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15 Dec

The Critics in Your Head Are Not You — or Your Partner

An Excerpt from Succulent Wild Love by Susan Ariel, Rainbow Kennedy and Dr. John Waddell

You have a constant stream of thoughts running through your mind, and we use the term “inner critics” to describe the thoughts that criticize you or tell you that you should be ashamed or feel guilty if you do what you want to do.

When you were growing up, basically well-meaning people taught you when to feel shame and guilt, and criticized you to get you to do what they wanted. Part of the information you took in about how to function in the world included these beliefs about who you “should” be and how you “should” behave.

After a while, these external voices became inner voices. And in many ways they were helpful. They reminded you what the rules were so you could avoid getting punished. They motivated you to achieve things so the people with authority would reward you. They protected you in a world where everyone was much bigger.

Now that you’re older, you have the ability to evaluate what is genuinely best for you and no longer need to rely on others to do that for you. But these clusters of beliefs are still in your head and often demand that you listen to them and do what they say.

They aren’t as useful to you now as they were when you were small. In fact, they can block you from taking actions that would truly nourish you. They were given to you by the authorities in your life based on their view of the world, one that isn’t necessarily best for you, especially the adult you.

Listening to these voices without questioning them, the same way you did when you were small, leads to unnecessary guilt and shame, and decisions that don’t serve who you are now. Additionally, in a relationship, if your partner echoes what your inner critics are saying, those criticisms can have tremendous power to affect you.

For example, if your partner says you should become a mountain climber to get more exercise, chances are this would not echo an inner critic. Few of us have been told that we need to climb mountains to be better people. If you had an interest in climbing, you might look into it. If not, you would simply ignore the suggestion, though you might wonder why your partner would encourage you to do this.

But if your partner says you should do something that echoes what an inner critic has told you — for example, that you should lose weight or get a better job or stop playing video games or eat differently, just to name a few common inner-critic beliefs — your response would likely be much more emotional.

You might be upset with your partner for saying that. You might feel defensive or down on yourself and pressured to do what they said. It would look and feel like your partner evoked those feelings, when in reality it was your inner critics. Sometimes even mild disappointment from someone whose opinion you value can be experienced as severe criticism because it empowers your inner critics.

Using the Inner Critic Care System, you will be able to identify the thoughts in your head that speak critically to you or evoke guilt and shame, so when others echo them you can address your inner voices directly rather than trying to change the other person or having them dictate what you should do.

It doesn’t work to deny, repress, or ignore inner critics — if you do, their messages will only get louder and larger inside your head and project outward. Self-critical dialogue is extremely debilitating, not only in love relationships but at work and as you go about living your life.

Once you are able to deal with your inner critics effectively, you can look into others’ suggestions if they appeal to you, ignore them if not, and realize that their opinions and desires have more to do with them than you. You will be less affected by others’ judgments about you and be able to respond to them more harmoniously.

It isn’t that you might not want to make changes or improvements in your life, it’s that you don’t need to be bullied or criticized into doing so. Knowing how to manage inner critics and care for yourself at the same time will give you tremendous advantages in every area of your life.

Your inner critics don’t just criticize you, they also criticize everyone around you. Not only do you need to live up to their standards, often so does everyone else. So you might find yourself speaking for your inner critics and making judgments about your partner. And if their inner critics match yours, your partner is likely to respond defensively. You might even get into a big fight, when in reality it’s the inner critics in each of you fighting with the other’s.

The idea is for your adult self — we call it your Aware Self — to be in charge of your decisions, not your inner critics. Most of us start out so merged with our inner critics that we can’t see them. We might say things like, “That’s just the way I am, I’ve always been that way,” or, “I know I have flaws and should do better,” or, “Loving just isn’t easy for me — I always find faults and flaws in whomever I’m with.”

If the idea of inner critics is brand new to you, your first opportunity is to become aware of them. Begin to notice your inner dialogue. Is it critical of you or anyone else? Anything that implies that you or someone around you “should” be doing something different, or that you (or they) are bad, wrong, flawed, or unlovable as you are, is the voice of an inner critic.

Often, our thoughts move so quickly that we miss them. The easiest way to know that an inner critic has turned on you is by how you feel. If you’re angry at someone for criticizing you, if you feel that you should be different, if you feel down on yourself, and especially if you’re defending yourself — these are all signs of inner critics.

You can work from the feelings back to the thoughts. Allow yourself to be aware of the uncomfortable feelings and see if you can connect thoughts to them. They could be something like, “You’ll never find love,” or, “You should be better,” or, “You always ______.” The words “should,” “never,” and “always” are particular favorites of inner critics.

# # #

SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) and Dr. John Waddell are the authors of Succulent Wild Love. SARK is a best-selling author and artist, with sixteen titles in print and well over two million books sold. Dr. John has been helping individuals and couples lead happier lives for over 30 years through his clinical psychology practice and metaphysical teachings. Visit them online at PlanetSARK.com.

Excerpted from the book Succulent Wild Love ©2015 by SARK and Dr. John Waddell.  Printed with permission of New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

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19 Oct

Entering Your Inner House

An Excerpt from The Book of SHE by Sara Avant Stover

It’s time to learn how to take care of yourself. I mean really take care of yourself. The most profound self-care practice we can do is right under our noses. It’s an internal practice, so simple and obvious that we often completely miss it. When we bypass this step, no amount of external pampering can nourish our depths when we’re feeling depleted, afraid, overwhelmed, or insufficient.

Self-care is just this: lovingly meeting ourselves exactly where we are and allowing things to be as they are. When we can hold ourselves in this way, our inner world starts to become softer, gentler. We start to trust our own basic goodness, and we even come to learn that irritation, aversion, doubt, and resistance aren’t to be evicted through our self-care; they’re to be allowed and included by it.

Devoid of our loving presence, our bodies become more like haunted houses than goddess temples. How did we end up this way? Trauma has frozen inside. Our bodies house all of our old memories, sensations, thoughts, and emotions. Scary, unpredictable, too much, too little: At some point in our lives, our bodies became scary to inhabit. They craved foods that make us fat, sex that makes us “bad,” or pleasure that makes us “selfish.” They grew hair in inconvenient places. They bled through our pants and stained our sheets.

Deep down in our bodies’ depths roam the ghosts of unhealed trauma, abandoned creative passions, sensual desires, intuition, and the true power that comes from who we are, rather than what we do. Our bodies aren’t indentured servants here to labor for us until we take our dying breath. They are sacred chalices, home to our SHEs. The chalice, a metaphor for the Divine Feminine, is the lake, bowl, vessel, womb, or grail. We are not only embodied as but also governed by circles. Within this roundness, we house the entire universe — each season of the sun, sea, earth, and moon. We are microcosmic containers within which the miracle of life can grow, flourish, and decay. Our bodies help us live out the unique contribution we’re each here to make in the short time that we have. Our bodies always tell the truth and hold the information we need to thrive.

The confusion we harbor about our embodiment has reached epidemic proportions. We’re all living in a time that values spirit (masculine) over matter (feminine). These two qualities exist in everything and are independent of gender. Each man holds feminine, or yin, qualities, just as each woman holds masculine, or yang, qualities — in different degrees. When we appropriately balance these two poles, we become integrated human beings.

The well-known yin/yang symbol from Taoism illustrates how the coessential polarities of masculine and feminine energies intermingle and flow together to create a balanced whole. Yin is inside, slow, passive, dim, downward, female, moon, while yang is outside, rapid, active, bright, upward, male, sun.

Masculine awareness ascends. It rises up and out of the body, seeking spaciousness and the bird’s-eye view (think meditation, quantum physics, and the compartmentalization and mechanization of “the body” in Western medicine). Feminine awareness descends. It moves down and into the body, all the way into the heart of the earth (think belly dancing, Mother Teresa kissing lepers in the slums of Calcutta, and the use of medicine spirits in plants to heal the body). Ultimately, we need both to truly thrive as individuals, and as a society. We need both dancing and sitting still, penicillin and echinacea, splitting the atom and activating our compassionate hearts.

Since we’ve all inadvertently prioritized the “up and out” (masculine) current, we need to remember how to go “down and in” — not just as a concept, but as a felt experience. When we inhabit our bodies, we feel like we’ve come home. Embodying our womanhood needs to be a full-time affair.

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Sara Avant Stover is the author of The Book of SHE and The Way of the Happy Woman. A pioneer in contemporary women’s work, she has been featured in Yoga Journal, Newsweek, and Natural Health and on ABC, NBC, and CBS. Visit her online at http://www.thewayofthehappywoman.com.

Excerpted from The Book of She: Your Heroine’s Journey into the Heart of Feminine Power ©2015 Sara Avant Stover. Printed with permission of New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

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27 Sep

Three Lessons I Learned from Editing MALA OF THE HEART: 108 SACRED POEMS

 

Guest blog by Kate Vogt, coeditor of Mala of the Heart

Great spiritual and religious traditions teach us to open and heal our hearts. Silent practices of prayer, meditation, and contemplation give rise to an ever-deepening awareness and opening of our hearts. Similarly, poetry written by saints and mystics consoles the heart, helping to open it in a way that is quite unique compared to that of other art forms. Mala of the Heart: 108 Sacred Poems is a collection of poetry spanning a wide range of cultures and civilizations that celebrates the eternal spiritual truth within each heart. We hope you’ll enjoy this article in which coeditor Kate Vogt shares lessons she learned while working on the book.

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The journey of coediting Mala of the Heart was filled with many insights. I learned a lot about myself, and, more important, the book offered me a chance to experience some of the great wisdom that is held within its pages. Here are three of the lessons I learned:

  1. Let Go! I maintained an underlying sentiment in editing this collection: to honor the source of these poems by helping them live on in the world. In more practical terms, this meant viewing the collection of 108 poetic expressions of supreme transcendence as a precious garden that I was tending. Since these expressions were sung or written by wise women and men without expectation of earthly gain, it only seemed appropriate that as an editor of their words I would take heed of their teachings. Because these poems are pure offerings, I (along with my coeditor, Ravi Nathwani) viewed my role as one of caretaker or temporary nurturer of the collection so that it could attract and inspire others far beyond me. This view allowed me to experience a spiritual practice known as letting go, or acting free of any anticipation of praise, remuneration, or any other tangible benefits. Letting go of expectation wasn’t a specific action; instead, it took the form of heeding the compelling call of the wisdom within the collection to honor and support it. As a result, the collection has been graced with generous contributions from people like Jack Kornfield, who wrote the foreword, and Elizabeth Gilbert, who offered her endorsement. Let go, and grace will flow!
  2. Pause! As a child, I always loved looking for the Big Dipper in the nighttime sky. Then I’d move on to the Little Dipper and other constellations. I was always amazed that particular configurations of stars formed different shapes. While editing the poetry, I revisited this childhood habit for the first time. But something had changed: instead of seeing the stars as forming different shapes, I noticed that it was the space between the stars that determined the shapes. The stars are similar in brightness and size. The gaps are like invisible connectors that give meaning and form to a group of them. When the gap is large enough, the space invites the mind to rest in the silence. The poetry in Mala of the Heart changed my experience of habits such as this one of childhood stargazing. The poet-saint is a master of conveying wisdom in the space of a pause. The spacing of gaps between the words and phrases can change or strengthen the meaning of the words and can even invite us to linger in the silence.
  3. Laugh! I am lucky enough to have a father who makes it a practice to laugh regularly. Most of his jokes are about average incidents in life and on the surface are not particularly funny. But because of the way my father begins to laugh almost as soon as he starts the story, I can’t help but be infected by his laughter and even see the story as just as humorous as he does. He is ninety-three and attributes much of his longevity to being able to laugh at the foibles of life, his included. When editing the poetry, I began to more fully appreciate that my father had modeled a very practical tool for walking on the path toward self-transcendence or following one’s belief system. The poems feel as though they arose out of immeasurable joy, contentment, and wise happiness. They are not necessarily jokes or humorous, but many of them playfully tug at my mind. For example, “Die while you’re alive and be absolutely dead. Then do whatever you want: It’s all good.” These words by the seventeenth-century Zen master Bunan inspire me not to take myself too seriously. A more overt example is a poem by another seventeenth-century poet, Tukaram of India, in which he begins to call his dog “God.” After a while his dog starts smiling and dancing. Then he stops biting. Tukuram poses the question, “I am wondering if this might work on people?” After spending some time with these poems, I’ve become my father’s daughter, finding myself laughing spontaneously at some of the most mundane occurrences in life. After all, it is “all good.”

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Based on the book Mala of the Heart: 108 Sacred Poems. Copyright © 2010 by Ravi Nathwani and Kate Vogt.

 

Kate Vogt teaches both classical Yoga and Yoga philosophy privately and for teacher trainings in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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23 Sep

SEVEN CUPS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Guest blog by Aleya Dao

Imagine a life filled with happiness, connection, and purpose. Just think: You are able to connect with the divine and perfect aspect of yourself. You feel protected and guided by a loving angelic presence. You use every challenge to grow stronger and to access a higher consciousness. You are healthy and filled with self-love. Deep inside, you feel creative, passionate, and joyful — and all of that is reflected into your life.

Wouldn’t that be lovely?

Well, it is possible, and I am here to show you how. The basic idea is that all your work is done at a level higher than your physical reality. There are aspects of you that exist in higher dimensions, at the spiritual level. I call these parts of you your energy self or your Higher Self.

I have created a step-by-step process to help you gain access to your energy self and the energetic resources it controls. As you develop these tools, your consciousness will evolve, your challenges will transform, and a deep inner peace and empowerment will bloom.

You will learn that your real power comes from within and from beyond. When you explore your inner realms, along with the higher dimensions, your life will start to change in amazing ways.

For many years I looked for fulfillment externally. My life was a half-empty cold cup of coffee. I felt a deep sense of emptiness, even though everything on the outside looked “perfect.” I was living in a beautiful mountain town. I had a thriving acupuncture practice. I was healthy, had great friends, and was single and dating, yet this full life was not enough. I yearned for an inner change, wanting something, anything, that would fill my emptiness.

I chased numerous spiritual teachings, hoping that each one would give me the answer. I longed for an enlightenment moment that would miraculously transform my life into one of bliss and joy. But nothing could have prepared me for what was to come.

In the middle of a sound healing session, I was hit by the cosmic two-by-four. I had an awakening. In less than thirty seconds, my consciousness radically altered. A bright light enveloped me. My awareness shifted into a higher realm, and I felt an exquisite vibration of love, as I saw the world surrounded by loving, compassionate beings. Waves of light coursed through me, filling me with new ideas, perspectives, memories, and pearls of wisdom. In every fiber of my being, I could feel and see a multidimensional reality.

I started to see the world through new eyes. It was like getting X-ray glasses. I could feel a deep interconnectedness and purpose behind everything. The fabric of the world looked like an exquisite pattern of love and light, instead of a dark, shadowy, and challenging place. I understood the reason behind every action, and I had a profound awareness of what needs and lessons were being addressed by other people’s behavior. This greater awareness was simultaneously overwhelming, empowering, and comforting.

You would think that having a deep inner knowing of connection and peace would make life a cakewalk. I wish. Often the opposite is true. Life gets real, very quickly.

As you awaken, you will become more sensitive. This sensitivity will become your greatest strength and your greatest challenge. You will need tools to protect this new level of awareness. You will also need discernment, empowerment, and courage.

As you become more sensitive, you may feel other people’s feelings, hear angelic beings and guides, hear or know the thoughts of others, see beings of light and dark, and maybe even see the future of your life and of others’. These experiences may be both comforting and frightening.

You might also experience a conflicting sense of connection and deep loneliness. Old relationships could fall away. You could even find yourself living in a new place, driving a new car, wearing new clothes, and maybe even taking a new name.

Less than six months after my enlightenment experience, I had experienced all the above, and more. My entire life had changed in the blink of an eye. I had to let go of the old and move into the new. I slowly discovered the tools to help me navigate the unknown waters with ease and eventually with grace. I was my very own guinea pig, and my life was the lab. I learned how to discern the difference between my thoughts and feelings and the thoughts and feelings of others. I learned how to hold appropriate boundaries, meet my needs internally, and take responsibility for my inner and outer reality. I met my beloved partner, found a beautiful home, and created a bountiful livelihood.

I am not saying it was easy. I fell down a lot, had my heart broken a few times, spent way more money than I had in my bank account, moved seven times, got sick, got healthy, lost friends, and made new ones. My learning curve was steep and involved many tears, laughs, and thinking I was insane for brief moments of time. Fortunately, I had guidance through the entire process of integrating a higher consciousness.

Through trial and error, and with the help of my angelic guides (beings of love and light who exist in a higher dimension), I have developed seven concepts that have proved useful to my clients, my students, and myself. When understood, practiced, and mastered, these concepts can help you create the life you yearn for, one of abundance, balance, connection, and empowerment. When you take the conscious, slow, gentle path, you will save time, money, relationships, and your general sanity.

After fourteen years of practice and teaching, I have distilled these concepts into what I call the Cups of Consciousness. The seven cups are simple statements of truth:

  • First Cup: You Live in a Multidimensional Reality.
  • Second Cup: You Are Never Alone.
  • Third Cup: You Can Change Your Inner World.
  • Fourth Cup: Your Challenges Can Help You Grow.
  • Fifth Cup: Your Body Is a Nature Spirit.
  • Sixth Cup: Your Soul Has Wisdom and Inner Gifts.
  • Seventh Cup: You Are Perfect.

Combining these concepts can help you form a big picture of reality that can dramatically transform your life. If you sip from just one of these cups, however, it can help you find greater peace and empowerment.

If some of the cups do not resonate with you, put them aside. You can always come back to them — or not. Your life will change positively whether you master just one or all seven of the cups.

# # #

Aleya Dao is the author of Seven Cups of Consciousness. She opened the first alternative health-care clinic in Telluride, CO, and has built an international healing practice with her online subscribers and students. Visit her online at http://www.aleyadao.com/

Excerpted from the book Seven Cups of Consciousness ©2015 by Aleya Dao. Printed with permission of New World Library. http://www.newworldlibrary.com

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