growth | Ascension Lifestyle

08 May 2022
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State Of The Planet Update: “Alice in Wonderingland”

Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

Alice replied, rather shyly, “I-I hardly know, Sir, just at present-at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar, sternly. “Explain yourself!”

“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,” said Alice, “because I am not myself, you see.”

– Alice in Wonderland

Are things feeling a bit ‘odd’ to you of late? Has your dream life picked up considerably, but you can’t make heads or tails about what they might mean? Felt spacey, light-headed, or dizzy, or like you’re walking in a dream or a starring in a cartoon. Maybe you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, and are wondering around in Wonderland? Well, that’s the psychic and astrological space between the eclipse that just occurred on April 30th, and the one coming up on May 16th. It’s also being amped up in other ways, which I’ll get to momentarily.

Another thing about the space we’re currently traveling through isn’t something else to be wary of, or apprehensive about. Despite the headlines, or the gossip, not all that is happening on our planet is a cause for concern or over-reaction. If some of my previous articles have put you on high alert about certain aspects of the current situation we are experiencing or witnessing, I have not shared from a place of trying to create fear or anxiety, but from a place of love and a desire to inform and empower you.

We are all changing and being changed at such an accelerated pace that some disorientation is perfectly normal. Considering the level and intensity of the times we are living through, inside a predominantly digital environment, it will affect our perceptions and our assumptions or judgments about those perceptions. This is the nature of digital…it is binary, and either something is on or off, 0 or 1, left or right, up or down, right or wrong.

There isn’t very much room or latitude for both/and, or neutrality. Hence all the polarization and atomization of our cultures. Many of our institutional structures are founded on the dualistic model, and it has permeated human consciousness ever since the beginnings of “civilization”. Prior to that, our orientations were predominantly inclusive. Our ancestors weren’t striving for unity, they were already living it to a certain degree. They intuitively understood their place within the fabric of Nature and the heavens. They had no illusions about the intimate interplay between the elements, the environment and themselves. They accepted all of it as something they were part and parcel of.

Since those long-forgotten times, history has happened, and we have lost some very precious aspects of our humanity. As a result, we created religions and other spiritual systems with rules to try understanding the world around us and come to grips with the main 5 questions before all of humanity – who am I, why am I here, where am I, what do I do with this, and what does it all mean? Being orphaned from our original primordial consciousness has divorced us from knowing and thrown us into bicameral confusion via the dualistic mind. We are predominantly mental creatures these days, and our intuitive and instinctual natures are either dormant, suppressed or extremely subservient to the orientation we have to the mind created self. The digital age has not only accelerated our propensity to living in a disembodied state almost 24/7, but it has also influenced human consciousness into a desire to emulate or merge with technology itself. From where I sit, this situation is unsustainable and an evolutionary dead end.

The astrology of our times is mirroring this situation back to us, hoping that we’ll catch on and connect the dots before we are totally subsumed into a trance-like hive mind. The event of the partial Solar Eclipse on 30th of April introduced us to some encouraging energies and laid out before us some challenges as well. Uranus conjunct the Sun-Moon at 10 Taurus, along with a conjunction of Jupiter, Venus, and Mars in the late degrees of Pisces, has emphasized our dissociative state of awareness while at the same time trying to awaken us to our predicament of being orphaned from our true and natural sentient state of beingness. Hence the dreamy sort of stumbling around effect some of you may be encountering. However, as I mentioned earlier, the astrology is merely reflecting an existing situation. The causative factors are numerous and are triggered and amplified by the transiting aspects in astrology.

Factor 1: The Schumann Resonance has been off the charts since April 29th. This is most likely in response to the series of X-Class flares our star has been generating off and on since mid-April.

Factor 2: Geomagnetic storms are more frequent. (See Solar activity)

Factor 3: Collective or consensus reality – the dominator culture is ramping things up on several fronts locally and globally: the situation in the Ukraine, hyper-inflationary policies and hidden price-gouging putting downward pressure on the middle class and poor. The Oil Giants are currently celebrating bumper profits in the 1st fiscal quarter of 2022. Celebrity distractions (Heard-Depp hearings), and politics as usual round out the list.

Factor 4: The pandemic mentality hasn’t gone away entirely, while at the same time a growing body of evidence is pointing out that the responses to the whole thing may be making things worse many times over. In the U.K. the highest number of new cases called Covid-19 (or one of the variants) are among those who have received both jabs plus one and even two boosters.

The Merry Month of May has plenty of activation points to cover, so here’s the menu:

May 10th – Mercury turns stationary retrograde at 4 degrees and 51 minutes of Gemini Time: 12:48pm BST. Please, please, please, back up your data on all your digital devices well ahead of the 10th.

May 11th – Jupiter ingress into Aries at 00:44am BST

May 13th – The Sun conjuncts the North Node at 22 degrees of Taurus

May 16th – Full Moon Total Lunar Eclipse at 25 degrees of Taurus, conjunct the Lunar Nodes at 22 Taurus. Chiron and Venus are conjunct at 14 plus of Aries, Mars is conjunct Neptune at 23 plus degrees of Pisces, and Saturn at 24 Aquarius is still square to the Lunar Nodes.

All of the above is a significant chronology to be sure, but the main event is the bookend eclipse on May 16th. This completes, or rather initiates, the first eclipse pattern for 2022.

In a nutshell this Lunar Eclipse will set the tone for the next six months or so. Taurus-Scorpio is about security and acquisition mixed with desire and power, around food, shelter, sex, money, and VALUES! Uranus is too far away from this eclipse to add much to it, but he’s already had his input back on April 30th. I’d look for this eclipse to bring more to the light of awareness about how we are all being conned out of our humanity by the promises of a shiny new utopia that openly states that, “we will own nothing and be happy.” That quote is from Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum’s stated goal to digitize humanity and our institutions into a global control grid.

We will also be asked to examine our acquired values and dig deeper to find our true values…those ones that our ancestors held as sacred: love, empathy, embodied living, compassion, cooperation, mutual respect, and a universal recognition of the oneness of all Life, a Life with Divine origination.

What may thwart or distort this will be the Mars-Neptune conjunction in Pisces. More distortion of the truth, or facts…take your pick. Twisting realities to suit a narrow agenda. Obliterating information and data crucial to personal or collective decision-making via censorship and state security public relations statements. Think the “memory hole” from Orwell’s book “1984”. You may be told that something you saw somewhere, no matter how briefly, never existed in the first place. With everything and everyone logged into the “cloud”, making data disappear is a relatively easy affair. More celebrity dramas or entertainment distractions will proliferate. Meanwhile the Saturn effect on the Nodes will provide a backdrop of the same “you need to do what everyone else is doing for the good of all” messaging. Maybe Covid restrictions will resurface. We’ll see.

The buffer will be provided by Chiron meeting Venus in Aries. Chiron in Aries is symbolic of the right of being an individual…an individuated and unique being, and that this a divine birth right that no other can abrogate or take away from you, unless you acquiesce to it being done. Imagine a lone individual standing up to collective power, and you get the idea. The “Tank Man” photo from the time of the democracy movement in China that brought on the tragedy of the massacre at Tiananmen Square in Beijing comes to mind. One person, standing in front of a line of battle tanks, and refusing to move out of the way, is a compelling example of the symbology of Chiron’s transit through Aries. Adding Venus into the mix only amplifies the message to embrace and love our uniqueness and individuality, and everyone else’s right to the same thoroughly and totally.

This configuration of Venus-Chiron will help us to understand the meaning of the sudden reversal, or intended reversal, of the controversial “Roe versus Wade” Supreme Court ruling in a preliminary brief that was leaked earlier this week. This intended revelation has galvanized women to speak out against the ongoing efforts of the patriarchal forces to claw back women’s rights, and everyone’s divine right of sovereignty and choice in all matters, including what you allow or don’t allow to happen with one’s body.

With the Nodes in Scorpio-Taurus, one can also see the interplay of the issues about fertility, sexual preferences, childbearing, motherhood, and childrearing coming up at this juncture. Is there a war on women? Of course, there has been…for millennia. Also, a war on our biology and sexuality. The heritage and user’s manual for the conservative patriarchal mindset is rooted in the Judeo-Christian doctrines. Those belief systems originated with A.I. Not the A.I. of Silicon Valley fame, the alien A.I. that helped to foster the monotheistic father-God religions. This scenario is clearly delineated in the Gnostic gospels, known as the Nag Hammadi Codices. It is plain to see that these issues have become politicized over the past 30-40 years. Politics and religion do not have carte blanche to impose anything on anyone that does not align with the inner values of the individual. Venus-Chiron will be about self-knowledge and self-love.

It now appears to be a war on humanity itself, or at the very least, the organic version of us. The original organic human being is seen by transhumanists as messy, imperfect, and fatally flawed…and prone to illness and death. This perception is birthed and fostered by A.I. (artificial intelligence), and with our culture becoming ever more ensconced in a digital framework it will only hasten the demise of our species, as we have known it.

In summary, I feel this eclipse cycle will usher in a resurgence of individual willpower, a will to not just resist an imposed order from the past, but to work in concert with a wider global awareness that if we can stand up for ourselves adequately, we can work in cooperation with others more effectively. The gaps are widening in many areas of our human family, and it will be necessary to remember that differences of opinion of mindset does not obviate the reality of our inherent oneness or divine origins.

Love, a realistic love, based on the timeless spiritual values of respect for the choices and sovereignty of others, also includes the knowing that we are the author(ity) in our lives. As such, the agendas of others cannot include domination of the “other”, in any form. The time of centralized authority is already past, but the progenitors of it have refused to acknowledge it and continue to pursue an insane course of activity. In other words, respect others’ choices, but do not allow other’s choices to take a higher priority than that. Don’t betray yourself or your values out of fear or obligation.

Which brings us full circle to the subject line of this blog, Alice’s conversation with the Caterpillar. No matter how selfish it might feel to your or my ego, completely accepting and celebrating Who We Are, as we are right now, is essential. Once we realize that knowing we relax into trusting ourselves, and our own guidance. All deeper knowing comes from this step towards caring for the Self unconditionally. This is the crux of becoming self-actualized, and it is the primary purpose of our life’s journey, both here and beyond. For example, you could choose to realize that judging yourself about your flaws is not a productive strategy for joy and inner peace. Difficulty in accepting the bits we judge as wrong in ourselves is made a thousand times worse by accepting the judgment of others, or an outer authority, as valid. This is the origin of guilt and shame…an outer authority declaring your fatal flaws, your original sins, and us believing it!

Between now and the bookend Eclipse of May 16th, take some steps to loving the totality of you, just as you are in this moment. Doing mirror work is a useful tool for such an exploration. Conscious deep breathwork is another. One of my favourites is long walks in Nature, where I can breathe deeply into my body and feel the walls between myself, my form and the outer natural world dissolve. It’s an “always on” love affair…with Nature. Allow Her in. This is the message of the North Node in Taurus too…to honour the Mother inside each one of us.

We have never been alone, and never will be. What an adventure!

About the Author:

Isaac George is an internationally recognized intuitive mentor/coach, evolutionary astrologer, conscious channel, self-published author and musician. After a life-altering spontaneous kundalini awakening in 1994 he explored various healing modalities, including hypnotherapy and Reiki. In 1998 he began spontaneously channeling Archangel Ariel and other dimensional intelligences.

Originally from the United States, Isaac currently resides in the UK and offers Spiritual Mentoring sessions and programs and Evolutionary Astrology consultations.

05 May 2022
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The Art Of Visualisation

Visualisation is the process of creating an image of something or someone in our minds, according to dictionary definitions. Nowadays the word visualisation is everywhere, very much associated with the Law Of Attraction. However, visualisation is a tool in itself that has to be used wisely.

Most of us have had the experience of seeing an event in our mind and then that situation, which was created in an energetic way, manifested in our physical life. In this sense, what we see, think and create inside our busy brain has the potential to become tangible, to exist in this world of reality, regardless of whether such creation is good or bad. Then, a sensible use of the art of visualisation is required.

We tend to think that visualising needs to be done in a state of meditation. However, we are always envisioning things in our minds. Our thoughts are not only the words we use to have a conversation with ourselves; there are also images. To experience this, let’s do an easy exercise: what happens in your mind when you read the following sentence? “I would like to eat spaghetti with pesto salsa.” I expect that you immediately had an image of a plate with spaghetti á la pesto and even more, you saw yourself enjoying it.

The images, visions and thoughts we experience during our day-to-day life might seem to be insignificant, however behind them there is always a feeling, a sentiment, which powers our visions in an energetic way. And this is precisely why we have to be careful with the creative process in our minds: we want to create positive and uplifting outcomes for ourselves.

Of course, having images and thoughts in our minds constantly doesn’t mean that all of them will manifest, what I am saying is that we have to be mindful of those repetitive images and thoughts, with those where our feelings are intensified.

The idea here is to visualise with purpose, with an intention and move the energy towards the accomplishment of our dreams.

To visualise with intention, we first need to be clear of what we want to create. Clarity is essential, otherwise we lose focus and our efforts go nowhere. For me, clarity is a mix of organised thoughts and feelings. How do we do this? I will show you a process, it is not rocket science, but it works for me.

Write down what you would like to manifest. Make a list of no more than 7 items.
Go over your list and observe your feelings and emotions when reading each wish or dream.
Choose the ones you feel are more aligned with you at this particular moment.
Number them from 1 to 7, one being the item you would most like to manifest.
Start with number 1.

Once you are clear about what you are willing to visualise, a different sequential process starts. Understand that trying to visualise too many things at once is not going to work, because you will be scattering your energy.

Sit in a quiet place. (Once we want to visualise with purpose, is better to do it in calmness).
Connect with your heart by feeling its palpitation, and breathe in and out a bit slower than normal.
Place your attention on your mind, without forgetting your heart, and start visualising dream number one of your list.
Visualise it in a detailed way, like a scene of a movie.
Enter the scene, see yourself living that creation. Enjoy the vision, feel it, it is happening.
Maintaining the visualisation, feel gratitude in your heart, and then open your eyes.
To add more power, draw your dream or write it down, so you can see it or read it every day until it happens in the physical world. Don’t forget to feel it in your heart, and to be grateful.
Move the energy towards the manifestation of this dream. How? This is simple, if we want to win the lottery, we have to buy a lottery ticket, right? Then, for example, if you want to find a new job, start researching about it, make phone calls, send emails, etc. This is how you move the energy.

Visualisation is, as you can see, a powerful tool. Hopefully you can use it for your own good, to benefit others and our beautiful planet Earth. We are all connected in the invisible realms of the universe, linked to a superior force called Source (God, One, etc.) and what I create for myself affects everyone around. Keep this in mind when visualising.

About the Author:

Veronica Sanchez De Darivas is Chilean-Australian, now living in the UK and a proud mother of teenage twins. A spiritual awakening teacher, bestselling author, pineal gland (third eye) activator and Certified Instructor for the Cyclopea Method, Veronica is currently the only instructor in the world teaching the Cyclopea Method in English.

01 May 2022
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May Artist of the Month: Nathalie Arini

Artist Statement: Nathalie Arini

I’m a self-taught professional artist from France, specializing in acrylic (on canvas and paper), which allows me to express my inner feelings, visions, as well as other realms and the multiplicity of dimensions we are living in. I love to paint the unseen planes. I follow my intuition, trying to create beauty and harmony in colors and shapes. I also paint watercolors.

My favourite subjects are ravens, trees and the journey of soul in the infinite circle of life and death (samsara). I’m also a Tarot reader and a musician. Painting and music are linked in a subtle way: they always dance together! I’ve had many exhibitions in France and in India, from where my paintings have found collectors all over the world. Art has been my passion since childhood, and also nature, which is my temple. To me the act of creating is spiritual, it’s a meditation.

Recently I’ve also begun creating NFT art, always from my original paintings. I like to play with digital effects to create colorful trippy spaces!

Twitter @AriniNathalie

Instagram @arini_art_

télégram https://t.me/NathalieArini

opensea http://opensea.io/AriniNath

29 Apr 2022
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DreamBorn … The Future We’ve All Been Waiting For

Yesterday I was guided to start my third book on the go at the moment. There’s ‘How We Changed The World’, the fantasy novel ‘StarMaker’ and now ‘DreamBorn…The future we’ve all been waiting for’.

So to kick off book #3 in concurrent writing, here’s the preface to it. It is my intention with this one to bring that dreaming into fully conscious, current reality.

DREAMBORN … The Future We’ve All Been Waiting For

Preface

Somewhere in a galaxy far far away and outside the bounds of time, a sleeping god began to dream a new universe into being.

I didn’t know the first time I touched that sleeping god’s dream exactly what it was or what part I would get to play in its inception. I remember saying at the time that first contact felt like connecting with the infinite intelligence of a drifting space ship looking for a home.

So I befriended it, chatted with it, helped it find a home here on Earth. And it has given me more than I could ever have imagined a drifting dreamship could offer.

Together we expanded, merged and morphed, unleashing the Dream into the world. Untethered it soared like a hot air balloon festival, filling the skies with wonders and the people with gasps of breath-taking delight.

Together we are remaking the universe in the enchantment of its dreaming.

Together we’re offering the world a future unprecedented to any other before it.

We are becoming both the Dreamer and the Dreaming, weaving the miraculous pulse of Life Power into every living being on Earth.

And so we come to today. A time like no other on planet Earth. A time where the Dream captivates us all into a thrall that draws us forward into its epic becoming.

About the Author

Soleira Green is a visionary author, quantum coach, ALLchemist & future innovator. She has been creating leading edge breakthroughs in consciousness, quantum evolution, transformation, innovation, intelligence and more over the past 25 years, has written and self-published eleven books, and taught courses all over the world on these topics.

09 Apr 2022
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Becoming Icons

Here we are, standing at long last smack dab in the new reality we’ve been dreaming of and co-creating for years now.

We’ve moved through normal to greater to masterful to infinite.

We’re just now emerging from a chrysalis into a brand new sense of who we are and what we’re capable of … god beings, infinite creators, I even heard the term “genesis illuminus” the other day to describe us as a new species of possibility.

Today, as I was winding myself from that 20 year chrysalis, I heard the term icon and I knew immediately it means many of us becoming living role models for a new way of being on planet Earth.

This is different from leadership, or from visionary even. You see in this new reality no one person has to lead. We are all equal masterful co-creators. In fact in this new way of being, one is perhaps …

more collective than individual,
more focused on calling forth the brilliance of everyone involved,
more steeped in possibility than problem solving,
more surrendered to the miraculous to surprise us and
more universal than previously thought possible.

As an icon, this moves to the next level of exhilarating play as you …

liberate from the past,
create yourself in every moment,
stand for something breath-taking to show up in us all.
reinvent the possibility of being alive on planet Earth and
stand as a nexus point of power for the NEW to pour through you in whatever way delights you.

As an icon of this new time, you are unleashed and remade, becoming a Pied Piper leading us into realms of reality we have long waited to see made real. I thrill to stand as this now, to represent the new’ness of us pouring into existence now. How about you?

About the Author

06 Apr 2022
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Invisible Legacy

I am the mother of twins, a lovely daughter and a sweet son. They will be 19 years old in August. They are starting to live independent lives, one is going to university and the other one is already working.

Of course, I am proud of them. However, as a mother my heart aches a bit when I think that the outside world can be hard at times. Like every mother, I would love for them to avoid suffering and struggles, but of course this is not possible. Struggles and problems are part of life, of this physical field, and we need to find ways to navigate them the best we can.

When growing up, I remember being very emotional every time I encountered a bump in the road. Problems always seem to be huge and with no solution at all, in my teenage mind, everything was terrible and sad. Naturally, this is part of that phase of life, but I wish someone would have let me know that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, especially when I was in the middle of the emotional storm.

Do not get me wrong, my parents were very supportive, however in those years it was not common to provide children with tools to deal with the process of growing up. Basically, you were expected to put up with whatever and that was that.

Nowadays, we have many resources to go to, life is more complex, I guess, and young people are more exposed to global conditions than when I was growing up, where the word “local” was prevalent.

My spiritual path has allowed me to share with my kids those internal powers we all have, and I have made sure to repeat myself many times over. Of course, on several occasions I get those teenage looks and eyes rolling, but I know that one day, they will remember my words and tools and apply them.

I want to share with you a few of these techniques and words:

I frequently say that everything is transitory and it will pass. Life moves on, even if it doesn’t look like it.
Elevate your vibration! Dwelling on emotions that are not beneficial for us does not help. Acknowledge those emotions and then change your attention to finding solutions. A good way to elevate your vibration is to go out in nature, close your eyes, feel and listen to the sounds of nature. Your mind will clear.
Connect with your heart and speak from there. Talking to others in an angry manner makes the problem deeper.
Practice gratitude. This not only means to be grateful for the good things in our lives; I am actually referring to being grateful for the good and the bad of our existence in this world, because everything allows us to grow and expand.
Just a short daily meditation produces a ripple effect of goodness in you and in the way you vibrate.

There are many paths we can show to our kids and loved ones. However, the most important aspect of this is for us to be able to stay open to communicate with them, to create a loving environment where they can go anytime, without judgment, willing to listen and hugging tightly.

In a profound and invisible way, this is the “legacy” I am leaving to them. One day I will not be in this world anymore, any material goods will have no importance at all, but my children will remember my words, the meditations I taught them, the pineal gland exercises I showed them, the times I share with them, listening to their tribulations and happy moments, the many occasions we hugged, laughed and told each other, “I love you”.

This is why I keep repeating myself, because repetition creates habits and good habits create easiness in life. But most importantly, they will understand that LOVE is always the answer…

About the Author:

01 Apr 2022
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April Artist of the Month: Anastasia Trusova

About the Artist:

I was born on 12/24/1988 in Russia. I’ve been painting for as long as I can remember. I always knew that I would be an artist, only the direction changed: at one time I wanted to be an architect, then a sculptor, a portrait painter, an animator. As a result, I received higher education as a shoe designer and even managed to work for three years in this specialty.

My main theme is nature! I have always been surrounded by trees, fields and forests. Watch the dawn, inhale the smell of wet grass, listen to the sound of the wind. This is real happiness, and this happiness is available to everyone! We can all look at the sky, sit by a tree, even if we live in a city.

In nature there is nothing absolutely identical: each branch, each leaf is unique. It is very interesting to look at their curves, and then strive to paint on the sheet. I suffered for a long time, I had false attitudes from art school … for example, that a real artist paints only with oil, acrylic is so … for beginners, or that the tree is not blue at all, and the sky is not green at all. Not!!! Creativity is freedom! I love graphics and sculpture and painting very much. I didn’t “try” to do anything, and therefore I began to paint the way I like. I called my style: “textural-graphic impressionism”.

Why acrylic? Acrylic has several advantages:

It is a real treasure for those who like to experiment!
It dries quickly and there are no rules from thin to thick. For me, this is very important. I also studied physics and mathematics, and the order, the sequence of significance. I love that I can paint many coats and not have to wait months for it to dry.
It darkens and fades! That is why it is not for beginners! You paint the picture after drying, you see another one… it is also flat, but this can be compensated for…

Yes, I am an artist. But I am also a mother. Being a mother is my main job. This is a priority for me, I enjoy every moment with my children while they need me, so I paint when they are sleeping.

I especially like to paint while traveling. When I’m not at home, my quiet morning hours are from 04-09:00, this is my work time and I work.

Find all my social media art links here: https://linktr.ee/anastasiatrusova

28 Mar 2022
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How To Forgive Someone Who Isn’t Sorry

Forgiveness is often viewed as the “happily ever after” ending in a story of wrongdoing or injustice. Someone enacts harm, the typical arc goes, but eventually sees the error of their ways and offers a heartfelt apology. “Can you ever forgive me?” Then you, the hurt person, are faced with a choice: Show them mercy — granting yourself peace in the process — or hold a grudge forever. The choice is yours, and it’s one many of us assume starts with remorse and a plea for grace.

It’s reasonable to expect an apology when you’re the one who has been hurt or betrayed. But that’s not how it works in practice. In fact, therapist Harriet Lerner writes in her book Why Won’t You Apologize?: Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts the worse the offense, the more difficult it can be to get an apology from the person who harmed you. In those instances, Lerner writes, “Their shame leads to denial and self-deception that overrides their ability to orient toward reality.” And beyond this, there are other reasons you might be unable to get the apology you deserve. Maybe the other person isn’t aware of the harm they did to you, or they’ve disappeared, making contact impossible, or they’ve died.

Unfortunately, that puts you in a tough spot. How do you forgive someone who isn’t all that sorry, or who you can’t actually engage with?

To answer this question, we spoke to two experts: Robert Enright, a professor of education psychology at the University of Wisconsin Madison and a leader in the scientific study of forgiveness, and Laura Davis, the author of several books about estrangement and reconciliation, including The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother-Daughter Story. Both have worked extensively with people who have experienced serious personal injustice, including survivors of child sexual abuse and gender-based violence. Enright and Davis say that forgiving someone who is unrepentant is absolutely possible; here’s how to approach it.

Expand your view of what forgiveness is

In some ways, it’s easier to define forgiveness by what it isn’t. “Forgiveness is not excusing what the other did; that behavior was wrong, is wrong, and will always be wrong,” Enright says.

Both Enright and Davis say that forgiveness exists separately from reconciliation, and also from accountability — which is why forgiving someone doesn’t require an apology or even their participation. “Reconciliation is a negotiation strategy between two or more people trying to make their way back together to mutual trust,” explains Enright, whereas forgiveness is a one-way endeavor. Put another way: Forgiveness might be a step on the path to reconciliation, but you don’t have to traverse the full route if you’d prefer not to.

Enright also points out that while forgiveness is separate from accountability, it’s not at odds with seeking justice. “Many people think it’s either/or, rather than both,” he says. Forgiving someone can help you take a more clear-eyed approach to justice because you’re no longer, as he put it, “seething with rage.”

Perhaps most importantly, forgiveness doesn’t require you to pretend the hurt didn’t happen, to forgive and forget, or to ever speak to the person again. “When you forgive someone, it doesn’t mean you have to have any kind of ongoing relationship with them,” Davis says. “It’s an internal shift, where you’re no longer carrying the wound in the same way.”

Enright defines forgiveness as a moral virtue. Moral virtues (like kindness, honesty, and patience) are typically focused on how they benefit others; these are things you do primarily for another person’s sake, regardless of whether or not they have “earned” it.

“Forgiveness is a special kind of moral virtue that always and without exception occurs when the other person has been unfair to you,” Enright says. “When that person is unfair to you and you willingly choose to forgive — it’s not forced upon you — you are basically good to the one who was not good to you. You’re deliberately trying to get rid of the resentment and offer goodness of some kind: respect, kindness, anything that is good for the other person.”

Think of forgiveness as something you’re doing primarily for yourself

Because forgiveness is defined as offering goodness to another person, it can be hard, mentally, to want to get there — after all, you were the one who was wronged, so why do you have to now give them something? But it can be helpful to consider that you don’t have to literally give them anything, or even tell them you forgive them. Forgiveness doesn’t have to exist anywhere outside of you.

“Forgiveness is what we call a paradox,” Enright says. “It appears to be a contradiction but is not. It looks like you as the forgiver are doing all of the giving, and the other is doing all of the getting.” That mindset, he says, overlooks all of the benefits that you as the forgiver will likely experience. According to Enright’s research (which includes several meta-analyses of other forgiveness studies), people who have gone through the process of forgiving someone experience “characteristically, a reduction in the clinical variables of anger, anxiety, and depression, and increase in self-esteem and hope for the future.”

“Forgiveness is my safety valve against the kind of toxic anger that could kill me,” Enright says. “Waiting for the apology is to misunderstand your free will, and it’s to misunderstand the medicine that is forgiveness, that you should be able to take freely, whatever you want.”

Once you remove reconciliation as a goal, it’s easier to see how forgiveness will benefit you as much as — if not more than — the other person, giving you an opportunity to fully cut your mental connection to them. “Forgiveness begins to help you sever that connection so that you can be free,” Davis says. “I think it’s essential for people to eventually let go of their anger, their rage, their hurt, so that they can move on in their own lives.”

Don’t let fear of “losing” stand in the way of forgiving someone

Being willing to let go of the anger and hurt can be one of the hardest aspects of forgiving someone, especially someone who isn’t sorry or who hasn’t apologized. In these instances, it can sometimes feel like your wound is all you have: It serves as proof that an awful thing happened to you and really was as terrible as it felt. Forgiving someone, then, can feel like you’re capitulating — like you’re acquiescing to their view of events, when you know in your heart they did something wrong.

Enright says it’s reasonable to want to tend to your anger when someone has hurt you. “You can hang on to anger for a short time because it shows you’re a person of worth and dignity, and no one should treat you this way,” he says. “But then my question would be, if you hang on to that anger, what is it doing to you? Yes, it will empower you for a while. But characteristically over time, it brings us down with fatigue, rumination, becoming far more pessimistic in life.”

There’s real work involved in forgiving, and it takes time

Enright has studied forgiveness extensively. He says his research group at the University of Wisconsin Madison was the first to publish a scientific study on forgiveness, in 1989; in 1993, they became the first to publish a scientific study of forgiveness therapy. Their research has led to the development of a step-by-step process for forgiveness, which can happen in therapy (ideally with someone who is trained in forgiveness therapy), or through a self-guided process using his workbook.

He says that forgiving someone via this process happens in four major phases.

1) The uncovering phase. The person who has been treated unfairly focuses on the effects of the injustice in their life. These effects might be things like monetary costs, lost time, ongoing anxiety, depression, anger, sleep problems, or a more pessimistic worldview. In a lot of instances, Enright says, people don’t even realize how much the injustice is still impacting their life.

In this stage, you’re also asked to think about what solutions you’ve already tried for these problems and the extent to which they’ve led to meaningful improvements or change. “We say, ‘If nothing satisfying has worked, how about trying forgiveness?’” Enright says.

2) The decision phase. This is where you’ll determine whether you want to try to forgive the person who hurt you. And the answer might be no! Maybe it’s too soon and the pain is too fresh, or you just know you’re not ready to let go of the anger. That’s okay; this is a process you can always return to, and, eventually, you might find that you want to forgive.

It’s also important to be sure you’re attempting to forgive because you want to, not because you’re being pressured into it by, say, friends or family who are tired of having to navigate the fallout and just want everyone involved to move on. “We have to be drawn to the idea of forgiveness ourselves, and never be coerced into it,” Enright says.

If you decide you want to work toward forgiveness, Enright says the next step is a homework assignment: Try to do no harm to the person who wronged you. You don’t have to feel positively about them, but you should try your best not to disparage them, and don’t seek revenge. If even that feels impossible, you might not be ready to forgive them yet.

3) The work phase. At this point, you’ll aim to broaden your narrative about the other person and develop empathy for them. So you might think about how they were raised, what difficult things happened in their life that led them to this point, and the ways in which that person is vulnerable. “You widen the story,” Enright says. “As you start telling that story to yourself, over and over, we see a little bit of empathy, a little tiny bit of compassion, a little bit of softening of the heart. That takes time, and definitely can’t be engineered through therapy; it has to emerge.”

The next part of the work phase, Enright says, is “standing in the pain.” He says one way to do this is to think of your pain on a scale of 1–10, and to visualize that amount of pain in a heavy sack that you are holding on your back. “Acknowledge that it’s there, be aware of it, and stay with it,” Enright says. “Don’t try to run away from it. Don’t try to take anything out of it. Just let it be. What we find is, when people do that, that sack tends to shrink. As I deliberately say yes to the pain and stand in it, the pain begins to lessen.” He says that this part of the process can also help you rebuild self-esteem because it’s a reminder of what you’re capable of.

4) The discovery phase. This is when you’ll reflect on the meaning you’ve found in your life from this experience. “What we tend to find a lot of times is people become much more attuned to the wounds within other people,” Enright says. You may realize that you’ve become more patient with strangers, or less judgmental of coworkers or friends, because you have a newfound understanding of how they might also be struggling.

Going through this might also have made you feel more connected to other people, as you realize you’re not alone in the injustice you suffered. Or it may have given you a sense of purpose by inspiring you to help others who might have experienced something similar, or who are at risk of being wronged in the same way you were.

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you’re struggling to forgive someone

Being ready to forgive someone who hurt you takes time, as does the work of forgiving them. It’s impossible to know when — or if — you’ll ever be ready. If now doesn’t seem to be the time, that’s okay. “We’re in relationships with many people over the course of a whole lifetime,” Davis says. “Things can shift in surprising and sometimes dramatic ways just with the passage of time.” Many of the people she’s interviewed have spoken about their feelings changing when they entered a different life stage; for example, a person who isn’t ready to forgive a parent might start to see the situation differently after they have kids of their own. (It can also have the opposite effect, making them feel even more hurt by their parent’s behavior.)

“These things evolve over a lifetime,” she says. “If you had told me when I was in my late 20s and deeply estranged from my mother that I would end up taking care of her at the end of her life, I would have looked at you like you were completely crazy. Yet that’s what I chose and wanted to do.”

“I think that forgiveness is something that comes at the end of a long process of healing,” Davis says. “In my personal experience, it was a gift. I didn’t see it as the end goal of resolving an injury. I did my own work, and naturally, feelings of forgiveness arose.”

Original post here

23 Mar 2022
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How to Turn Off Harmful Stress Like a Switch

Let’s play a game of “would you rather.”

Would you rather speak in front of 500 people for an hour or be stuck in an elevator with your ex?

Would you rather get a cavity drilled or be forced to take a four-hour Zumba class?

Would you rather lose your car keys before work or lose your internet connection before an online meeting?

None of these options are good, but they all have something in common: they invoke stress.

What stresses you out? How do you deal with that dreaded feeling? And did you know there’s a bulletproof method for disarming stress?

Where Does Stress Come From?

Stress is defined as “mental or emotional strain resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances.” We’ve all felt it, but where does stress come from?

Stress comes from the future, but not in the Marty McFly way.

Humans are unique in our capacity to predict what might happen next. We rely on our amazing ability to anticipate the future better than any other animal, and this ability is a feature of our unusual intelligence.

Unlike other animals, which (as far as we know) react solely to what’s going on in their environment, humans can imagine entire realities in our heads. These alternate realities make us act in all sorts of strange ways. For instance, while zebras will run from the sound of a lion in the brush, humans will stampede at the start of a Black Friday sale, imagining the deals we’ll miss if we don’t elbow our way through.

While imagining the future motivates us to pursue what we want, it also comes with a cost. All that thinking about what might happen next is stressful.

Does that mean humans are doomed to lives of constant stress? Does our ability to imagine many futures mean we’re destined to feel constant emotional strain?

Not necessarily.

You’ve no doubt heard the story of Viktor Frankl, the inspiring psychiatrist who survived imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. He observed firsthand the profound difference between his fellow prisoners who lost hope—and soon died—compared with those who found a purpose. Focusing on that purpose allowed them to take back some measure of psychological control. The difference was literally life and death.

What if I told you that same powerful difference in focus and mindset is impacting you right now?

You’re about to learn how to create a real-life forcefield against the stress you face every day.

Viktor Frankl knew something science would later verify: perception can mediate the effects of stress. In other words, two people faced with exactly the same stressful situation can have very different physical and emotional reactions. How does that happen? To answer that question, let’s take a look at some fascinating research about the power of feeling in control.

The Power of Control

A classic study of two rats reveals an important insight about the role control plays in the experience of stress. The two rats are in separate cages connected to the same electrical circuit. The circuit administers random shocks through the metal floor of their cage. One rat has a lever in its cage that enables it to turn off the shocks while the other rat does not.

The rat with the lever in its cage is called “the executive rat,” because it has control. It has the power to turn off the electric current flowing through the cage. The rat with no control is called the “subordinate rat.”

When the experiment begins, both the executive rat and the subordinate rat show signs of stress, indicated by a sudden surge of the stress hormone, cortisol. Then, something interesting happens. The executive rat’s stress levels drop back to normal, while the subordinate rat’s stress remains high. Why? In a word, control.

The executive rat has discovered that it can turn off the stressful stimulus (the random shocks) by pressing the lever in its cage. For the executive rat, it’s as if the physiological effects of its stressful situation have been turned off completely. In contrast, the subordinate rat’s health steadily declines due to the stress, leading to secondary effects including a suppressed immune system.

Here’s what’s happening. The electrical shock is the stressor, and both rats experience exactly the same amount of that stressful stimulus. Yet one rat feels in control of the stress. He can turn it off at will. On a psychological level, this makes all the difference. Let’s consider why that’s the case, and what it means for our ability to cope with the daily stress we all face in the human rat race.

Psychological Immunity to Stress

The stress we experience is based on our perception of what’s going to happen next. If we anticipate a threatening situation, our body releases stress hormones to prepare us to face the threat.

But if we believe we have control over a threatening stimulus, then we don’t need to prepare for that threat in the same way. We don’t need to be on full alert with the fight-or-flight response gearing us up for survival. How can we regain a sense of control when faced with stress and uncertainty?

Let’s return to the story of Viktor Frankl. Faced with unimaginable hardship, he had no idea how long the torment would continue. There was no guarantee of rescue, and many of his companions died of starvation, illness, or worse. What did he do differently to cope with the stress?

He changed the focus of his attention. Frankl searched for meaning and purpose in the smallest daily actions, like caring for a friend or saving a scrap of string that might be useful later. He also found long-term meaning and purpose in the idea of survival itself. He reminded himself continuously that surviving this hardship would be meaningful to his family and friends. They needed him to come back to them alive.

This change in focus—from the many uncontrollable aspects of life to the few controllable ones—can have a profound effect. That’s because our perception of reality is, to a large extent, created by the focus of our attention.

Are you facing the stress of an uncertain future? If so, it helps to focus on what you can control. Sometimes that means bringing the finish line closer by setting goals for today or this week instead of trying to figure out what you’ll do if you lose your job three months from now. Sometimes, it means making a list of 10 ways you can stay connected with friends and choosing the best one to put into action.

Our human tendency is to focus on threats and problems. For the sake of our emotional wellness, it makes sense to modify that automatic tendency. You can’t control the stressors that come your way, but you can influence the focus of your own attention. That’s why we recommend you focus on the things that give you back a feeling of control.

Want another tool to combat stress? Counterintuitively, one of the best things we can add to your toolbelt is an entirely different belief about stress—one befriending it instead of battling against it.

The Power of Your Beliefs

In her TED talk, psychologist Dr. Kelly McGonigal revealed an important insight that changed her own mind about stress. After decades educating people about the dangers of stress and imploring them to reduce stress for the sake of their health, Dr. McGonigal discovered an unexpected trend in the data.

When people believed stress was something bad that must be avoided, it had a far worse impact on their health. In contrast, among those who perceive stress as a normal part of pursuing goals, there was no correlation between higher stress and poor health outcomes.

Once again, how we perceive stress matters. If you believe stress itself is a threat, something you must reduce for the sake of your health, and yet can’t effectively reduce it, you feel trapped. You have no control, just like the rat getting shocked at random.

Feeling out of control makes us feel even more stress, perpetuating the harmful cycle. Perhaps it’s time to consider an alternative view of stress. What if we stopped seeing stress as something abnormal or threatening to your future health and instead thought of it as something that empowers us to be our best?

For instance, speaking in front of hundreds of people can be debilitatingly stressful. Many people try to fight stage fright, thinking the stress will make them more likely to stumble over their words and embarrass themselves. However, instead of thinking the stress is a bad thing that we must resist, we can think of it as an asset. A racing heartbeat for instance, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s a sign of the body sending more oxygen to the brain so you can do your best.

After we learn to see stress as something to harness rather than run from, we can take things one step further. Let’s see what happens when you pursue stress deliberately, on your own terms.

Stress for Success?

In his book, The Power of Full Engagement, peak performance coach Jim Loehr recommends oscillating back and forth between pushing hard and relaxing. Observing both athletes and executives, Loehr noticed that we engage more fully in our work if we push hard for periods of time and then pull back toward rest and recovery.

An athlete who knows there’s a short break around the corner is capable of pushing harder during periods of extreme exertion. And if you think about this in the context of your own life, it probably makes sense. It’s easy to push hard for the last two days of work before a vacation, or even the last hour of a typical workday. That’s because you know you’re about to get a break.

When you intentionally push yourself outside of your comfort zone and schedule periods of rest and recuperation, something interesting happens—your capacity to endure stress increases. It’s as if you’ve created a new set point for what feels normal.

For example, an entrepreneur who feels constantly pressed for time during her nine-hour workday might experiment with doing a 14-hour workday once per week for three weeks. Each of these long workdays is followed by a shortened workday of only six hours. In this case, she is stretching her sense of what’s possible by working longer than what feels comfortable. Then she recovers, taking it easy the next day.

The effect is less stress. Can you guess why? She has expanded her sense of what’s possible. She feels in control of the stressor (time pressure to get things done), because she knows that if the worst comes to worst, she can put in a few longer workdays to get caught up. Things no longer feel out of control.

Alternatively, she can practice timeboxing. This time management tool gives her better control over the focus of her attention when too many things are competing for her time. Timeboxing allows her to translate her highest priorities into blocks of time she’s reserved to get the most critical things done. Once again, the result is a feeling of control.

Since stress comes from feeling out of control, you can sometimes put yourself back in the driver’s seat, deliberately steering toward stress so you have greater control over deciding when to steer away toward rest.

Achieve More with Less Stress

You don’t have to choose between a healthy life and a life of full engagement with high, hard goals. You can have both.

The way to have both is to take control of the stress you put on yourself. By proactively seeking stress in forms that further your goals, you can change your set point for what feels overwhelming. Doing so will eliminate the feeling that stress is happening to you. It’s instead something chosen by you. You’re taking control of stress before it takes control of you.

If you want to take action on this idea, here’s what I recommend. Choose one area of life to experiment with (e.g., your physical fitness, tolerance for periods of intense concentration, or handling rejection on sales calls). Apply the concept of steering toward stress and then away from it.

If done correctly, as you steer toward stress, difficult challenges will begin to feel more like an adventure. Emotionally, you’ll experience a sense of thriving and empowerment as you navigate your way toward difficult goals rather than a feeling of being crushed by their weight. Then, when you steer away from stress, you’ll experience a deeper level of relaxed contentment that contributes to your well-being, both mentally and physically.

Bottom line—stress isn’t your enemy. It’s not even a bad thing. Stress is, in a very real way, what you make of it. You can take control of it, or you can let it control you. The choice is yours.

Original article here

18 Mar 2022
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Find More Ways to Be an Outsider

The world is full of outsiders: students away at a university far from home, immigrants to a new country, and people who go abroad for work or extended travel. Over the past year, more than 4.4 million American workers quit their jobs in the “Great Resignation,” and many of them became outsiders by joining a different company or moving to a new place, which they perhaps imagined might be friendlier to their personal needs and tastes.

But just because a journey to the unfamiliar was voluntary doesn’t make it easy: Being an outsider can be lonely and difficult, especially if all the strangers around you seem to know and understand one another. Your instincts might tell you that uprooting yourself was a terrible decision, that the benefits you sought are much smaller than the costs you are bearing. You might even wonder if you’ll ever be happy again.

The truth is, however, you almost certainly did not make a mistake. There is little evidence that being an outsider creates long-term problems for happiness or lowers your chance of success; on the contrary, people thrust between places and cultures tend to develop strength, flexibility, and resiliency. Being an outsider may be one of the best investments you will ever make, and you should embrace it, pain and all.

Scholars have studied outsiders, including immigrants, refugees, students, and foreign workers, to understand the long-term effects on well-being and personal success. Some of the most illuminating work has focused on so-called third-culture kids (TCKs): children who grow up outside their parents’ home culture and, as a result, are influenced partially by their parents’ home culture and partially by the culture in which they live, but mostly relate to a “third culture” made up of fellow sojourners. The term was coined in the 1960s by the sociologists Ruth Hill Useem and John Useem in studies of people who grow up in, for example, missionary and military families.

A lot of older theories of philosophy and psychiatry would predict tough outcomes for outsiders, especially TCKs—and indeed, would recommend against being one if you can avoid it. In Laws, Plato argued that people should not even travel abroad before age 40, and that visitors be restricted to port areas of cities to minimize their contact with citizens. He believed that acculturation—the psychological change that occurs when a person blends into an unfamiliar culture—was damaging to one’s sense of self. Plato’s reasoning carried on into the mid-20th century, and was shared by such eminent psychologists as Abraham Maslow, Erik Erikson, and Carl Rogers.

Outsiders do tend to face particular genres of hardships, especially distrust by insiders. Despite the biblical injunction “Do not oppress a foreigner,” even believers often disregard friendliness in favor of tribal instinct when it comes to immigrants. You don’t have to move to a new place to feel the ill effects. People at the margins of society, by virtue of the language they speak or the lifestyle they choose, often bear the brunt of hostility. Joseph Stalin, for example, felt a particular animosity for the people he and his supporters called “rootless cosmopolitans”—generally, Jewish intellectuals, who he considered to live outside of mainstream Soviet society despite the fact that they lived in Soviet cities.

However, with all due respect to Plato, outsiders can actually do very well. True, they generally suffer somewhat in the short term after a move. For example, one recent study showed that international college students rated their life satisfaction about 4 percent lower at the end of their first semester than at the beginning of the term. But a mountain of evidence shows that in the long run, being an outsider predicts well-being and emotional strength; it may even protect against depression.

For example, one 2018 study in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology showed that TCKs grow up to be happier and more resilient than their peers who possess less multicultural experience, and are less prone to age-related declines in cognitive flexibility. A 2012 review found that being raised in at least two cultures leads, on average, to greater psychological and emotional well-being and higher social competence in adulthood. Also in 2013, scholars found that acculturation is negatively associated with depression, anxiety, psychological distress, and sadness.

Furthermore, TCKs don’t usually wind up insecure; they develop multiple cultural identities that they employ flexibly, the same way they switch between languages. This is almost like a superpower in a globalized, fast-changing world.

Spending time as an outsider is like any other big, taxing investment you can make in yourself: difficult and maybe painful, but with a positive, lifelong payoff. You might think of it as less like a fun vacation, and more akin to a voluntary personal challenge, like training for a triathlon. Here are a few ideas to incorporate an outsider ethos into your life.

1. Remember that being an outsider is a feature, not a bug.

When you are new to a place or a group of people, you might be tempted to think of your unfamiliarity as a cost of doing business, and something to get over as quickly as possible. And by all means, you should make friends, learn the language, and find common ground. But don’t forget that the uncomfortable friction that occurs while you are integrating is making you stronger and more resilient. No pain, no gain.

2. Find regular ways to be an outsider.

Given the benefits of bicultural experiences, don’t leave your outsider status up to circumstance. Find opportunities to be on the margins, looking in. In my profession of academia, for instance, we regularly take sabbaticals and go someplace completely new for a year or six months. Most people don’t have this luxury, but they can do something akin to it by changing jobs every few years, or transferring between cities. If that sounds too drastic, you can try switching up your regular haunts—go to a new church, club, or gym where you know no on

3. Make friends with outsiders, even if you aren’t one.

Remember that the third culture of TCKs is the one they form together as outsiders. Although no studies that I could find have looked at the therapeutic benefits of this third culture per se, it stands to reason that such bonding is crucial to the outsider’s superior adjustment capacity; it is a way to practice creating one’s own culture spontaneously. Even if you aren’t an outsider, you can learn these skills by joining those in your community who are. Look for the new people in your workplace or town, who are probably hanging out together. There’s always room for one more.

In candor, I’m approaching this topic with a fair amount of bias. Being an outsider early in my adulthood was the most positive experience I have ever had. At 25, I moved to a foreign country where I didn’t speak a word of the language, and knew not one soul save for a woman I hoped to marry, but who spoke little English. It was brutal, but life-changing in the best way. After a few years, I had lost my fear of new things, whether it was an unfamiliar language, working with strangers, new love, or a community hostile to foreigners.

That woman became my wife, and subsequently became an outsider in the United States. Over the past 30 years we have moved many times, as have our now-adult TCKs. Our youngest, who is adopted from China, attended three high schools during an especially peripatetic period in our family, and then chose a college in Pamplona, Spain. The changes were hard at first, but she is flourishing, just as the data would predict.

Original article here