Pathways to my Heart, Part 2

If you have not yet read my previous post, Pathways to my Heart, Part 1,
I recommend doing so. You’ll have some important background for this post.

On one fine Sunday recently, I got hit with a double whammy of relationships that were toxic in their current form. It showed up as two unrelated people angry with me for no good reason that I understood. Oh, how my ego protested. “It’s NOT MY FAULT,” Miss Ego declared. “Why are these people mad at the cancer patient?” she whined. “I haven’t done anything wrong!” and she stomped her psychic foot.  Miss Ego was quick to take the victim role on both accounts. I longed to simply turn away and be done with each of these relationships, but oh no, that was not going to happen. I was plagued with internal emotional drama and turmoil around both of them, and could not shake it off. It became clear very quickly that this was a test.

As I struggled with how to handle each delicate situation, I came to understand that I had to be the grown-up in the relationship in both cases. I had the skills and it was time to use them. I’m also lucky enough to have a marriage that sets the bar really high, where I get to experience ease of communication and loving acceptance, even when I’m at my worst. I took a deep breath. Then I took another. I handled them one at a time. I got some support from trusted allies. I ate some humble pie. And I came from love. I owned all the anger, resentfulness, and disgust that I had been feeling, quit projecting blame outside of me (best as I could) and  stopped trying to convince others to take “my side.” Miss Ego continued to jump up and down and stomp around, but no longer was she running the show. I saw her as my inner little girl, and held her in compassion.

In one of the cases, the other party took in my apology and said it was their work to let it soften their heart. Fine. My part done. Right? Right! (Wrong). The other one was not so easy, as it was someone much closer to me. I felt really funky and weird about the second issue, and I did not understand why. As I processed through it, I realized that it had pushed a very old button for me from my unsafe childhood, and it goes something like this: I’ve done something wrong, I have no idea what it is, and any second now I’m going to be in big trouble for it. It’s not a guilty-conscience feeling, but rather a sense that I’ve been wrongly accused when I am totally innocent. I found myself fearful and afraid and again Miss Ego, in the form of my inner little girl, was seeking protection by doing her best to make the other person into a bad guy and enrolling others into her drama. It wasn’t going anywhere good.

Once I was able to see that old button had been pushed, a more rational version of me finally kicked in. To complicate things, I was pretty sure this person was not being honest with me on several counts. Part of me wanted to confront the person with proof of the lies. Nope, that was not going to work. Okay, what was that lesson again? Oh yeah, love. Acceptance. Forgiveness. I reached out via email with a loving message. After writing everything I REALLY wanted to say and cutting out all the parts that were blaming, accusing, judging, assuming, and telling stories I made up, I was able to successfully communicate and repair the relationship. It almost felt like, remember that old saying, “kissing ass?” I think kissing ass comes with an agenda, something that one might want from the person whose ass is being metaphorically kissed. My only “agenda” was personal peace and ease.

Although I’ve known this intellectually for a long time, I have a deeper and more heart-based understanding now of the following tidbits of wisdom:

• What other people think of me is none of my business.
• It does not matter if someone is unable to be honest with me (for whatever reason), I can take them at face value.
• I have a fine set of communication skills, which I can now convert into what I would call “acceptance skills.”
• Dropping heart armor means being vulnerable, and a vulnerable heart is a powerful heart.

A day or two after the aforementioned resolution, I ran across a link on Facebook that really supported my process. It purported to be about protecting oneself from electro-magnetic frequencies. It was Taoist Master Mantak Chia giving a heart-focused energy and frequency generation technique through simple attention and awareness of the power of heart energy. Just by consciously magnifying love, joy, and gratitude, we can create a field of protection with our heart energy instead of building armor to try and protect our heart from hurt and harm… a lovely paradox. Again, all things I knew intellectually, but this simple video shifted my energy on a much deeper level than just mentally.

As luck would have it, my lessons were not over yet. (Are they ever?) Opportunities to look hard at how my past wounding drives me unconsciously continue to unfold. The next steps on the pathway to my heart brought me face to face with the spectre of my childhood abuser, as represented by someone in my life. I really thought I was over this stuff, a long time ago, but apparently my heart disagrees. As the deeper layers are revealed and laid bare, take a deep breath and prepare yourself for Pathways to my Heart, Part 3… to be continued.

If you have not read my book, Reclaiming Aphrodite-The Journey to Sexual Wholeness, and would like a free pdf, you can get it here.

Love & blessings, Amrita