What do to, and when?

What to do and when?

Hahaha. Good luck on this one. As if there is an answer. Some people live by “if you wait, it will come”. Some believe you must consciously intend and manifest (because Spirit is sleeping on the job?).  Some believe it must “feel good” or it is bad for you. (Well heroin “feels” great…. So what does that mean?). One answer for sure is that there is no one answer when it comes to personal growth and Soul Evolution. In fact one can only hope that you realize every article I write is from my truth(s) and if you find it helpful that is wonderful. And if you find these articles annoying, then hopefully you will disregard and move on. Take the best and leave the rest as is said in 12-Step programs.

Your Life Path was designed by you and your Guides for you to evolve as a Soul. This means everyone is on a Spiritual Path, whether they know it or not, whether they believe in spirituality or not. No one “has to” work on his/herself. Life is the ultimate Teacher (the Tao) and you will learn what you came here to learn, one way or another. Whether you learn well, or your learning is average, or if you don’t learn what you came here to learn (and have to come back for a do-over) life and life circumstances will teach you. How much and how well you learn is completely up to each individual. If you decide you want to consciously “work” on yourself, that does not in and of itself make you a better person or more advanced etc. What matters most concerning a choice to do conscious work on yourself is how you take on the work and the energy behind your choice. If you think you are broken, or you want power and prestige, your work on yourself runs the risk of being inauthentic and even abusive towards your own Self. Choose to work on yourself because you are unhappy in life, or something, some energy is “nudging” you to learn more regarding self-mastery and being an authentic being living with integrity, morality and ethics. You might want to read Practicing Loving Kindness by Pema Chodron as a starting point to better understand your choices regarding doing conscious work on yourself.

This article is for those of you who had a difficult childhood and feel those wounds are still having an unpleasant influence in your current life circumstances and decisions. This article is also for the restless souls that know and feel that this life is not all there is. So where do you start? Follow your heart? Use your intuition? What if you are an unhealed wounded person? What if you are an unhealed wounded person and you don’t even know that… yet. If that is the case you will be led by your wounds, and all the protective behaviors you learned and implemented over the years in order to survive and keep living with your wounds until, hopefully, one day you wake up, come out of denial and begin the journey of  healing, personal growth and Soul Evolution.  If you are part of the walking wounded you will have issues with trust, trusting others and trusting yourself including not trusting your choices regarding how you pick people to interact with or be in a relationship with. The walking wounded often start off either isolating themselves, hanging out with people crazier (even more wounded) than themselves so you feel more sane compared to them, or trying to find people that will “tell you what to do” because  you are so empty or broken inside. This leaves the walking wounded very susceptible to being manipulated by people who are only too happy to tell others what to do. Quite often the walking wounded get drawn to satanic, pagan, new age or cult practices where “leaders” thrive on telling people what to do and even what to feel and to the walking wounded with a history of neglect and/or abuse and a loss of trust and belief in themselves this will feel like “home”.  You can get lost in these circles of isolation and/or bad choices for decades.

Your unhealed wounds will often misdirect you with so-called guidance cloaked in “meant to be” as is said in new age circles. Your wounded self will be drawn to dysfunctional and even painful or abusive “meant to be’s” especially those dressed up as “feel goods” such as love bombing, toxic positivity and interesting (but ultimately unhelpful) “narratives” told to you by other unhealed and untrained new agers, narcissists and even cult leaders.  You will not be able to distinguish these nuances because your radar is broken. It was broken and reset based on your wounds so you will be easily manipulated into “feel good” strategies. Moving into healthy challenges is the heart of healing, self-healing, and Soul Evolution but in the beginning healthy challenges will trigger anxiety and fear in the unhealed. The challenges in your life are “meant to be”; you designed them and set them up for implementation before you ever incarnated. What is not “meant to be” is your suffering.  Challenges are arduous but suffering is optional and you and your Guides did not set up challenges for you to fail; you set them up for you to grow and evolve through the process and actions of taking risks, making mistakes, having patience, being persistent and developing faith all of which are a part of learning. Recovery, healing, building trust in yourself and others means you will have to take risks by changing your behaviors, your choices, your actions and feeling your feelings, all of them.

Where do you start? There are no rules and each individual journey will be different based on your history, your character and integrity, your cultural and family background, gender, age, and so much more. There are some things to keep in mind. First off, as a wounded person you cannot heal in isolation. Even the shamans and monks that live in caves in the Himalayas had Teachers though some do study with Pure Spirit, but then you are looking at that as a practice and lifestyle attained by decades of discipline and pursuit. If you want to live in this world and not pursue decades of austere arcane practices you are going to have to risk taking a chance working with someone or a group. If you have fear of being dominated or controlled working with a self-directed spiritual group such as a 12-Step group is probably a good first step for you. There is no “leader” in 12-Step and it is not a self-help program; it is a spiritual program. There will be enough humans there to be resources for you and points of contact in helping you to work with your Higher Power and the learning you will receive will come from listening to and hearing shares in the group without the fear of working with a “leader” or a person who might dominate or control you.  

However if you have a ginormous ego or you are a major control freak (a symptom of deep trust issues) or a huge people pleaser you would probably prefer to jump off a cliff rather than show up in a group. People pleasers and those with a falsely bloated ego (the walking wounded often create a false bloated ego as a defense mechanism in order to avoid feeling shame) will look for a “cool” person to be their teacher so they can seduce or suck up. If you are a people pleaser having a “leader” you can orient yourself around so you can adapt your behaviors to win approval is your powerful dysfunctional pattern and it will call you, at first, on the beginning steps of your healing journey. If you have created a giant (false) ego as your coping mechanism in life, you will want to “win” the approval of some powerful or “gifted” (in your mind) “leader”. That coping mechanism will help you to (falsely) feel “good” about yourself, by association.  In other words if a cool teacher (or “gifted” or “powerful”) accepts you, that will help define you as cool or powerful too. It is a fantasy but it is also a very common coping tool of the walking wounded and a powerful tool used by cult leaders to manipulate potential followers.

You can (and should, if drawn to) read books, watch videos, and self-educate. But at some point you are going to have to actually practice, put into action, what you are learning. How will you evaluate those efforts? You will need a trusted person to observe you, listen to you, talk to you and give you feedback. You cannot simultaneously practice new learning and observe and evaluate yourself in new behaviors. Can you use a good friend? Perhaps. Most good friends will not risk the friendship when giving opinions, observations or feedback meaning that they may not be able to have difficult or challenging conversations with you. This is why people choose to work with a mentor, someone who has made the journey his/herself. In order to determine if a potential mentor is the real deal you will have to spend some time observing the person because everybody these days has a good story. In fact as far as I am concerned, the better the “story” about being “chosen” or “gifted” or “called”, the more skeptical I tend to be. Look at behaviors and actual lifestyle as compared to “presentation”. Listen with care and read between the lines. Authentic people are not consistently consistent. I personally look for inconsistencies because that is a sign of authenticity and choose to work with people whose inconsistencies are acceptable for me within the boundaries of my parameters on what constitutes a good human being. For me a quality person is honest and transparent about who s/he is and does not hide his/her emotions by presenting a “smooth” or “non-reactive” front.

I need to look up to and respect any mentor I work with. Some people can dislike their mentor and are comfortable “using” someone because they “want” what their mentor has (or you think they have) such as a “gift”, talent, connection (for career or love), or because they somehow think this mentor will “save” them. For some people it is built into their family or ethnic culture to use people. There is nothing wrong with using someone in a healthy fashion if you are honest about it and don’t add in sucking up or people pleasing or other manipulative techniques to try to ensure a (unhealthy) connection. Mentors are used to being “useful” and really that is their job. They are not your friend or lover or savior.  However if you add in emotional seduction to your relationship with a mentor it will definitely muddy your waters. Some people cannot work with a mentor without adding in emotional and/or sexual seduction. It is what they learned as a child especially if there was sexual misconduct or abuse. This is another danger of working with a mentor and not a group or at the very least and mentor and a group.  Until you are well on your way of coming out of denial and into at least the first stages of recovery working with a mentor and having no group participation at all, you can expect drama and/or loss in your mentor relationships. This is not meant as a threat rather information for you to use to prepare yourself. Prepare for the worst and expect the best.

You can have more than one mentor however I would suggest they not be in the same area of recovery as that can become confusing. For example you can have a 12-Step sponsor, a meditation teacher and a health (nutrition and exercise) coach all at one time. The same holds true with groups. You can work with a church group, 12-Step, an artist group and an incest survivor group all at the same time (should you be so inspired). This might be a good choice for you until you have a stronger version of discernment regarding what is healthy for you. Setting up a network of support is a good choice. It means you will have some checks and balances in place to try and offset your tendency to be guided by your wounds or to inappropriately bond with a mentor or Teacher.  I don’t care how introverted you are, if you refuse to be part of any group even as a listener, you are more committed to being “right”, “looking good” and staying in “control” than you are in your own recovery and growth. You are a human and until you can embrace your humanity you will use your isolating techniques (or excuses) to avoid fully participating in the journey you signed up to do when you chose to incarnate. In groups you cannot manipulate, suck up, win approval or manipulate the feelings of yourself or others, at least not forever and not with everyone. In groups you learn to hold your own space in your own recovery work. Speaking in groups is the only way to expunge toxic shame. Speaking in groups gives you a chance to practice social skills. Where else can you safely do that? Being in a group teaches you to be able to tolerate the emotions of others without trying to hide or fix things.

You don’t “have” to do anything.  Life and the situations and circumstances your life brings to you were arranged to happen, by you and your Spirit Guides when you were a ball of light. Life will teach you. Life will force you to change and grow.  Life will force you to work with groups such as in-laws or co-workers so you change and grow. Life will also send you mentors, usually they are the ones that hurt and betray you the most as that is how many deep lessons roll in, with pain. You can also choose groups and mentors and be willing to accept your lessons rather than trying to resist them or “manipulate” the Universe to “get what you want”.  Either approach is fine. Some people get a career or make a living by going to school; some do so without going to school. Some never even have the opportunity to attend “school”.  Some of us prefer to go to “Spiritual School” and some prefer “Life School”. Be aware of your choices. Only then can you “move at the pace of Guidance”.

These are short articles and reflect my thoughts, experiences, education, knowledge base and personal practices of my Path.  Take the best; Leave the rest.

Journey On

Dr. Marie @ LifePathHealings

MarieFeuer.Org