Category Archives: values

Graceful Leadership

Culture, decolonising, Spiritual Skills, values, , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Lukas

There are many different ways to reflect upon the tumult of world right now. Indeed, the very sense that things are particularly tumultuous is in some ways a mirage, and like all mirages, is  born of perspective.

Reflecting to a fellow millennial about the relative tranquility of the 1990s of my childhood, it didn’t take long to think of some examples that demonstrate the extent to which this was not true for everyone. The Rwandan genocide and the war in the Balkans immediately came to mind, as well as famine in Somalia, the Oklahoma City, Port Arthur, the Japanese death cult that released nerve gas on the subway. The 90s weren’t really that tranquil.

But like all things that feel deeply true, and therefore should not be dismissed outright, I can’t ignore the sense that there is something different about this moment in time. I think this is especially so for those of us who live in the Western world, but if we expand that out to people deeply impacted by the goings on in Western world, it seems pretty clear that everyone is affected to one degree or another.

The key to making sense of all of this might be to open ourselves to the possibility or multiple truths, dualities and both/ands. This may need intentional nudging given that most of us have been socialised to believe in one overriding and logically derived ‘truth.’

Perhaps we can simply say that things are different, but also the same. In Indigenous science, the practicality of this might hinge on where we are, who we’re talking to or what we’re focusing on. In other words, truth as something fluid, and relational. Or it could just be a duality.

So what IS different about this moment?

Of late, I’ve been struck by the extent to which so many of the problems in the world can be put down to poor or unwise leadership, and by extension (though I’m not sure in which direction this flows), real eldership.

Bad leadership is of course not new. It is so not new that many people speaking from a modern perspective utterly saturated in bad leadership for hundreds of years, argue that it is more or less innate and inevitable. Such a perspective sees greed as omnipresent, force as the strongest power, and power inherently leading to domination and corruption. I cannot stress how wrongheaded and unwise these kinds of maximalist perspectives are in my opinion, but suffice to say, I do see it as useful to see this darkness as an inevitable part of human nature.

The potential to play host to the psycho-spiritual virus of greed (beautiful elucidated as a concept called Wetiko/Windigo in some Native American cultures ) and putting one’s own needs too far above those of fellow humans (and ultimately, the planet), is clearly endemic, and in a sense, a permanent potentiality of the human shadow. But it does not have to be so dominant as it is at present. Many cultures knew and understood this, and created environments to fortify against it by actively nurturing and fostering wiser ways of living (including of course good leadership), and also creating taboos that served to suppress it.

So again, what’s different about now compared with recent history? I feel the need to answer that question with other questions:

To what extent do the performative aspects of good leadership actually mean better leadership and less Wetiko? And is it better to have the symptoms and impact of bad leadership show themselves more subtlety and insidiously, inviting more trickery and deception into our lives, or is it better to have things boil over and fester openly, destructively and chaotically?

Here are two stark examples of these ways of being: the US President sending the Secretary of State to the UN Security Council to make the case for the 2003 Invasion of Iraq (and then doing it anyway when they said no) versus the US President not bothering with anything of the kind before taking the President of Venezuela; Israeli leaders throughout most of its history officially espousing a two state solution to the ongoing violence (even when actions belied this intention) versus the current Israeli Prime Minister declaring his open hostility to the idea, and arguably therefore, any hope of peace or freedom and self determination for Palestinians.

To me, of the many concepts that we can use as an easy synonym for ‘wise leadership’, the simple act of being graceful during hard times, especially with rivals or people who threaten you, is one of the better ones.

Grace is defined in the dictionary in two main ways:

    • smoothness and elegance of movement, and
    • courteous good will.

Its proto Indo European deep root is *gʷerH (don’t ask me to decode that!) and relates to praise and welcome. The possibilities for a rich tapestry of wise leadership and eldership under such a concept are profound. It means responding, not reacting. Welcoming not just people, but events, which means not rejecting things existentially. It means being grateful for hard things, not just easy things.

But back to the question. How much does what I’m going to call ‘performative grace’ indicate real grace, and how much do we need it?

To start with, ‘performative grace’ is on a continuum. Not as good as something more real, substantive and completely embodied, but meaningful, and better than no attempt at grace. And of course, we need to be on the lookout for genuine intentions versus pure trickery. Trying to do better versus merely pretending to care.

When the current US President was elected for the second time, I chided someone I know for saying “he’s no worse” than the other candidate. I had the benefit of a close up perspective of life in the United States as a social worker and knew that many vulnerable people were about to suffer even more.

But reflecting now, I think even beyond the direct impact of destructive actions, there is a clear difference between current leadership and what has come before in terms of the intention, or performance, of grace. And this matters.

To me it is clear that even a pretence of grace results in less short term suffering. The mechanisms for this are too innumerable and complex to be fully explained rationally. We just know it when we experience its impact, including in our own individual lives. Intention is an impactful force in and of itself.

So the more grace embodied in our leadership, even if it’s mostly intentional, the less short term suffering there’ll be in the world. But it’s beneath us — beneath our potential — to be forever stuck at only performative grace. Perhaps we need the most toxic and graceless leadership elements in our midst to dominate for a while in order to expose more vividly those blocks stopping us from having leaders that genuinely embody grace more fully.

We can grieve that we will all be hurt by this, and at the same time we must not only grieve, but allow ourselves the natural instinct of struggle to make things better right now. This might mean settling for genuine performative grace if that’s truly the best we can do. It often feels like the best I can do in my own individual life, with my own self-leadership, as depressing as that may feel.

However difficult, holding the paradox that we can both accept the need for harsh medicine whilst also striving to ease suffering along the journey is an important spiritual skill, for any person, culture or society.

Reflection: How can we be better at accepting where we’re at whilst also aiming for better, all from a place of grace?

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Calendar Year Reflections

Relationships, spiritual skills, values, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Blog by Valerie
Honour all ancestors – of land, lineage and spirit. Live in balance. This is a steady life’s mission.
And even after years of this commitment, I can still feel profoundly torn at times, like I’m being called to discard a deeply engrained aspect of identity. Coming up lately have been some foundational traumatic experiences that caused me to feel unsafe in the world. My father, an reliable ancestral helper, recently apologised for being cowardly in not tackling his trauma, and I was reminded/warned to keep honouring (demi) goddesses like Freyja, Inanna and Changing Woman. (Image of Changing Woman from a Diné sand painting)
I have also recently gotten the message that I have been doing well to ground on the land here and honour Mother Gulaga. And I have also been aware that I need to continue to do more to honour my totemic responsibilities with earthly non human kin, including supporting healthy marsh habitats and birds (my middle name is Schwan, swan in German, after all). I recently joined a local wildlife rescue group, and I’m visioning additional plants for our dams as visiting herons and ducks have been asking me to make the ‘ponds’ more comfortable for them, as well as water storage for us.
Similarly, I feel the need to honour food and medicine plants more. I’ve been working in the garden here, and collecting and drying herbs for teas and smudging. I have found that small acts can make a big difference; that plants and animals have pretty endless compassion and low expectations of us humans, and each intentional act of honouring is noticed.
Strengthening social connections honours our ancestors too. I heard someone recently refer to reading the news as a vice. I don’t see it that way. I see it as a social responsibility to the collective to do my best to hold compassion, give grace and send love each morning when I read ‘the news’. I am also in the process of becoming a citizen of Australia to deepen my social commitment where I am now.
We said goodbye to our dear Chloe last year, and welcomed a couple of cute guinea pigs. We are ready to let another dog into our hearts and home.
Nurturing my self, child, partner, and friends, sharing my medicine with community, and stabilising our survival and well-being continue to underlie all of these activities. I look forward to further home schooling and home steading, and Earth Ethos-ing with Jos and all of you reading this.
May you and we all be healthy and well and live even more fully and authentically in this time we refer to as the year 2026.
Reflection: What life’s mission is steadying your journey?
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The Paradox of Healing

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Blog by Valerie
Years ago when I took a uni course on social psychology my main takeaway was that people who use positive psychology have better mental health than those who don’t. But, if a belief or mantra that has been helping the person is shown to be untrue, their mental health becomes worse than people who have not used positive psychology at all.
That resonated, because years before then when I lived in South Africa, I used positive psychology to survive danger (murder, fire, death threats, riots — if you’re interested you can read about it in my short novel). I drove around repeating to myself, ‘I am safe’. It helped, and it was exhausting to keep up that mindset in such circumstances. When I got back to the US, all I did for three weeks was sleep, walk in the woods and cook. I had a lot to rebalance, and I knew my positive psychology coping strategy was a form of trickery, or sorcery.
I haven’t written much about sorcery because I prefer not to use it much. I think I’m in a minority among spiritual practitioners about this. But when we do sorcery, we’re potentially missing important life lessons, while also opening ourselves up to more powerful sorcery and trickery by others in a cycle of endless power games.
I consider it sorcery to do a ritual for a specific intended outcome, such as keeping myself safe in an unsafe environment, getting a specific job, etc. Note: I consider it a prayer or wish when doubt and openness are intentionally included. And I consider it rebalancing and healing when shifting trauma- based beliefs into life affirming ones, such as moving from “Life overwhelms me” to “Life supports me.” This is healing trauma trickery / destructive sorcery!
Consider the difference between a ritual with the intention of “I call the right job to me now”, and “I receive an offer for the job I just interviewed for within the week”. I like to use the phrase”or something better” at the end of many prayers, with trust that I can’t even imagine at times what would be best for me, and with the acceptance that what’s best will feel unpleasant at times. That’s part of trusting life and embodying a shamanic “I don’t know” mind. If for survival reasons you decide you really do want to just use sorcery to get the job, then I don’t want to lay any existential judgement about that being wrong; I just want to say that there are tricky consequences for that, often which we don’t realise until later.
There’s a common myth that healing can be completed, like we can cross it off a list. A wounded healer is often understood to be someone who’s “finished healing” in many ways and is ongoingly healing deeper layers in their life. There are some lessons that we don’t revisit in our lives, and others we are surprised come up again: “I thought I/he/she was over that by now!” (Image from here)
So much of why this is a myth is because we can’t transcend our circumstances. I can’t heal a wound around capitalism while living in a capitalist economy. I can make changes in my life to limit my relationship with capitalism, but I can’t totally escape it. Even if I went to live alone in the bush, totally naked and without a knife or anything manufactured, I’d still have had my life path and thinking shaped by capitalism to the extent of choosing  extreme rejection of it!
I have been noticing thoughts coming up about a belief in trusting that I have everything I need, so if, for example, my family isn’t around, then I mustn’t need them. I needed to think that way to survive estrangement; it was a balm for a big, painful abandonment wound that I carry. But I don’t need that sorcery, that positive psychology trickery, anymore. The truth is, I do need my family, and I am actively experiencing abandonment every moment of every day we can’t relate. What I can trust is that I need to strengthen my capacity to be with the pain of the wound. My capacity to be truthful and neutral about a wound is my medicine as a Medicine Woman. And embodying my medicine strengthens me and those around me. That allows me to protect myself better, so I don’t play out abandonment games with others in my life. When I have the capacity to accept and hold the truth, that I both need my family and don’t have them in my life, then I feel more empowered and more whole. The wound gives me purpose and defines my medicine. (Image from here)
That’s the paradox of healing: we’re strong and secure in being both wounded and whole at the same time. Sorcery, whether positive or negative, doesn’t give us that. It is by its nature, forceful and charged, not neutral, open, and flowing. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ever use it, but it does mean, we are wise to use it carefully.
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Honouring our Rage

decolonising, healing, Indigenous science, Relationships, Spiritual Skills, values, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Blog by Valerie
Rage matters. It’s a passionate, spirited emotion. Spirit keeps our inner fires burning and helps us feel alive. We need healthy spirits! I remember spiritual teacher Tom Lake, an Anglo-Celtic medicine man sharing that to try to get rid of one’s anger is to dis-spirit oneself. What we do with that energy makes a difference to our fulfilment, our personal power, and to the people and world around us.
Unfortunately social and political power are often not encouraging of us being our best selves. But we still have to live with who we are being and what we do.
I have noticed a pattern to the hateful messages I receive from other politically Indigenous folks. The person states their cultural affiliation (usually Aboriginal Australian, sometimes Native American), then attacks mine. The comments are about one of my online offerings, but are directed to an unknown reader using othering language. They open with language like “I’m really interested how she can claim…” while expressing no interest in dialogue. Most comments occur on weekend evenings from males. It’s clear the person didn’t read more than a paragraph or two about me and my life’s work.
I feel the person’s rage and see it as a cry for help. I send compassion, care, and a boundary of not engaging directly so as to avoid fueling flames of further divisiveness and violence.
We all get overwhelmed and are unsure how to direct our rage at times. I get that. For all of us who care about Lore and Law, who feel connected with Mother Earth and the ecosystems where we live, there is a lot to be angry about right now. Much about the way we are collectively living feels wrong, yet as individuals we can feel limited power what we can do differently.
Here are some ways that I find constructive to honour rage in the short term:
  1. Primal screams (you might like to add chest beating) and foot stomping;
  2. Big sobbing, raging grief (where you really let go and have a big physical cry);
  3. Physical movement (running or wild dancing are good options); and/or
  4. Musical, artistic or other creative expression (banging drums often helps).
In the medium and long term, I find these helpful:
  1. Practicing unconditional love and acceptance (especially with oneself and with people who have very different values and worldviews);
  2. Reflecting how to more fully live your core values and ways to practice compassion when you can’t (maybe you do some activism or make a small lifestyle change);
  3. Spending time connecting with landforms, animals and plants and attuning to indigenous science messages; and/or
  4. Setting and honouring boundaries to uphold important Lore and Law (like treating yourself and others with respect and dignity).
When I think about people behaving in ways that I fundamentally disagree with and find inherently destructive, it helps me to remember the cycles of the Earth: birth, life, death, and rebirth. Destructive energy leads to death and decay, and following that is an opportunity for rebirth. Death and decay is uncomfortable to be with, but it’s s purposeful part of our life cycle. Deaths of collective dreams and ways of being can feel very big at times, yet reach unexpected tipping points. I find solace in the quotes below, and maybe you will resonate with them also.
Let’s express our deepest passions and rage wisely to keep that energy flowing! Let’s allow toxic divisiveness and existential supremacy to die and decay, making more space for interconnectivity and beautiful rebirths to emerge.
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Parenting with Indigenous Science

Culture, decolonising, Indigenous Science, relationships, spiritual skills, values, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Blog by Valerie
 
There’s so much parenting advice, and so little I resonate with, so I thought I’d share my perspective.
 
Parenting is about building relationships through developmentally appropriate leadership (which is related to a previous post on governance and the YouTube video below on sacred leadership/eldership by Tjana Goreng Goreng, PhD). Kids, whether our own, family, or community, challenge us to confront triggers, fears and insecurities, as well as allow us to more clearly see our strengths, values and capacity to connect. 
 

 

When babies cry out we give them instant attention and soothing, but that is not always a good idea with older kids, much less adults! Often we set patterns into motion because of our own limitations (read about some of mine here). I knew a mother who considered her adult daughter mentally and emotionally fragile (which I didn’t). She martyred herself to avoid her daughter feeling pain and experiencing certain struggles. But some of that seemed to me (and the daughter’s therapist) necessary growing pain for the daughter’s development. And I felt the mother was projecting her own mental and emotional fragility onto her daughter because she felt unable to hold space in certain ways. They both seemed a bit stifled. 
 
I say that with deep compassion, because we all have limits and struggles. Part of the fulfilment of any spiritual work, and certainly parenting, is bringing our deepest challenges to the surface so we can make peace with ourselves (and our ancestors, younger and older!) to become even better leaders — i.e. more powerful, grounded, centred and humble human beings.
 
When I look at my child, I see some struggles she’s come here with, some that feel linked to her father and that ancestry, some linked to me and mine, and some connected to her context and the land and ancestors where we live. (Ie ancestors of spirit, lineage, and land). When I am able to shift something that she’s also carrying, I expect her to have a big emotional response because we are connected with very open hearts. My shifting innately moves her heart and affects our shared ancestors, and she has to process it too. All of that emotion is likely to also affect my husband, because we’re all very sensitive. So when I feel something shift, I both feel excited and tend to brace myself to be able weather some emotional storms that my leadership has set into motion. 
 
I’m very aware that being committed to deep spiritual work asks a lot of myself and people who choose to be intimate with me. I don’t feel like I have a choice, though, in the way a singer can’t (or ought not!) stop themselves from busting into song throughout the day. To stifle it is to self destruct and snuff out my life force. Parenting feels the same in that it’s not a choice, it’s an honour and responsibility that defines the structure of my life.
 
I remember a book that made news years ago about parenting being all joy and no fun. To me, that says the parent is overwhelmed and may not know any other way to lead and set up their life. I’ve seen quite a bit of a so-called ‘gentle parenting’ approach, which feels like a reaction to authoritarian parenting and actually seems to me to stress out the children by giving them too much leadership space and not enough containing and consequences to uphold values and norms.
 
I appreciate some elements of the ‘sturdy parenting‘ approach and agree that there’s a big difference between punishment and consequences (Image from here).
 
And I add to that an Indigenous worldview in which there’s a huge difference between deeming behaviours as unacceptable and judging a person as unacceptable.
 
It seems to me in an effort to limit the destructive impact of the existential judgment and punishment wound in the western worldview, there arose a popular idea that yelling at kids destroys their self esteem. I do not agree. I think expressing anger and showing that it’s an intense emotion that we all experience is part of healthy leadership. And after I express anger, I offer a cuddle. I tell my child that I love her no matter what I’m feeling, and that there’s nothing wrong with her. (And if I was angry with someone else, I make sure to tell her it wasn’t about her and still offer a cuddle if she wants.) She now says to us, ‘Sometimes we get angry’ with the same tone as ‘Sometimes we get sad’ or ‘Sometimes we get wrinkles’ (referring to what happens in the bath). It shows me she feels that it’s okay to experience intense emotions within herself and with others in her environment (Image from here).
 
Recently I sat down and cried before bed and told her that I felt sad because she had been very hard on me that day. It was the highest defiance and worst day of listening yet. I could tell she felt bad. She came over and hugged me and said, “It’s okay, I love you no matter what, Mommy.”  That helped fulfil me both as a parent and helped my inner child feel safer than I had with my mother.
 
Parenting, like other forms of leadership in Indigenous science, is an exercise in unconditional love and existential acceptance, while embodying core values and cultural norms and creating consequences for breaching them. I hope it resonates with you, and thanks for reading!
 
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Darkness

decolonising, healing, Indigenous science, relationships, spiritual skills, values, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

“Darkness is the purest form of light” is a teaching I deeply honour from Tiwa Elder Joseph Rael – Beautiful Painted Arrow. He says this because out of darkness all colours and possibilities emerge, whereas white light reflects and pushes all colours away. Darkness is a metaphor of the sacred womb where we all begin our lives in our mother’s bodies. And darkness envelops us each night (if we allow it). Within the womb of darkness is the potentiality for anything to be (re)born.

I heard an interview with Gina Chick recently in which she said that she spends most of her time in uncomfortable spaces. That is also my experience of living in a way where I honour darkness, and it aligns with the explanation of the Red Road discussed in a previous post, where we focus the majority of our energy on honouring ancestors, living our core values, and grounding respectfully where we are. (Image: metaphor of a plant that spends most of its energy building strong roots and connecting with other plants underground, and less energy flowering or fruiting above the ground)

I’ve found that when we are committed to a holistic spiritual path of allowing all feelings and thoughts to flow without existential judgment, when others we are in relationship with do not do this too, seeds of destructive energy grow bigger between us, along with pain, judgment, insecurity, and crazy-making cognitive dissonances. If both are willing to confront the resulting mess, come together to listen to each other and take responsibility for choices, behaviours, and resulting impacts (whether intended or not), then the relationship and trust between them can repair and deepen. Unconditional love means no existential judgment.

If one or both do not do this, then the relationship transforms into one with less trust, safety and intimacy, and it can even fracture beyond repair. And broken trust, as most of us have experienced, tends to be harder to rebuild than it is to grow trust and intimacy in the first place.

In a recent blog I shared that I have witnessed numerous people work for years towards something, then turn their backs at a pivotal moment in abandonment and destruction. Some stories and beliefs seem so deep they trick us into crazy-making cognitive dissonances that become hard to contain. Cognitive dissonance is when we feel split by words and stories not aligning with behaviours and actions. For example, if we believe we are a good friend and that means we don’t feel jealous of friends’ successes, yet we do feel jealous when a friend gets a new job and we feel stuck in job rut, then we might push those feelings aside and pretend they’re not there. (Image: let’s feel it all so the negative feelings ground and we grow from them rather than growing into piles of sh*t in our lives!)

This becomes even more crazy-making when we layer denial on top. If the friend who got the new job is like me, she can feel this jealousy rising and wants to avoid it destroying the relationship. Maybe she practices giving compassion and grace while hoping that her friend processes the hard feelings, and hopefully she processes some of her own hard feelings such as disappointment that her friend couldn’t celebrate her new opportunity with her. If time passes and the hard feelings persist, she might ask her friend to talk so as to clear the air between them. If the jealous friend is too scared, ashamed, unaware or in denial about her hard feelings to be able to take responsibility and process them and instead tells the friend with the new job that she’s crazy, she is happy for her and doesn’t have any jealousy, that becomes crazy-making for both of them.

Crazy-making takes a lot of energy to carry. It spirals us out of our hearts and bodies, creating separation from our truth. We lose integrity and the ability to experience wholeness when we are trying to be two people at once. In the previous example, the jealous friend trying to be ‘a good friend’ isn’t allowing herself to be authentic and a messy human who can both feel happy for her friend and a bit jealous as well. That’s actually making her less of a good friend and growing the seed of jealousy even bigger, creating more destruction in the relationship. To me, the best thing that could happen is that the jealous friend lets go of her judgmental story about identifying and behaving as a ‘good friend’ so as to create an opening for the two of them to have a real and sustainable friendship capable of withstanding pain and hard emotions. (Image)

Exercise: What stories do you tell yourself that limit your openness to darkness? You may wish to close your eyes and meditate on the question: ‘What do I believe about the nature of darkness?‘

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Spiritual Secret Sauce

healing, Indigenous science, spiritual skills, values, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

Over the years I have observed a number of spiritual seekers looking for a ‘secret sauce’ solution to their lives – some kind of trick or program that, if they followed it, would lessen their pain and make their lives look more like what they have in mind. I have numerous times had the experience of being ‘tried on’, sometimes for a few months, sometimes even for years. But when one is looking for a secret sauce, spiritual practices from any tradition will inevitably disappoint. Yes, some ceremonies or practices may resonate so deeply, even profoundly altering our life direction with deep healing in a moment or over a short period of time. But if we continue to seek ‘pow’ experiences, we will end up chasing the dragon on a hopeless, addictive journey. 

An important spiritual ‘pow’ I experienced when I was trying to move through suppressed childhood trauma that had come up in my late 20s. I did four ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon, followed by a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat in Chile (without warm enough clothing!); I felt for weeks afterwards as if my brain had been shaken like a snow globe. I had done that on purpose to move the trauma through my life over years instead of decades. I remember sitting in a hotel room in Peru and painting pictures, then ripping them up and reassembling the pieces to reflect myself. Life was very intense for more than seven years as a result of the pace at which I chose to ride that wave of energy, and miraculously Lukas rode through it with me, often saying he felt like he was barely holding on. I am glad to have moved through much of that trauma. My most recent spiritual ‘pow’ experience was the birth of my daughter. She turns three this year, and I feel like my nervous system is calming down from what the birth brought up. 

Last year someone who tried me on started working through my book, and after three weeks said to me they were done doing spiritual work because they weren’t seeing enough changes in their life. I was pretty stunned that this person was expecting such a short ‘pow’ turnaround in their life with so little effort. When I was very unwell in my 20s and finally found a naturopath who diagnosed the pathogenic bacteria in my gut, I remember her saying that with three years of drastic diet limitations and careful, targeted supplements I could expect to feel better. That sounded good to me as I considered how many years had led to my system becoming so sick. And it turned out to be true. (Image from an art installation in Sydney in 2020; sorry I don’t remember the artist!) 

These days I like to think about how long it takes a plant to establish its roots underground, all the nourishment required to even make it to the surface, and then the years of growth and renewal and moving through disease. I told that person that some seeds I had planted in my life over a decade ago were only starting to bear fruit for me now, and that I had been doing some of the same daily spiritual practices such as altar work and seasonal ceremonies for longer than that. Unfortunately, that person has become very dis-spirited, and I hope they find a way out of the dark hole they’re in. (Another photo I took at Angkor Wat years ago of an amazingly resilient tree)

It seems to me that a real spiritual ‘secret sauce’ is made up of persistence, patience, a daily practice, trust and faith in something(s) bigger than ourselves who care to help, commitment to core values that are worth living and dying for, grit and determination to stay the course, and a sense of humour.

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Clean & Dirty Pain

Culture, decolonising, healing, relationships, spiritual skills, values, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

I recently came across the concepts of clean and dirty pain. This is a well written deep dive if you want to read it before I share my perspective. I’ll describe it as follows:

    • Clean pain is when we accept and move through what life gives us in fullness of emotions and experience; and
    • Dirty pain it when we resist, deny, and layer shame, blame and guilt on top of the pain life has brought us so that we multiply our suffering and so as to punish or even torture ourselves. (Image from here)

It’s been my mission for some years now to honour all energies, feel all feelings, and witness all thoughts with acceptance, love and compassion. It’s been especially important this week as we’ve been a target of some online abuse, as well as rejection from a few people we care about who have become bogged down in shame. I am used to being a presence that some people find it hard to be with, but that doesn’t make it easy! I have purposely been to many dark spaces, and I have honed some fierceness through some soul-wrenching boundary-setting, and I understand that not everyone wants that mirror. Yet more and more of us seem called to move through intense pain, and it seems at times that our only choice is how clean or dirty will the path we take be.

I think about how those who are brave enough to share something soul-led, something real, in a world that is so often about superficial image and illusion, in a world that is so quick to judge, to dismiss, to be outraged and unkind, are those who will save this world…To be able [] to be ourselves, to share of ourselves, to have access to the dark parts of Self to bring forth what we will from our personal Underworld is perhaps the point of the human quest, or at least one of the main bullet points.–Mary Shutan on Facebook

I’ve written a few times about trauma being neurobiologically encoded in our brains at the intersection of disgust/aversion and terror. That Western science knowledge has really helped me to judge when I need to move through something painful and when I’m potentially re-traumatising myself. After many years, I now feel like my instincts and flow are trustworthy. It makes the pain a lot easier to be with when I trust that it’s valuable, and I trust when I feel moved to shy away or go into it directly.

Accepting clean pain might sting for a day or two, but it doesn’t linger or fester.

So, to the people who have been sharing disrespect and rage with us recently, we feel your pain and pray that by grounding your projections and reflecting compassion back as best we can, that you are able to feel something more than overwhelm.

And we want everyone to know that however overwhelmed you feel in a moment, you’re not carrying it alone. With thanks to Shannon of Providencia Waco for sending us this song by Alexandra Blakely, we invite you to close your eyes and receive this musical medicine:

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Witnessing

healing, Relationships, spiritual skills, values, , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

Witnessing is an important method of learning and healing. In a MOOC (massive open online course) I recently completed on indigenous early child development, witnessing was taught as one of the main ways indigenous children learn, to remind western educators to value it and not expect that learning needs to be in a lesson format. It seems to me, witnessing is how we all learn. We have to teach children how to behave in ‘lessons’ and other learning environments. But from when we’re tiny babies and can’t physically do much, we learn by witnessing the world without and our feelings within. (Image from here)

I’ve been doing a lot of witnessing lately with both political and social situations around me. ​Sometimes I feel grumpy and want to say, ‘Hey, don’t treat me that way!’, but I realise it isn’t about how someone is treating me, and I don’t need a boundary. They’re in pain and asking me for compassion, patience and grace. Other times I want to say, ‘Hey you don’t have to live in your hurt and believe that’s the way life is!’, but that rarely feels constructive with stuck and pained mindsets, and I don’t want to be unkind or lecture.

So I ask myself, what is my responsibility? 

I​n terms of larger social issues, I understand ​the appeal of ‘news fasts​’, because a lot of what’s reported on is hard to digest and happening physically far away​. But I feel it is my responsibility to maintain some awareness of struggles where I have ​a connection, and devote some of my time to witnessing reports from people there, feeling my feelings, and sending some prayers.

Witnessing can be incredibly healing​ because the other doesn’t feel invisible or judged. It can also be really hard work.​ I see it as an art, and part of the power of practices like ​s​acred circles, talk therapy, or confiding in someone. And it extends to our non human kin as well, as anyone who’s ignored their pet can attest. ​(Lukas and I had a cat called Marigold years ago who did what we referred to as ​’statement shits​’ outside her litter box to get her message across when she was unhappy with us​!)

Sometimes witnessing doesn’t feel like ​doing enough. I for one can’t take a photo or write a story ​about someone having a hard time and feel like I’ve done my job​ (but then I’m not a journalist​!). I tend to need to dialogue with someone or send prayers. Others might feel the need to donate money or time. One thing I’m wary about​, though, is rescuing. Sometimes we are in crisis and need to be saved from a bad situation. And yet, often the harder thing to do is to witness a struggle, wait ​to see if there is right timing ​for us to intervene, and accept that an intervention might just be a few gentle words or a reminder ​about a boundary. To overstep places us in drama we needn’t take on, and to avoid cuts us off from parts of ourselves and each other. 

That’s why witnessing is an art. ​And to all of you practicing it, I honour your work. Thank you very much for all of your unseen, valuable heart labour. (Image from here)

Exercise: Reflect on how you value witnessing. What do you tend to do when you witness something hard? What do you tend to avoid witnessing? What do you ask others to witness?

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