If we were learning to master the piano, we’d miss a lot if we only played in one section. Like with us, a piano only comes into it’s full expression when the high and low notes are in partnership.
We are needing to be aware of the interplay between our outer and inner worlds. Each influences the other, whether we realise it or not. Continue reading Playing the full spectrum of our emotions
All of us are at home with the parts of ourselves that we like. These we elevate and present to the world. Yet this is not all of who we are. We often don’t have a good relationship with the parts that ‘don’t work’, and have separated some places into ‘No-Go’ zones. So, in order to cope with our lives, we don’t embrace some of our painful emotions that are not working so well in us – like our fear, remorse, guilt. We find it hard to appreciate those unlovely places. We might fill our empty spaces with noise and obligations so that these emotions get quietened or at least pushed down again. For we do not feel comfortable with our powerless feelings.
Continue reading Accepting parts of ourselves that ‘don’t work’ can enable us to have better relationships
Most of the time we sail through life unaware of the unseen world beneath us. From time to time, evidence of this reality breaks through the surface and we are reminded of its existence. Only if we dive below, do we discover that there’s hidden beauty and fear – and there’s always more than we could have known, waiting to be explored. We sense that the seen and the unseen worlds are not separated, but that they depend on each other – for what happens in the one affects the other, and together form part of a larger whole. Similarly, as we explore and discover unseen realities of ourselves, we will be enlarged, if we don’t look just for what we want to see, or listen for only what we expect to hear.
Continue reading Diving Deep
Just as we have a body, we have an inner self. There are similarities between our physical and our unseen parts. If we reflect on our body and how we care for it, we can learn a lot about about how to tend to our inner ‘body’. Just as we eat well and exercise to keep healthy, so too we nurture and love our inner self.
Continue reading “Where does it hurt?” Healing our wounds in order to live more fully
We all so need real connection to others through the eyes. It is in the simple act of seeing and being seen that a profound transaction of life happens. If we do not receive this from anyone, we can become relationally anorexic as our sense of self is not fed.
Continue reading Dropping Facades which Hamper True Self Discovery
Facing what we find when the tide goes out
With so much information available to us now at the touch of a button, it’s easy to think that ‘we know.’ This attitude will actually jam our whole process of relating. Much of what we know of ourselves was what we were told; it was learnt behaviour. And if we stop and look at our relational patterns, we can see what ways we’ve been taught. We can affirm and continue in those patterns or we can choose to change them. It’s like we’ve been given a room to live in which is full of another person’s taste in furnishings. We can leave it as it is for security’s sake or we can make it our own while keeping some of the things that are ‘us’. Continue reading Learning to Know Ourselves
