Positive Energy Guide

This post suggests compassionate responses and actions we can take to stay balanced during times of major change:

Don’t take the ambient energy personally. Ambient energy comes from the physics that CAUSE earth changes AND from the collective response. By ambient energy I mean the energy currently circulating around in the collective. You know—the energy-aftermath from the feelings the news stirs up.

Less obvious and even more important is the energy OF the ACTUAL events the news is ABOUT. Energy generated by people in distress ricochets around the earth like a rock in a pond or an earthquake causing a tsunami and moving continents.

Do explore what is going on with you personally and the issues that arise inside, and address them. Take care not to add anything to them. The intensity that fuels your reactions may have little to do with you. (See Post #3 in series.)

Learn to take internal trauma with a grain of salt—even while you validate and honor its origins. Neutral observation brings balance. (See Inner Work series.)

Seek to participate in fully in transformation during times of trauma. Whether or not the PURPOSE of trauma is transformation, positive participation alleviates stress by conferring a measure of, if not actual control, constructive direction.

Take a longer-range view. Look beyond the last few days and weeks to note with compassion that we’re in the middle of a very long grind. We habituate to this stress mentally, and take it for granted. Our emotional and physical energies adjust more slowly, while fast-moving effects build over time.

Accept your discomfort. Grasping for joy and trying to push away discomfort digs us in deeper. It sets up a series of reactions that make authentic joy harder to access. Be with What IS as you take actions that nurture greater comfort.

Extend compassion to the parts of yourself that feel traumatized by the level of change occurring.

Surrender to the fact that change is inevitable, and seek to surf with it. Resistance drains you and keeps you stuck. Find ways to create benefit, even through loss.

Ask for divine assistance–not to GET something but to BECOME all you can be.

Do your Inner Work (Link).

Use the energy of change to transform yourself and your life by considering positive outcomes. Use any disruption you feel and your concerns about the future to motivate constructive action, personally and in service. Make a concerted effort to recreate your life while things are in a state of flux anyway.

• How would you like to emerge?
• What do you need to release or tear down to make way for a better situation?
• What can you free yourself from or give away?
• What do you need to be independent of to be happy?

Contemplate the freedoms that come with loss. Also contemplate the types of freedom inherent within commitment, the things you can express and accomplish.

Deal with any lingering dissatisfaction and your fears of going away from familiar structures and situations.

Make moment-to-moment choices that are consistent with you where you want to go.

Take responsibility–by staying as present as possible to your authentic experience.

Find practical ways to reduce overwhelm:

• put self-care at the top of your list
• set clear priorities
• revamp boundaries to fit current circumstances
• take time to relax
• spend time in nature
• exercise
• notice if listening to the news becomes too much
• take care of your spirit

Avoid random action rooted in restlessness.

Make changes based on true preference. Changes made to avoid discomfort can land you in another form of discomfort somewhere else. Impatience without a solid direction is just undirected energy.

Give energy a positive direction. If you do not have a clear sense of direction, focus on building clarity and developing lucid intention.

How do YOU manage the energy of change?
Which aspects of you adjust quickly and which ones get stuck?
What do you do when external energies become intense?

Intense world energies have been bringing up buried personal issues, but there is another phenomena going on too. What is it, and how can we use it for positive growth?

I got a call from an intuitive woman does her Inner Work and keeps her energy clear. She had been feeling disturbed by a vague sense of guilt, shame, or culpability and wondered why. She had effectively scanned inside, finding no source.

Responsibility is in the air. It accompanies all our new opportunities for choice. Choice and responsibility go hand and glove. The world has entered a phase in which we must each and all assume greater responsibility for our actions and impact upon one another.

Example: Persons whose choices courted or passively led to disaster for their families feel bad about it, adding concern about responsibility to collective energy pool. One may feel he “should have” sold the house sooner, or she “should have” selected a different retirement plan, etc.

Even waging peace demands responsibility from participants and those they petition.

We each take up what responsibility we can, hoping to see ourselves through the world changes. This new flood of responsibility—the energy of it—begins to work its way down into the things we feel bad about, into our old wounds and shame.

Assuming greater responsibility requires becoming aware of what we need to be responsible for. Not knowing what we are responsible for can cause stress and confusion. So does loading our plates with way too much responsibility without clarity about exactly what is ours, and what to do differently. This boundary-confusion can reactivate old wounds.

Many blame ourselves when we experience trauma. Children who are mistreated or have a parent die attempt to make sense of their world by taking inappropriate responsibility for things that were done to them. This stance confers a sense of having a measure of control. It’s easier to manage than feeling totally powerless in a senseless world. But it also keeps one stuck with feeling blameworthy. World changes can undermine this sense of control, making the wounds accessible.

Turn this to your advantage by doing deep emotional ‘housecleaning’ while the energy supports this transformational practice.

The sense that at some level we choose and set up our destinies can add fuel to confusion about responsibility. In general, giving our experience meaning and seeing ourselves as participants reduces trauma, whether or not our assessment is correct.

One reason those who have been victimized feel blameworthy is that we take on, absorb, and come to identify with the energy that abusers refuse to carry. Guilt and shame an abuser pushes away from his or her body congest in their energy field, like disowned emotion tends to do. This energy easily enters us those who are shocked and stunned into absolute openness by trauma.

Energy an abuser rejects can get stuck in your fields or body and echo as if it is your own. If you confuse this with a psychological pattern you will find that pattern highly resistant to change—and perhaps simple once that energy is removed.

Remember that blame is different than responsibility. Blame keeps one stuck in the past. Learning to assume appropriate responsibility in the present can free us from blame. (Also see Forgiveness Series.)

During times of upheaval we have a wonderful opportunity to do deeper healing and make major changes. Bring love and light to all realms of distress. We are helping everyone when we do.

Do you find yourself feeling responsible for things over which you have or had no control?
Do you blame yourself for it or go into shame?
How do you soothe yourself when this comes up?
How can you move into positive action instead of recycling your discomfort?

Times of change are exciting and invigorating to the extent that we use them to make meaningful discoveries, adjustments, and connections with others. The ways we respond to change depend at least as much on how we position ourselves internally as it does on our life situation.

Using the energy of change to transform depends on the way we manage our moment-to-moment experience.

How do we get from living our lives like business-as-usual to engaging fully with profound change? Strong energy signals that wake us up to the possibility or necessity of change usually take the form of some type of discomfort. These signals alert us that something different is going on. How we experience, embrace and respond to these signals is paramount. If we ignore, misinterpret, or shut them down we cannot use them for intentional transformation. Change will still occur, but with less awareness. We have more choice and possibility when we put ourselves in concert with the changes.

One way that intuitively sensitive people get clear is to ask ourselves: “What is my own in the energy, and what belongs outside of me?”

This is a great place to start when we feel strange. It is, however, easy to misinterpret uncomfortable sensations from the outer world as some sort of energy invasion. When world changes are intense, the energy fields around our bodies go through changes too. And why not? The relationship of the earth itself to its magnetic poles changed a bit with the tsunami. The government has had to change GPS settings. We really aren’t separate from all that.

Initially, during intense world changes, when I felt the fields around my body going through strange changes I had to really pause and evaluate what was happening. Like others experienced in working with energy, I went through a mental checklist to rule out common types of energy interference. I’m talking about the kinds of influence sensitive people take on from others. For example, when someone is throwing anger at you from a distance, pulling on your energy out of neediness, or projecting onto you issues they are unable to acknowledge in themselves, you may sense this energy coming at you and feel invaded. Even those who are fairly skilled may not find it easy to check our own subtle energy when our energy systems are compromised.

After ruling out the usual suspects I discovered that the fields around me were going through the equivalent of being stretched and thinned in places and pulled different ways, like a pizza crust in the hands of a chef.

As we become more sensitive and also more connected with the entire world our energy goes through changes. Unfamiliar sensations occur. These sensations are not totally unfamiliar, so we initially interpret them according to what we already know. We are unable to interpret them based on what we are not yet familiar with, so we make our best attempt. It is essential to stay open to new possibilities and to stretch toward new understanding.

Here are some unusual sensations that may occur when our fields are stretched, pulled and impacted by world changes. Some feel similar to energy invasion:

• fields feeling wispy, or weak
• disproportionate tiredness, which may feel like being drained
• bouts of dizziness
• nightmares
• periods of disorientation, brain-fog, or inability to focus
• inconsistent motivation
• sadness, shame, anger with yourself or others; the showing up of really old issues or inner wounds
• restlessness
• inability to access usual channels of guidance
• sense of losing your bearings or that life tools no longer work
• feeling that there is something in your fields that doesn’t belong or hasn’t been there before

Mental and emotionally you may feel:

• Nothing applies or makes sense
• Doubt
• Wondering whether we made a mistake
• Handling stress poorly
• Feeling unhappy with what you’re doing or like leaving your current circumstances
• Situations we have put up with for years may feel intolerable
• Strong desire for change, perhaps with no idea what to create
  
  This type of sensation may come and go. When the cause is energy it’s important to remember that nothing is wrong. As you relax and adjust the sensations pass. Kind self-care is the best plan. 

  In Post 6 we’ll explore the relationship between dynamic, changing energies and responsibilty, following in Post 7 with compassionate responses and actions that help us stay balanced through times of major change.

  How does monumental world change impact YOUR day-to-day energy?
  What do you do to increase your inner balance, clarity, or ease?

   

   

   

   

It makes perfect sense that intuitive people respond more to global events. We feel them. If you think about it, you will see that intuitive people, when other factors are the same, go through life changes more quickly than average. Seeing through into what is going on, and being able to grasp the life lessons within situations and relationships makes for a faster response.

We all say “I’m not going to do THAT again” sometimes. Intuition increases your ability to tell at the start whether a situation is actually new or THAT again. If we THINK it is different but it is not, we stay stuck. If we think it is the same and it is not we remain rigid with respect to it–defensive—and do not engage in it and grow. It follows that flexible, intuitive people grow faster. This accelerates life changes.

Speedy life changes are not particularly comfortable. Poise through change demands spiritual detachment and works-over the ego as we become self-aware through new experience. This is hugely true during transformation. So when the world is changing quickly, those of you sensitive, positive people who are looking for constructive ways to improve your lives and the world are often uncomfortable.

In response to the world changes, those of us who are able, are becoming more open to compassion, more aware of others, and keener to the preciousness of life. We long to use our hours and days for something truly meaningful. Uncertainty about the potential duration and quality of our lives makes transformation a much more immediate goal than it is in times of inner peace. These choices accelerate the pace of change even more.

The process of becoming aware IS exposing. Consider the first post of this series, with the list of personal traits and issues that pop into awareness as awareness expands.

Another reason some feel exposed is a side-effect of feeling so directly connected with the rest of the world. It’s as if we can no longer effectively hide out at home to get a break from external energies. One highly intuitive client said she felt “very exposed and vulnerable.” She found some relief in long periods of time alone.

A lot of energy-sensitive folk are spending periods in isolation lately. As one highly-aware friend put it, “I’ve had a few days where I’d just as soon take a beating as pick up the phone.” I could relate, even if I could not indulge.

Feeling vulnerable runs the gamut between wondering whether one will still have a house, a job, a family, our health, or a life by the time the world quits bucking, to feeling floating anxiety in resonance with the pervasive and ambient feelings of others. This is in addition to our internal, personal response to major change. If the way that you receive internal guidance is also in flux, you may have intermittent access to the clarity on which you usually rely.

I will take up the topic of inner guidance and life direction in some subsequent posts. The next post details specific experiences energy-sensitive people experience when planetary changes sweep the globe.

If you can use this period of change to transform YOUR life, what would you like to create?
What is precious or meaningful to you?
Can you see a way to aim yourself toward what you value, using the current disruption to your advantage?

The same energies that are actively altering our physical and societal world are of inestimable use for transformation and awakening.

Energies that stimulate profound change can cause restlessness and exhaustion. Alterations to our personal energy require energy to adjust to and assimilate.

As we explored in Part 1 & 2, we are not immune to the energies that change the planet.

Energies that cause radical change make us want to change too. We are less willing to tolerate situations—in the world and in our personal lives—that go against what we feel is right. We may be less likely than usual to tolerate restrictive or annoying circumstances.

When specific types of energy are prevalent, we tend to drum up a feasible story in order to make sense of our experience. As an energy worker I observe that when certain types of energy are around-and-about at a planetary level, a large percentage of clients show up distressed about related emotions and sensations. When fiery energies are taking place clients come in angry and frustrated–and find a “reason” in their lives to explain.

Sometimes we simply search through our experience for a supposed “reason” to make sense of what we are experiencing. Other times the ambient energies add fuel to the fire of what we already have burning.

Anxiety is usually easy to find “reason” for. Spacey energies may be more challenging to explain away, unless someone has been missing out on sleep. Knowing “what is going on”—even if the explanation does not acknowledge the primary cause—is easier for most of us to deal with the great unknown. Consider the way superstitions have seemed safer than the fearful void of having no idea WHY.

Carolyn Myss describes trauma as “A trauma is something that has happened to you that your reason cannot understand.”

“Our myths are being dismantled.” This trauma calls us into transformation.

Carolyn goes on to observe that “Spiritual Awakening is a trauma.”

I have been discussing these formulations with clients and friends, who find them enlightening. In this blog series I expand on these useful observations, extending them into the context of “subtle” energy. (I used quotes because some of the energy these days is not so subtle.)

The first step is . . . backward.

Step back and notice the connection between the world situation and your personal experience. While obvious if we really think about it, most of us initially do not connect the dots between World and Self when we feel out of whack. Personal and Universal are customarily viewed as opposite categories. Culturally, we rarely link them. Even the fact that these polar experiences are becoming mixed together in our experience carries an element of trauma. It’s a breakdown of an old worldview.

Questioning faith goes along with the territory in the process of transformation. Alterations to core beliefs is almost always somewhat traumatic, particularly when loved ones cannot support changes we are called forth to integrate into new life expressions.

A clear-sighted and intuitive friend said, “I feel that old ways are dissolving around me.”

An energy-sensitive client describes her experience: “It’s like being pulled out of one world into another and all the rules change—and you have to figure them out. You don’t know what they are until you bump into them.”

You have to figure basic things out instead of simply living into them as we do with established structures and habits. This takes focus and energy. At the same time your ability to focus may be compromised by odd shifts and changes, and alterations in the ways we perceive guidance. Part of the trauma is not knowing how—or whether–to respond at a practical level.

Radical change takes energy. Your energy fields, meridians, and subtle energy structures take time to accommodate and assimilate these changes. The vast majority of people who walk through my office door have been unaccountably exhausted. The effort of trying to understand the incomprehensible can be draining.

I think it is safe to say that the majority of people on the planet are having some serious concerns at this point, whether it is about rising water levels, water pollution, banking, housing, employment, war, or planning ahead. We are becoming aware of our vulnerabilities collectively. This is reflected in our personal experience.

In Part 4 we’ll explore specifics about global change and energy-sensitive or intuitive people.

What are YOU learning about yourself and the world during this time of change?
What do you feel is important for you to create, achieve or release in your life while you have a chance?

How do the changes going on in the world impact our personal energies? We think about housing, money, oil, water, food, and pollution. Let us also begin to consider the subtle impacts of monumental and global change:

Conversations with clients and friends are revealing to me that most of us underestimate the extent to which we are impacted by world events. Changes that impact our personal energy fields are highly subjective–yet more important than one may think at first glance.
If you have a home, a job, and your family is okay you may not recognize the extent to which world changes impact your day-to-day experience.

Changes in the world we live in present new choices. Small changes such as banking options or Facebook format do not rock our world—until they accumulate speed and combine with enormous world changes. Constant change in simple things we have taken for granted can cause overwhelm and over-stimulate us.

“Choices equal change.” (Carolyn Myss) Change forces choice. As our available options change our previous choices are no longer available. We have to rethink things. Here again we see the circular relationship between transformation and awareness, since having to make new choices makes us more aware.

When internal changes–no matter how vague or undefined–challenge basic assumptions about the world this is a type of trauma. (See Part 1)

Think of a time when you were really hungry and absolutely nothing you could find seemed fit to eat. You might feel really stirred up and restless. Feeling a need and having no idea how to satisfy it is, in a very minor way, a kind of trauma.

Have you ever discovered that something you believed in wholeheartedly or took for granted was untrue? Your realization may have taken the form of a betrayal, loss, disillusionment, or the failure of a system, like a religion or the legal system. Situations that force us to rethink everything, wondering where we went wrong and why unimaginable things have happened are traumatic. They throw us into uncertainty and confusion and disrupt our sense of stability.

The severity of trauma does not depend on external factors. When I was raped at 19 the worst part was that the legal system let the guy go. Rape had been verified at the hospital. I had been robbed, and police told me the rapist had assaulted other women but the case was dismissed. Discovering that society allows this and feeling unsafe all the time were infinitely more painful to assimilate than the physical event. I had to work with this disillusionment for years.

Things we do not understand cause a degree of trauma. Some adopt belief systems to make sense out of experience. If these belief systems collapse we feel intense trauma. Right now we do not understand what is happening in the world and many do not feel safe.

Culturally we are accustomed to leaving the world outside our doors, peeping now and then via technology, which we could turn off at will. Technology now streams into our homes on the airwaves. We can turn off our myriad technological linkages, but cannot insulate ourselves. The actual energy of world-rocking events comes through our walls with the same ease as wireless technology, radio waves, ionized air, radiation, and innumerable yet-to-be-defined influences that connect us. That the world is all One is not spiritual rhetoric. It is molecular fact. We are steeped and stewing in the changes that rock the world.

Impacts to our personal energies differ depending on the specific frequencies of the energies that flood the earth. Forces and frequencies real enough to cause sun spots, solar flares, aurora borealis, earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding, extreme weather, and tsunamis can and do impact human energy fields. The manner and extent to which we are impacted depends on our unique personal balance, resilience, sensitivity, strengths and weaknesses, chemical and nutritional composition, stress level, and so forth.

We are not the same. Some of us thrive when others decline from stress. The stronger the influences, the more of us feel stress. Current influences are very strong. Even if you are someone who thrives during massive upheaval and change you know and love others who do not. Through bonds of compassion and the energies that link us with those we care about we are bound to feel something. Energy-sensitive people who resonate with those in trauma mirror that distress.

In Part 3 and 4 we go on to explore exactly what you might be experiencing and how you can use your experiences to enhance your life.

How sensitive are YOU to events that impact Earth?
Which kinds of change impact you the most?
How does your sensitivity show up for you?

In this post series we explore the way major world change impacts energy-sensitive people.

“Spiritual Awakening is a trauma.” I was surprised, intrigued, and inspired to hear this comment from the spiritual thought leader Carolyn Myss.

Some of you may need definition and background for the rest of the series. Let’s jump right in and define my use of terms so the rest of the series will be smooth sailing:

Transformation means moving quickly into and stabilizing within a more-inclusive state of awareness. (My definition for this context.)

“Awakening means becoming aware of our relationship to power.” (Carolyn Myss)

Huh? Okay, that threw me too when I first heard it. It takes a bit of thought because it’s such a tight summary. I’ll unpack it, the way I see it. The list below refers to experiences that we may lose power to or attempt to have power over.

Awakening/Self-awareness involves becoming aware of:

• all emotions, including so-called negative emotions
• wounds to self-esteem and how we compensate
• the extent to which we use possessions, roles, or positions to define ourselves
• how honest we are able to be with about who we are
• how we manage our personal needs in relation to others, such as whether and why we give up parts of ourselves in an attempt to secure intimacy
• any posturing we do to try and control our image and the way others view us
• hidden motivations and unconscious drivers that influence how, when and why we attempt to get what we want
• what we are willing to give up to get what we want or to be right
• how our energy and body language communicates needs and requirements to others
• our degree of willingness to use force or impose our will
• our level of moment-to-moment awareness about the way our self-assertion impacts others

The state of being spiritually awake includes being awake to what we are up to and why. Awakening is the opposite of denial. Full self-awareness and presence in the moment require awareness of the above.

Confronting and assimilating the initial realizations that accompany self-awareness takes tremendous compassion and the ability to observe neutrally, without condemnation. As we explored in the Forgiveness Series, compassionate acceptance is key. Our patterns run for cover into the unconscious instead of remaining available to view unless we are able to bring forth love in the face of them. Once we are able to do this for ourselves we can also view the same behaviors in others without withdrawing love.

Considering this list you can see the role authenticity and humility play in Awakening. In a very real sense, full authenticity IS personal power. The power to be fully one’s self is far greater than false power associated with domination and control.

Authentic power includes awareness of what we are serving from moment to moment. Unconscious patterns allow the Shadow (unconscious) elements to drive.

In psychology we pursue understanding to better our life, using a rational approach to feeling and motivation, often by looking for answers in our personal pasts. We are, however, much more than the sum of our pasts.

In spirituality, we seek to expand awareness through heart-centered, intuitive and energy-based methods of connecting with the Greater Whole. The Self-knowledge of Awakening transcends distinctions and categories.

Transformation causes and is caused by self-awareness. This circular aspect makes it massively powerful, again relating transformation with power. Awareness confers a greater range of choice—an element of power. 

Transformation occurs as we become more Awake to who we really are. As we Wake Up our interior contents begin to come to light. The process of Waking Up can and will reactivate unresolved traumas. Being awake includes familiarity with and deep acceptance of our inner wounds. Whatever we resist seeing in ourselves is a pocket of Sleep.

No doubt you have heard of supposed-spiritually-advanced persons who abuse power in one way or another. It is a daunting challenge to fully know ourselves and to achieve a significant degree of mastery over our baser impulses. Again: Judging ourselves and holding ourselves to perfectionist standards makes the issues we need to accept go into hiding, giving them power. Gradual, compassionate awareness over time is the best plan.

Right now the world is Waking and shaking us. What happens when we start to Wake Up more quickly than we are prepared to assimilate?

In Part 2 & 3 we will explore a subtle-energy perspective of trauma. We will look at how and why monumental world change impacts those of us who are sensitive to energy.

Related Posts: If this Post seems dense the Inner Work Series supplies background. Find by clicking numbered pages below.

Good questions (from Carolyn Myss):

“What is it in your life that you allow to have authority over you?”
“What part of your life are you willing to give up to make that [higher awareness] happen?”

This Post follows the Social and Mental Forgiveness Tips from Part 1. You can move from Mental toward Transcendental Forgiveness like this: Realize that forgiveness and even love need not be held hostage to understanding. We may have no clue why loved ones let alone strangers act as they do. Being willing to extend compassion for their humanity whether or not we understand is a transcendental act.

Now we continue with Emotional and Transcendental Forgiveness Tips:

Emotional Level

• Acknowledge and accept your pain. Release judging or shaming yourself for feeling pain.
• Be kind to yourself, especially when others are not. Extend compassion to yourself when you are in pain.
• Notice the way stuck rage and pain poison and pollute you.
• Notice the ways you fight off receiving forgiveness—and soften.
• Make friends with your pain. It guides you to healing.
• Seek to release getting mad at yourself for getting mad at yourself.
• Be consistently loyal to your authentic feelings, whether or not you choose to share them.
• Discover the vulnerable feelings beneath your anger. Face them gently and find out what you need to treat the vulnerable part kindly.
• Cry, letting your tears purify your heart. (If you would like a recording of my )****
• Use flower essences or homeopathic remedies that address your exact emotional patterns.
• Get support for issues you repeat over and over. Energy-based therapies help such as EFT-type methods, Thoughtfield Therapy, and EMDR.
• Set up circumstances where you can experience totally safe touch, like massage or reflexology.
• Pay attention to the way you hold your pain in your body and breath.
• Practice compassion for people’s vulnerabilities and compensations, including your own.
• Give your sub-personalities each a voice. Allow the hurt and angry ones to express. Let the parts that long to forgive to speak too. How do you feel in your body when each voice speaks? See yourself as bigger than your wounds so your healthy parts can support you.

If you are going through recent or severe trauma, see:
“Self Care for Serious Betrayal of Major Transitions”

Transcendental Level

• Find the place inside where you are willing to let your protection layer be removed.
• Open yourself to grace, even when you cannot feel it.
• Forgive the soul, not their actions.
• Discovering new dimensions of your inner experience by going deeper.
• Practice Positive Vulnerability (see Post 7 in series).
• Before sleep, set your intention to experience forgiveness in your dream state.
• Keep the company of profound and loving people.
• Pray. Or somehow open your heart to larger-than-self assistance. If you are too angry to do so, work with the Emotional Level tips first.
• Learn to recognize the difference between the good clean pain of your heart opening and the crushing heartache of being treated cruelly. Welcome a breaking heart when it means developing greater tenderness and compassion.
• Explore what it means to be fully and completely human.
• Learn to broadcast authentic energies and sensations of forgiveness.
• Work with a group of people who combine their intention toward forgiveness. Make sure they are authentic and admit their wounds.
• Dedicate every bit of energy you release to healing the kinds of issues that caused your wounds, for all beings.

Take your time to forgive, going ever more deeply through the spiral of experience that covers the same ground over and over, yet every time with more of yourself Present.

Which Forgiveness Practices work best for YOU?
Which discoveries have surprised you about yourself as you’ve explored forgiveness?

Please share YOUR tips and insights about forgiveness.

Forgiveness is totally tied up in our personality structures and belief systems. This post contains potential action-steps from the Forgiveness series. Tips and tools in this text help create conditions that support authentic forgiveness from the inside out. Each person may need a different prescription, so I am including a Holistic selection.

Tips are categorized with respect to the Modes of Forgiveness in Posts 1 and 2. These suggestions areprimarily Inner Work (see related post series). Forgiveness is internal. When we forgive inside, and forgive ourselves, authentic external expression naturally follows.

These behaviors and exercises help us to respect and release our wounds. They begin with practices that help us to avoid setting ourselves up for resentment, and work toward more profound strategies for managing and releasing pain. Part 1 covers Social and Mental skills and tips. Part 2 goes into Emotional and Transcendental.

If you have been through horrific experiences of loss and abuse you may need additional support. Practice forgiving yourself in all the ways you are able until you can take on challenging incidents involving others, or life itself. The frustrated rage of torment can make us push away the energy and possibility of forgiveness. Whenever you can, stay open to even small experiences of relief and release. No matter where you start to eat the elephant, you will make progress.

Social Level

• Change “What’s wrong?” to “What do you need right now?”
• Place more value on what you think of yourself than on how others perceive you.
• Acknowledge and communicate your needs–without making others responsible for them.
• Acknowledge other people’s needs–without assuming inappropriate responsibility for them.
• Take careful note of people’s capacities before making yourself vulnerable. Expect a learning curve, and possible inconsistency under different circumstances.
• Set boundaries with compassion for yourself.
• Make yourself vulnerable and open where compassion is abundant. Talk about your wounds only with people who can relate, understand, and make a caring response.
• Notice when and why you begin to blame or become defensive. What is going on inside? Seek to use clear boundaries instead of defense.
• Notice when you feel like you need pretense. What do you need from yourself at that moment, in order to be authentic?
• Resolve disagreements whenever possible–and attempt to even when you’re not sure you can. Life goes by quickly. People can die before you forgive them. Forgive whether or not you care to spend time with someone again. You can release them in peace.

“Never let the sun go down on an argument.”

Mental Level

• Remember that lack of forgiveness binds you to the people who hurt you. Consider exactly what it costs you to maintain a grudge. Free yourself.
• Learn from your mistakes—especially if they hurt. Let the lesson be about insight and understanding, not a way to be hard on yourself but a way to move forward with grace.
• View pain as a form of guidance. What needs does the pain speak for?
• Find the gifts in your wounds–authentically.
• Think, visualize, imagine, intend, and wish for authentic forgiveness (but do not fake it).
• Notice claims you make against yourself and assess what kind of personal development would allow you to release them.
• Read my Post series on Betrayal.
• Notice your internal talk. Never talk to yourself in ways you wouldn’t dream of addressing someone you care about. If you speak harshly to yourself, invite a compassionate voice to come forward. Do this every single time, if you can. The nasty voice is not “you,” but only a part of you. You need not to take its comments to heart. Talk back to that voice, balancing its harsh assumptions with loving truth.
• Put yourself in the place of others and seek to understand the circumstances and conditions that formed their fractures.

Which of these tips stands out for YOU?
What can you do to help yourself to remember to practice it when you need it the most?

“Being positive” or acting “loving” can be driven by narcissism. Denying wounds drives them deeper and makes them inaccessible to healing or forgiveness.

I am going to say some things about narcissism. Please understand that this discussion is less about the disorder itself than a further commentary on the importance of owning our wounds.

Narcissism, in my estimation, is a kind of a turning point. One common expression of narcissism represents an extreme of social adaptation. It’s like social conditioning on steroids. Appearances have turned the corner from being socially useful and are now headed down the road to pathology.

Narcissists do exist whose adaptation is focused on professional attainment, who do not care how they appear to others. They are perceived as jerks. This post focuses on those whose world revolves around being liked.

Society generally envies narcissists. And why not? They have mastered the art of social appearances and seem so enviably well-adjusted and well liked. External appearances are maintained without functional introspection or sensitive awareness of other people’s feelings. Narcissism is a personality disorder. Something is not working correctly.

Recognizing the disorder is essential self-care. A sensitive and loving person can get drained and dispirited relating to a narcissist. Staying in the relationship too long is likely to become something for which the sensitive person needs to forgive him or herself.

Narcissists are motivated by how they appear to others. They may seem very normal. A crucial difference between someone with a bad case of “nice” with an intense need for approval and a narcissist is that the latter is incapable of putting themselves in another person’s shoes. If you feel distress about something a narcissist has done they blame you for making them look bad–if only to themselves.

Someone who lives in their image of themselves CANNOT understand or value in you what they push away in themselves. The wounds. It’s not personal. That makes it more confusing.

The most confusing interactions I have ever had were with people who excelled at appearing positive, confident, and caring as a way to avoid their wounds. Sensing what was actually going on was like being lost in a fun house with a distorted hall of mirrors.

Narcissists can be consummate actors. Some narcissists can be generous with material things, attention, and loving words, and may even have scores of adoring friends. (Think: “Iron Man.) A narcissist may even run a charitable organization, become a doctor, or set themselves up as a spiritual leader. It’s easy to believe the narcissist’s act–because they do. Seeing what is going on can be shocking. You just don’t want to think someone who ACTS like they care so much could be so cruel without even noticing. They have no clue.

Trying to explain backfires. If you express distress or give them feedback, they may praise themselves as loving, generous, and skillful with people, telling you with apparent sincerity that you are way off base. Meanwhile they systematically ignore anything that does not support their glowing image. Attempts to communicate your own experience are interpreted as something positive or negative—about them.

If you become angry or hurt this only seems to prove that the problems are all yours. He or she maintains the illusion of being wonderful while you “carry” the difficult emotions for you both. Superiority is a powerful defense.

When we show compassion to someone with this character disorder they have no compunctions about using that—and the rest of our energy—for themselves.

Narcissism is extremely difficult to treat. Those who need treatment cannot recognize it. They are extremely successfully defended. Narcissists don’t seek help; they do not admit to having any issues. They are likely to put down people who appreciate or suggest therapy.

My heart totally goes out to anyone living with a narcissist. It can make you feel crazy. Even intuitive people can be taken in. I hope this post will increase awareness. If you’re partnered with someone who everyone seems to love, who is super-friendly with others and casually callous to you, this is a warning sign. Forgive yourself with great tenderness if you are in this situation. You can forgive the narcissist too—but remember that you are dealing with a personality disorder. Mind your boundaries and don’t let yourself be used.

A knowledgeable friend said, “They can be so charming and persuasive. And one can be fooled at first, then be ensnared by the time the damage is done.”

(The psychiatrist and Intuitive Judith Orloff has online resources for dealing with narcissists.)

Here are a few links for technical information in case you need it:

Symptoms of Narcissism
Diagnosis and Treatment of Narcissism

The rest of this post applies generally, not just to narcissists.

If the need to look good or nice or loving or even spiritual makes us deaf and blind to the distress of others, hidden wounds are blocking the ability to see out. We need to be able to see IN in order to see OUT clearly.

Acknowledging our own wounds is a genuine kindness to others.

Part 14 consists of tips and suggestions that support forgiveness, in each of the four modes from Part 1.

How do YOU feel around people who do not acknowledge any shortcomings or issues?
What happens inside you when you extend kindness to yourself?

Please pass this post along to those who need it.