Monthly Archives: April 2012

The Spiral Change

I’ve done it! I’ve finished my business plan and my request for business seed money has been granted! With endings come new beginnings, and since the completion of my business plan I’ve been very focused on writing and creating this blog. One of my advisers noticed this, and recently in our conversation brought up his surprise as to where I am putting all my attention to.

“Shouldn’t you be more focused on Willows Lavender than your blog at this point? If you focus on many different things, you can only do a little bit at a time, but if you focus on one thing you can get a lot more done in a shorter time period?”

He was right. And so I informed him, that honestly, I just don’t know what the next step is with Willows Lavender. What do I need to do now?

We didn’t come up with an answer because we didn’t know what I needed to do. But this conversation did prompt me to pull some cards before I went to sleep that night. The cards that I pulled were: Inner Power, Self-Reliance, and Quiet Time. I spent some time feeling them and this is what passed through my mind:

  • Starting and running my own business is a huge step in taking back my power and owning it. I need to be in my power as a business owner.
  • This business is a way for me to become more self-reliant on myself, learn to find the answers of what I need to do next by myself, for I am full of wisdom if I will listen to it.
  • Take some time off from working and allow yourself to open to the wisdom wishing to be heard.

I thanked the cards, put them away, and rolled into sleep fully intending to take the next day off to work more with my own inner guidance.
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Spiral Times began in 2009 as an experiment, which each and every post has been since then. It began because I felt a need to share with others my experiences, thoughts, dreams and desires – many of which I have never taken the time to write down and post about. Spiral Times fell aside as life’s many lessons came full blast to me over the next few years until I was once again ready to post, which was last year at the end of 2011.

Never has Spiral Times lost its meaning to me, and today I would like to share with you why this blog is named as such because it is named for a moment that is still very vivid in my mind and that has greatly affected the way that I live and experience life.

In that particular moment, five years ago, my heart was being torn in many different directions. I knew that no matter which way I chose to go I would lose something important to me and so I couldn’t make up my mind in which direction to go. Crying out in despair for help, tears rolling down my face (it was dramatic in my mind so imagine it as so!), I was suddenly transported to another very different place.

I was walking up the slope of a white-blue spiral in a dimensionless and timeless space. The spiral expanded above and below me, and held other people who were also in various stages of ascending or descending. Sometimes they were even sitting or pacing back and forth on the spiral.

At the same time I saw and felt this, I knew that this spiral represented human consciousness. I knew that one could go up or down this spiral in whatever form or fashion one wanted to take. There were no good or bad, and no part of the spiral was better than any other part. However, the higher up the spiral one was the more “truths” one was aware of because the higher up the spiral the more “truths” one had lived. The higher truths encompassed and expanded the lower truths (for lack of me knowing the words that would better explain this experience without judgement I will use lower and higher even though no part on the spiral is better than another). Each person was living their truth, and as such was on the part of the spiral that vibrated to their truth. As each person lived they were making choices to expand or minimize their truth and change where they were on the spiral.

As I felt myself move up the spiral I returned to the living room and watched a spiral dissipate into the air, literally moving up from where I was.

This blog honors that moment that taught me so much so quickly. It was a moment that became the basis of many of my beliefs and that reminds me to argue less, to never try to convince or persuade a person, to bring compassion and understanding to every encounter, to all change to happen as it naturally does in life and with people. As your truth and vibrations change so does your life to match.

And yes, I get lost in the everyday world, and sometimes I’m not able to live these ideals, but the spiral reminds me of these ideals.

As I shift, Spiral Times shifts. Writing here for the last few months has allowed me to come to know what it is exactly that I really want to put on in the world at this moment. What I have been writing here doesn’t belong here. It belongs to Willows Lavender.

And so the Spiral Times is going to shift, make a transition, perhaps even experience a metamorphosis into what I’ve been guided that it needs to be.

On May 1st I will post again to inform you of any updates, and hopefully the Spiral Times will resume its journey anew at that time.

Until then,
Adios.

Who is Mirroring You?

What do the people around you reflect?

Many times I’ve come across the concept that the other people that I encounter are mirrors for what’s happening within me. The first time I encountered the phrase I sat back and contemplated it, rolling the phrase “People are mirrors for your inner self.” I knew it was important, but I didn’t quite understand it or realize it.

For many years after I tried to grasp the concept, tried to feel what it means for others to be a mirror of myself or to be a mirror for the person. I think once the concept is fully realized in a person will change the whole person’s behavior and the way they interact with people. Once fully realized, a person can see or feel the sweeping undertows of an interaction with another person and what is truly going on in a situation.

A small piece of Maya or illusion is removed.

Sometimes my brain has a very hard time conceptualizing a particular concept. This was one such concept. My brain twisted and bent as it strived to make sense of people mirroring me for a few years now. Often I would meet a person and do my best to see what was being mirrored back at me only to not be able to find anything at all. I would be asking the question: “What is it that I don’t like about them? What is it that annoys me?”

And if they were really annoying or infuriating to me I would say to myself, “Oh God, seriously? I really hope I am not like that at all!”

It was rare that the mirror would spawn deep reflection – my brain hurt – until I finally realized a small part of the concept just last month: Whatever I get annoyed about, I am. This was beautifully shown to me by the Universe and a friend of mine. I was complaining to her about how some people make plans: “They leave it all up in the air and I never know if we are actually going to meet or not! And I get so confused sometimes!”

My friend said: “You do that too.”

Stunned, my words died in midsentence. “What? When?”

She proceeded to give me several examples of when I had done the exact thing I was complaining about.

And it hit me: I am what I complain about.

Last week I witnessed a woman who was reflecting parts of me that I don’t like to look at or accept within myself. Because I refused to look at this aspect of me my reaction to her became stronger and stronger as I fought it – I wasn’t looking at my victim state because I wasn’t being a victim therefore why should I look there?

Deeper reflection over time revealed that there are still areas of my life where the victim mentality comes into play. By allowing myself to have a victim mentality and not being on guard of my mental patterns I step out of my personal power. I don’t take full responsibility for my life, giving it away to whatever fits in that moment of time.

Something else I have recently noticed is that in all the mirrors I’ve ever looked at, I was always trying to find what was wrong with me. I was always asking the wrong questions. I believe that asking those questions was part of the reason that I had such a hard time conceptualizing the idea – I didn’t believe that a person could mirror positive aspects of me too.

The Universe is not a tyrant.

The Universe is expressed in my reality right now as a duality – there is positive and there is negative and therefore mirrors in my life express both. Mirrors can be a positive experience!

Mirrors can be positive and beautiful too, just like you!

Realizing the other part – that you are a mirror for others – can change interactions with others as well. There are times when I have been hanging out with a person and something gets triggered. From my perspective I’ve done nothing to provoke or annoy the person, yet something happened for them that wasn’t pleasant.

Understanding that I may have mirrored for another an aspect they hate allows more acceptance and compassion to flow from me to them. Having experienced my own reaction to someone innocently reflecting one of my most undesirable aspects of myself in my opinion, I can totally empathize with a person who receives the same from me.

When a reaction like this happens, if a person is able to be conscious and allow the reaction to happen without judgment more clarity for both people can be attained. The person on the receiving end is able to step back from the situation and stay calm. He is able to practice allowance, his own wisdom and compassion. He needs to be able to decipher what is going in the situation – is he a mirror, or is he something more? How can he best respond to this situation? Does the reactor need space?

Sometimes the only thing the receiver can do is accept it. Sometimes the receiver must intervene. I would love to one day have the ability to take all with calmness and yet give out exactly what the other person needs to learn what the Universe is trying to teach, just like the story of a monk who threw his shoe at a student to make a point, or Jesus turning the merchants tables over in the temple in anger. (I’m sure most traditions have similar stories that I’d love to hear about as they bring a smile to my lips).

The person reacting needs to be able to fully react without judgment or fear, and learn from his reaction by having the space to process what happened and why. This must processing must be done on the reactors own terms and in his own time.

I feel like this happens quite often on a less extreme scale in many of my interactions with people, and part of the reason why I don’t want to respond to certain people or vice versa. I truly believe that every encounter with another is a learning opportunity. If I could use them all without being overwhelmed or driven crazy, I would! 🙂

P.S. Pictures in today’s blog posts were not taken by me. Click the image to go to the owners Flickr portfolio.

Self-Acceptance

The world is a wonderful harmonious place. It is full of sunshine, rainbows, and faeries. There are little Unicorns traipsing along the rainbows if you look close enough, and the fey regularly come out to happily play. The trees reach up into the sky unremittingly, the birds chirp joyously, and the plants all around us innocently grow. Humans help each other whenever possible and listen empathetically when appropriate. Time doesn’t matter  so there is no rush to accomplish anything because it is all completed right on Universal time. Laughter and joy permeate in the air around us. Kindness and generosity are regular occurrences. There is naught a harmful intention in the air for all is cared for and wonderful to bear.

This is what my brain naturally thinks of the world before I leave my bed. Then I get up. Reality is very far from the perfect fairy tale world that I like to think I live in.

I have been told over and over and over again certain things: The way I think is wrong. I am naive. The world doesn’t work that way. People aren’t kind and generous. I can’t trust people. Helping people is not worth the time nor expense – they are all trying to get something from you. Happiness is not possible unless you have lots of money. And yet money doesn’t buy you happiness.

Most of my life I’ve thought that I am weird. I view the world differently and that, I’m told, is a “bad” thing. I’ve allowed all of the thoughts listed above, and my beliefs about myself that are based on other peoples thoughts to stop my natural tendencies, personality, and who I am from being shown. By doing that I allowed my power to be taken away.

Now that I am in the process of taking back my power and stepping into it there is much to learn and many thought patterns that will gradually be reformed. One thing that I have noticed is that  when I am centred into my heart and grounded the outside worlds opinions don’t matter nearly as much, and I am able to confidently spread my joy and heart openly.

When I was in grade one or two I had my first jarring experience of not being accepted. My parents had enrolled me in a Christian private school that was rather extreme in a lot of their views and actions unknown to my parents at the time. What my parents were concerned about was the high quality of education provided by the school, which it definitely provided.

In class we had been asked if our parents were Christians. I didn’t raise my hand because my parents weren’t “Christians” by the schools definition of the word. The next day during the first recess I was approached by a group of girls. The leader of the group asked me “Is it true that your parents aren’t Christians?”

I, excruciatingly shy, nodded, surprised to be surrounded by so many people. The leader then informed me: “My mommy says I can’t play with you because your parents aren’t Christians.” The other girls nodded, and all of them walked away. I distinctly remember the feeling of shock, disappointment and confusion.

Reflecting on this memory illustrates to me that non-acceptance is taught or learned. It is a belief or thought pattern that until otherwise expressed most children would not think other than total acceptance of what is, whether that be a person, idea, animal, etc.

At first I thought self-acceptance was a value made up of a collection of beliefs, but now I’ve decided that self-acceptance is the sum of deeply ingrained beliefs. If a person lacks self-acceptance this shows with various statements that tell what the person thinks of themselves or believes  about themselves. The same goes if a person has self-acceptance.

The beliefs that dictate if we will or can accept ourselves for who we are define what we think of ourselves. All of these beliefs and self-acceptance rest energetically within the solar plexus chakra. Therefore, self-acceptance is directly tied to and effects  self-esteem, body image, stepping into one’s power and self-confidence.

Hug yourself! Your beautiful too!

Some of the beliefs that may contribute to not accepting ourselves are:

“I can’t do that because its too hard”

“I am too stupid”

“I am too fat”

Versus

“I am capable of working hard to achieve what I want.”

“I am intelligent. It is okay to make mistakes.”

“I am beautiful the way I am.”

The last couple of weeks I struggled with my own issues of self-acceptance. There were many people who came into my life who were mirrors for aspects of myself that I don’t really care to think about or look at. In fact, sometimes I refuse to look at those aspects. When the aspects of myself are mirrored and I find myself reacting strongly to the person mirroring the aspect I know that I am not accepting something of me.

One woman last week stood out in particular. When I saw this woman, I saw me. When I saw her victim state I saw mine. And this was repulsive to me. She was a reminder of a part of me, of who I had been at one point in my life, and I really did not like it. This was a part of myself that I found hard to look at never mind love. It was much easier to ignore that part of me and pretend that it had never happened.

And so I question: Is a person whole only when they accept all parts of themselves?

A person is whole when they are able to accept the fact that they are going to cry, be angry, be upset, have bad days, have bad hair, and that they have a “shadow side”. Sometimes we are going to think “bad” things, we are going to make judgments on ourselves or others, do things that we are going to regret. And all of that is okay. It is all part of our human experience and all part of our own personal journeys.