by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 21, 2021 | Soul Words
Paul’s death has PROVED it to me that we as a society don’t know how to grieve and more so don’t know how to be there for someone in grief.
It is so sad that we have reached a state where we need to find courage to talk to a person who is in grief and don’t often know what to say or be there for that person.
It is so sad that as a collective we have to be “taught” how to process grief, how to offer support for a person who is in shock or grief and how to process our own emotions of inadequacy, numbness, shock, anger, guilt and sorrow when someone’s near and dear one passes away and we find ourselves so helpless.
I am not angry because I have no support or human connection available to me in the time of my greatest loss. I am fortunate for the love and kindness that is coming my way virtually and physically in bits and pieces.
I am angry for the sorry state of shitty affairs our collective has come down to where everyone feels grieving is a solitary process to be done in hiding and one gets befuddled in how to hold the person in tenderness & love when some one is in grief.
Why should I glorify myself ?? I was in a similar state a few years ago and only when I stepped in to the grief few years ago, I realised how this process is so difficult and yet how grief is sacred and yet how much we need someone to hold us in our grief.
We have become accustomed to grieving in isolation because of the shame associated with grief, because the grieving publicly or with someone makes us vulnerable and be perceived as weak. So we want to hide. But these defenses we have built because of our conditioning and the society not acknowledging the sacredness of grief.
Grief is a prayer. Grief is sacred. Grief is a portal. Grief is a death. Grief is re birth. Grief can be drowning if done in isolation. Grief needs a physical container to hold and keep the person afloat.
Grief needs our tender care and tending. Grief needs a reminder of the honoring of our pain and our heart. It brings down the walls we learn to build over a period of time.
It takes courage to cry and courage to allow oneself to FEEL FULLY OUR PAIN.
The more we are comfortable with our own emotions without feeling fear or shame or guilt or inadequacy, the more we will find ourselves equipped to be there for the other without questioning this or that.
The more we will understand the concept of just holding the person not just in words but through the physical embodiment of it without feeling uncomfortable, without the desire to advise or to fix.
We will know how to be fully present in our body for the other even with silence, with gentle tender loving care.
Body speaks. One doesn’t need to do or say anything.
Sometimes a person in isolation is also unable to manage the mundane or even unable to grieve. This is where the tribe would hold space in the ancient times. Let the person just BE and be there for the person in grief and manage the mundane on their behalf. Give enough time and space till the person is ready to come back.
And if someone is indeed holding the fort, this coming back becomes possible because you know you are needed back in the groove of life by one and many.
When we grieve, we have one foot in the other world. The desire to live goes away at times and there is an intense sense of despair and hopelessness.
We try to find hope in the eyes of others. We try to feel the love in the sacred touch / hug of others. We try to believe in life again through the smile of others.
We stay connected to this world through the presence of others.
The trauma gets processed in time not leading to further power loss or energy loss or soul loss and hence ensuring health and wellbeing in mind body and spirit.
I can go on and on about the importance of grief and grieving together as a community and the sole importance of just feeling our pain fully.
So much undigested pain and sorrow we carry within our bones, within the collective. This undigested pain and sorrow gets an outlet as anger, abuse, violence, greed, power, control disease and in extreme cases, even death. ,
Everything, after all, is energy, isn’t it??
It is up to you how you will shape and allow your grief and be there for others in their grief.
We are the torchbearers who will correct the deformities and dysfunctions, we have become, won’t we ??
In spite of my own grief, I feel compelled to write about this. I cannot stress the importance of all of this enough.
by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 14, 2021 | Soul Words
Trust begins with trusting the “Self”
Trust begins with ‘accepting” the Self.
Trust is not external. It is very much internal.
No one can hurt me with out my permission.
And even if they do and I get hurt again, it’s ok
Because that is part of being “human”. That is part of relating. That is part of allowing. That is part of Being.
To hold back even when someone extends themselves is fear.
It is ok to be cautious. It is ok to not want to trust or be all out suddenly. But remember to be not so cautious that you draw a wall instead of a boundary.
Blessings for blossoming of your Spirt, heart, mind and body in 2021.
To New Beginnings!
by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 13, 2021 | Soul Words
Feeling empty, rejected, betrayed, unseen, unrecognized, unacknowledged, invalidated, over compensating, proving, having this deep desire to help and fix others, over extending one’s self always and compromising on one’s own needs, always comes from a deep space of feeling unloved within.
Whatever be the reason for not feeling loved, it is the root cause of all our problems.
Lack of love causes lack of abundance.
Feeling unloved has a potential to create deep rooted financial issues as well. When we feel deeply unloved, we set our inner programming to something is wrong with me, leading to feeling deeply small, unworthy, inadequate within.
This could lead us to living highly disempowering lives. We either over compensate by being obsessed with seeking material pleasures or our finances get depleted and inadequate as well.
Feeling unloved (lack of love) leads to several addictions
When we feel deeply unloved, we tend to fill that void of love through work, sex, smoking, alcohol, food, other substances, over giving, over mothering, through relationships, travel or any other over indulgence.
Addictions are nothing but our own unconscious way of seeking to fill that emptiness or void (internal) through something (external).
Feeling unloved creates health issues.
When I was a child, I used to fall ill very frequently. When I grew up and embarked on the journey of my healing, I attended a course in hypnotherapy. During the course, we were connecting with our inner children. I took up this issue of my acidity.
When we regressed to the past, it was uncovered that the illness was the child self’s way of screaming for love and attention.
Yes, feeling unloved creates health issues.
Feeling unloved creates failure in relationships
When we feel deeply unloved within, we seek to fill that emptiness by seeking love outside. When we seek to enter into a relationship from a space of feeling unworthy, unloved within, we tend to get clingy or co dependant in our relationships. We either land up over giving (without realizing it), we lose our self even more and we seek the other to make us feel better through the external love or attention.
But the hole that is lurking inside doesn’t get filled no matter how much external love comes in. That void continues to exist like a never ending pit. A wounded girl feeling unloved WILL attract a wounded boy feeling unloved or who will further project that feeling of being unloved in her by his unconscious actions.
A wounded boy WILL attract a wounded girl who no matter how much she loves him, he will never feel enough and he will continue seeking it and thirsting for it like an endless well which never gets full and never feels fulfilled. She will continue projecting his void in some way or the other and both will create another recipe for disaster or a dysfunction.
Feeling unloved creates Anger / Violence /Abuse / Depression
Many a times the only expression of our pain that we feel is through our anger. Anger many times is a result of feeling violated or unloved within.
When one feels unloved, the deep rooted belief that develops in a person is “I am not loved because something might be wrong with me.” This creates deep unworthiness and feeling of being small within.
When we feel small inside, we always try to compensate this feeling either by projecting our flamboyance or by proving we are superior to the other. This itself begins the fall of all good within.
This proving or unworthiness often leads to extreme projections of greed, control, violence and abuse.
Depression
When we feel rejected or unloved by one or all, we unconsciously tend to reject the Self. We forget who we are in order to fit in. This rejection of the Self often creates disassociation, disconnection, deep sense of sadness emanating from this disconnection from one’s true self and in extreme cases anxiety and depression.
We all long for feeling connected and this connection begins with our own self. When we feel unloved, we lose trust in the process of life, we lose our childlike innocence in the wonderment of life and it often leads to feeling disappointed, angry, disheartened and frustrated with life.
These are but a few evils of feeling unloved. And yet we run for seeking the fulfillment of love through external measures like money, greed, control, relationships, substances, work, sex etc.
So what is the solution? Well there isn’t any except the realization that if we have been deeply unloved by the other, it now becomes our primary responsibility to love one’s own child self.
More on this to follow. Until then chew on these.
Have a love filled 2021.
by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 11, 2021 | Soul Words
My heart aches to see so much corruption, manipulation and control in spiritual sects as well.
It’s like in the olden times witches and women with spiritual prowess were physically tortured and killed and now a different kind of suppression exists.
The suppression through controlling people /spiritual seekers through creating cults, co dependency, control, manipulation and through their mind.
The witches still continue to be annihilated and the sad part is they can’t even see it or realize it.
The mind games and controlling the other is so subtle that the seeker doesn’t even realize it.
Very sad state of affairs.
The above introspection made me write what a spiritual teacher should be like.
The best teacher is the one who has the courage to say, “go fly, you can do it on your own”.
The true teacher doesn’t hold the students close to their chest and create dependency.
The true teacher let’s them learn to do things on their own and make their own mistakes and chart their own part.
The true teacher doesn’t decide on the behalf of students but rather lets the student make his/her own decisions and allows them to be independent.
Everyone needs a tribe but there is a difference between a cult and a community.
Most spiritual teachers are falling prey to the same patriarchal divide of superiority and inferiority. The teacher is superior and the seeker is inferior.
The circle of oneness is once again falling prey to manipulation, divide, control and toxic co dependence between the teacher and the seeker.
The moment a seeker starts putting the teacher on a pedestal, he/she begins the journey of losing his/her own uniqueness, beauty, magnificence and sovereignty.
I am not saying don’t respect the teacher or look up to them for guidance and leadership but beware of the hierarchal leadership emanating from our current dysfunctional existing set ups and a feminine influenced leadership that creates community not a cult, that promotes healthy collaboration n is not afraid to help students rise to their own glory and is ultimately about oneness and not divide.
We have such deep rooted wounding and insecurities that we now use our spiritual gifts in a manipulative way to prove to the students we are indispensable.
It is time for great awareness amongst the spiritual so called leaders as well.
Are you as a leader creating healthy influence or out of your own fears and ego and insecurities, creating toxic co dependency between yourself and your students aka one more dysfunction aka refuting the purpose of spiritual quest and healing altogether??
It’s time for some introspection for those who call themselves teachers /path showers on the spiritual path.
