The Leap of Faith
Perhaps you have experienced the sensation of looking off a deep precipice of a mountain. The drop seems dizzying and treacherous. As you look out, it seems the landscape goes on forever, with more mountains to climb and overcome.
It feels just like this in life when you come up to an obstacle or challenge that pushes you to grow. This may be anywhere from your commitment to your healing and growth in consciousness to getting clear on and expressing your life purpose.
You know you need to jump, but you don’t know where life will take you or if you will succeed, let alone survive. You know you can’t stay where you have been. Your old structures and belief systems don’t support you anymore. You have outgrown your old way of being.
You have come to the “Leap of Faith”. It wouldn’t take faith if you knew you would make it. So you leap, sometimes sure that you will die. In a way, part of you does die, that part that was afraid and couldn’t see the bigger picture. Every time you take the “leap”, it gets easier, and you come to know that God is always there for you.
I want to mention disappointment here because it is so often mistaken for sadness. Disappointment stems from unfulfilled expectations. You expect things to go a certain way, and they don’t. You are emotionally attached to the outcome of how you think things should be. You are deluded by your own illusions and fantasies. You feel let down and perhaps even betrayed. You feel disillusioned.
The ego views this as a loss. There is an element of sadness to disappointment, but there is mostly fear. You may fight the fact that you have no real control over anything but yourself and your choices. Perhaps, you cover this fear with anger or feelings of victimhood.
You may feel dried up inside. The well has run dry. You feel no emotional vitality, change, or movement. Your disappointment may lead to physical fatigue and even illness. Your focus on this negative emotion creates more setbacks in your life. Your disappointment creates passivity. You either feel stuck, or you spiral downward.
You need to accept the fleeting nature of beauty and perfection. There is an ebb and flow to all of life. With every day, there is a night, and after the darkness, the light always comes. Nothing is permanent.
Your Emotional Barometer
When you truly understand disappointment, it becomes part of your emotional barometer.
· Pick a topic where you experience a lot of disappointment.
· Be honest with yourself. If you pick a topic you don’t have much charge on, this will not be a good test for you.
· At one end of the barometer you have disappointment and on the other is peace with numbers one through ten in between.
· Where do you see the dial land (one through ten) on the gauge of your emotion.
After you have done some healing around this issue you just saw reflected on your emotional barometer, do the test again on yourself to see how much you have healed and grown. Where you are on the gauge will tell you your level of emotional security and trust in yourself and the process of life.
You may ask, “Does that mean I shouldn’t set goals and work toward them?” Of course, you can. Your heart is seeking fulfillment through the expression of your desires and your life purpose. So, set your goals, work harder at realizing them, but also work harder at letting go of your emotional attachment to the outcome.
When disappointment comes up for you, you know you have become attached to your expectations about how you think people or things should be. You are not in present time. You are in either the past or the future, in fear of letting go and fully embracing the present moment just as it is.
Live in the present moment. Self-mastery comes from being grounded in the present reality. Your success grows out of being down to earth. Trust the process, and adapt to the ever-changing flow of the river of life. Let your disappointment reveal your state of emotional and spiritual maturity.
Peace, Maren
There is a wonderful analogy about letting go in the movie, “Finding Nemo”. The young fish, Nemo, is captured by men and taken away. While searching for him, Nemo’s father, Marlin befriends a loony fish named, Doree. She tries to help him find the quickest way to his son.
At one point on their journey when they don’t know which way to go, Doree calls out for help. Off in the distance they see something coming, but can’t make it out. Terrified, they soon find themselves swallowed by a whale.
Marlin tries to find a way out, banging hard against the inside of the whale’s mouth, wearing himself out. The whale’s big form carries them quickly and easily a very long distance. Doree asks the whale what’s going on. He tells them to go to the back of his mouth. Marlin believes they will be swallowed and holds on for dear life. The whale tells them to let go. Doree lets go as Marlin still struggles.
Eventually, Marlin can’t hold on any longer, and he lets go. The two fish are blasted out of the spout at the top of the whale’s head and thrown right into the harbor where Nemo is.
Perhaps, there are areas of your life you are still holding on to how you think things should be and the little security you think will keep you safe even if you are unhappy. Your intuition tells you if you will just let go you will be fine, but you are too afraid to listen. You wear yourself out, holding onto archaic and limiting beliefs and patterns and don’t live life to your fullest.
Remember that you can ask Spirit for help. Even though you may be uncertain and scared, take the leap of faith and let go. Surrender to your inner guidance and the flow. Spirit will always guide you to the things that will bring you the most growth, and ultimately, the most joy.
You will be surprised to find yourself blasted into whole new levels of awareness, fulfillment and ease. Maybe, just maybe, God has something better in store for you than you could ever imagine for yourself.
Peace, Maren Nelson
Minister of Mind/Body Healing
Life Breath Integrations
What Are Boundaries?
Most of us were first taught (or not) about boundaries within the structure of our families when we were young. It’s rare to find someone who was taught the awareness it takes to properly develop this personal and social skill. Like the old saying goes, “Good fences, make good neighbors”, healthy boundaries make healthy relationships. A lot of people don’t understand what it means to have “healthy boundaries” in any of their relationships, especially intimate ones.
I was in a relationship with Ted off for about four years. He reminded me of the family I grew up in with similar patterns of relating. Both of us were raised in families where we had both taken on the belief about a woman’s place and that we should be oppressed. The relationship wasn’t exactly healthy to say the least.
The relationship held a lot of powerful lessons for me many of which were not easy, but I grew. A couple of the biggest lessons were to learn to set better boundaries for myself and to learn to speak up for myself.
I began to ask for what I needed and wanted in the relationship. I would sit there shaking like a leaf as I told Ted, “I need to hear, ‘I love you’ once in a while or a simple, ‘You look nice today.’” I stuttered the whole way through. He didn’t change, but at least I asked for what I wanted.
I felt very controlled in the relationship, and it drove me nuts. This was exactly how I felt growing up. Although consciously I didn’t want this, unconsciously, this was just how I thought things were. I talked to Ted about boundaries, and I would see this glazed look come over his eyes as he nodded his head. Nothing changed.
About five years after we broke up for the last time, Ted told me that when we were in the relationship, whenever I had said we were having problems with boundaries, he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. He thought I wanted to draw a line down the middle of the room with him on his half and me on mine. He didn’t have a clue what codependency really meant.
Ted had done some work on himself since we had been together. Now, he understood what I was talking about back then. Although I didn’t laugh about it then, we could both laugh about it now.
What does the word really mean? The codependent is the caretaker, the one who steps in to fix the people around them. Codependents think they need to control. They may even feel they get their value or worth from fixing other people or their lives. They may feel so out of control in their lives, they have to control others.
If you are codependent, you will attract to yourself one or more people in your life who will act out some kind of dysfunction or addiction. Although you don’t like the behavior of the one acting out the dysfunction, you will cover for them and try to fix them. You are actually enabling and supporting the other person to continue to act out.
If you have someone to focus your attention on, you don’t have to look at your own issues. You can blame the other person for the problems in your relationship and in your life. It allows you to stay in denial of deeper issues when you can point the finger at the other person. It gives you a false sense that you are okay.
It sends a nonverbal message to your partner that they can’t handle their own lives, and they need you to help them. The codependent is as tied to the behavior as much as the one acting out.
In a dysfunctional family with unhealthy boundaries, each member has made an unconscious agreement with the others to play a certain role in the system. If one of the members tries to change or pull out of the system, the others may feel betrayed because the one who is trying to heal has broken the family agreements that keep the dysfunctional system in place. The rest of the family must change to pick up the missing pieces for the system to continue to play out.
This codependent family doesn’t know how to deal with the new pattern and may even get upset. They probably won’t want to change. They may even try to get the person who is trying to heal to revert back to the negative pattern so they can go back to theirs. If this person is able to stick with the new, healthy behavior, it would mean a shift for everyone.
What happens quite frequently is that two or more codependents will come together in some sort of relationship. They each have their particular dysfunctions or addictions and will enable and try to fix each other, never really looking at themselves.
Although they may complain endlessly about their partner, they unconsciously prefer a relationship like this. It is less threatening to keep the negative patterns in place than to take responsibility for themselves and make the necessary changes to create a better relationship or leave.
Codependent caretakers deal with denial, control, obsession, repression, low self worth, lack of trust, dependency, anger, poor communications, and weak boundaries. In the progressive stages of codependency they may experience a decline in physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health.
If you suspect you may be codependent and want to heal it, first identify your beliefs, ways of thinking and the behaviors that follow or areas that cause you problems. Then, define what you want to do about them, and follow through on creating healthy changes for yourself.
Enmeshment
If you were raised in an environment or family that was codependent which many of us were, you will likely carry that same behavior into your adult life and relationships. Enmeshment is when one person’s problems are the other person’s problems. The boundary lines are unclear as to who you are and who they are. You are overly involved in each others lives in a controlling, unhealthy way.
With enmeshment, your sense of self-identity is merged with another person. Your individuality is partially or fully denied and you may deny them theirs. Often, the person you are in relationship with will invade your personal space as though they have a right, and you do the same thing with them. You project onto each other your own feelings and desires onto each other without checking in with each other.
Codependency is often acted out by those people who think they can fix their family whether it is family of origin or those they marry into. You can’t. Neither is it wise to try to fix close friends, work associates, your children/step children and/or their partners, anyone you are in a personal, intimate, and/or sexual relationship with. Do not try to fix your spouse. This will set up an imbalance to the relationship.
If you attempt to try to fix any of these people, you are setting yourself up as the therapist. Whether you are consciously aware of it or not, you may try to control their experience, thinking you know what they need to heal. You are too close to the person to really see the bigger picture from an objective viewpoint.
The person you are trying to fix may not be ready to share certain “secrets” with you and will withhold whether they are consciously aware of it or not. This will defeat the whole purpose of healing.
I have to admit that I have done one and only one session with my mom and dad, my four sisters and two of my five brothers. I wanted them to know what the Breathwork is about so they would understand more what I am about.
I have done quite a few sessions with my son over the years. In many ways, I know it really helped him. In retrospect, I can see how it set him up to look to me for his emotional healing and spiritual development.
If I had it to do over again, I don’t think I would have done it that way. We finally reached a point in his mid-twenties when I told him I would no longer do sessions with him and that he would have to find his own sources to help him heal.
I have found the best way to help those close to you to heal is to be an example. We are never healed alone. When you go for your healing, the people around you, especially the people you are closest to such as family, intimate partner and close friends, will be affected first.
You don’t have to say a word about what you are doing. They will energetically be affected whether they are consciously aware of what you are doing or not. When they see the changes in you, this will have the biggest impact on them. It is up to them to go after their own healing.
If you try to force, coerce or manipulate someone to do what you think they should, what they hear behind your advice is that something is wrong with them. They probably won’t be able to hear it, and you could slow them down or turn them off completely to go after their own healing.
Peace, Maren Nelson
Perhaps, you came from a family where abusive ways of communicating were so common that, over time, your family members became numb to the sarcasm, belittling, shaming and name-calling. This includes all the, “You should do this, or you shouldn’t do that”. You may have developed a hard shell and even joined in this ugliness as a way to protect yourself. You may not even be aware you brought this pattern into your adult life and are doing it now.
Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, it’s an inappropriate way to try to control others. Underneath it all, the one who does this is coming from fear. They see themselves as so small and weak they have to bring others down to their level to feel a sense of power. We see this in intimate relationships, families, businesses, communities and between nations.
I have been hearing about a new technique of communicating called “Nonviolent Communication”. I’m so glad to hear that more and more people are realizing the importance of communicating through love. Nonviolent Communication aims to create a quality of connection among people through a set of understandings and suggestions about how to express and listen to oneself and others more compassionately and clearly.
There's a large network growing across the planet of active teachers and practitioners. Other terms for it include Compassionate Communication, Giraffe Language, and Open-Hearted Communication. Nonviolent Communication is also the title of a book by Marshall Rosenberg, who (with others) developed this practice and theory. The book has an official website; also see BookShelved:NonviolentCommunication . Other books include BookShelved
ontBeNiceBeReal and BookShelved:ConnectingAcrossDifferences .
Love, Maren
With Valentine's Day around the corner, I thought it would be a good time to share with you an excerpt on releationships from my upcoming book, "The Joy of Healing". (For clarification: Early in the book, I talk about how the ego is based on the insane belief that we have separated from each other and All That Is or God. This is absolutely impossible because we wouldn't exist if it were true.)
"The Special Relationship - You meet someone and things seem to click. Although you have been hurt before, he or she is everything you always dreamed your partner would be. You have so much in common, and they really understand you. You feel like you have know each other forever. They can do no wrong. This is the relationship that is going to save you, and you go for it.
The first six months of the relationship seems so perfect. You show each other the best of what you both are. You look into each other's eyes, and it's like seeing yourself, all the love that you are. You have found your other half.
The relationship acts as a Band-Aid covering and soothing all the wounds from past relationships that started out exactly like this one. It seemed all they did was reinforce your pain and the beliefs you had hoped weren’t true. Different face, same pattern, but you don’t see it.
Those first six months, you don’t really let each other see those dark and hidden places inside your mind, your fears and your addictions to avoid pain. Neither of you want the other to see who you really are because deep in your heart you believe you are guilty and unlovable. You can’t look at this yourself or let them see it. You believe that if you did, you would find your worst nightmares about yourself are true. Instead, you use the relationship to avoid the only truth, forgetting the Love that you are.
The relationship becomes a you-and-me-against-the-world thing. You think you are safe in the little bubble you have created with your partner. You don’t realize the form of this relationship is actually increasing your feelings of being separate from each other and the world. This is the 'Special Relationship'.
Gradually, those wounded places and limiting, unconscious beliefs begin to show themselves in the relationship. If you are not aware of what is going on, you will project onto your partner those things you are not willing to look at, accept and heal within yourself.
Once again, you go through the pain of disillusionment. Another partner disappoints you. The relationship ends, and you are alone once again with that empty place inside until the next person comes along who resonates with you. The cycle begins all over again, and nothing really changes…
The Holy Relationship - The scenario of a 'Holy Relationship' is quite different from the 'Special Relationship'. The relationship is not used unconsciously to feed the ego and add to the belief in separation. It is used as a means to open each other deeper and deeper into love. The relationship then acts as a catalyst to share that love with the world through the expression of your unique gifts and talents. The relationship is inclusive, not exclusive.
Perhaps you have certain agreements with one person that you don’t have with other people such as monogamy. Maybe you agree to stay together to support each other as life partners. You keep these agreements out of love and a desire to maintain this connection because it adds more joy to your life. Your personal integrity with yourself strengthens the bond of trust with your partner and theirs with you.
Relationships are the best workshop in town. You and your partner know that if you truly allow yourself to love deeply, all the ugly wounds, irrational beliefs and deepest pain will surface to the light of day. You know it’s useless to hide. You know there’s nothing left to do but to get real with yourself and your partner.
You are willing to really open, look honestly at yourself, and take personal responsibility for your healing and so is your partner for themselves. Although you and your partner have all the faults and frailties of being human, you know they are not what you are.
There may be times you may forget who you and your partner are and fall back into the unconsciousness or denial of the ego. You are no longer really present with your partner. During these times, the first one to remember to invite God or your divine guidance into the relationship is the most rational. You have remembered to turn the relationship over to love instead of fear.
Where you may have many conscious or unconscious agendas about how you think things should be, Spirit will have only one, your return to Love. Spirit will use every relationship for what will bring about the most healing. However, it may not come in the way you think it should.
You learn that turning it over means letting go of control and trusting the process, your partner, God and most of all yourself. You know you can handle whatever happens. You know that whatever happens is for the highest good. You know that even if the form of the relationship were to change, the love will always be there.
The intimacy deepens as you unravel those unhealthy kinks within each other. With the support of your partner, you let go more and more of self-judgment and projection. The opening of your heart and your expansion in consciousness spills out into the world to be shared with everyone. The relationship is a conscious blessing to each other and the world.”
In Service, Maren Nelson
Hi everyone,
I've been telling people for years the breath oxygenates your blood and organs, strengthening the immune system. It also, opens up more clarity, access to more creativity, a deeper sense of well-being, you have more energy, and a deeper connection to God (whatever that is for you).
There was a rumor this came out from John Hopkins. I've been informed, however, this didn't originate from there, and I want to make that correction from the email I sent out. I still find the information valuable, and believe it to be true from a common sense point of view. Take a look at #16 in particular.
Excited!
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