2. Transforming my experience

I can transform an experience of hardship and suffering by finding something in the situation to be grateful for. A situation in my life which can be transformed in this way is:

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

The distance from my parents. I am at the other end of the world from my parents. Distance: 13,484 km / 8,378 miles and 24 hours flying and wait time door to door.

They're aging, all their children are abroad, and they dither about coming to be with us. They are comfortable in their own land! How to leave our families and stay with them as we'd like to? I feel torn, wanting to be with them but needing to be with the kids too, keep working even the few hours I do.

The way I'm managing it is, we've arranged their life there, as comfortably as we can; keep calling them almost daily, and I know they have many loved nephews and nieces and relatives whenever they need. So, I have to be relaxed and realize that if it was meant to be, the way towards them would smooth itself.

Much internal work is going on, and after 2 months of intense two-way pull, I have come to terms with it.

The good news is , that they're considering visiting us now! [on again, off again, though!]

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

I am currently going through another spiral of revisiting difficult  times experienced as a child, then teenager, then early twenties around power and abuse issues. Something came up in the media in Australia that triggered my grief around my own experiences. A perpetrator has come unstuck and lost his job.

Then at work I have had to counsel some mothers who are also experiencing revisiting childhood and early adulthood abuse. The good thing is listening to them has helped them realise they are moving on and having me there helped them to debrief and shift. 

The not so good thing is I thought I had moved on and now find myself back there. I realise I have to move through this. The good thing is that I am coping and came to a realisation that the perpetrators of abuse eventually experience the consequences of their actions and it just is. It happens , life happens and we move on. I dont feel sorry for them experiencing consequences nor do I feel they deserve it . I just feel that things just are and have a sense of “so be it”

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

Thank you for sharing, Jenny. Don't you find it's about cycles. We don't move in a linear way but in a spiral. We are hurt/wounded the healing process starts. We feel things are much better, then something comes up to reveal how the wound has not yet healed - none the less we we are not still at 'point A'…
It is special that you have these references as a counsellor so others can benefit from your insight and experiences.

Holding you in my heart during this challenging time, childhood abuse causes so much pain

love

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

Thats exactly it Hummingbird and how I explained to my clients, thecyclic spirals. Whenever I tell people this they immediately get it. It just feels so right.

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

its always wonderful to see how 'truth resonates'

love

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

Thanks, Jenny and Anna. This has been my experience too, that healing isn't a one-off; it's cyclic, a spiral. Until I finally got that, I was devastated every time the hurt came up again—I thought I was done with it! Acceptance, as you say, Jenny, is key.

Same with *ascension* in this new energy, I'm feeling this now, that ascension is no longer a straight-up, like Jesus, like Elijah (and yes, you could say they were special cases, but the thing is, they did not get to retain their human bodies). Expanding outward from the 3D reality we're so accustomed to—but which suddenly no longer feels comfortable, like a skin needing to be shed—into the new world also takes the form of cyclic spirals. So I need to remember that when I experience that déjà vu, been-there-done-that-lesson feeling, that while it might look like the same lesson, it's one that I get to do precisely because I passed the lower-level versions of it. In a manner of speaking. :)

Ruth

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

Yes!
And how surprising it is when we see those little black dots of pettiness or envy or jealousy or anger in our energy field! The clearer it becomes, the more we might see, as  spots on a dusted-off mirror. But just as those spots aren't integral to the mirror, neither are these little black dots.

When I see aspects of myself that make me uncomfortable, I first look at them with delight, because it frees me from the burden of being more than, or better than, or superior than - all the traps of ego and not of light . Then I look at the feelings of discomfort with compassion, and in being aware of them, allow them to be dissolved, and to experience a deeper sense of the essence.

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

embracing rather than denying, Meenakshi, seems to be the way…

love

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

Could you elaborate, Anna?

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

Meenakshi, I was responding to your words - it feels that instead of denying the uncomfortable feelings you go out and meet them - this allows,

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

Ah! Yes, we can't run away from the feelings. Good point to underwscore.

 When I saw your words embrace and deny; further thoughts flowed through: perhaps we can, though, distance ourselves from them [which may seem like denial] so that we can then embrace them in our more expanded state.
That can help if feelings threaten to overwhelm.

For instance, if I say : 'this fear is not mine. It is the fear of displaced humanity [or, as some say, ancestors or past lives] going towards me into the light'

Then we seem to be denying them but are actually able to expand more fully into the compassionate heart, and thus handle them.

Anna, you are such a wonderful guide through the labyrinth! Your presence enables deeper exploration. That inner labyrinth.

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Meenakshi, I am also enjoying our journey.

I feel we allow the opportunity for wisdom, insight, intuition to enter the process when we

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

on reading this thread again something came up for me. Meenakshi you said it when you commented that something coming up again about past life or ancestor memory and Ruth mentioned deja vu.  

I remembered a dream I had that I think was ancestral memory, or past life but I feel that its ancestral. Remembering it made me react as if it actually happened to me in this lifetime so I think I am still reacting to it. Recent research is showing that transgenerational trauma changes your DNA. The original trauma changes your DNA then you pass the changes on to your children and if they experience healing the DNA changes again. Its very fluid.

So I'm feeling this memory I had in a dream has been passed on in my DNA and now I must heal it.

In the dream I am an Australian Aboriginal and am on the Murray River. My family and others from my people have been captured by white English soldiers and they have put fences up on the edge of the Murray River and erected little white tents in it. There are tents for the women and tents for the men . My mother, grandmother, sister and aunties in this life are all there and two of my sons from this life also there. They are a baby and a toddler. The women decide that one of us must escape and tell others what has happened and keep our memory alive because they believe they will be killed or worse. Its decided that I will escape because I am a good swimmer. I am a good swimmer in this life too. Its decided I will swim upstream under water and go to the far shore into another tribes land. They say they will care for my children, but it has to be me. They say its meant to be.

I escape and dive in the river and start swimming underwater. The soldiers fire at me and I feel the zing of bullets in the water and am very afraid and am mourning for my children already. I go into a dream state within the dream and round the bend in the river. I reach a beach on the far side. I am exhausted. I see other people from another tribe and am afraid they will kill me too becasue I am not one of them. An old grandmother sees me and motions to me saying to come out. I hesitate and she insists so I stagger up the beach. There are many people there. I look down at my body and realise I have become white and am even more afraid and confused. She says not to worry. When I ask who all the people are she says they are my ancestors. They are all different colours nationalities. I ask if she and her clan will kill me again and she says “No” and laughs. I look at my white skin and say but I'm white now. She explains thats just so I can do the work I have to do. I have to pass for white. She tells me that I must be a bridge. I feel very alone.

I still feel the pain of losing my children and family and my people now. In this life I felt very alone and like I didnt belong anywhere until I was in my 40's and as if I was grieving but didnt know why. I just wanted to go home all my life. 

This experience is in my labyrinth about halfway up the tree trunk on the left. 

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

What a powerful tale, Jenny!
Im becoming more and more aware how past lives influence me in this life..
how certain things only make sense when looking at it knowing there were lives beyond this one…

and of course knowing there'll be lives after this one too . So we shouldnt attach to the past but learn from it …  we're always creating

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

Jenny, this is a deeply moving experience; and so clearly visualized! You have so many details, which shows how real this is for me. I am grateful that you shared this with us.

Does it transform with your sharing? A sense of freedom?

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

I feel that its more valid, as valid as any experience that has occurred in this life. That means I can move on from it as I have other experiences. I still feel the hurt though and know I have to do something to try and right the wrongs.

Recently I read a book called 'My Place' by an Aboriginal woman called Sally Morgan. She also speaks of a dream she had of being hunted with her people back when whites first came here. They were hunted down and massacred, treated like vermin. It was also very vivid for her. It is as if the ancestors want us to remember. Its about paying respect to the experiences of the people and also a way of the ancestors speaking to us and showing us that we are Aboriginal. Our Aboriginality has been covered up for years because it was never safe to identify especially if you were part white because these children were taken from their families and either put in orphanages or with white families to try and eradicate their Aboriginality. As a result there is an identity crisis within people who half know but never quite sure who they are.

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

This is an aspect that is becoming so much clearer to me now. I saw that movie that's a true story about 2 brave sisters who came back after being taken away - something to do with a boundary or wall that they kept following. That's when I learned about Aboriginals at that time when they were being made to forget their roots.

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

That was called Rabbit Proof Fence Its a fence that was built to keep the rabbits in one region but the fence didnt keep them out. They were an introduced species that came in plague proportions becasue they had almost no natural enemies. It was also used as a boundary fence. The movie explains a lot. There are some redkneck sections of the Australian community that are very racist and there is a lot of internalised racism that is not overt but based on the taught assumptions of a community that felt they had to eradicate non-whites in order to survive in a remote and often hostile environment. I have written a paper on decolonising information in health. I'm going to try and change current perceptions of Aboriginal people and try to improve equity of healthcare for the people at least in my Department. 

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

Yes! I remember now. Bless you for what you're doing, Jenny. I really admire people who have the courage to facilitiate real change in the lives of others.

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

A situation in my life which can be transformed in this way is:


Hearing voices.


While extremely frightening at times, confusing and full of riddles, they are helping me return to center by presenting opportunities to face these things that I have been running from in a constructive manner.  As such, I have been cleaning up my life and learning to reintegrate with others.

Re: 2. Transforming my experience

KJ, I keep feeling humbled by the challenges you share with us. It must feel frightening to hear voices. Your courage to face these things is very precious and sounds like it is plating an enormous role in what you call, 'cleaning up my life and learning to reintegrate with others.' We can all learn from such courage.  Thank you