 2 Jul 2003 @ 23:44, by Alana Tobin
Some feelings, thoughts and perceptions from an emerging sister on the path. See Part Two for more!!
Conscious Communications and Community
Part One: Author Alana Tobin
An excerpt from a writing project in process:
Being in conscious relationships requires our being honest about our feelings, our needs and most importantly involves real listening to one another. I am learning how important it is to ask people more questions when things are unclear. When someone writes or speaks something that I have a reaction to or they have a reaction to something I communicate, I am learning to ask for clarification rather than choosing a feeling in response, or assuming or concluding anything, and then responding from those spaces. I am also profoundly learning about matching energies, and how I do not choose to do this anymore if at all possible. (Breathe) Ha! Sometimes the old stuff grabs me by my ovaries, oops! I am human gees! I have found that the filters with which we read and hear with often overshadow the communication due to our conditioned responses (body memory/pains, etc).
As I have learned and continue to learn and experience it, being in conscious relationships often involves serious appraisal of our conditioned attitudes and behaviors and the consequences of these. We are often confronted with our need to give up controlling behaviors and speaking in ways that manipulate or judge, thereby polarizing us both with ourselves and with others. Most importantly I trust that as an awakening and healing culture, that we are hopefully moving more away from the projection games. How many of us do this easily? In our bigger world, how many want to? Yeah Right!!
Haven’t you ever had a deep fear or wound surface in response to a person or a situation that has pushed your buttons, and your immediate feeling in defense was to shut them out immediately and to maintain safe distance? (Self preservation baby!) Yet more of us are being gifted and yet challenged, to face our own fears, resentments or judgments or … and see that when pain meets us often that we have some inner work to do, and some outer changes to embrace in how we relate to ourselves and with others. Hopefully we are becoming more committed to improving our communication skills.
Sometimes the very person we want to run away from is the person most needed in order for us to really grab a hold of our deepest unconscious self and the fear and pain that we ourselves generate. We end up suffering inside and want to displace the feelings in order to limit or stop the pain in situations such as these. The tendency is to place blame outside of ourselves or to project the pain onto another so that we can create safe distance from the (extreme-sometimes) pain evoked. When we project our pain outwards and give the person(s) outside of ourselves the power, we dis-empower ourselves, and in the extreme we become a victim. Really we become a victim of ourselves. Then what often happens is we seek to control the situation in even more unconscious ways until we really can get in some doo doo. Sometimes we mess up the chance to take responsibility for our own energy charge and own our part. “oh Boy!”
Through owning our part in creating our experiences (owning our thoughts, feelings, words or behaviors), we can create new openings to conscious communication. A newly emerging self is seeking to birth through us at this time and sometimes we need our midwives around us to assist and support us through these ‘density dances’ we do as the ‘cauldronic fire' phnifire.gif burns away the dross while more ‘Essence’ incarnates. I perceive that in order to birth into this new state, we need caring community to assist us to stabilize these new bodies, minds and hearts that we are growing. Taint easy is it? And yet, at times it is quite buoyant with the right support and the thriving environments and people around us to help us navigate our way through the labyrinth of death and birth this process requires. Ooooooh! Breathe again. Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!
Are we really committing to having what we say we want? If we say one thing and we act in ways where we do not practice what we speak, we are incongruent. Sometimes this involves an ambivalence. All of us at one time or another must come to explore and embrace these incongruities. We have opposing views, feelings, and aspects within us that have the potential for us to achieve balance. However, sometimes a part of us desires one thing and another aspect fights us in resistance to receiving that very thing we desire. At some level we may not believe we can have what we desire. In fact, these many aspects of the self are reflected in the people around us. I remember Barbara M. Hubbard, author of ‘Emergence, the Shift from Ego to Essence', She termed the inner aspects as the inner family and the universe in person. (The ego aspects that are either seeking or avoiding being a part of the One).
I personally believe that when we come to listen to one another and have an embracing attitude that everyone out there is a reflection of potentialities within me, or unclaimed aspects of me, or parts I recognize but do not like or want to own, that we have an opportunity to then take more responsibility for ourselves and our stuff. In doing so, there will come a balance in this dance of relationship. For surely as most of us come to awaken, and incarnate more of our essence, we will move through the dross of our pasts, (this and other lifetimes) to clear and transmute these human patterns individually and collectively.
Should we choose to be involved in the work/play of conscious relationship, we will indeed come to embrace it all eventually. To deny that we are being called to this work in community, to enter into learning and developing new tools and environments for conscious relationship to thrive, is in my view a most naive and childish perception with real consequence. How many of these people who share this view have intimate authentic loving spaces where they can be free to have and be their authentic fuller selves? (warts and all). This denial of acknowledging and attending to this material can often be seen in certain ‘new age’ circles where the tendency is to push away and at all costs to avoid doing the hard stuff - (old form) they cry out, in favor of ‘love and light, love and light, lalalalalala..Oye!!
Yes we are opening to new forms and expressions, and the yin and yang of this thang, is that none of us have maps. We are moving through the light and the dark of it, and we need all the help we can get!! So that being said, all the tools, resources, environments and people that can come to support this birthing process and subsequently a birth of new community, are now more than ever, being spiritually called together to find one another and to create new ways to support and nurture this birthing process and the new relationships that emerge.
YES, we are being called to take ourselves much more lightly, and Yes to listening more and reacting less, and most certainly, YES to opening to creating safe containers to process our feelings and get to our needs through as much ease and comfort as possible, and oftentimes this works fine, and then it doesn’t. Like when…. the wound surfacing within you is so deep and the unconscious like a snake has got a hold on our butt, and is crying out from the pain body to control things ‘cuz it hurts so bad’ “Hoo Dog!” Time for the white coats? Naw!!!!!
This is the emergency scenerio that at some time may hit each of us. Lets get really honest folks, it is at times like these that we need to take more care, as in 'intensive care' situation, when a snake may bite us in the butt, the chest, wherever you’re storing it. Sometimes, in this emergency of releasing the old strangle holds of the ego, we move through rough territory or passages. We all carry deep wounds and at some stage when we are strong enough and have the navigational tools, we will come to address and heal this material at this deeper level. Usually it is through a very trusted relationship whether with your husband or wife, your friend or within a trusting and integral community, these levels of pain can and do surface. This is the love environment which can hold us to heal this intense energy in the heat of a profound transmuting fire. Alchemy at its finest!! Brother and sisters can I get a witness? Can you relate to what I am writing here? Whew!!
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