Historically we were encouraged to duck and dive the challenges across the male/female divide. At home, girls are raised to follow their mothers behaviour and instruction from their fathers. If discussion and argument are prohibitive, if shouting and powering over was the “normal” then girls learned to placate and please and be nice and develop the ability to “read” the situation for its potential danger. Better to tuck under and placate then risk greater punitive challenges.
Many authors offer commentary on the abuse of power in the world of Art, Theatre, Music however, I
really, believe we need to talk about sexual harassment in every area of our Culture: politics, health care, education, science, medicine, research, film and theatre… I cannot think of one area of our culture that doesn’t have this associated with it. I feel as women we need to stop making “nice” with it, and call it what it is.
Recently in our Meditation The Way of Effortless group, three young women shared things experienced in this past week, sharing there experiences and what they chose to do about it, here:
The 1st one: She had just had her hair done and feeling joyful and delighted with how she looked, she was walking down the street in Vancouver, when an older man approached her on the street, and said “Nice” and winked at her. Instantly she rejected his comments. She turned and quietly said in a very steady voice “I did not ask your opinion” She turned and walked away.
(she didn’t do the usual, accept his “compliment” uninvited as it was, and then try to make NICE with it and ensure he felt complimented back by his comment)
She felt fully empowered and yet needed some assurances too, as this was certainly “not a normal thing to do” sharing she had never done this before.
The 2nd one : She was walking back to her office and felt a man FOLLOWING her, entering into her building she saw him come in with her. When she got on the elevator, she had such a strong feeling she had to do something, even though there was a group of others in the elevator, as she entered it, he did as well. She suddenly stopped pushed the door OPEN button and got out, HOLDING the elevator door, she held her hand up in the STOP position and asked him to get out. She then said to him, “stay right where you are, I’m calling security”, stepping back into the elevator she called security as the door closed leaving him there in the lobby. Others in the elevator with her where shocked, and she felt she had saved him getting to other floors where he might have done something. Listening to her intuition and the strong feelings within, she stepped beyond her comfort zone and took action.
The 3rd one: The woman was on a dating site, when the emailer started referring to sexual actions and she said to him “Excuse me?” in the text response, He responded with “well what do you expect” she responded “to be treated with respect” and deleted his account.
NONE of the women were upset, they just acted with volition in the moment. They took their power and said NO.
When we are in fear, of losing our jobs, losing the part, threatened outside our comfort zones, there have been times where we stopped and just let it go, pretend it was not feeling like it was really feeling, that pressed down, panicky feeling wondering what’s going to happen next. And often when the thing passed without anything further happening – it was like a “lucky break” so I won’t talk about it, I won’t complain, I’m just so glad nothing bad happened.
And yes, even when bad things do happen, we fear retribution and tuck under and just hope it never happens again.
This is abuse of power, it’s no difference in the church, or any other place where some have an inaccurate belief they hold power over others.
In the past women learned to make light of the issue and just get past it, however, when we do that, we create issues for ourselves in our beliefs around who we are, and what our real power and purpose are. We are not here to subjugate ourselves for anyone, especially when forced.
In the case of Sexual Harassment for anyone (because men get it too) it is not very far off bullying, this powering over – because they can.
Make no mistake, this “locker room talk” is not about sex, it’s objectifying women “I have power over you, and I’m going to show you just how much.” It assumes a weaker person will give in, under the pressure to the one with perceived power, Like Jennifer Lawrence who agreed to a naked line up and still remembers the feeling of the degradation even now. That is a psychic rape. Anyone in a position of power over others, has a due diligence to take responsibility for that power, using it with care and service to the other. Just as parenting can draw out an abuse of power over the child, we as humans must rise above this base behaviour that creates a sick addiction to subjugating other humans.
There doesn’t have to be anger or charged hysteria.
We can say no. In fact, No. is a complete sentence.
The interesting thing is most of us have a bad experience of authority growing up, usually it’s with our parents, then we have this with teachers, and eventually we have to come back to our genuine or authentic authority –eventually we grow up and stop whining about what we didn’t get and go get it for ourselves.
The scary thing is we actually can go get what we want. What we wanted all along. We can just go get that. And yet we can’t either. We get stopped.
When we walk the road we are supposed to walk, we have the opposite of civil authority, and we become in touch with authentic authority.
When a person is being authentic, they have authority. They are in their power. They don’t have to fight and argue, scream or go home and beat their chest and sob their pain away. They recognize who they are and they see who others are, and they accept what is in the moment.
Things can change, often they do. In fact, change is the only permanence we know
We get confused, so we don’t trust our own natural authority. When people fear not making a mistake, and fear being imperfect, we let others fill in the gap, we trust others with our truth, our sacredness, and we let them destroy it, or try to. Usually another that does this kind of thing is out of touch with their own sacredness.
Listen, it’s only money. If you put the money aside what are you really arguing about? He didn’t love me enough? If he didn’t that’s down to two things:
He didn’t love himself enough to start with and should never have been in relationship with any other human until he sorted that out in himself.
You didn’t love yourself enough to know that no one else can fill your love quota except you. A person can tell you a million times they love you, if you don’t love yourself, you will reject it.
It’s not good enough love, it’s love that you don’t want, or like, it’s meaningless to you, it’s only physical, it was just about the money, it was a place to live, for a while I loved him…
No, you love, and it’s there forever. If it comes and goes like the sun behind a cloud does, then it wasn’t love, that might be friendship, affection, physical touch, even good kissing, but that’s not love. Love sticks around, it goes through hurt and pain and sadness, and it sticks. Love exists beyond pain. Love exists beyond the grave. If you get good love in a lifetime, it can change everything for you. And good love is not necessarily coming from the hot guy or the great looking chic. Often love starts out in friendship, caring, similarities, sharing, building core values in a relationship that begins to mean something. Then love grows – love for you in that relationship. When you love yourself through another, you can learn what that love would be like if it came through you. That kindness, that regard, that joyful connection. That’s love. And it will grow with care. Love only grows with care. Demanding and commanding love, is like asking the cloud to move on so you can own the suns rays.
Doesn’t work like that. Love grows when it’s tended, with care, dignity, kindness. Then love grows. If you are doing other in a relationship and wondering why it’s hard, argumentative, judgmental, and lacks kindness… then again, it’s not love.
Finding the dream of the self means tapping into our own genuine authority As we get closer to the self and the dream, we are in touch with our own genius, and this can be a painful place to hang out. Usually there is some wounding going on in there somewhere. If we are in touch with our authentic self, we are in touch with our own personal healing. Healing what we need to heal – not what someone else judges us for and condemns us, telling us you need to go get that fixed – no I doesn’t’ work that way, You hold all your own answers, and if you don’t believe then just let someone try and help you heal. Or fix something, or point something out to you or correct your behavior, or ask for something different than you are giving them. Just let them try. I’d like a seat at that one, just to observe of course
When you change your life you change everyone around you. And most will resist your change unless they are changing too. Especially family.
And often they pretend they want you to stay the same, don’t change, but really most people are just focused on themselves about 99% of the time, and when you ask them, beg them to listen and help you with a problem – what are the delaying tactics you’ve witnessed? Lets go get something to eat first, I need to use the bathroom, there’s the phone.. Just give me a minute…on it goes. So pay someone to listen to you, see if they really hear you, or are they working their own model of what you need to change too? If you sense someone is envious, your gifts are becoming more pronounced, because there is a penetrating and damaging energy that can come in when you get in touch with your gifts. People don’t like it. Not really, because it flies in the face of what they are not doing. Sure go fly that plane, write a book, figure out a challenging process… say no once in a while and just see what happens.
You don’t have to explain anything, you don’t have to give your reasons, send notes, text others, you don’t have to do that. Did you know that? Its ok for you to just do what you are doing. If people ask, you can be responsive, or you can even tell them, “I’m working on myself right now I’ll let you know when I figure this out”. It doesn’t damage relationships… it does set boundaries and that is a healthy thing.
The self is not innocent the self is the union of opposites, the self is interested in experiences of all kinds, it’s not interested in playing perfect, or pretending there is a right or wrong, it craves experience in all its many forms.
We can act out the shadow side; we can see it in others, and in ourselves. Some pretty dark and disturbing stuff exists within the shadow nature of the self.
The normal boundaries maintained by the ego, keeping things separate, now collapse. When there are zero boundaries the shadow can swamp the ego. Now it’s let me out of here time. And that’s really not an option. I’ve had it on good authority, that if you leave unfinished work in this lifetime, no matter how hard it might seem to face this life, in this moment, if you opt to cut your work, apparently you just get to do it over. Either on that side or in a repeat performance in the next life. We never really get away with anything, no matter how mad we get, we have to deal with it. AND it’s been my experience if you avoid doing your work you just get to repeat the patterns enough times until you are saying to yourself, “hey haven’t I already been down this path several times? How come I’m here again?”
A healthy ego is needed to structure the energy. There is a slight difference that makes the self move towards the good, instead of the dark side. It’s humanity that keeps the self in a positive state, or pretends it’s trying to be positive, all that discipline and gold star business when we are little kids.
They get us worked out fast, “want the treat? Ok, work hard then”… And it just carries on; want the guy? Work hard. Want the job? Work hard. Want the house? Work hard, want the … and we dig in, lets go get this one done; we know all about working hard to get something by the time we are two.
What is the de-fault state? What is the fault of the state you de-fault to? What state are you in daily when you are not pretending to be perfect, ok, up on everything? Who is the authentic you? Do you know?
The self, itself can manifest anything. It’s us that don’t want the negativity the authentic self can’t be wounded or damaged by anything. It’s eternal, it’s without ending. The ego is the buffer and it knows it’s got a limited time line here. When the self is in the ferocious mode the ego steps in and keeps things in order. When all the stuff stops, and there is no one or nothing around you, what is the state you default to? Can you name it? Is it anxiety? Fear? Anger? Judgment? Who are you when you are just being yourself? Listen to yourself the next time you eavesdrop on your state, – are you criticizing others? Judging you, depressed, that’s a good one. What about obsessed or controlling? Powerless? Have you tried the state of ambivalence? There are so many choices, its really sad we kind of create the default state, and drop in there every time there is a pause in the play. Where did we go?
If you think of the other emotions, peace, love, joy, happiness… what about those states? Do you have to change your state to get into those states, or wait for something good to happen to motivate you towards those states?
Do you actually know what they feel like? If you felt one of those states, would you dismiss it? And return to what?
The faces on the temples are there to say, don’t come in here – unless you understand that the sacred is also the most deadly. Sacred and sacrifice are two sides of the same place.
The sacred always involves power, so we have to have authority when there is sacred around. A Move towards the sacred is the increase of power and the shadow activates the ego. The ego steps up its need for control and suppression because there is a lot of power moving around.
The increase of spirit is an increase in power. Imagination is the core power that increases the spirit – Imagine yourself… with a new default state… what would it be? What would it look like, feel like, sound like? How would you know it was different? Can you maintain it ? What happens when it goes? What do you go back to? Are you aware of who you are when you are not trying? Sometimes it’s exhausting isn’t it? Just trying to be… something
So there is a certain way along the path where you have to recognize it’s not ok to keep doing what you are doing. You can’t keep saying, “well I didn’t know”, because now you do know. Once you know you really can’t un-know it. It’s hard to set up these lies to ourselves, and then endeavour to maintain them, it’s gets really busy when this happens and takes a lot of extra effort to keep oneself out of the know, when you really do know.
This is the shadowy way of dealing with power. This kind of authority is controlling, threatening, dangerous,
There is a danger of becoming the one that is guarding what is sacred – then you aren’t really close to the authentic power you are just maintaining the status quo, and protecting the sacred for everyone else. A sacrifice, remember I mentioned, it’s close to the sacred?
You have: Two ears, two eyes.
One eye sees what everyone is looking at and the other sees what is there.
One ear hears the conversation; the other ear hears what is not being said.
If you won’t see, and don’t want to listen, don’t want to feel…. The default state is ready and wiling, It entertains the ego and allows the “normal” default state to emerge.
Everyone has both language and sound within the sound combined with the image, and each person is here to connect to this, which is within them, and bring it forth. And it’s vital that you do so. And you won’t until you get in touch with your authentic power.
YOU are essential! Stop; telling yourself; you are not.
And …Everyone has this saboteur that stops and cancels it – this is the essence of the questions when we ask:
“What stops you from getting what you want?” it’s the saboteur – and only you can do that to yourself. No one else can, you have to grant them access to your secrets, let them trash your sacredness, give over your power, diminish yourself, lay face down and let them walk over you… and only you can do this.
No one makes you do anything. it’s all by choice, agreement and often a trade off to get something you thought you really wanted at the time, but later found out, it was one of those things that drops to the back of cupboard, and eventually goes out to the garage sale.
It was just some glitter, looked exciting, but then it really wasn’t what you thought it was going to be in the first place. Just a facsimile of the real thing. A faux version of it, but not the real one.
Dreams are the world trying to come through now. Why stop them? They are the access point to your genius and it’s trying to reach you one half of every 24 hours. That’s a lot of dreaming.
The saboteur is the shadow self, the critic. Just about to get what I should be doing, and the critic comes up, and cancels it out. “oh maybe someone will object to what I say? Would they be upset with that? Someone could be offended? Would I hurt someone’s feelings if I spoke my truth?”
This is the shadow, and you need to be alert to the shadow and know that this is so, and how does this work inside me?
What triggers this in me?
The critic is the exaggerated sense of self, you can’t get rid of this, better to make peace with it, know it, and let it chew down on small things that can help you do better in areas you are sabotaging yourself. Like cleaning the toilette, sorting your paperwork, making the timely commitments etc.
The critic is useful – it helps you get aware of the saboteur. Your parents gave you the internal saboteur, and their parents helped them out the same way. Essentially right now, most of us are dealing at least seven generations back with this stuff. You know the material:
Don’t get too big for your britches… we know who you really are.
Contact me today for more information on this program, it’s just brilliant. 604-421-1722
Sometimes its the hardest thing to do!
Who am I?
What do I want?
How do I get it?
How do I stop myself?
What if I don’t get it? What if I do?
What would I have to give up to get it? Maintain it?
Mindsets –
I can’t have that
He’s too good for me
I’ll never be able to get that
Words carry energy
You start to believe them And other people start to believe whatever you are saying too
Where to start?
Go back to the start or origin of the story? There was a reason you began to distort, delete and generalize your power in this way. Do you remember why you created this version of yourself? Once a client shared with me, she was quite attractive in High School, and got teased by her brother a lot at home. He would joke in front of his friends, “oh she can get any guy” and they would all laugh at her. So she started to tell a different story to stop/interrupt their teasing. She would say things like “I’m not that, I’m not, I’m fat, I have freckles, I’m not that good in school, I’m not that smart with math or sciences…” and the guys would nod and leave her alone.
After a while they stopped teasing, but the story stuck there inside her mind rolling around. A story to make people stop bullying her, had become her story to share with the world.
Another client shared her father wouldn’t listen to her unless she had a problem, then he would begin solving it for her, and it was always the wrong way. And he always added that it was a lucky thing she had him to figure out her problems for her otherwise she would be lost in the world. At 55, she’s still suffering from this internal “installation” that she is lost without her father’s guidance.
Powerful positive thoughts and feelings far out-weigh the negative ones
Recognize your story, it’s origins, and take back your power from them. Cancel, clear, delete; and create brand new images. Take all the colour out of those images and make them grey, black & white and just blow the dust away. They are not true. You can be attractive and still be smart too. You can solve your own problems and if dad has no other way to connect with you that’s his loss.
Replace negative statements with a single positive word
First get rid of them, use : Cancel Clear Delete or Cancel Cancel Cancel. And just stop the thoughts.
What if I can’t what if I keep thinking them? Notice the minute they start and STOP right there, now do something else to distract you from that thought. Still persisting? Then hear is what you tell that persistent internal voice that is really just trying to help you “So What”. So what. So what.
Inner mantras you can do for yourself right here:
I am –
I will-
I am doing
I am being
I control my own thoughts, they no longer control me,
I am an abundant wealthy millionaire and I feel it in every cell of my body
I am in a successful relationship that feeds all levels of growth and potential
I believe in myself and my ability to create what my heart desires most
Your thoughts and words match your life, and these are the only ones you tell others. This is who I am. And they are the only things you listen to from your inner voice. Go ahead and connect to the inner voice and those things it sometimes says to you: “I’m not safe, things are out of my control, I’m suffering, I don’t know what to do”
These are all generalizations, that are deleting true information, they lump all the images and inner voices into one big jam up. And it stresses you and tumbles about in your mind. Go ahead now, and reframe these using the positive reframing:
I am safe right now
I am in control of my life right now
I choose not to suffer in any way
I know what to do to help myself right now
Your thoughts and actions create your reality
Make another choice, Right now!
A Great Exercise:
3 goals you want to come into fruition in the next 90 days and then next 12 months
What you really want and not what you have been told you should do or want?
What are they? List them now
Stop, take a breath , relax, what do you want?
A great place to start is what is your dream for your life? What is it? What was it – if you have to go back, what did you want to be when you were seven?
Historically we were encouraged to duck and dive the challenges across the male/female divide. At home, girls are raised to follow their mothers behaviour and instruction from their fathers. If discussion and argument are prohibitive, if shouting and powering over was the “normal” then girls learned to placate and please and be nice and develop the ability to “read” the situation for its potential danger. Better to tuck under and placate then risk greater punitive challenges.
really, believe we need to talk about sexual harassment in every area of our Culture: politics, health care, education, science, medicine, research, film and theatre… I cannot think of one area of our culture that doesn’t have this associated with it. I feel as women we need to stop making “nice” with it, and call it what it is.
