Self-Love

Opening the Capacity to Love

Tiffany 6 Comments

Each of us has an infinite capacity to love.
Yet we put rocks, sand and baubles in our jars
Out of fear, out of pain
Blocking our ability to fully receive
And acknowledge the vastness of our own greatness

Allowing the stories we’ve told ourselves
about why we cannot love
Gives them further solidity
Occluding from within the flow of love.

This truly is a labor of love,
Literally and figuratively.
For to clear the congestion,
these objections to love
Is to remove them, to inspect them,
To feel them, and allow them simply
To be, this is the lesson of love they were
Meant to be.

It is always our choice to see.

Namaste

images: Google

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Using the Imagination to Cope with Emotions

Tiffany Leave a comment

Her fingers shook as she raised the black clove cigarette to her cracked lips. The golden light as she lit the clove created a patchwork of dancing light and shadows, revealing deep wrinkles in the skin of her face.

Soon she began to speak as the smoke poured out from her lips in puffs. “I want to control everything. I do not trust anyone,” she said while her shoulders were drawn forward; bearing the burden of the world and caging her heart.

I understood her fears, I told her as we stood at the entrance to a dark cave. I listened, nodding my understanding as the words poured out of her mouth like acid. I understood deeply, as she was the personification of my anxiety.

After she finished speaking, I experienced a deeper calmness. I had allowed myself to hear, see and experience my anxiety, to where it released the need to gnaw at my gut.

To up the ante, I saw myself sending her love. After all, that’s all my anxiety ever really wanted; to be loved and accepted.

This method of using the imagination to have a conversation with our emotions is based on the book Inner Work: Using Active Imagination and Dreams for Personal Growth by the Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson.

While Johnson uses more dream-like modes in his examples of active imagination, I find that this “personification method” tells me quite a bit. I gain a good deal of information based on what the emotions say, their demeanor and their appearance. By listening to them and also sharing my own perspective, I am able to regain a greater degree of peace.

This process is quite simple. While sitting in a supported position, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, then allow your imagination to take you inward. For some reason, I see myself outside of a cave and maybe another setting would work better for you. Once there, call forth an emotion that has been troubling you. You can name this person. Write down your conversation as it occurs; it helps to further the process. Following the conversation, give the emotion love or at least appreciation.

I’ve personally found this method more effective than riding the emotional wave that I’ve described here.  I hope that you find this helpful in your journey.

Namaste

Image: Pintrest, no credit given

 

Breaking Relationships

Tiffany Leave a comment

Tapestries frayed with time
don’t hold the same face
held in place
by pure will and strength
afraid to let go
the fear of the unknown:
who? who would replace?

non-severed ties
tug on strings
pulling back together
bumping into things
that smother
where flowers decay
and green shoots wither

it seems like
i’m stuck in “Groundhog’s Day”
where each cycle
leads to the same resolution
just a new revolution
of the clock
circling the same drain

how to break this
circling of caravans,
impending decay,
strings pulling on things,
unwoven tapestries?

Patching broken pieces
back together lovingly
with stitches thrown
from one’s own heart
relinquishing misplaced others,
Knowing another, someone better
indeed does exist.

Main image: google

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Accepting Others

Tiffany 5 Comments

It is within our ability to accept all aspects of ourselves, the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly, that allows us to more fully accept and appreciate others. Compassion begins within. 

(C) 2017 Tiffany Cara

Allowing to Let it Go

Tiffany Leave a comment

When we push away the feelings we don’t want to feel, the resisted feelings only grow stronger. It is in breathing through and allowing ourselves to feel (not necessarily act out) our feelings that allows them to move through us. It is gen that we can choose differently; to move forward. Letting go happens when we allow, not when we push things away. 

May we each allow a new voice from within ourselves its space, so we may move forward with a greater sense of grace.

Namaste

(C) 2017 Tiffany Cara

Stopping the Insanity of Dating

Tiffany 26 Comments

At a young age, I fell in love with the concept of love. I believed that to be in love with a man meant that all of my problems would go away. The knight in shining armor was a frequent fantasy of mine, though, he was rarely wearing armor in my mind. Ironically, it turns out that in reality the men I’ve been romantically involved with have had armor that was hidden, just below the surface. And so did I. 

When I decided that I wanted to end my marriage nearly 3 years ago, I believed that I would seamlessly walk out of his arms and into the arms of the “man of my dreams.” It’s great for me that this did NOT happen. For starters, I’d not have created this blog (today is my 2-year anniversary blogging, by the way!). Secondly, I would have just made the same damn mistakes that I made in my marriage; because I still hadn’t learned to love and respect myself. Thirdly, I would never have discovered that the love that I have been seeking all along has always been in my own heart. Finally, I never would have trusted in my own love. I did not believe that my love was enough, so I sought it in others.

I see now where I was running around, panhandling for love, seeking to put a few coins into my mostly empty cup. To seek that love and meeting of needs from someone else has only left me feeling disappointed, resentful, hurt and depleted. It is also crazy-making to seek from others something they can never truly give if they themselves feel broken or inadequate. Broken hearts only create more broken hearts. Hurt people hurt people.

So at 41, I’ve decided that I’m done with having a broken heart. I’ve decided that I’m over sorting through potential dating partners through on-line dating, or searching faces in a crowd for “him.” I’ve decided that I don’t want to waste any more of my life looking for something “out there” that is really within me. Only I can love myself the way that I need to be loved. Only I truly know my own needs enough to meet them fully.

The path to this decision has been tumultuous, unsteady and at times damn right frustrating. Now that I am here, I have a sense of peace and release that I have never experienced before. This decision has freed me to be myself more than ever before. This decision to stop dating, to stop beseeching, to stop putting myself in situations where I put my heart, and sometimes sanity, on the line has lead me to a new discovery; the well of my heart runs more deeply than I ever could have imagined.

While I still believe that there exists a “man of my dreams” and that I will meet him one day, it is imperative that until then, that I fill my own cup. If he is truly the man of my dreams, he is learning to do the same for himself.

Cheers to filling our own cups! Cheers to filling our own hearts with the very things we seek from others: Love and Acceptance. May we each find the peace and love within that we deserve, no longer only seeking it from others.

Namaste

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