Truly. I find that when I help people connect with their FULL selves, larger selves, “I AM” selves, they literally forget about their “problems.” Problem? What problem? Not from this True, Loving vantage point!
When we decide to see the goodness and wellbeing, we can receive it. And when we count it, we grow it in the world. It’s a beautiful service from the inside out. I heard this from Michael Neill at a 3 Principles retreat I went to in Malibu in February. It really landed for me. We all, at least sort of, know in our heads that Wellbeing is present no matter what. But we continue our confusion that it’s not. We ARE wellbeing. All is well, always. It really would be a shame to never realize that. I am sure everyone reading this really does know that wellbeing is the truth, no matter what circumstances may look like in any moment. If more of us stand in this reality, we make it more accessible, more real, more VISIBLE for ourselves and every other being on the planet. Imagine if we all moved, acted from here…..
There’s no need to change myself. Or overcome my conditioning. It’s all been perfect. The behaviors/identities I thought I was prior to this moment were not bad, wrong, false, or misguided. The “me” that The Universe has been up to this point is not inferior to the “me” that is emerging. An oak tree is not better than an acorn. A butterfly is not better than a caterpillar. The soil that a paper cup (or mountain) disintegrates into is not better than the paper cup or mountain. Neither is the paper cup or mountain better. It’s all the dance of Existence. Unfolding, moving, reveling in itself. And none of these things needs to TRY to transform. They are carried, moved in the natural wave of Life. The Divine. I do not have to try to be different, to be “more of my true self,”or to try change in any way. I am being lived, and the inner and outer forms are changing as Love revels in itself and dances for its own exaltation of Existence. It just helps if I notice what is happening and what is actually here, now, in this fresh moment. It helps if I notice that I am a tree, rather than an acorn feeling the natural pressures and movements to become one. It helps if I notice I have wings.
The new year can bring such huge expectations, resolutions, aspirations, manifestation rituals, etc. All for things we want to accomplish, achieve or HAVE at some indeterminate but hoped-for time SOON! Even with the concept, “soon,” it’s about what we will have LATER. Later, as in “over there.” If we can just figure out the right steps to GET there. If we can just change ourselves enough, work hard enough, figure out the magic words to make things be different. We gear ourselves up, brace ourselves, or maybe even hide from the tremendous oncoming pressure of “the starting gate” of January 1st.
We don’t really WANT to hurl ourselves at life, but we’re afraid if we don’t we’ll miss out. (Or won’t be good enough or loved enough or safe enough.) But we’ll never catch the carrots we dangle in front of our own noses. Really, the new year can just amplify that familiar, confused panic we feel so often – the urgency to make things be different than they are. To make OURSELVES be different than we are. That frantic chasing after Life itself. (As if we can ever be separate from Life.) The carrots are illusions. We are ALREADY good, loved and safe.
The more I slow down and breathe, the more I can FEEL in my body that we ARE Life itself. It’s not “over there.” We’re it. IT. Perfect as we are, right now. Complete. If we chase after our future, all the juice of this extraordinary, ordinary NOW goes by without us taking it in. Without us experiencing the fact that we ARE so alive and whole, right now in this moment. Without us realizing that we ARE the juice. It doesn’t only come later after we’ve “earned it.” And it’s not some thing or accomplishment “out there,” and always “just up ahead.” All the love and gold is sitting calmly and beautifully right here. We’re it. We, the magical, extraordinary, ordinary, messy, perfect whole expressions of LIFE that we are.
And so, We Who Are All Perfect Life Now, without changing a thing let’s celebrate! Yes, Happy New Year! But even more, I wish us all a HAPPY NOW HERE!
HUGE love, Chris
The more I slow down and breathe, the more I can FEEL in my body that we ARE Life itself. It’s not “over there.” We’re it. IT. Perfect as we are, right now. Complete. If we chase after our future, all the juice of this extraordinary, ordinary NOW goes by without us taking it in. Without us experiencing the fact that we ARE so alive and whole, right now in this moment. Without us realizing that we ARE the juice. It doesn’t only come later after we’ve “earned it.” And it’s not some thing or accomplishment “out there,” and always “just up ahead.” All the love and gold is sitting calmly and beautifully right here. We’re it. We, the magical, extraordinary, ordinary, messy, perfect whole expressions of LIFE that we are.
And so, We Who Are All Perfect Life Now, without changing a thing let’s celebrate! Yes, Happy New Year! But even more, I wish us all a HAPPY NOW HERE!
HUGE love, Chris
https://youtu.be/9WDz1OqNMhI
Here is a direct link to the video GP posted on his own blog so you can check out his other stuff too! Worth a look! https://masterheart.clickfunnels.com/squeeze-page17648519
Hey everyone! I am a huge fan of Matt Licata. All of his writing is extraordinary, but I feel moved to share this particular article. I just copied and pasted it from his blog, but I also added some additional comments he made on Facebook after he posted this. Enjoy!
The agony of an untold story, By Matt Licata. (See original) post at:
http://alovinghealingspace.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-agony-of-untold-story.html
“Talk therapy” gets a bad rap these days, from caricatures of analysts and couches in cartoons to the shaming of “one’s story” by certain forms of spirituality, quick to label any hint of narrative or subjectivity as evidence that a person has lost their way.
Clearly articulating our story, the way we have come to make meaning of our lives and experience, into a field of empathic, non-judgmental, attuned, right-brain to right-brain connection can be incredibly healing, reorganizing, and transformational.
While the reality of the power of a true I-Thou relationship has been known intuitively for a long time, the field of interpersonal neurobiology has discovered the mechanisms of what is actually happening during moments of empathic attunement, and the neural integration that is fostered within this field. This is not some sort of airy-fairy pseudoscience and positive thinking. Read the research and see. Or just open your heart and feel.
Often when I speak with someone who is deeply invested in their spiritual life, they will preface their communication with, “Well, I mean, not to get into my story or anything…” As if “having a story” was somehow evidence of not being spiritual. Something to be ashamed about. Some obstacle to transcend, “get over,” or do away with, some clear manifestation of being “lost in the ego.”
This is madness.
I love what Maya Angelou has to say on the matter, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” I find this to be so true.
Of course, it is important that as friends, therapists, counselors, and healers we work at multiple bands of the spectrum, also including the emotional, somatic, and spiritual. That we send breath and life into each level, using whatever skillful means at our disposal to attune to what area might most need attention at any given time.
As many of us know all too well, it is easy to drown in our stories, to fuse with them, and be flooded or engulfed; to forget that no story will ever fully encompass the entire majesty of what we are. But that is not indication that story is impure or an obstacle to our healing and awakening. There is pure wisdom buried in the story if we will take the time to allow its meaning to unfold. It is the fusion that is the issue, not the story. We must make this discernment in the fire of our direct experience.
The appearance and navigation of story is not evidence of some spiritual failure or that you’ve fallen short. But evidence that you are a human being. Welcome. We human beings are storytellers. It is a very valid, creative, and honorable aspect of our holy brains and nervous systems, of our souls. Rather than shame and attack our storytelling capacity as error, let us embrace it as a gift from the Gods, and engage it with our hearts open.
Get to know in a really clear way the story you are telling about yourself, others, and the world. Get curious. Listen closely. Travel inside the story, with breath, into its very core and secret places. Illuminate it with awareness and with compassion. From this ground, you can then decide if you’d like to update the narrative, re-craft the story of your life, re-envision a new perspective, re-enchant the plot and cast of characters, bringing forth a more integrated view, perhaps one that is more up to date and a reflection of the deepest truths that you’ve discovered, not just inherited from an earlier time.
The goal is not to “not have a story,” but to have a flexible relationship with story, playing and dancing and dreaming with the lens through which you see yourself and engage reality. As a creative, open, and luminous pathway in which you journey as the hero or heroine of your own life. And to use your story as a way to connect with others, to truly meet and touch and be touched by them, to love and be loved. To help them with everything you have within you.
Go ahead. Tell a story. Dream a new dream. Author a new poem of your life. The Gods are listening. Your heart is listening.
(For those of you interested, the four fundamental psychological functions that Carl Jung defined are thinking, feeling, intuition and sensations.) 😉
Matt’s additional comments on Facebook: As someone so riveted in the work of the heart, I do feel called at times to come to the defense of the intellect, of cognitive functioning, reality testing, executive functioning, the development of the self and subjectivity, which in my experience are inseparable from the heart itself, a luminous expression of spirit, as it comes into and infuses the world of matter. Of course, we can always stay open to the trance of over-intellectualization, the overuse of the conceptual, and engaging with it as a means to defend against the unresolvable, creative, wild, mysterious energies of the body and the heart, but let us not do so at the expense of splitting off from the miracle of this brain, this mind, and the ways it can serve us on the journey of love.
In Jungian psychology, for example, there are four primary functions by which we perceive and enter into relationship with others and with life itself, different (but related) pathways by which we engage with spirit and matter (which are inseparable from a more tantric view). Thinking is one of these functions, and incredibly important, a gift given from the Gods and Goddesses as one way to enter into relationship with the mystery.
Like all functions, it has both a wisdom aspect and a more neurotic aspect, when not applied skillfully. The invitation is to inquiry deeply, to honor the wisdom aspect, while challenging the more neurotic aspect.
The other functions (in this model) are intuition, sensation, and feeling. In my experience, the invitation is to honor the reality that we tend to specialize in one over the other three and as Jung notes we are usually quite deficient in one of the four, but this one serves as a very unique doorway or portal into the unconscious.
To consciously develop (differentiate) each of the functions is an important aspect of inner work, in my experience. It is common in contemporary spirituality to de-value the thinking function and value feeling and intuition, and of course we can understand this given our culture’s overemphasis on thinking. But this overvaluation is not an indication of some inherent problem of thinking, but rather a disconnection with the wisdom aspect of thinking, and an undifferentiated relationship with the four functions overall.
“EVERYTHING is an expression of God’s (Source’s, The Universe’s, etc.) Eternal Loveliness.”
— St. Francis of Assisi
“Sometimes a thing needs to be retaught its loveliness.”
— Thomas Merton
I found these quotes in a book I read awhile ago called Loveability, by Robert Holden. (FYI, I recommend the book.) I love the quotes (and the people who said them.) I relate. In fact, it’s a rather succinct description of what I do. I help “reteach” folks (put them back into contact with) their unique, eternal loveliness. We forget how truly sacred and perfect we are, AS we are. Right now. I am deeply interested in reminding you (and me) about that.
So here’s the thing: it’s not about becoming Eternal Loveliness. We ARE that. In every expansive, glorious, wretched, confusing, “shameful,” fearful and “ugly moment.
It is ALL the Eternal Loveliness. Not later when we somehow effort our way into a “higher” frequency, when we are “over” our “issues,” or when we have it “all together!” We are ALL, TOGETHER. Right now. We are the All. We are the One. The Wholeness. Every bit of it is valid and necessary for Infinity to be Infinity. Not only does “sometimes a thing need to be re-taught it’s loveliness,” but it seems to me that we “things” are learning that there is no part of us, no behavior that is not an expression of that Eternal Field of Love. Every bit of us is gorgeous. Just take a look at your selfie. 😉 <3
So here’s the thing: it’s not about becoming Eternal Loveliness. We ARE that. In every expansive, glorious, wretched, confusing, “shameful,” fearful and “ugly moment.
It is ALL the Eternal Loveliness. Not later when we somehow effort our way into a “higher” frequency, when we are “over” our “issues,” or when we have it “all together!” We are ALL, TOGETHER. Right now. We are the All. We are the One. The Wholeness. Every bit of it is valid and necessary for Infinity to be Infinity. Not only does “sometimes a thing need to be re-taught it’s loveliness,” but it seems to me that we “things” are learning that there is no part of us, no behavior that is not an expression of that Eternal Field of Love. Every bit of us is gorgeous. Just take a look at your selfie. 😉 <3
It takes practice to rewire neural circuitry, to re-encode pathways with empathy, attunement, and compassion. Unfortunately, for most this foundation was not available; there was no holding environment that could contain, dance, and play with the magic of a little emotional being.
Intellectual understanding, while important, is not enough. It takes action in the moment, a new response to the eruption of dysregulating thoughts and feelings, over time, to reorganize the nervous system and re-author a new, more integrated narrative about who we are.
The good news is that you can begin right now, no matter what is going on in your life. Instead of urgently seeking relief, become curious about the unique ways you become activated in relationship. Instead of falling into the habitual extremes of dissociation and fusion, enter into communion with the burning, the charged, and the claustrophobic, unresolvable alive world of feeling.
The journey of metabolization occurs in stages, which we cannot skip. Initially, we must train ourselves to stay with the intensity for very short periods of time, titrating and pendulating the overwhelming thoughts and feelings, going back and forth testing our window of tolerance. Slowly, we discover that even though it may feel otherwise, we can endure this material. Our survival is not actually being threatened. Before we can begin to move deeper, we must first know in an experiential way that staying with it is not going to take us down.
Once the nervous system has the experience that it can tolerate very small doses, we then stay for two seconds, instead of one. We move from merely “tolerating” to starting to contain it, realizing it is not some enemy coming at us from the outside, but a lost aspect of ourselves, longing to be allowed home.
Once contained, we can begin the journey of accepting it. Not “acceptance” in that we are condoning or settling for something – or that we “like” it or “want” it to say – but in the sense of a fiery, compassionate willingness. We are willing to experience what has come, finally, for we sense that resisting what is, this whole play of experiential avoidance, is the root cause of nearly all our psychological suffering.
We are no longer willing to abandon ourselves. No, I’m not going to do that any longer. Even though it takes everything in me, I am going to move toward my vulnerability and care for it, re-encoding a new pathway. Even though I will not be “perfect” at it and likely “fail” over and over again, I will remain steadfast in my vision.
This is where the work shifts to a more heart practice, where we aren’t as interested in clear insight and pure awareness, safe as a witness on the sidelines, but rather begin to explore what it would actually mean to open our hearts to our pain. To hold it like a mother surrounding and enveloping her baby. This can be pretty radical and truly goes against the grain. We start to bring kindness to the feelings, to the parts of ourselves we had to disown at an earlier time.
It just moves on from there, with deeper and more integrated forms of awareness, compassion, and exploration, traveling into the core of whatever arises and touching it with our hearts. Eventually we may even come to love our triggers, longing to hold them and know their subtleties, standing in awe at the opportunity to learn more about love as it comes into form.
Depending on the degree of trauma and dysregulation, this work is often best done within a safe (yet provocative) relational container, where we can make use of an attuned other’s calm and soothed nervous system to help contain, hold, and integrate this material. That’s not to say that we cannot do a lot on our own. It is kind to allow ourselves to at times turn to another for help, while at other times to stay contained and practice on our own.
In this way we can become vehicles of love in action, knowing that this work we are doing is never for ourselves alone. But is for life everywhere.
For more of Matt Licata’s brilliant writing, visit: http://alovinghealingspace.blogspot.com/
