by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 30, 2022 | Soul Words
I have always had a problem glorifying God or any divine beings, for that matter.
A part of me cannot put anyone on a pedastal. Yes, I love them, honor them, respect them, can also worship them, but I cannot over glorify them.
Precisely why, I run from places and people where a cult gets formed.
Wherever there is a cult, there is no Self. Every one follows someone rather than one’s own sovereignty and Self.
I hate to put myself on a pedastal too.
When I talk about dieties or guides or gods or goddesses, I feel a ONENESS with them.
They can be my mother, father, brother, sister, guide and yet my pal, my buddy and yet a little girl (like my Kali) and a little boy.
I feel a resonant oneness with them. I don’t put them UP. I don’t put myself DOWN.
There is a presence which I acknowledge and honor.
My presence is not below it either.
There is a unity. There is oneness.
I have often questioned myself whether this is me denying the god/ creator.. whether it is my ego.
I have felt like this for years. Yes, I am a rebel. I question all stereotypical things.
I question my own thoughts and muse.
And yet, I am finding this radical courage to put it out in the open for the first time, I am not less than God.
I am not merely his / her / Divinity’s spark.
I AM THE DIVINE.
We often worship or glorify that which we think or feel we are not.
One of the reasons, many spiritual practices were given to us, like chanting 108 /1008 names of a particular diety, it was simply to glorify and embody THAT vibration within and Remember it and Re-member it.
In this journey of Becoming some thing, seeking something, how did we forget who we ARE??
Many spiritual teachings talk about, “Remember you ARE God”. How much do we really understand its meaning and true essence?
Jung said, people we admire are a part of our golden shadow. It means we have that part within us, but, we have hidden it, suppressed it or masked it.
Even if we think purely from a psychological perspective, if we glorify a particular person or a master or diety, doesn’t it also imply it is our golden shadow, waiting for us to own it, embody it and integrate it?
The more I deepen within my own journey of grief and loss, of death and re birth, all teachings, all truths point in one singular direction.
Unbecoming.ReclamationRemembering. Re-membering.
The disconnection from this sovereignty of who we truly ARE IS the root cause of so called contrast or evil, including illness.
Aham Brahmasmi. I AM. SHIVOHAM. True Self love.
by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 22, 2022 | Soul Words
We value success by the money we make.
We value productivity by the number of hours we work.
We value relationships by the expectations being fulfilled.
We define success by the goods that we can buy.
Who gave us this definition of success?
From a heart based living, how did we become a product driven culture?
How did this come about?
Why is a relationship a failure if it has conflicts and turmoil ?
Why is a person a failure if he/ she is unable to live / fulfill some of his / her dreams?
Who taught us that the more we work the more we toil the more successful we will be?
How did money become a barometer for fulfillment and success ?
And how did our spirituality become a tool for MEASURING / Rewards / Calculations??
If these are not systems of dysfunction then what is??
What is true achievement? And why is the focus only on achievement??
Why inability to make a living is considered a failure? Why and when will we stop using and abusing our spiritual gyaan for our own escape and hiding??
Why is failing and falling, ailing and aching, NOT normal in our society??
Why are these barometers of self worth and self esteem??
Why does no one talk about soul based living from the heart?
Who made these definitions of good and bad? Success and failure?
Why do we forget everything is relative? Why is everything black and white?? What happened to grey??
If you and I don’t question these systems, who will ??
Humanity cries and yet we continue with same rotten mindsets, behaviors and paradigms.
What are we waiting for?? Are we waiting for one more cycle of earth based life to END??
Time to reflect upon these is NOW.
You matter. Your choices matter. Your words and voice matter. Your decisions matter.
by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 20, 2022 | Soul Words
Why are you still not ok with your knowing? Why is your seeking still not ending??
Look at that flower bud. It is patiently waiting. Paused wherever it is. Content in its knowing. Fully knowing. And allowing its blossoming. Waiting.
No despair. No desperation.
No seeking. Just pure being in total allowance.
No efforting.
And then it blossoms without even trying.
What happens within you when you feel this process of eternal being and blossoming within you?
Can we today, while breathing, just drop the seeking, for one moment and just allow the blossoming without efforting??
by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 18, 2022 | Soul Words
Over the last several months, I have poured out a lot of my anger, angst and vulnerability on my social media pages / facebook timeline.
From some, it has invited advice/suggestions as if pouring it out had to be fixed.
From my family it has invited shame and ostrecisation.
And yet for a few, it has given them an opportunity to understand how important it is for us to feel our pain, express it, and how rawness and vulnerability is not weakness but an important way of being.
For those who needed to learn, even my raw uninhibited primal sharing of my grief and sorrow, anger and pain has become an important teacher in their field.
For some, my way of being is a poison, for some, my way of being is medicine.
And I JUST AM.
And in just BEING, I am learning to simply be a witness to both the scenarios unfolding in my space before my eyes.
More often than not, a lot of shame and judgement has followed me as I have flowed shamelessly with my emotional outbursts. Am I being a victim, am I being too clingy, am I getting co-dependant, am I seeking attention, I have questioned myself several times. I have felt the shame when someone has distanced themselves and it has made me unsure of myself.
At the same time, I have allowed myself to deepen into a space of honest self enquiry. I have descended into my pain and allowed myself to trace the roots of what I have been feeling.
I have traced it back to the lineage wounds when women might have been blamed or shamed for men going away or not being present. How many times do women get blamed for a relationship gone sour !!
“He went away because you were a bitch”, “He divorced you because you did this or that”, “He left because it was your fault:.
How many times do we hear this in our society? If the relationship goes sour or a man leaves, the society is so quick to point fingers at a woman.
During the past several months after Paul has passed, I have felt this shame and I have found myself in the question box, “Did I do something wrong? Was I getting too attached or clingy? Was my communication inappropriate?”
I felt this pain of the women in my lineage (both paternal side and maternal side) and I asked the spirit of the fire to destroy and transform this shame, for, it doesn’t belong to me.
As I continued feeling the ripples of this shame, validation etc, and the emotional field continued to be volatile, I suddenly got into a conversation with few of the students (not mentioning names).
Yesterday, not once but thrice, it was validated in my field, how me wearing my triggers/emotions on my sleeve (aka sitting with my pain/anger, expressing n feeling it freely, writing about it, vocalizing it) has helped them realise and understand the importance of being real, the validation that they needed to express and feel fiercely and the safe space where they could be themselves and the ability to see how expressing our emotions, doesn’t make us less courageous but more courageous.
Vulnerability is strength and not a weakness.
Everything that churns in my space daily, and the ability to feel it so intensely and acutely does overwhelm me at times.
I cannot believe the finer layers of the same work that I thought I have completed and processed are arising in my field again.
I am learning to be an innocent wise child, while sending love to the wounded inner child and I am reminded of the words of Matt Kahn,
WHATEVER ARISES, LOVE THAT.
With allowing that, and learning to love that arises, I am being ME and owning it, daily, one step at a time.
by Neelam Nanwani | Jan 16, 2022 | Soul Words
Are you the “container” or the “contained”??
It was Paul’s birthday, November 8th 2019. His first draft for his book River of Life was ready. He invited a few people at our home for reading of the first draft.
On Saturday and Sunday (November 9th & 10th), a beautiful, soulful tribe gathered at our home for reading the book penned by Paul Hinsberger-Shamanic Counselor “River of Life”.
As we each read the book, a lot of things stirred within each one of us.
The river flowed in our individual container (BEing) rising, slowing down, rushing, flooding, cascading various facets of our own life.
The River told us many stories about our own life. In our life we have been held as a container – holding deep wisdom, insights, experiences, gifts, and uniqueness of our BEing.
In that container, we are also contained by our own fears, shame, judgements, responsibilities resistance and grief.
The river allowed us to see, feel, notice and observe our own container – our LIFE.
In some aspects, we were the container – holding deep truths and deep tears. Holding hope. Holding pain, trauma and grief; holding joy; holding the visions to our soul journeys.
In certain aspects we were contained, not allowing the container to flood the plains of the rivers of our lives.
In all of our lives, as we navigate through our own unique and individual rivers, overlapping the rivers of others who cross our way, aren’t we all the ‘container’ to deep wisdom and intuitive gifts.?
We desire and deserve to share these gifts of our unique container with others. I feel, that makes us the most fulfilled and content,.
What perhaps ‘contains’ us is our lack of imagination to flow through the ‘perceived’ mundaneness of our individual pebble filled wobbly path and challenges or hurdles that we encounter during the flow of our rivers.
We fight the flow. We contract when we need to expand and we expand when we need to pause and contract.
This dichotomy (the dichotomy, which I also call as the feminine, masculine intertwining flow) keeps us on our toes and keeps us entangled in being contained in the container.
Perhaps some food for thought will help us navigate through the river of our life with poise and pose :-
(1) Where are you the “container” in your life?
(2) What does your “container” hold?
(3) How many times do you look inside the “container”?
(4) What do you do to tap into the essence of the “container” that you are?
(5) How transparent is your ‘container?”
(6) Are you proud of your “container” or are there some facets that you are ashamed about ?
(7) Do you often clear the contents of your container or do you keep them stuffed always?
(8) What contents of the container were you born with and what have ‘you” stuffed into it?
(9) Can your container ‘breathe”?
(10) Is there enough space in your container so that what is inside can reach out to others?
(11) What ‘contains’ you in your life?
(12) How does that containment affect the contents of the container?
(13) If you would not be ‘contained’, what / how would you be and how would your life unfold?
(14) How much has the containment ‘contained’ / confined/ tamed you and how much have you tamed /
confined the contents of the container??
(15) How would the river of your life be without being a container or the contained??
Introspect. Share. BE.
by Neelam Nanwani | Dec 28, 2021 | Soul Words
When we embark on a spiritual quest, we have to begin to realise as the quest deepens, that the whole journey is not about the process of ‘reaching’ somewhere or becoming something.
We get to realise that ‘we are already that’ which we are seeking to become or be.
The journey rather and the whole aspect of it is only and everything about “cleaning and clearing” what you are not and about removing the masks that we have worn. The whole journey is all about taking steps to drop those masks one by one.
If I am not this belief, not this mask, not this imprint, then who am I?
The journey is not about finding that Self but simply being aware and willing to drop those layers, barriers, impressions (acquired through ancestors, culture, society, parents, womb, our own experiences & choices) which we have unconsciously chosen to wear and made our own.
There comes a time in our spiritual quest where these layers are either stripped off willingly by us or we are literally ripped apart.
This begins the great death and dying process. Death of old identity, death of the ego self dressed and so mighty comfortable in these layers.
This can be a huge threat to the ego self because for the longest time it has not known who it is beyond these stories, labels and masks.
There is an unconscious attachment to these stories and memories. The cognitive mind has the best intentions to move beyond these. However the unconscious, unknowingly attaches to the pain bodies or these layers and/or masks.
The journey, therefore, is not the learning of esoteric gifts, albeit, only and only of stripping of these layers and being patient with yourself as you either bare your self or are torn apart.
When the resistance to be bare is too huge, this is where Spirit or soul self intervenes bringing forth contrast, challenges (illness, finances, death of loved ones, relationship issues, deterioration or crumbling down of the tower of one’s life held ever so dearly) and one might go through what is popularly known as stress, anxiety, depression or dark night of the soul.
It is a process which can bring grace through our full body presence and surrender. Our connection to our soul (the divine within and without) becomes imperative.
Anxiety, overwhelm, depression, suicidal tendency, inability to feel emotional stuff, running away from feeling grief, health issues could all represent a disconnect between the soul self and the mind.
The bridging point, therefore is to return to the heart. To the space of love and acceptance. Only that could create a deeper allowance and perhaps non resistance.
We are not, however, taught to drop control and come to a space of surrender. Hence what is a huge process of initiation and unbecoming feels to our ego mind as a suffering.
The gap between the soul and the mind widens as we engage in being a victim, why me, what wrong have I done kind of situations there by magnifying the depletion of the self worth and the unbecoming.
The true healing, as stated above, in a manner that we unmask and reclaim who we really are, the “Self” that is not these stories or masks, takes time, some times years, at times an entire life time and most of the times, lifetimes and lifetimes.
If you are in a space of suffering or rather great UNBECOMING, I encourage you to not lose heart.
For, what might feel as everything coming crushing down, may actually be a process of homecoming.
A coming home to the Self.
Dec 27, 9.10 AM
