by Neelam Nanwani | Feb 18, 2022 | Soul Words
When we grow in our self worth, we don’t get affected by judgements.
When we grow in self worth, the voice of our inner critic goes down.
When we grow in our self worth it is easy to speak our truth.
When we grow in our self worth, whether people agree with us, doesn’t matter.
When we grow in our self worth, we realise the importance of rest.
When we grow in our self worth, we draw stronger boundaries.
When we grow in our self worth, we don’t say yes when we want to say no.
When we grow in our self worth, it is easy to let go of non serving /undesirable relationships.
When we grow in our self worth, we learn to respect other people’s time and energy.
When we grow in self worth, we are impeccable in our commitments.
When we grow in self worth, we don’t let others violate our energy.
When we grow in self worth, we don’t get unsettled by someone disagreeing with us.
When we grow in self worth, we have more courage to pay attention to our emotions and to our needs.
When we grow in self worth, we strive to be in alignment with our soul gifts and expression.
When we grow in self worth, we don’t question our abilities and the trust in them deepens.
When we grow in self worth, we grow in self love.
Aho !!
by Neelam Nanwani | Feb 16, 2022 | Soul Words
The process of unconditional love and the lesson to learn unconditional love is or can be the toughest lesson to learn.
When we talk about unconditional love, we often imply it for others. But, if we are on the path of self real- I – zation, then we cannot forget the Self or I in the process.
And so, in my understanding, the aspect of uncondtional love applies to one’s own self as much as it applies to others.
While being in a state of unconditional love for others, if we feel violated or abused in the process, then drawing boundaries and standing tall for oneself implies unconditional love for the self.
Unconditional love doesn’t imply letting others walk over you.
Hence, unconditional love with boundaries while honoring the self and being in that space for self – first and foremost, is a tricky balance most of the times.
Unconditional love doesn’t imply being a martyr for the other or saboteur for the self.
Drawing this balance, requires us to be in our center, in our heart space so we can do and be from there rather than old imprints, past hurts, exploitations or wounds.
The need to be needed, the need to be accepted and acknowledged often makes us over strech our sense of being and yet at the same time the anger for being violated, not being seen rears its ugly head.
This dichotomy is often treachorous as it hides the real self, masks the soul’s lessons and often endeavors to trick us in unique ways.
It is like a trickster tricking us to show the other is loving us while we might just be a beggar picking up every crumb being thrown our way.
While we learn to say no to the crumbs being thrown our way, mercilessly being naked and present to what stirs within, we can offer unconditional love to the orphan child within.
He/she is waiting for us to receive it, hold it, love it, accept it. The orphan child is waiting to be seen/ held/ loved and re-united with our SELF.
The orphan child within weeps the pain of the adult self too. When the adult self becomes present to this pain, and learns to parent the self through various ways, it is then that the pain of the child self is shed and it is then that the child self feels safe to return home.
Is your inner child weeping? What are its joys and sorrows? Is it caged by your inner critic?
Which are some of the ways you could connect to these parts within you?
Could you sing to your child self? Could you eat a meal with her/him ?
Could you hold your child self’s hand and take it for a walk?
Could you teach it to marvel at sunrise, sunset, stars or the moon?
Could you swing with your child self?
Could you write a letter to him/her?
Could you remind him/her, how far along you both have come?
Could you ask ur child self what brings it joy? What are its needs?
Spending daily some time with our child self keeps our innocent wise self alive and makes the adult self be more present too.
Do introspect, try and share.
by Neelam Nanwani | Feb 7, 2022 | Soul Words
One moment I breathe easy
Another moment I gasp for my breath.
One moment I feel a great return,
Another moment I feel I am drowning and sinking.
Death has taught me so much,
And yet I wish loss wasn’t a teacher.
Dying and being reborn is a choice.
Some choices we make while living,
Some choices we make while leaving.
Death brings freedom,
Freedom from the cage that we build when we live.
We tame n create self bondage,
And then we crave to be free.
When free, we crave connection again.
And through the connection we cage or become encaged again.
Death and re birth (literal or metaphoric) isn’t a linear journey.
Both are intertwined.
One cell dying while simultaneously giving rise to another.
One breath ceasing and giving rise to another.
Like never ending waves of the ocean of life,
We keep ebbing and flowing.
Often befuddled, amidst control and surrender, plagued with fear n loss
Enmeshed, entangled.. yet seeking to be free and fly away to the stars
Only to come back and re create old story and aching to be free again.
Maya. – she is NOT illusion,
But a human experience fully embodied and experienced.
But we neither live her fully nor understand her mystery.
Mastery – did we come here to live fully the human or did we come here to elevate to what we already descended from?
Mystery is woven in each breath. And In the pain we often forget.
This secret, this search keeps us on a perpetual quest.
But what if Life, the great human existence and experience we often call as Maya is what we have exactly come here for?
The mirage that we seek in the spirit, in the outer, what if it is actually inside us.
We seek to liberate through understanding and mastering energy. But what if the mastery is also or only to understand and embody the mystery of the wisdom of matter, the body, the earth ??
For, what is Awakening if not being awakened to the wisdom of this Great Plain we have been sent to ?
What if we need the earth instead of earth needing us ??
My only knowing so far has been that duality is oneness. Oneness is duality.
All routes lead to the same truth. The truth, which is only Relative and hence The Great Mystery.
by Neelam Nanwani | Feb 5, 2022 | Soul Words
Whenever someone in distress reaches out to you, what is your innate natural tendency? How do you respond or react?
Through the journey of my grief and loss, I have observed that more often than not, many begin to unconsciously bypass how the other is feeling in the given moment. We either start correcting them or are propelled to give some solution or advise or we donot know how to respond so we stay quiet or we unconsciously start identifying with that person by saying, “yaa this happened to me too and I did this or that.
The worst thing I have heard is, “Oh.. for you, its been only a year of pain..you don’t know how many years I suffered and remained in pain.”
It made me angry. It made me feel, my pain is not being witnessed and is invalid. Or is not great enough as your pain to be acknowledged. I felt not seen.
Our pain has also become competitive. Oh..my pain is bigger than your pain..so why are you wining?
I have been fortunate enough to be held by my online community of students in my journey of grief and loss and yet I have realised how ill equipped we all are when someone expresses their pain and angst.
We don’t even know what to say, let alone being in pure embodied Presence.
This has led me to write this article.
Something you might consider saying to a person in distress :-
I acknowledge how you feel.
More often than not, we always rush to correct the person who is feeling a certain emotion or give advise or ask them to fix it or release it.
Be brave, move on, how can you feel this way, stop being a victim, brushing aside what someone is feeling, keep yourself busy ..these are some of the ways we address someone’s emotions / pain.
More so, we in the healing fraternity have learnt jargons about releasing, healing, moving on, being positive.
We there by give a signal to the person’s psyche that whatever he/she is feeling IS not ok.
We indirectly bring shame to their experience.
How about re wiring it to say, “I may not fully understand what you are going through, but it is ok to feel what you are feeling”. (This too shall pass). Everything is going to be ok. You are going to be ok. You ARE ok. I hear you fully. Please share/ vent whatever is flowing within you fully. Please don’t keep it inside. I am fully present.
All that a person in sorrow or pain needs is a fully present container.
We all have the ability to find solutions based on our individual understanding provided our sense of self is intact. Having a fully present container creates a safe space within the person to be held without judgement n shame to his / her experience. When this container is available, the person’s sense of Self returns faster. It is then that the person might be receptive for suggestions or possible solutions.
However, the first step is to Not Discard how they feel but acknowledge how they feel.
When a person is in pain or distress, their sense of Self is greatly diminished. By invalidating their experience and pain, we are further shaking their foundation and sense of self.
A person might start internalising, ” something is wrong with me. I am unable to get through this.”
The pain has already broken the person from inside. Invalidating one’s experience can further damage sense of self and self worth.
Every emotion is also a cycle. Just the way one cannot jump from sunrise directly to the night time, one has to go through mid day sun and sunset, similarly our emotions have to go through a cycle of feeling them fully before they fade.
Let’s build our vocabulary to, ” I may not fully understand how you feel, I acknowledge what you are saying. I hear you.”
It goes a long way dear ones in building bridges, bringing a person home from the deep trenches of his/her dark tunnels.
by Neelam Nanwani | Feb 3, 2022 | Soul Words
We ask people, “how are you?”, but are we really prepared to RECEIVE the answer fully?
This does not mean our intention about asking about their well being isn’t genuine. However, equally true is the fact that most of us feel befuddled and don’t know what to do or say when a person genuinely shares what he / she is going through (challenges / pain/ feelings/ situations). The part within us that deeply wants to support and help, feels lost. What can I do? How can I help? And we sort of realise that there might really be no way to help and that brings helplessness and a deep sense of inadequacy or feeling of unworthiness within.
This is a very difficult space to BE in and feel that unworthiness within the self, to be intimate with that innate sense of helplessness that creeps in during these situations.
Our human brain or mind works very fast. It wants to so deeply help and support in order for the person’s pain to go away that it starts conjuring solutions or statements. It starts giving ideas , suggestions, plans of action -say this, tell them to do this, do that, da da da da da ……and this inner programming is so quick that before we start realising, our mouth has opened or our hand has typed suggestions, solutions, or indulged in situations where we start doing or saying something that we feel might help or support the person.
This addresses our concern that we might be feeling. It helps with our own helplessness or deep rooted sense of unworthiness.
But, what about the person at the receiving end? Did we check what he / she might need?
Is he / she just sharing ? Is he/ she just venting or ranting? Does the person need solution or does the person just wants to feel needed, validated or acknowledged in that moment? Or simply witnessed and held?
Agreed that online spaces make this process immensely difficult. But simple statements like “I am listening”, “I am present”, “I see you” while controlling our own inner impulse to advise or suggest solutions without asking if the person needs any suggestions can go a long way in not invalidating the other persons pain and experience.
Allowing ourselves to BREATHE through our own innate discomfort and helplessness of not being able to do much, learning daily about BEing rather than slipping into Doing, these are the things which would, in my opinion go a long way – for ourself and the person that we desire to support or be there for.
We want to take away the pain of others and support them. We desperately do what we know best. We are indeed coming from a place of support and love.
However, in that moment, what does the person really need??
Can we ask, “How can I support you today?” Can we simply listen from our body and not just the mind?”
Can we breathe through our own unconscious helplessness that keeps coming up when we really aren’t able to do much ?
And yet can we realise that pure presence IS everything?
Holding space IS everything. Gentle nudges ARE everything.
Listening IS everything.
Do we realise that the other person’s sharing might also bring up “our own pain & helplessness” and it is our own inability to feel our pain that provokes us to offer solutions or suggestions that haven’t been sought yet?
Do we realise that simply sitting with that person may make ALL the difference in their field??
What bigger need do we humans have than being witnessed for who we are and what we might be going through? This doesn’t mean encouraging victimhood. This simply means, for now, being present to them fully and may be when the wave has settled, ask “Do you need a suggestion or advise?”
Do we realise that pain, loss, trauma and grief is such a roller coaster that the person going through it may start feeling “I am not important, and that during the grieving or traumatic period, their sense of self is HIGHLY diminished. They already are questioning their existence and their state of being; they are already feeling that something is inherently wrong with them for them to feel what they are feeling or what they are going through.
By giving our solutions or healing suggestions, don’t you feel, we might not only be diminishing what they are feeling but also indirectly conveying a message, that they might not doing enough??
And that is the least that we want them to feel, isn’t it??
Do we realise that they might feel that the whole world is going on enjoying life while all they feel is pain ? Is something wrong with them or about them that they have manifested so much pain in their life?
And when we advise, we further might enable this state.
Do know, that solutions are welcome too. But it depends how actively engaged you have been in their healing journey. If you are just a passer by or have been a mere spectator, then please check if your suggestions would be welcome or is it the need of that moment.
More so, is it YOUR need or THEIR need?
No one can lessen the pain that the person might be going through. All we can do is to walk, may be a few steps with them without invalidating their experience and pain and there by not denying (but aceepting) our own pain.
What we honor, honors us back.
This is the biggest act of kindness, in my opinion, to the other and to your own self.
by Neelam Nanwani | Feb 1, 2022 | Soul Words
Many eastern practices have made way to the land and heart of the western land and vice a versa.
Many indigenous practices have become cross cultural.
Man has traveled to different indigenous lands, met teachers, learnt different practices and shared it or sold it to the people of his native land and other regions.
Indigenous practices across the world have first flourished, then suppressed and annihilated.
Indigenous wisdom past many years is also reviving and rebirthing across the world in a cross cultural manner.
Sometimes it is genuinely absorbed and passed, sometimes it is exploited or commercialized and some places it is mixed with one’s own understanding n practice.
The bad thing is things have become corrupted, exploited, misinterpreted.
The good thing is indigenous wisdom and ways are reviving big time, more than ever and each is learning and unlearning, Remembering and Re-membering as per their own exposure, understanding and appetite.
It’s all a part of the game.
In an existence where we learn and understand things through polarity, the grey and the good co exist and feed on each other.
Each serves a purpose and plays a role.
In an intricate web, where, we might feel, we are against each other, we might actually also be enabling each other in ways our cognitive minds may not even be able to fathom.
When we look at things from this perspective, we will learn to simply see each force as a contributing force in and to the microcosm and there by also affecting the structure and texture of the macrocosm.
All spiritual practices, through their own unique way, ultimately, are leading us to the oneness that we are and the oneness that we seek.
