by simple gestures: try this…go here…do that…
And then press pause and
resume complacency.
~Nikki, The Soul Reporter
Without the pain
I would not have found the poetry.
~Nikki, The Soul Reporter
My husband just airdropped this to me. Turns out in 2012 I used to write posts like this, and share them to subscribers. The reminder makes me wonder why I don’t really write anymore and that makes me sad. So since I’ve no new material, here’s something old and still relevant.
By Lou DiVirgilio
As I age, and my body morphs into an older characterization of my younger self, my feeling of myself within my mind has not changed. That is to say, in my mind my identity, my character, the way I use my energy, has remained constant. And further, this felt quality of myself would remain the same even as I awakened from sleep, even if I were hit on the head and lost consciousness, even if I awakened from a coma, even if I had amnesia. This individualized quality of being is experienced, at sometime or another, by every spiritual awakened human being. Even though there is unrelenting change bombarding our being, there is also a place of constancy within our consciousness, and this constancy gives us our feel of our unique quality.
All manifest things have a certain predominant quality. For instance, if an oak tree seed were planted, an oak tree would manifest, not a pine or maple tree. The oak tree’s DNA has instructions and memory to form an oak tree; of course within the instructions are continuous adjustments of internal relations to external relations. Therefore, not all oak trees would look 100% identical, but their oak treeness, their quality, their essential characteristics, and their function would predominately remain the same.
You the reader, have probably noticed the difficulty of confidently understanding some of the meaning of certain ideas put forth in this blog. This difficulty arises first, from your unfamiliarity with the ideas put forth, and the limits of the English language for explanation. The English language has no equivalent words for some of these ideas. They are beyond its syntax. That is the reason Sanskrit and other languages are used. These other languages have incorporated these ideas into their word syntax.
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We know ourselves. This has come to me recently in a conscious way.
We all know when something isn’t right within us and amongst us. What we do with this is where we need to place our attention. What do I mean by this? For many of us, when we know something isn’t right— what do we do about this? Do we try to understand what it is? Or do we push it away and put our energy to functioning as if all is well?
We also know when something is right with us. Most of us would like if others noticed this. Again, what we do with this is where we need to focus our attention.
Is it enough that we know this? Is it enough that we truly do know ourselves? Or do we believe we need the other? Do we not trust ourselves to know who we are?
If we did, imagine what that might mean?
Perhaps we do not know because from right out of the womb, even before, when our parents paint our rooms blue or pink, we are told who we are, what we will like. In school we are taught what “they” think we don’t know and need to know, and on and on it goes.
But we know. We know ourselves more than anyone else can know. And this is the key to our unfolding, our conscious knowing of who we truly are and also, who we are not.
What’s this selfie for?
In the hopes to be admired.
I want to be admired and I also fight against it. The fight against it has mostly won. And, has come at a price. I hide. I have been stingy with sharing and passive/aggressive about it. I have silently said to readers, followers and potential ones:
look at me dammit. Pay attention to me. Admire my face and my insights. So I show off.
And then on the flip side I’ve said:
forget you. I know you won’t notice me. See I knew it- no likes. Another post of such great words (I mean I have the best words) and no one cares. So I shut down.
This has been my dance with all of you (and my nearest and dearest ones). It’s dysfunctional and toxic and not how I want to show up in the world. Therefore, I have mostly remained hidden. This is also unhealthy because the truth of me, and all that I’ve come to realize about life and myself, wants and needs to be exposed.
The truth is I’ve reacted to all of you, which is really just my own battle with myself that I’ve drafted you all in, and it comes out of a conditioning that came from my upbringing.
Essentially, I was ignored. I longed to be deeply seen. I know now it wasn’t personal. It was the impact of being raised by those who did not see themselves.
Until we see ourselves we cannot and will not see another.
If the desire to be seen, and essentially deeply known and valued, is not identified and satisfied, this desire becomes increasingly toxic. At its worst it becomes the dance I have described- on one end a compulsion to be admired, which can be as extreme and defined by a narcissistic personality disorder. And on the other end, a complete erasure of self characterized by self-neglect.
The desire to be admired is a trap, part of the psychological mindset, which creates dysfunctional and protective patterns and behaviors. In the age of social media and a particularly exaggerated version of an admiration-seeking U.S. president, we are afforded the opportunity to really look at the deep inner wound of neglect and abandonment. In doing so, we can limit the toxic interplay it does create and instead tease out the toxins and understand, and most importantly feel the hurt of not being seen.
This post is part of my own teasing, a confession in a way to make the dysfunctional dynamics known and to state I want to now come to all of you, readers and followers, and to my family and friends, in a more authentic and whole way. To share only to be admired comes from the smallest of self and truly not worthy of any of us. This way of showing up is also not sustainable and will eventually come back to haunt us us in one form or another.
We may never be able to be truly seen by another or by our primary caregivers. But we always have the opportunity to heal the wound and to fully see ourselves. The more of us that do this, the more we will see each other. Only this will bring the kind of shift so many of us desire in the world.
~The Soul Reporter
The dominant culture, which is mostly reactivity from unprocessed trauma, tells us that we aren’t supposed to let people hurt us. But the truth is people do hurt us.
My mom hurt me today. And there’s been plenty of other days as well. As her young child I was constantly hurt. I learned to cope and self-protect through a variety of ways. As a child, it was through art, music, books and my imagination. As I grew older, other ways were through perfectionism, OCD and controlling behaviors and the big one: codependency.
Today, I stopped taking her hurt. I set a firm boundary. And then I let myself be hurt. When our mothers hurt us it’s the ultimate betrayal. If the hurt is constant and consistent, we will learn to betray ourselves. We will make choices and create an entire life and get involved in relationships from this deepest wound.
If we are brave and committed to change, we will begin to awaken to our life built from self-betrayal, and we will feel shattered. At the very least, bruised. And, this is the place where we learn self-love, self-compassion, and forgiveness of self and others. It is a deep and holy space of grief, surrender and heart opening. We will learn self-love and begin, little by little, to create a life for ourselves painted from the womb of our rebirth and our deepest reckoning with ourselves.
We will recognize that we no longer need to protect ourselves from hurt. We will come to experience our heart as strong, worthy, willing and ready to feel feelings and remain stabilized. We will learn the difference between self-betrayal and self-love. We will see setting boundaries and making conscious choices as our gateway to creating new experiences, experiences based and waged in self-love.
To continue on this self-love journey, my self-reflective practice for the month of November is this….to explore, experience and learn:
What does self-love look like in my relationships…..
Beyond relationships, what does it look like for me in my life…. How do I paint and create my experiences through self-love?
I am excited to begin experiencing this.
~The Soul Reporter
This is me sophomore year in high school. I’m in photography class (the only class I liked). I see a contemplative person. A deep well doing my best to function in superficiality, knowing there’s more, and feeling my way inward.
I am still this way except I am beyond doing my best with superficiality. I have moved to that deeper place and I’ve discovered so much about myself.
The journey so far has been intense and this is because I set a clear intention- maybe around the time of this picture- that I would get through my stuff sooner rather than later.
This “stuff,” is the trauma and neglect of my childhood. It’s the alcohol and mental illness from a primary caregiver. It’s the bullying and feeling left out in school. It’s the why I’m codependent (now in recovery). It’s all of that and more, and how it creates deep psychological conditioning, which creates disruptive relationships dynamics, behaviors and moods.
It is my sense we are in a great battle due to the wounds of our upbringing. These wounds create psychological conditioning that impact our everyday lives, experiences and relationships. Many of us do not realize this is the case and just assume: this is who we are. But these attitudes and behaviors, that come from this psychological space is not who we are. We are more. And, we can be restored to who we are. Some of us are waking up to this realization because it is time. It is time to evolve and advance, and break the cycles of trauma and neglect.
At 47 I feel I am on the other side of the psychological conditioning and making my way toward everyday, every moment consciousness- one glimpse at a time.
As I become more awake the desire to externalize all that I have learned also awakens. This is why I have started a new page on social media called A Daily Glimpse. The intention is to share, in a digestible way, the often complex and challenging experience of personal and spiritual transformation. There have been many who made the shift that came before me and helped me along the way. I now notice others coming forward to do the same. Sometimes I wonder, am I too late?
The ego says: why bother then. Well- because this shift in higher consciousness is bigger than my ego and I choose to be a part of the change and that is why I want to offer the messages I have to give. If you’d like guidance and support in making the shift from our psychological conditioning to expanded consciousness follow @adailyglimpse.
Being the inheritor’s of a God-Spark is not a possibility easily accepted. Yet, within the human spirit lies a recognition that we are more than we appear.
There is a cosmic urge to reach beyond our grasp, do the impossible, know the unknown, to live an examined life. This is all part of our evolutionary heritage. This God-Spark represents our essential core. We live, move, and have our being, as does all manifest life, from this Source.
This idea is not some divine inspiration that was brought down to me by an angle or written in stone nor broadcast by the voice of God. I learned this idea by studying ancient philosophies and spiritual writings. I found the idea of Divine Consciousness expressed in the Old Testament, in Genesis, …”the power of God was moving over the waters” (space), … God’s Consciousness, (his power), spoke the Eternal Word which energized all manifestations; from no-thing, to all things. Divine Consciousness was installed in all things and its vibration sustains All. I also found the idea in the New Testament, in St. Paul’s letter to the Colossian, “It is my task to fully proclaim God’s message, which is the secret he hid through all past ages from all mankind, but has now revealed to his people. God’s plan is to make known his secret to his people, this rich and glorious secret which he has for all people. And the secret is that Christ is in you, which means that you will share in the glory of God.”
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The Soul Reporter 