Spring 2014 Newsletter

When I opened my eyes in bed the other morning, I saw a spider on my ceiling. I've always kind of liked spiders - the whole web spinning thing just seems cool. The spider was stationed near the middle of the ceiling, suggesting he’d crawled up the wall and halfway across the ceiling while I was sleeping. It was a beautiful morning, with sun streaming in through my windows, and so I decided to enjoy what the day had brought me.

Within a few minutes of watching the spider, I realized he was stuck. He'd take a step or two, fall, hang by his thread for a few seconds, and then pull himself up and try again. Despite his persistence, he was getting nowhere. Still, I decided to let him have his path. I watched for several more minutes, thinking there was a message in this for me. Oftentimes, I feel like I'm making no progress as I struggle toward my goals. Sometimes, I’m not even sure what that goal is or whether I’d really want it when I got there.

Eventually, the spider started to get tangled in his own threads. Also familiar to me. His front legs got wrapped up, so that every time he tried to take a step forward, he would actually trip! I watched him trip over himself, fall a bit, hang there, pull himself back up, and then repeat the entire process. All the while I was wondering why he just wasn’t letting go. What was he striving for? Where was he trying to go? He struggled for a while longer, and then he finally did what seemed so logical from my perspective. He just let go. He gave up the fight and trailed down his thread towards my bed. I scooped him up and carried him outside into the garden.

I sat with the experience for a while afterwards, understanding that the spider had just revealed some deep truth to me about surrender. In letting go, he’d allowed a larger force to step in (me, in his case). And this larger force had picked him up and transported him.

I tell this story because I think it mirrors what’s happening on a planetary level. Each of us has our own version of struggle. We’re shifting, as a collective, into a higher vibration. It’s no longer an idea. It’s happening right now. We all must do the deep internal work. We all must face our fears, our doubts, our issues. We must wrestle the real-life challenges being set before us. The process can be intense. For many, there’s the fear of falling. Sometimes, it feels like the world is falling away. Indeed, I believe it is. The old structures are crumbling. The system built on separation, struggle, competition and war must be dismantled. We cannot build a world based on cooperation, compassion, equality and kindness without doing this work. The question is, “Can you surrender your fear?” Our old system is built upon it. It’s our default setting, in a way. It’s why this transition feels so intense. We’re being asked to surrender all our fears. We must figure out how to let go while being propelled forward.

I’ve watched this process unfold so many times in my personal life and with clients who courageously share their authentic experiences with me. For you left-brained people who like a road map, here’s the process broken down into three steps:

1. First, we must look at the fear. This is the not-so-fun part, where we have some negative or challenging experience that sends us on an emotional roller-coaster. It’s the moment of chaos…the health issue, the relational issue, housing concern, career challenge. It draws our attention to the fear in a very concrete, physical way. The fear steps out of the dark place and slaps us in the face. 2. Now, we must meet the fear where it lives…in our emotional body. This can be a tricky endeavor. We’re not comfortable feeling. It’s inconvenient. And we’ve got a lot of practice not feeling. But we must do this work now. If you push it down or try to hover above it or rationalize it from a mental or spiritual perspective, know that it’s just going to come back up again later. You’ve got to get dirty. You’ve got to feel the inconvenient feelings. It's like cleaning out a closet. You can't just notice it needs to be done, think about how it might be done, wish that it would be done, etc. You just need to roll up your sleeves and start cleaning.

That's actually simpler than it sounds. When I say "feel your feelings," I mean it quite literally. Let yourself be sad, afraid, frustrated, embarrassed, angry, etc. Allow the emotion to well up within you and just feel it. By feeling it consciously, you're bringing your light into a place of darkness.

3. Choice time. Once we do the feeling work, we get to decide if we’re really done with the fear and the experiences it keeps bringing to us. If so, we must choose a new way of understanding and a new way of relating to ourselves with regard to that issue. And this isn’t just a mental exercise either. We must put it into material effect. We must take an action.

So what does that whole process look like? Well, here’s an example:

Let’s say you’ve always had some self-worth issues. Maybe they’re not very obvious. Maybe you’ve found a way to function in the world in spite of them. You’ve learned how to hide your self-doubt or pretend it’s not there or work around it. It’s a thought pattern that’s based on fear. You fear you’re not enough. But it’s buried. It’s deep. It’s a fear that lurks in the subconscious. You may be aware of it, or you may not. Either way, it effects how you move in the world. It limits you in some way. It holds you back. So you attract an experience that will help bring that fear out into the light – this is the first step. This will probably entail someone reflecting your fear back to you. Someone will give voice to it, and you’ll be forced to face it. Maybe you’ll get fired from your job. Maybe someone will reject a creative project you’ve shared with them. Whatever the form, someone, in some way, will tell you, in no uncertain terms, that you’re not good enough.

So now it’s out. It’s out in the light, and you have two choices…face it or try to push it back down. This is step two…the emotional body work. Up until now, you’ve probably pushed the feelings associated with this issue down. Otherwise, it wouldn’t still be there, and you wouldn’t feel any pain or even be having the experience. So what if you faced it this time? What if you allowed yourself to actually feel whatever that experience stirs within you?

This isn’t fun. But the good news is, it’s usually pretty short-lived. Emotions are meant to flow. They move quickly. When we’re not clenching in defense, they pass in and they pass out, and we learn something about ourselves in the process. So you feel the pain. You really go into it. You question if you’ll ever be good enough. You may wish you were different or wish the world was different. You go into whatever the experience is reflecting back to you. You cry. You rage. You stare the demon in the face. You feel the emotion you haven't wanted to feel. You observe the way you reject yourself. You see how you repeatedly tell yourself you’re not enough.

And then you have a choice – step three. Do you want to keep beating yourself up this way? Or would you rather choose a thought that’s more loving? Fear or love…this is always the choice. More and more of us are choosing love. So let’s say you ride that wave…you plug yourself into that matrix that’s being built every day by people making the same choice…and you decide that you’re done with that. You’re done with needing someone else to tell you you’re good enough. You’ve made the decision yourself. You're done beating yourself up. You're done believing you're lacking in any way. You choose instead to love yourself better. Not the way you want to be, but the way you are right now in all your glorious messiness.

Great! Now put it into practice. Take an action. Integrate it into your life. Make that phone call. Send that email. Go for a walk. Stand up for yourself. Break off that bad relationship with that person who always makes you feel bad about yourself. Do something to integrate it into your life in a concrete way. Even if that something is taking a nap because truly loving yourself in that moment means snuggling with a blanket on the couch.

If you’ve truly felt all the pain around it, the choice to love yourself is usually easier. But be patient with yourself. Some of these fears are FEARS. They may be too big to process all at once. If you can’t leave that job just yet, maybe you can limit your exposure to the more toxic aspects. Maybe you can put some other supports in place to love yourself better. Baby steps. The good news is the support for this work is there – in both the visible and invisible realms. In fact, it's becoming increasingly difficult to avoid doing it. The energy is moving us forward. Trust the process as much as you can…keep reaching for greater self-love and more trust whatever you're experiencing…these are the higher vibrations - trust and love. Keep letting go. Keep surrendering. Know that every time you make a choice for love, you strengthen that matrix. Every time you let go of another shard of fear, you make it easier for someone else to do the same. Every time you surrender, you make a space for larger forces to come in and assist.

For those of you who feel challenged by the idea of surrender, I encourage you to read about the Displaced Defense. It explains betrayal wounding in more detail (the "warrior wound”) and the heart/sexuality split that so many of us are working to heal. And, of course, check out the "Surrendering to Trust" meditation on my Meditations page.

All my love to all of you….and a special thank you to all of you who’ve stepped up recently to share the positive effect this work has had upon your lives. It means the world to me! All my love, ~Kim