The Practice of Transparent Communication

"...maturity is recognized through a disciplined refusal to choose between or isolate three powerful dynamics shaping human identity: what has already happened, what is happening now and what is about ...to occur... " David Whyte

How do we learn how to hold the past and the future in the present moment? What is it like to be felt, held and witnessed in those moments? That is what I am coming to learn through the practice of Transparent Communication. I cannot really explain how it works, I can only share my experience it. I am blessed and grateful to be studying with Thomas Huebl and the Academy of Inner Science

 ESSENTIAL MOMENTS: Waiting for the “cut”

I am sitting here this morning looking at the drawing I taped above my desk.  It is a drawing of a flower petal exercise I experienced as a part of a  Thomas Huebl US Practice Group Leader Training. It was held at the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS) in Petaluma California. They are having a conference next week and it is not too late to join in the fun! Such beautiful land, incredibly caring people. and an exploration of a path to BEING love in action.

I am re-membering the exercise, looking at a bunch of words I had written on the paper. My eyes fall on the word unworthy. Immediately, my heart sinks, I feel the hot flame of shame rumble up from my belly and scorch my throat. Instead of turning away, I am curious about this unworthy one and I stop pushing that one away. I think about what this means to me and begin to understand the phrase, “Whatever is the most personal, is also the most universal.” Everyone has feelings of unworthiness at some point.  To me, it is a matter of varying intensity. When the intensity is titrated properly, it can be felt and digested without overwhelming the nervous system. Areas that do not have the support to be felt will be numbed out in some way in an effort to preserve the “system.”

As I sit, I remember my breath and stay with the sick feeling of unworthiness in the pit of my stomach. The flame in my throat begins to recede.  It is weird to me how this just happens. I follow the heat downwards and touch the emotional energy trapped in my pelvic bowl. I feel the depth and weight of the emotion of grief stored there.  I re-member after the flower petal exercise, I got together with two of my classmates to talk with each other. In the Academy of Inner Science work, it is called it a triad.

In the triad we experimented with one another using the specific practice we are learning called Transparent Communication. During one of my triad partners time to share, she said, “I don’t usually cry in front of people because once I start crying, I am afraid I won’t stop.” I re-member how my mother used to say that same sentence. As I look into my classmates’ eyes, my heart floods with compassion and she is both herself and my mother.  I say a silent prayer for them both. When it is time for feedback, I ask her if I can take a risk and share something and then say a phrase. She says yes.

I say, “My mother’s life experience is much like yours and she would say that frequently. My greatest fear is she died without knowing self-forgiveness. When I tell you that, I feel a lot of grief starting to come up in me.”  Tears stung my eyes and I felt a lump in my throat.

The words, ‘Forgive Yourself’ come into my awareness. I feel fear in my gut and I tap into my heart. I feel shaky. I take a breath, I hear a whisper in my head saying, ‘Take a Risk’. I say, “Yes.” Tears well up in my eyes and I say, “Forgive yourself.” She starts to cry. 

I, along with another classmate, just sit with her and energetically hold her in her tears in silence. She talks about her fears of not ever being able to stop crying. I feel disorientation and confusion. Is it my mother that I am feeling, my classmate, or myself?  Maybe all of them?  The confusion settles and clears and I continue to hold the connection with my other classmates, and together we meet in  “the space between us” and her tears subside. We fall into silence.

The energy settles in the silence and our breath falls into a synchronistic rhythm within it. The exercise is over, and we all express that we feel more space inside our bodies, and we share a sense of connection, love, and peace that feels very healing.

I am back in my room now in Oakland (even though I never left) and I can feel the unworthy one relaxing as I take a deep breath and sink deeper into my body with a little smile and an AHHHH. 

Namaste

Never Let Go of The Thread: What it means to be a family

Parent Vows:  What does it mean to live into your destiny? The one not given to you by fate?  The one you were given by design.  The Original YOU? The dream that is dreaming you?

I wonder about the dream that brought me here to this earth fairly often. I like to ponder things in my quiet moments. The one I have been pondering lately is coming out of the Parent Vows Project.  I have talking to my father for a long time about the vow my parents made when they were thinking about conceiving each of us.  My parents made a special vow... My Father has told me the story many times. 

They laid each one of us on the altar of Our Lady of Loretto Church, and vowed before God that they would do their best to have a loving family. They promised they would gave us back to God.

What does IT mean to me? I have many privileges my mother and father did not have...and I get to fulfill a dream that my mother and father sacrificed on behalf of my brother and sisters. They did it in order to bring us here. It is one hell of a story.

My mother was at the Christ Hospital School of Nursing when she met and married my father. He was a handsome, well dressed, wealthy Sicilian man. And he adored her. 

Back in those days, the hospitals had their own training programs. It was run like a convent. Nursing students could not be married. They worked long hours and lived in a dorm, and received training, room and board in exchange for their education. Their purpose was to support the doctors and the hospitals in the practice of medicine, but nurses started to apply the science of Florence Nightengale, and began to notice the patterns their education was bringing, and were trying to be a profession and claim their science.

Back in those days, nurses had to stand up when a doctor entered the room and if there was not place for him to sit, (it was most usually a him), they were expected to give up their seat. There were still very few University Programs, and many nurses had to get their doctoral dgrees in other disciplines. The profession was still very young, and my mother chose to get married and have children. She chose to leave the dream of her career behind.  It was a different time in history.  That is what many women did at that time. I believe that is why she got cancer.  She repressed a lot during her life.

So how did I become a nurse? In my mid-twenties, I worked two jobs. During the week I worked at a home health agency as a coordinator, and also helped my father run his Balloon shop on the weekends. I liked listening to the nurses.  The stories they told, and the patients I got to interact with when I scheduled the nurses' visits.

My partner at the time was a Certified Nurse Midwife. She had a very good intuitive sense. She held the energy of the ancient midwives. There was a part of her that kind of reminded me of a witch. It was pretty cool. We did shamanic drumming and hung out in nature and listened to women's music. We went to festivals, and had a full life. She also had a daughter.  I had a family.

My partner had a vision one night when we were on a retreat in the Hocking Hills of Ohio. We went there to help me find clarity on my purpose, and to learn what that would mean for us as a family. It was a women's retreat center. It was so peaceful and beautiful there. The food was simple and prepared with care. It was fresh, country food, and the air was clean and crisp. The nature was incredible and I could feel something in me starting to come together.

We drank in the moonlight while sitting in the hot tub. We marveled at the infinite blackness of the night sky. With no city streetlights to dim the scattered constellations etched against the inky darkness, we often fell into companionable silence. 

It was from that place that my nursing career was born. I had been seeing a career counselor. I needed to find a professional career, and my life purpose. I was 27 years old, and was struggling to find my place in the world. 

My partner awoke from a dream at 4 am on the third night of our journey. She sat bolt upright in bed, and shouted, "I got it, you need to become a nurse."

I rejected the idea immediately. I told her my mother also wanted me to become a nurse, and I was not interested in fulfilling her unfulfilled life. My partner laughed at my stubbornness and started asking me questions. With each question, more clarity came and it seemed like nursing was a perfect fit for the life I wanted to create, and the life we were creating together. My resistance softened.

It met all of the criteria I had laid out with the career counselor, for not only what I wanted to do, more like a natural progression of who I was already was...and who I wanted to become. I am still living into who I was meant to be. In some way or another, aren't we all?

That was 25 years ago, and I am still following the voice of the ONE who brought me here in order to be of service to our world. It is a time of great transformation in the way we know and learn about wellness and disease. I am gratefully excited to be walking this path with each of you reading this...and committed to the path of discovering new ways to look at IntegratingDNA into our collective journey of health and healing.