What was the energy like in your household growing up? What emotion moved things along in your growing up? In my household,, my father lived in the emotion of anger verses aloofness. During the aloof period of the curve, he would ignore just about everything and let things be as they were. Then one day the controll switch would go on and suddenly the household was in the full active emotion of anger. The house could never be clean enough; no matter what we did we could not achieve a clean enough house to appease my father. So for most of our days our job was to remain invisible. It was important not to be noticed and above all not draw attention about anything because the anger switch could go on at any time.
There are other households I know about where the emotion that moved things along in the house was anger. Anger was pervasive and the answer to everything. It was a famous quote that I heard at one point in time. Anger is a great motivator.
So I grew up working always to stay out of sight and to never be a target of angry people. It was so much safer to be invisible. In my case, it did not work well for me. I wanted to be invisible yet my approach to life meant I would be a shining extrovert - loud and proud. It is the man who wants to be noticed with applause but wants to make sure he can deflect the applause and step aside. You can't have it both ways.
Our goal is to be safe and continue to be setting our own sacred space. Our sacred space can be about taking care of ourselves so that we are feeding ourselves spiritually.
I always remember a workshop I did years ago. During the Sunday of the workshop weekend, one of the people I was partnering with said to me,"This is a good day to die!" This was from a native american phrase about our ability to take risks and explore. In the midst of the morning circle, the workshop was an open end discussion. The workshop leader looked across the circle at me and pointed out how much work I put into 'hating myself.' It was the point of recognizing I was not being authentic and it was so simple to just be who I was. Later during the day of the workshop I did a native American exercise where I was rolled in a carpet and my job was to fight my way out. It felt like I had no fight left and no breath. There came a point when the choice was either give up and die or fight my way out. I fought msy way out and later that day ended up sleeping for a few hours just centering myself after the work to just be fully conscious and fully present.
So when you were growing up what was the emotion of your birth family? What were some of the ways you held your sacred space? Now that you are in full adulthood, what steps are you taking to change your home emotion? What steps were being taken so that you found your way forward?
This is really importan because we want to break the cycle and change the emotion we live in! I have promised and vowed to myself that I will not end up with the same kind of energy in my life as that with which I grew up. I take the extra steps to make things different.
It is what allows me to be safe and to be working with self-care. So it is about the self-care steps we take. So what are your self-care steps you take to work on balance and work on spirituality?
These are interesting questions and the answers change everything1
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