Finding Calm in the Fiery Change

Quote for Reflection: “When everything around you is crazy, it is ingenious to stay calm.”~Mehmet Murat ildan

Difficult Energy
We are in the shadow of more potent and perhaps very difficult energy. Mars, the red planet of war-like and angry expression, will station retrograde from September 9th until November 13^th. So what is normally ‘inflamed’ can get hotter. An everyday situation will take on the experience of urgency.

We will need all the patience and the strategy we can muster as Mars makes an incredibly challenging and unusual square to Saturn for weeks on end. How will we be able to bring patience or take action, and keep our core center? Can we even acknowledge that we have a core center? Can we remember to return to our eternal core center knowing there is a place of calm in connection with All-That-IS?

Core Center
As the fires are raging and the pollution levels are unbreathable where I live in California, I think about how many who have experienced deep trauma and may have difficulty finding a core center. One skill I learned is to touch the chest or heart and breath (with a good air purifier), and acknowledge to myself that who I am, is fully accepted by me and Creator.

You can also use a picture of yourself as a precious child to look at it, and let that part of you know you’re right there with him/her no matter what. Another strategy is ‘faking-it-until-you-make-it’, imagining it even if the feelings aren’t there yet.

Skill Sets to Communicate
One of the skill sets that are so important in healing of abuse is the way we communicate within ourselves and to others. Are we reactive or trigger often? Are we unable to stay present or do things that seem to go over our head without speaking to it? Do we present it to others much later (sometimes months and years) expecting them to remember like the way we have held onto it? Do we compare outside ourselves as a way to feel better (or less) about what we’ve done or not done? Do we find it automatic to discuss controversial topics by using sarcasm, put downs, one-ups, self righteous assumptions, name calling or dissociating?

If so, these are trauma responses. Yes, trauma runs deep in our lives and world.

In order to know that we’re even responding in these ways, there needs time for attentive awareness. Do we tune into our self after we’ve had a conversation that might have been controversial or difficult? What do we feel? Heavy? Tired? Angrier? Balanced? Curious? Open? Do we want to feel understood or feel right?

For me, I wanted to be understood and heard, so I’d needed to learn the language skills that were missing to do this. I’m not perfect, but I really do want to be respectful to others even if they are projecting their feelings or just really off in what they are presenting. Stooping to another’s level of dysregulation is not going to create world peace.

Family

I was raised in a family who felt it was totally acceptable to gossip, compare themselves to others and compare others to themselves. They told us children what they thought our feelings and actions were to be. Controlling is too kind of a word. Their dictates would then be expected to be taken on as our identity.

If we children ‘regurgitated’ this pattern to others, that was considered being rude and disrespectful. Those evaluations were to be kept ‘private’ behind the family’s closed doors. You can understand the confusion that would have occurred for a child. It was all about appearances.

At 10 years old, I was threatened by both parents to be strapped in a hairdresser’s seat to have my hair cut and ‘permanented’, the horrible smelly ones. I cried hysterically that I didn’t want their threat or their decision of what they thought would make me pretty…it was my hair. The identity of what would make me feel attractive was forced to come outside myself. I never had the ability to decide how I wanted my hair until I was 16 yrs old. I didn’t feel pretty until I was in my late 30’s after being divorced and in therapy where I could tune into myself.

Respectful communication towards others was limited to carefully crafted language that made things ambiguous in what was said–dangerously threatening, shamed in being wrong, or overtly insulting as a means to get a point across. Respect was, “Do what you’re told and not as I do” modeling. Children were to be polite and well-mannered according to a standard that was set by June Cleaver for the ‘Beaver’ while the parents were deceptive and untruthful.

This pattern was so divisional and divisive. It was also used between the siblings in order to create favoritism, manipulative connections, eschewed acceptance of self through others’ perceptions, and a false sense of loyalty and belonging. It’s the same patterns I see in the world now.

If we do as we’re told, we are a ‘good’ person. We are keeping others ‘safe’. We are being considerate and caring about others. We are being an outstanding and exemplary citizen. It’s all a traumatic maneuver for controlling others through obedience training, like a slave.

Individualism
At what cost is our free will and individualism being usurped to allow for governmental social ‘new norms’ to take over? It starts, again, in the family with members who are going outside themselves. Without learning to check in if we actually feel somatically and emotionally connected to our self, we then take on those outer expectations as a way to live individually, but not individuated from others. It feels like losing a piece of one’s own heart. Where is self love when we live outside our self?

In discussing difficult issues, it starts with saying that there is an issue and taking action to do something about it. But in families whose awareness is very focused outside themselves, censorship occurs or ways to shut down the other in naming the situation. It becomes ‘taboo’ subjects, secrets that are shared without the other who is being discussed even involved. It’s so easy for governments to install their mandates when so many have been emotioanlly stifled or abused as children and don’t know these patterns.

Battles
Do you know that saying, “Pick your battles”?

What if the conversation wasn’t about ‘battles’, but just sharing ideas and information? And then you show up thinking that’s what’s going to happen though others don’t have the skills to meet you there?

Then this is where an attempt to create a battle could occur. For some, there is an immediate refusal to listen and immediately tell you you’re wrong or on the wrong side, or your disagreement to their perception is taken as an personal offense against them.

At which point do we engage or disengage from their battle? How long can we keep disengaging until the relationships has no more energy for connection? Can the energy of Love still be present in a disconnection?

I believe it can.

What another means
One of the triggers that I see so often is that people don’t ask what another means. They don’t go for clarity of understanding but assume another’s actions is about them, their character or reputation.

It’s so easy to ask, “What do you mean by that?” in a curious way. And sometimes, even that question isn’t acceptable for others who live from dysregulation.

A person can be mentally brilliant but may not have emotional intelligence. And this is what is being shown to us in the public realms now. Many ‘experts’ have their multitude of titles and connections to prestigious learning institutions, the appearances, but their information and discussions are meant to limit others’ perceptions through deceptive and disconnective means. This shows up as censorship and diminishing others. This is often not recognized due to how the media manipulates dialogues, inverts truth, and then normalizes what is false, unheartful and unhealthy ways.

Power struggle
Do you know what a power struggle involves?

Imagine yourself pushing your energy against another and they are doing the same thing against you. Then, all of a sudden, you just step out of the way. Guess what happens?

The other falls forward, perhaps to the floor, and there is no one there to be against…except the floor. It’s like pulling the plug out of the socket–disengaged and no energy to run on. The one who let go feels the most balanced because the force and pushing was disengaged.

Some people have beliefs that they have to battle to know they are connected to or disconnected from others. Choosing to disengage with love is a practiced, learned skill. Not everyone is going to resonate where we live and think from.

There is an easily-applied, simple communication skill when a conversation is going south, that feels incongruent with our intentions or with the energy of the participant/s, and where a power struggle might occur. I use, “I will agree to disagree,” and then end the conversation.

Clear of intention
Even if I am baited to rejoin, which is often a tactic to keep the power struggle dominated, being clear of my intention and not feeling a need to be right, can allow for a sense of my personal empowerment. Inside myself, if I know what my truth is without having to defend it, I can let the ‘struggling’ go and return to my core center where I find calmness.

I remember a relationship group I was part of years ago, where the facilitator said, “No need to bang your head against a brick wall and expect the wall to move.” It’s those simple statements of total common sense that come to me when a conversation isn’t working.

So as our world’s situations show up with intensity and/or struggle, I support all of us to watch for areas that work and don’t work in communication, and see where we can use simple, supportive and self-empowering skills to disengage or engage to create the shifts that keep us in our calm center.

With deep care for a centered world within and on the outer,

Judy

Helpful Creator’s teachings/downloads
I know what it feels like to, how to, when to, that it’s possible, that I can, I do (or I am/am able to be):