When we embark on the journey of our spiritual healing, we often ask, “What is within me that has brought this to my doorstep?” This doesn’t mean that if someone abuses me, its because something is wrong within me and hence I have attracted this situation or challenge.
The premise simply is that we take full responsibility of and for our lives.
When we view life from this perspective, we stop being a victim of our situations. We introspect, what within me (thoughts, beliefs, emotions, imprints – karmic/ancestral, womb, birthing, society, religion, upbringing or any other) is bringing this to my doorstep.
What can I do to shed these imprints or beliefs or fears within myself?
More often than not, we desire that the outward situation (be it relationship, finance, health) changes. But the outward situation merely reflects our own hidden buried subconscious unconscious state/psyche.
We often (if not always) attract on the outside what we ARE on the inside. The contribution of our subconscious mind is 90% in what happens in our lives and the conscious mind just plays a 10% role. Our subconscious mind and what we store in our unconscious psyche is a sum total of our past lives, ancestral stories, stories we pick up inside the womb of the mother, our birth scenario and our upbringing.
All of this is formed through the journey of our soul in its evolutionary process from one life time to another.
The lessons and karmic imprints accumulate over a period of time and the challenges (if lessons not learnt) become harder.
We also tend to get influenced by the thought process and emotional makeover of our primary care givers. Whether we have had a functional relationship with them or a dysfunctional relationship with them, we tend to become like them out of our innate unconscious sense of loyalty towards them.
As lifetimes go by, we move farther from our own innate truth and Essence and we become someone who we are Not.
Lifetimes could go by until we realise what we have done to our own self. This immense loss of self, in a given life time stares at us, screaming for owning who we ARE.
We often do not know, how. But the soul is now ready to reclaim its innate power and truth.
And with this begins the journey of self realisation of the soul – realising who it truly IS and its innate Divinity and essence. However, for a soul to know itself, it has to first shed what it has become or the imprints and masks it has acquired through thousands of years during its evolutionary journey.
This descent of the soul begins the process of deconstruction. This is often known as the journey of the underworld or at times a dark night of the soul. It feels like every thing is breaking down and coming to an end.
The human experience feels full of misery because breaking down of what felt safe and familiar once, is all going away. We cling (at times unconsciously) and feel that the misery is not ending. We feel patterns are looping and we push harder and harder for things to improve.
What is perhaps needed is to not push but to pause and allow the process of deconstruction. Yes, it takes courage and this “Unbecoming” is an art. An art that we have not been trained into.
We have been trained to “Become Something.” What we need to perhaps learn and be in allowance of is this Process of Unbecoming.
Nature dies and nature is reborn. We are nature personified and should we desire to rebirth our Being, we have to allow this deconstruction, shedding and UNBECOMING – just like nature does.
Neelam Nanwani is a midwife to the soul and conducts talks, lectures, workshops, mentorships and retreats in this Sacred Art of Unbecoming. Join the WhatsApp Group for staying updated on free talks, circles and events.
If I live every moment from the space of being my true potential and my true nature, from my true centre, then I would realise that everything that triggers me about the other is my own aspect deeply hidden within me, looking for validation and acknowledgement.
Slowly and gradually, what others do, will not matter. What I AM, is what will drive the heart always. And that realisation will keep bringing me back to my own centre, to my own truth.
The closer I move to my own truth and the more I live my own true self, what others do, will cease to trigger and bother me.
If someone or something on the outside is bothering me and if a reality exists within me which feels unjust or unfair to me, then I pause and know that it is my own wounding screaming for attention and perhaps even a simple acknowledgement.
During my homestay at Binsar, many such wounds and triggers reared their head again. Aspects that I thought I had made peace with, came crawling up my sleeve, all over again.
For the first three days, the home stay was graced with a large group of 16 people, most of them were students of Vedanta. They were treated with a lot of care and respect and all of their needs met, whether they asked for it or not.
When the group left, a part of me started observing a change of attitude and a certain degree of misogynistic attitude in the owner of the home stay. Simple things I would request would be denied or over looked while the group was treated quite differently.
This started happening repetitively that brought up an unrest in me and the old wounds around “This is unfair or unjust” and “Am I not equally important, so what if I am not with a group” , triggered again. My anger, amidst the stillness of nature was palpable.
We all struggle with our unique place in this web of life, we all ache to feel significant and we all aspire to feel in this scheme of things , “we have a role to play and that we matter.”
The child self in us aches to be seen, to feel that it matters and that it’s important. When this sense of self of the child is threatened, a sense of unrest and often unsafety starts arising in the child. And this then, gives rise to all the chaos and the drama on the outside.
Thanks to my dreamwork and the dream I had the previous night and thanks to the stillness of nature which spoke to me in myriad ways, it made me aware that my own wounds around “life is unfair” or my past family history and karmic history around having experienced “injustice” (or even causing injustice) was rearing its head again.
This awareness induced a pause button to my reactive nature and propelled me to breathe through this pain, again and just be present to it.
I sent love to my child self, spoke to it and I deepened in prayer and surrender. I also sent blessings to the perceived perpetrator.
My unrest settled and although I stayed present to the instances which were seemingly unfair, I also felt compassion for the man and could empathise with his wounding which made him behave in a certain way.
As I communed with nature, I could find my way back to my stillness and in the subsequent days the stay came with a sense of ease and acceptance of the given moment.
The Nature Spirits and my dreamworld were kind enough to show me where I was still holding traces of my pain and gave me an opportunity to accept it, not fight it and yet surrender it.
Returning back to my centre brought me back, home to my true nature.
Celebrate your true nature and Mama nature. Join us for a Full Moon Celebration Drum Circle on 22 June (Saturday) from 7 pm to 8.30 pm (IST). You can add yourself to the WhatsApp group here to get the Zoom link and other updates.
I have been receiving questions on what I will be teaching during the sea healing retreat. What modalities – shamanism or something else.
The sea healing retreat is not about “modalities.” It is as the name suggests all about the SEA and working with the energies of the sea for healing of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.
Unlike other retreats, where the name suggests “X” and the contents are x, b, cx, a…the Sea Healing Retreat is going to be focussed fully and only SEA as the theme.
We all love the ocean. We feel so relaxed at the sea beach. We feel a magnetic pull towards the sea. We feel we can unwind and be stress free.
At the Sea Healing Retreat, 2019
But we do not know WHY we feel stress-free or relaxed when we are at the beach. Little do we know that just like the sea is deep, vast and treasure-filled, so are the healing abilities of this mother of all mothers – The Sea.
So no. There are no modalities. There is no shamanism (albeit everything you see, feel, hear, breathe is Shamanism).
This Sea Healing Retreat is open for ALL and gives you an opportunity to “retreat” from your daily hustle and bustle and go within your own quiet self. Dig deep into your core. It allows you to be who you are without any masks. It gently holds your hand and like the sea embraces you unconditionally and takes you into the depths of your great unknown treasures and strengths.
It unlocks you. It deepens you. It expands you. It moistens you. It untames you. It makes you cry. Makes you laugh. Makes you want to fall in love with yourself and your life all over again.
If you feel you would like to rediscover the child-like innocence again and embrace the sea as your mother, want to be nourished and nurtured, and want to dive into the great unknown, COME! The Sea Mother Awaits YOU.
A glimpse from the Sea Healing Retreat, 2019
Sea is My Mother – A Sea Healing Retreat in Kerala. August 1st to 4th. For more details and to register, click here. You can also call 9979901933 or email neelamnanwani@yahoo.in to know more.
It’s been three days, since I returned from Binsar, Kumaon in Uttarakhand. People who knew I had been away for 12 days, have been asking me whether the purpose with which I went, has been accomplished.
Although, I had no such goal in mind, I did need a break from mundane and my own time with Mother Nature.
Was my travel attached to a specific goal? I don’t think so.
What I relished the most about my travels was deepening into a state of non doing and just Being. A state which most, including myself find it difficult to get into.
It was a long tedious travel (24 plus hours for me from Ahmedabad) to reach the home-stay I had booked and it was a long tedious walk of almost an hour plus to reach the home stay.
My right leg had developed excruciating nerve and muscle pain and all my plans of visiting temples and places of power nearby were squashed.
It was as if I had no choice but to just BE. It was a pain filled (physically) and yet a stillness inducing rendezvous with Prakriti.
There was no destination to rush to, no tasks to complete, no targets to achieve or no goals to accomplish.
Some of my known people were even amazed about what I would be “doing” at a remote place like this and that too all by myself.
While I kept telling myself and them that my purpose was to connect to myself and enjoy nature, in hindsight, even that felt superficial and lame.
What I deeply cherished being there was a sense of peace and stillness inside me (although it took work to quiet the chattering mind and the body screaming with pain).
I was forced to ACCEPT what was. No markets to shop from. No hospitals to look for. Not even a lady to massage my aching leg.
I was forced to BE with the pain and Accept it. I was nudged to send love to my aching body.
I enjoyed sharing my BEING with all facets of mother Earth and Nature.
I cried. I laughed. I talked to myself…and most often, I just sat looking at all facets of nature. And I just breathed deepening into a silence which the hustle and bustle of the mundane and civilization doesn’t permit.
There were a number of days when I was the only guest in the homestay and it was dark and cold on some evenings with rain and ice falling.
Amidst all of this, there was a quiet that I was lulled to bring myself into.
The sounds of nature felt like a lullaby of the mother trying to soothe the tantrumy or crying child.
And although, through all my pain of abandonment which reared its ugly head after Paul, I have been asked to look upon my divine parents as the guardians instead of biological parents, the deep presence that I feel with me and beneath me, behind me and around me and most importantly inside me is that of Mother Earth/Nature.
Have I returned whole and fully healed or as our productivity driven society teaches us “mission accomplished”? I don’t know yet. For, there wasn’t a mission to accomplish.
What I have returned with is, perhaps more of myself and a sense of peace. And even if these feelings feel transient, I am content knowing that our journeys aren’t about a specific end result or a goal to accomplish.
I was just content Being there and I am content, when home called, coming back to her.
Amidst all this, whether I have gained or lost something, healed or not, at this point it seems all an illusion.
All I know is that I carry the chaos and the stillness, all within me.
And I am deeply grateful to this solo adventure that I took courage to embark upon.
It has brought me so many gifts and even if not, there would have been no regrets.
But that said, whether we realise or not, everything around and within us, conducive to our ego mind or not, is a gift.
