ways we betray and relate, and inspiration about belonging
Some of the major stuff that I've been reflecting with, noticing more, and moving through growing pains with in my life, work and relationships this past year include:
Trust. And respect.
The power of our stories... and the disempowerment, betrayal and violation involved in telling stories that aren't ours to tell. Or only telling parts of stories that help with our own posturing or un-examined needs and motivations.
The dis-ease to please - or just a sincere desire to help, combined with doubting one's own truth, and poor self-attentiveness... and how this makes for awfully foggy and depleting boundaries. And how that can work out well for those who might receive consciously or unconsciously from a lack of boundaries.
And how, if you don't have solid boundaries in place, or a practice that explores just what you need to be well in your own skin first, and maybe have learned to be a people-pleaser or the default helper along the way - for various reasons... how this can be a detriment to the best of intentions. Such as being reliable, for instance. That can crumble when you face the truth of having enabled certain expectations, over-committed, or dis-honored your own boundaries, truth or needs.
There are layers of personal and not-so-personal ways my consciousness has been seeing how these notions play out - in the world, in my life's story, in my self, and in those I love. The ways I've contributed to poor patterns and behavior, and didn't fully realize their hold, or the deep-rooted reasons I had never examined fully before.
Such as the places and times where I learned how to behave, connect and survive in ways that dishonored my own needs, desires and higher values. And how I have been part of contributing to the continuation of shitty ways of behaving and surviving and connecting in others.
Such is the way of being committed to expanding and growing our perspectives, I suppose. We see things that are hard to see, and on seeing, we can't forget, so we have a choice. We have to make changes or we continue to betray our own growth and healing... and essentially, one another.
For me, personally... it is all very much a journey and surrender into faith and forgiveness and the mystery of transformation, as well. While most of my greatest healing and growth, and maybe even the best of what I have to offer and share, has come from inner awareness work, it does not come from me alone. By this, I mean it is a sort of grace. It is life and creative process and healing and God working through the life, awakenings and energy of this person called Hali. Something like that.
I see a deep need for change and growth in our world (understatement of the year). Most of us are feeling this on a collective level to some degree, if we are paying attention. And personally, I have stumbled and fumbled internally quite a bit, and with my people and work, as I try to grow, voice, reflect and re-align with my higher truth and values... all small ripples of this greater connection we share.
This process of course correction, that is true to our shining inner compass, can be really uncomfortable. Mine, ultimately, is a movement toward greater authenticity, respect, compassion and love... the kind that has a place for me in it as well, and that may also disappoint the expectations or comforts of others at times.
I will mess it all up, in all of my humanness, again and again, but I choose to try again and again, in my own little ways, within the life I have been blessed with.
This morning, Marie Forleo posted an interview with Brene Brown that is excellent. It gave me that feeling of how we are all tapped into a collective evolution of awareness somehow, as so much of what they touched on relates to this stuff, all over my journals and conversations this year.
While Marie mentions that she had never really considered the implications in how we posture ourselves and opinions against one another, and how this is can be part of not just trust-breaking, but an insiduous dehumanization... I have been thinking about this stuff almost as long as I can remember. Partially in thanks to my parents, and an early awareness and exposure to indigenous values, and Native American history in this colonized land. They (Native Americans) have lived through the despicable results of such social dis-ease, manipulation, disregard, selfishness, greed and the practices that 'justify' it all in our little minds.
So, while that is a bigger scale of connection I see, the video is all tied up with many of the things I listed above from my own personal, reflective process this year.
There is no part of how we each do human relations that is exclusive of any other part. We are complex and layered and we have a lot to learn - personally and as a human family.
How we are in our personal worlds is the resonance or dissonance that adds to a greater creative energy for the world we are part of... in its preservation and its transformation. And in any re-humanizing efforts we make to better see, hear and live in equity with one another.
Below is the video, in case you haven't seen it - I'm placing it here for you and for me. Much of it begins with ideas about belonging... and leads into important ideas to explore as we unravel how that can be realized, as individuals, inextricably together in this wilderness of life.
With the help of grace, may we each become a slightly better human today than we were yesterday, with all of our authentic and uninhibited cussing and praying, and in our stumbling efforts to act and speak from a place of respect and love.