Whole From The Start
  • Home
  • Offerings
    • Tend
    • Shamanic Healing Ceremonies
  • About
    • Aowyn Jones
    • Work With Me
  • Testimonials
  • Words
  • Contact
remember who you are

Witness Yourself. Try Vulnerability. And Give Everyone a Break.

3/15/2016

0 Comments

 
​Life seems so blissful and peaceful and easy. When I don't leave the house, that is. As soon as I start engaging with other human beings and the world in general, all kinds of crazy shit comes up. Because it's all about relationship, isn't it? That's where the juice is. That’s where we are triggered, and it’s where we get to observe ourselves. It’s where we get to discern whether or not we’re in alignment.

​We humans take things so personally. We are quite beautifully sensitive – much more than we give ourselves credit for. Sometimes we are co-creating a painful situation, and sometimes it truly is not about us at all. It takes mindfulness to witness our inner world. It takes courageous vulnerability to accept – or release – responsibility in our relationships.
For example:
A long term friend and I recently experienced an opening in our relationship where we each lovingly acknowledged some things that have stood in the way of our closeness. For my piece, I revealed that I greatly admired her skill as a therapist and agreed with what she had taught me around a certain topic, but I had felt watched and judged by her for years, which had triggered feelings of insecurity. As a result, I learned to protect myself by withholding what I valued most - I diminished my spirituality, a core piece of my existence - in her presence. In response, she revealed that she had indeed been judging me - and that her judgment came from being triggered due to some extremely harmful experiences from others' spiritual bypassing in the past. This was a huge revelation for me! I had made the assumption that because she's a brilliant woman and a skillful therapist and communicator, she must be operating from a place of wholeness at all times (an extremism that holding on to false beliefs about myself can bring).​
Picture
Because of our shared vulnerability in the safe space we co-created, I was able to drop my defenses and see her with my heart. I was able to hold her and me with a real sweetness, a real love. I realized that the judgment she displayed wasn’t about me. As a result, I started to feel a new freedom to be my full self in her presence... and to love and know and care for her more deeply than before. We were each able to acknowledge the truth of our experience, see a hidden tension that had been between us, learn about our own experiences and behavior, and become closer – and more free to be who we are – as a result. ​
​It’s easy to idolize people and think that everyone but you has got their shit together - so it must be something you're doing or saying that's wrong and is causing your suffering. Take that one step further, and you stop letting your heart guide your actions, deferring to others’ opinions instead. There are so many powerful people in the world! So many people who appear to have it all together in one way or another - whether it be in their skill set, their social confidence and connections, their thriving career, their ability to state their needs, their successful marriage, their spiritual path, or the way trouble rolls off their back like water off a duck. So many beautiful, amazing people. And all of them are HUMAN. Which means that they have things to deal with - different things than you, but just like you all the same... and their stuff can come out in ways that perfectly trigger YOUR deepest stuff. Welcome to relationship, my friends. ​Welcome to your opportunity to see yourself more clearly. Welcome to the opportunity to shed the strategies you’ve designed to keep you safely disconnected. Welcome to your opportunity to be who you really are.
​As I laughingly said to my husband earlier this evening, some fucked up thing in you attracts some fucked up thing in another person, and you are drawn to each other to learn and to heal (totally uncouth, I know. I’ve learned the value of levity).
​Here’s another situation:
You are the executive assistant to an internationally recognized motivational speaker. He has helped thousands of people to witness their inner experience and transform their beliefs in order to manifest the lives they want to be living. You love your job, you get along with your boss, and all is well... except that today, he has completely turned on you. He seems to be searching for things to correct or criticize. Each time you pass each other in the hallway, you feel a thick tension in the air. You feel edgy and you start combing your behavior for errors. What have you done to negatively impact the business? Why is your relationship with him suddenly in the garbage? You breathe and take some space, finding stillness and then flow. You soften. Without judgment, you witness your behavior and discover... nothing. You are doing your job as well as ever. There isn’t even anything to forgive. You recognize that his behavior is unusual. Later, you find an opening and engage him in authentic, heartful conversation about something meaningful to you – gently engaging the trust you know exists between you - which changes the energetic charge in the room and slowly rekindles your connection. After a few minutes, he reveals that he'd had an argument with his partner just before he came to work… where he saw you… and he’d pointed the blaming finger away from himself for relief. You rest in your knowing of your self and hold a spacious lovingness for his experience to unfold. He thanks you, apologizes for unjustly blaming you, and makes use of your offering to process his feelings. The air feels clear again.
​Every interaction is a gift from God. And when I say God, I mean your Higher Self. I mean Source. I mean the One who takes every opportunity to steer each of us back to our innate wholeness by way of triggers and awareness and courage and vulnerability and healing and LOVE.
Picture
Humans are human, including those people who seem to everyone else like they've got it all figured out (like you, perhaps). Sometimes we aren't seeing something about ourselves, even though we are affecting others by our unconscious behaviors. It takes slowing down to understand what’s going on. It’s a combination of slowing down, looking at what’s being reflected back to us, witnessing our inner landscape and our behavior... and then, even when our behaviors and the beliefs that cause them are conscious, it requires great courage to acknowledge what's happening. Vulnerability with ourselves and others can open wide the doors to personal healing and reparations.
Every single one of us is worthy of love and compassion: you, me, that coworker who flew off the handle again today, the helper who's great at healing others but can't show up in relationships, your lover who can't relax into physical intimacy, your parent who can only connect on the surface level, an acquaintance who entices you to want to spend time with him but always waits for you to initiate a get-together. Our best work is to be exquisitely mindful of our inner selves and how we do and don't show up in the world. Our best work is to love ourselves. Our best work is to give everyone a break. We’re all doing the best that we can with what we have or haven’t learned and what we have or haven’t healed and how we are blindly bumbling along or choosing to show up in life. Wherever we are on our path, every interaction has something of value, and every single one of us is worthy of love and compassion while we interact with and co-create this Great Mystery.

Blessings on your exquisite journey.
​Love,
Aowyn
0 Comments

The Medicine is Here For You. Help It Do Its Thing.

3/2/2016

0 Comments

 
Hi Sweet Hearts. I just wanted to post a quick note about receiving good medicine. The prescription is short and sweet, but it can have a profound effect on your experience of life. Check this out:
  • You walk into a room and see your good friend. You head toward each other and embrace. You squeeze tight, release and move into a greeting and conversation... but it takes a while (and maybe a drink or two) to release a certain tension. 
  • You're telling your boyfriend how you like yourself, but you wish you were more this and less that because it would make your life better in these ways and he says, "You are perfect exactly as you are." You smile, tell him he's sweet, and continue with what you were saying.
  • You're telling your friend about how you worked through a challenging situation with one of your employees. He tells you he really admires your ethics in business. You say, "thanks, man" and change the subject.
  • You’re having coffee with a friend and she says something that completely resonates with you and your life experience, but at a higher level than you’ve been experiencing. You say, "that's great" and keep the conversation moving.
Four really simple situations, right? Notice any similarities between them? In every one, "you" kind of blew past the medicine you were being offered. Call them compliments, call them love, call them what you will - I call them MEDICINE. The kind of medicine that can move deeply into your brain, into your soul, into your karmic patterns and make change in you. The thing is, you have to receive it. You have to make space for it to enter you. You have to give it some presence for the medicine to do its work on you. Let's look at those situations again:
Picture
  • You walk into a room and see your good friend. You head toward each other and embrace. You hug from a physically solid place (ie. most or all of your torso is in contact with hers, and you change your footing so that you're firmly balanced on your feet). You become aware of the fact that you're in this (precious, rare) moment of closeness with someone you care about. You stop thinking about what you're going to say. You are just present. You just breathe. You notice that it feels good... or maybe it feels awkward or horrible, but something in you is thankful anyway. You hang out in the hug for 20-30 seconds, enjoy the closeness, and let it change your chemistry (this piece is science, by the way. It takes at least 20 seconds of hugging for scientists to see a rise in oxytocin, sometimes called the “love drug,” which reduces blood pressure and cortisol - stress hormone - and improves sleep patterns). You end the hug, smile, make eye contact, feel real gratitude... say “thank you"... and then start catching up on each others’ lives.

  • You're telling your boyfriend how you like yourself, but you wish you were more this and less that, and he says, "You're perfect exactly as you are." You feel yourself ready to skip over that and keep talking, but you recognize that those words are MEDICINE. You ask him if he would say that to you again so you can really get it, and he agrees. You take a deep breath and get really mindful - maybe you even close your eyes - and you ask him to say it again. He says, "You are perfect exactly as you are." You let the medicine into every cell of your being, without expectation. You simply receive. You give it a full minute to soak into you - or more than a minute - you give it as long as it takes. You feel how it makes you feel. Maybe you realize the truth in his statement. Maybe you realize that you actually don't believe that about yourself, and you get curious about why. When you open your eyes, you release yourself from having to pick up where you left off in conversation. You give thanks. You start from here.
  • You're telling your friend about how you worked through a challenging situation with one of your employees. He tells you he really admires your ethics in business. You don’t respond; you just feel into what he said. You know this is true of yourself – yes, you have strong ethics. You truly value fairness. You like this about yourself – that you are living evidence of these good values. You look up, smile and say, “thanks, man. Yeah, fairness is really important to me.”
  • You’re having coffee with a friend and she says something that completely resonates with you and your life experience, but at a higher level than you’ve been experiencing. You pause for a moment and let the wisdom move into you, applying it directly to your self and your heart like a balm, then smile and say, “thanks for that.”
Things like this happen all the time. Everyone has medicine, and they are all great opportunities for sparking some amazing things in you. Truly receiving love medicine can help to heal past wounding. It can bring you right home to who you really are. It can actually change the neuropathways in your brain - moving you out of habitual ways of experiencing life into new, beneficial ones. It can help you to believe in yourself. All of which can have dramatic effects on your entire experience of life.

I’ll just offer one more example from my own life. I hope this is useful to you; it sure was for me.
​
My husband Peter (back then he was still my boyfriend) and I were going to change both tires on my bike. Actually, he was going to teach me how to change a tire. You see, when we met, I hadn’t ridden a bike in over 20 years and actually had to re-learn how to do it (I can assure you, it wasn’t like riding a bike). I was out of practice riding and had never done any bike maintenance at all. Peter was going to change one of the tires to show me how, and I was going to do the next one myself. While he was changing the first tire, I started to have a mild panic attack. The panic attack consisted of these ingredients: I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed. I felt stupid. I was sinking into an old belief that I was not a handy person, that I wouldn’t be able to do it, that I was too slow, and that I’d be judged and chastised for all of that. Tears were silently rolling down my cheeks. All the while, Peter was happily changing the tire, talking to me and paying attention to the task at hand. When it came my turn to change the second tire, Peter looked at me and asked what was going on. I didn’t explain to him that as a kid, there wasn’t a lot of patience with my pace of learning. I didn’t explain that I felt humiliated before I even began. I didn’t explain that I hated doing things like this for these reasons. I just said, "I don’t know if I can do this. I need your help." A moment passed. He said: “You’ve got this, baby. I’ll help you if you need. Just take your time.” I paused for a minute to take that in - to take in his MEDICINE. He was encouraging me. He was being patient. He was going to help me if I got stuck. I felt all of that. I looked at him – really looked at him. My boyfriend. Now. Today. Right here, in our backyard of the house we live in together on this gorgeous, sunny day in my adult life. I took in the fact that there was all the time in the world for me to do this. And I felt a sense of trust that allowed me to begin. I felt challenged a couple times while I worked, and the panic flared up again. Each time, I just stopped and breathed and got present to what was actually happening right now - as opposed to how it was in the past. I wasn’t being rushed. No one was annoyed with me. It was ok to not know how to do this the first time I did it. How could I? I had never done it before! Yes, it really was ok to not know how to do this the first time I did it! I asked Peter which tool was best, which angle. I stopped and sucked my finger when it got pinched. He waited. All of this I soaked into my cellular structure by being mindful of my experience: I am doing this for the first time, and it's ok. I'm right where I'm supposed to be, and there is all the time in the world for me to do it in. And I got that damn tire changed. That awesome new tire on my kickass mountain bike that I love. Yes I did. And each time I tried to do something that required tools or building or fixing, I let myself feel more and more worthy of time, attention, and skill-building.
Picture
​So. All of this is to say: be mindful, people. Everyone around you – every single person and every experience in your life – has medicine to offer, whether it's about changing a tire... letting go of a beautiful but boundaried identity... supporting another... or anything else you may be healing in yourself. You can pay a skilled therapist to see this stuff in you and guide you toward healing (I will always recommend Hakomi therapists). You can come see someone like me who will work mindfully with you to make change by the grace of the shamanic realms. AND, most importantly, you can know that every single person -  every experience in your life - is here by your choosing and your creation (consciously or not) to show you where you need healing and to bring that healing on, if you are willing to go there. The only thing standing in the way of you receiving the medicine is you. So be mindful. Slow down. Take your time. Take it in. Feel gratitude. There is love and healing for you. It abounds. The Universe is conspiring for your healing and your total experience of freedom, if you want it (and you do, or you wouldn’t be reading this right now). Open your eyes. Listen. Slow down. Take the time to let the medicine move through you.
​It is yours, if you will have it.

We are all on this journey toward who we really are. We are all coming home.

Loveblessings,
​Aowyn
0 Comments

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    October 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2016
    June 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    July 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    March 2013
    February 2013

AOWYN JAYLEE JONES  ::  541-639-2545
© COPYRIGHT 2015. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • Offerings
    • Tend
    • Shamanic Healing Ceremonies
  • About
    • Aowyn Jones
    • Work With Me
  • Testimonials
  • Words
  • Contact