Thankyou everyone for your heartfelt and thoughtful reflections.
I wanted to clarify how this question arose for me. My original question
came from being quite moved by a women's description of a near death
experience where her consciousness expanded into a oneness experience of
all creation. Her experience included and moved beyond her ancestors
lineage, beyond this lifetime, and included simultaneous lifetimes (that in
linear time might be considered past lives but in the consiousness that she
experienced this in - everything was occuring in the present moment). Her
consciousness expanded to include the origin of the universe and all
things. She returned to the living with a profound realization of the
nature of the mind and life itself. ( Dying to be Me - Anita Moorjani)
I was deeply moved by her account and it resonated with the view of reality
that I am forming from my direct experiences tapping into the field. She
encouraged the development of self love, kindness to ourselves, acceptance
of ourself as the path to aligning with this "source" as the energy as self
love is the closest "energy" to the consciousness that she had experienced.
In my original question to the group I defined self love as being fiercely
committed to taking care of one's own wants and needs. Perhaps that wording
was influenced by my own experience of how I distract from listening to
the deep "knowing" of what I need. I WANT to be fiercely committed to this.
I think of self love as being fully in alignment with a deep knowing of
what I need or want and there is a natural commitment to heeding that. It
is also compassion for myself when I am having a different experience than
that and trusting that I am a perfect as I am. Yes this is EGO but also
this is listening closely to my own deep knowing and loving myself enough
to follow that. I do not find this to be an easy task, much of my
relationship with myself is very different than that. I find the same with
many people I work with.
i understand working with this from a family system view. When I work in
the field I do not always work with direct family systems although they
often surface in the constellation. What I was curious about was placing a
standard constellation with 4 or 5 positions that I could have participants
step into in a group exercise format. For example - a rep for self , a rep
for obstacles to self love, a rep for resources or what will help, a rep
for self love (or the one that loves the focus person fully, or the Source
of oneself). I start with this set-up and then work with what arises from
the field.
It is a bit of a tricky set-up. Especially with the need to define what is
meant by self love. That is what I received from your reflections - how
important it is to define what that position means and to let the group
participate in the process of defining that for themselves. Your feedback
has inspired in me a desire to define this more for myself and to also
explore this in the field. What a beautiful teacher the field itself is.
Thankyou again for taking the time to send me your thoughts. Blessings to
you all.
Dienna Raye
Counsellor & Life Coach
www.diennaraye.com <http://www.fpcoaching.com>
250.352.1220
*
*
On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 8:12 PM, Anutoshf Foo <anutoshf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
**
Thank you for this sharing and to all of you who have contributed.
Angelika, thank you for putting into words the inexpressible so
touchingly...Love in it's purest sense which we each came with as our
birthright.
And how we each contribute to this flowering is an art into itself.
We are so blessed.
within love & it's mysteries
Anutosh
On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 7:42 PM, angelika schenk <angelika.schenk@xxxxxxxxx
wrote:
**
dear Chris,
thanks for contributing.
Last night, without thinking, I started writing. When your email came I
realised it fits into this thread.
So here it is:
Healing the past for a future of love
That´s the motto I found
for a talk on family constellations.
*For why would I like to change the past, at least and above all on a
feeling level? *
Because it helps me to (re-) affirm my own inner goodness, and even that
of others**
Because it gives me a new freedom to feel and act and be from hereon.
I have more choice.
Creativity, joy of living, working with others towards good things,
are some expressions of this newly found freedom.
To me, this heading makes a lot of sense. Many of the things that are
going on now would be different if a whole range of painful experiences had
been healed and laid to rest between the protagonists. To the extent that
we truly feel we have belonging and freedom, we can act more lovingly, more
boldly in good ways, we are more able to drop more ifs and buts that come
from fear. If we sense the warmth from behind our backs, if we feel our
ancestors' support and encouragement, if we feel their love, then we can
pass it on to others so easily. And reconciling is much easier than what we
think, once we understand that people act out of their own troubles, we
learn to understand them and not take it so personally any more what
hurt us a long time ago. This has a lot to do with how we relate to
ourselves. Let us be kind to ourselves, I mean, truly good, not putting
ourselves down, not being harsh with ourselves, not feeling bad over little
things, and easily apologizing to others when we upset them, because making
mistakes does not make us bad. When we are kind and understanding with
ourselves we lose a lot of weight, most of it was probably never ours.
Being kind and good to ourselves also means seeing ourselves in a realistic
way, and still good anyway. Deep down we are inclined to think that if we
are treated badly, we must somehow deserve it. This is a childhood remnant
that we can carry even into our adult relationships. A child tries to
behave the way that is expected. If we still get bad feedback, well there
must be something bad about us. As adults we may speak of Karma, of
punishment. But what if it was just a test how well we can maintain our
positive self-care? Or else, something from the past just comes to visit,
wanting to say to us: " You don't need me any more. This chapter is over."
When we are kind to ourselves, it is much easier to be kind to others and
to even remain kind in conflict situations, because we understand we do not
have to defend ourselves against an unjust criticism. When we are kind to
ourselves, we have more options how we look at things, how we respond to
things. we have more room to move. If it is not ours, we can decline to
take it, like the Buddha taught us. If it is ours, then we can respond with
integrity which is a part of our goodness. We can look at it, and perhaps
come to the conclusion that we did something wrong, We can feel sorry about
our actions (even of our negative actions against ourselves,) and express
that to the right address, and we think about how we can make amends where
possible. What we can always do is wishing others and ourselves well. We
can leave doors open, even those we have not seen yet. We can remain open
to all the good things that may want to come to us. We can breathe deeply
and freely. Bert says, we are all good, we just don´t take up the offer at
times. As for what our needs are, there are primary needs, meeting them
makes us feel fulfilled. And there are also compensatory ones. they are a
bottomless pit. Are we good to ourselves when we try to meet these wants
and cravings? Often our health and our serenity suffer. To recover our
primary needs we just listen to the child inside. We listen until the child
feels truly heard and seen. Children want to be loved and wanted, and they
want to give love . And they want to make a difference to the people around
them, usually to everything, to animals, to nature, to people. These wants
are primary needs.
15 years ago I had a chat about what we need, with my niece, 6 years of
age, and her brother, 5. They both came up with a solid and reasonable
list. I was impressed. Then my niece struggled with something: "There is
something else, how can I say it, we need helping. We need being there for
others."
with best wishes for us all
Angelika
