I’m Doing Better about Doing Worse

By Mary Pellicer, MD
photo by John Pellicer

My life has always had up times and down times, as long as I can remember. Sometimes I’m on top of the world and everything just flows with amazing ease. Other times, I get “triggered” because of one of my unhealed issues and everything comes to a grinding halt. Nothing flows and when it is really bad, it feels as if I’m slogging through mud if I try to move forward.
In my long ago past, these times would be times of spiraling downward and beating myself up. But, slowly over the years, I’ve learned more and more how to love myself—even during these tough times, or I should say, especially during these tough times.
So now, when I am triggered, and am feeling terrible I take the following steps:

1) I declare, like Judith Viorst’s Alexander, that this is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!!!!!

2) I love myself anyway (after all, this is when I need love the most), the best I can, even if it’s just a tiny bit, (this is a key practice at Renaissance of the Heart and it does get easier with practice).

3) I decide not to beat myself up (I have tapes and tapes on how to do that but don’t stick them in the tape player in my head) and I decide to be okay with doing worse.

4) I mope, sulk, read or watch movies or whatever escape mechanism I feel drawn too. Remember, I’m not beating myself up so I just let myself do this little escape from the reality of my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I don’t pretend I’m not doing these things, or try to hide them. I just decide to engage in this behavior for as long as I need to, knowing full well it’s not moving me forward and do my best to love myself the whole time. I am brilliant at these escape mechanisms so what’s not to love?

5) I accept the consequences of my behavior—if I eat that whole box of cookies I know I am going to feel absolutely dreadful in a couple hours, but I may decide I’m going to do it anyway. I work really hard not to lie to myself or pretend I’m not doing what I am. Did I mention I love myself for being such a crazy nut?

6) Sometimes sooner (the more I love myself the sooner it happens) or later I decide to work on healing whatever it is that’s coming up. If I’m really, really stuck with a dreadful case of the “poor me’s” I get some help from a friend (thankfully I have two of the very dearest friends, Nancy & Ceitllyn) who are also brilliant healers.

7) Then once things are past and I’m back on an even keel and moving forward, I learn what I can from the experience.

So with this plan in place, overall I’m doing much better about doing worse. I encourage you to think through (before you need it) your own plan for handling the down times so that eventually these down times are just little jaunts down into a valley that gets you further along toward cresting the next ridge on your journey forward through life.

We’d love to hear any other ideas and strategies you have for moving through the “doing worse” times.

From My Heart to Yours,
Mary

We’re Human Beings, not Human Doers

By Nancy Smeltzer
Photo by Dave Berry

With the beginning of a new year, it seems as if I and my healing partners, Mary and Ceitllyn, in Renaissance of the Heart, are growing into a new facet of our understanding on how to facilitate healing for ourselves and our clients. For a long time, we have gotten intellectually that we need to surrender our ego and intent to the Divine. After all, who wouldn’t? They have the big game plan, and can see far beyond what our limited human capabilities can perceive regarding all the implications for a given issue. Still, doing the surrender and wanting to surrender versus being the surrender are quite different matters.

For a long time, in our workshops, http://www.renaissanceheart.com/workshops.php,
We’ve stated that we’re human beings, not human doers. We set our intent for ourselves or the client, serve as catalysts to get the process going, and then get out of the way so the Divine and our client can do the healing. In other words, as we say down south, “Get your picky paws out of the way!” However, I know for myself, especially if it’s one of my core issues that I’m working on for myself, the “helper” part of me starts wanting to “do something”. Just surrendering and being in the still quiet of not doing, a thing has been a hard lesson to learn. It’s much easier for me if I have a set of rules to follow, or mantras to say or SOMETHING to do. However, what we’re finding is that the process will go much more quickly if we just set the intent, merge with the Divine and then just “be”.

In our Level 2 workshop, we teach the beginnings of access to an amazing state of existence called the State of Being. In that technique, you begin to access the quiet yet exhilarating state of being one with the Divine and the Universe. However deep that experience was for me when we were shown the process several years ago, it’s only a glimpse at how profoundly connected in you can be with the Divine when you get past the fear of doing so. I can hear some of you asking; “Why would you be afraid to be ultimately connected in?”, but, for me, at first, it was rather scary. There was a part of me that felt as if I was dying, or wouldn’t “be able to come back”, or was losing my essence in the process. Those feelings weren’t exactly conducive to my “letting go”, since it felt as if I were caught up in a survival mode. However, having done the surrendering enough now, and my demise did not occur, it’s easier and easier to surrender. Teaching the process to others, however, will probably be part of our level 11 workshops. For the time being, we’ll just do it for our clients.

The problem for me is knowing when I was doing, rather then being. Ceitllyn gave me the metaphor of being in a plane with the “seatbelts need to be fastened” sign on.
When I start feeling restless and want to “get out of my seat”, that’s a clue that I’m trying to do something. Another is when the setting up the intent sequence feels difficult to do. Our take is that connecting in with the Divine is our natural birthright, and if it’s feeling hard to access, then we have some resistance to doing so that needs to be healed. Since we just discovered this new to us process of connecting less than a week ago, I’m sure that there will be many more discoveries along the way. We’d love to hear form you regarding your own experiences of connecting in with the Divine, so please post a comment. That way we can build a community of like-minded souls that we’re calling Renaissance of the Heart. Why not come along and join us in our discoveries.

Love to your hearts,
Nancy