Vel Maaral - an individual perspective

 Vel Maaral has been my saviour in more ways than one. It has been the knowledge tool that has kept me protected in the dark of ignorance, pain, distress, and blocks. The Vel or the spear is known to be the breaker of barriers, be it psychological, physical, or any other level possible. So, it's safe to say in short that my life is an answered prayer even if my mind creates doubts, anxiety, fear and so on.

My soul has been placated like how a cranky kid's nerves are calmed down, and that's how I feel when I read it and each day feels like a new interpretation of revelations close to my life.

So, it's not just a loop of Tamizh mantras, but a medicine that cuts through the thick of layers that live entwined within us, and Vel Maaral liberates us from the karmic imprints as we absorb its essence in depth over a period of time. The Vel is the object and the essence in it all that has many functions depending upon the nature of inner demons - it can find its way through to the root of evil within us and bind us to faith and not fear, freeing us thereby to stay afloat and not sink under the weight of our unconsciousness.

The repeat nature of our everyday thoughts, imaginations, assumptions, and external influences makes it look as if we are caught in the web of the mind as it spins so many stories around our life experiences. But to weave a narrative which is free off the stickiness of past programming is a step in the right direction as our lives are woven in the direction that we project today. And I have at many a time looked at external sources of help to help reconcile my past with the present reality and my tendency to stay lost adds challenges of its own. But Vel Maaral has been the awareness creator as it helps me become aware of how far I stray(staying distracted) away from my current situation and how much are my fantasies and day dreaming feeding off off my straying in one topic of interest or another.

So, the focus is not to artificially create a velcro sticky faith to stay stuck on Lord Muruga or his weapon, Vel, but to detach myself from the loops of patterns which don't serve me any good today.

The enemy for me is not some strange looking person or thing on the outside, but the foggy, mystical, fantasizing, free flow of imaginations of my mind which is centered on projecting myself as a strong individual who is almost always trying to be right in her dialogues with others. An inner critic who is strong and simply unrelenting in the many forms it takes up in my mind as if to emphasize my mother's umpteen versions of her disappointments and criticisms on my health no matter how many doctors or how much care she thinks she gave - I could not shut her down then, but through these imaginations and my having the last say in each of those dialogues with her or with others, it's like I am finally getting to do that, but the damage is only on me, through me, like a self inflicting injury to cover the deeper wound within. 

I am yet to put to action the reparenting towards gentle self love that I so need to do, but my inner critic is so stuck on proving others wrong that I have truly negated my self growth even if I am painfully aware of the severely limiting aspect of adapting my beautiful, creative imaginations to the loops of criticisms, be it projecting on others or on myself.

It's almost like a judgement, all this inner chatter every day, and drains me off my life energy. I am thankful though for the Vel Maaral has made me straighten my mind out atleast this much with discretion and awareness of my own mind for now because I am not as alone and lost as I used to think I was. 

I can choose to better use my imagination and that is to create a new and maybe better reality. 

Imagination, intuition, perception, and sensing, deep conversations are all me (my inner strengths) for all along, but since I had so much of my repressed emotions and unexpressed feelings, and walking on egg shells in an emotionally dysfunctional family dominate my reality and my sense of self so much that I could not use my inner strengths in a way that would help manifest my external reality and be authentic to it to the fullest. The goal to be my actualized true self is something that's manifesting gradually as the supportive and assuring Vel Maaral is the weapon that breaks through and slays even invisible enemies as they surface to my reality and makes me better aware of the extent of my distress and helps to release them slowly and be in sync with the now.

 

A new core, a new shore

 All along I have lived like a deer in the headlights losing sight of my self priorities. It's a lot of confusion for who I was because I was made to feel guilty for who I was by my mother for whatever sensitivity I had in health as her frustrations, her fears over my health were superimposed by her and so I found myself constantly caught in the loop to appease her at the cost of prioritizing myself. My emotional sensitivity is something I was myself in the dark and the truth of that crept up making it impossible for me to ignore my emotions and feelings which was at a much later stage. But still, the knowing that I was made to feel a certain way about myself and the painful realization that I had chosen to disconnect from myself in order to stay blindly tuned to my mother's expectations was self sabotaging to say the least.

Now I don't go out of my way to be flexible for her. I just try not to get too rigid either in my stubbornness about embracing real change within me. Just giving in to her "love" a bit no matter how much of a bait she uses her love and care for me as, but she does that to wield her control over me as she is used to controlling me either through her frustrated yet helpless way of caretaking me as if I am a terminally ill patient back then. She made me believe that I am too weak and that affected my sense of self a lot. 

My will to want to fight back, to take a stand for myself, to take responsibility for my physical and mental health were all so limited by my mother's way of seeing me and that was me, the deer, getting blinded by the projected headlights of an external source, my mother, as I lost sight of my goals, my visions for my life and what lies ahead.

Life does not happen when you stay stuck in the comfort of who you think you were (no matter how weak, negative, ill willed it might be) but in the discomfort of who you want to become (as opposed to the expectations of others if needed) being fully centered on your true wants and needs.

I have been a survivor living off my mother's projected toxic love for me and wanted to assume that that's really true and good for me, but it isn't. She has steadily dampened my fire for exercising my will and I was so caught up seeking validation from her that I repeatedly self doubted myself and exercised limitations mindset on myself that I can easily adapt to and created ill will within myself for who I am and kept being in a confused space for who I wanted to be.

Her trauma of losing my father during her pregnancy seeded trauma in her womb and deep within me and I birthed trauma at each and every stage of my life being fearful, overwhelmed, confused for who I am and thereby numbed myself so much so that I stay sunk in deep unconsciousness of my self.

Her image of a sympathy gained from others victor (at the cost of projecting a negative image of her daughter) is who she has always been, and making me feel responsible for her state, whether physical or emotional, is who she maintains herself to  be. And to that effect, no matter how much is done feels not enough, specially when she steps out and it becomes mandatory to look out for her comfort at each and every step of the way which is exhausting to say the least.

My creativity feels stifled as my inner thoughts circle around the times of the past and the present which hovers around my mother and how much I have been taken for a ride.

Life is a journey but when you become other people's ride, then you need to get back to being driven so that you can take charge of your travel and your experiences fully.

I am tired of being other people's ride and I am not so altruistic as well, but just made to feel guilty constantly and hence had given in to prioritizing others, courtesy my conditioning embedded deeply by my mother's behaviors as mentioned above. And so I became a dumped site, thanks to few friends who assumed that my space, my calm is something that they can exploit and just validated for my being all so idealistic and giving and generous with my listening and time as I too let them believe and was never being true to myself while being with them. I thought I had to stretch in terms of empathy and understanding and that was energetically draining which I didn't realize back then but kept giving away my power, my space to accommodate others.

My heart flutters like tender wings,

And gets stuck in the pull of weighing down things.

It had to find its strength, the flaps continued to beat against odds,

To open my trust in believing myself and not stay enmeshed in others lives like peas in a pod.

Strength is when you stop saying you are weak,

But give yourself reason to trust that life ahead is not so bleak.

Wings without ascension is not freedom,

It's being authentic without fanning the fires in the belly out of boredom.

Mother wound was my cocoon and my comfort nest,

Walking on egg shells to not anger or sadden my mother, a daily test.

This is emotional abuse, I was not aware,

Didn't call out my mother out of shame, guilt and confrontational fear.

 I revisit this wound scratching the inner surface which isn't my core,

The need to let go the old and connect to my flow is releasing my hardened heart from the mossy shore.

Cutting loose from the compulsion to go round and round without finding a way out is a clear sign,

That the footprints don't follow you as much as you ruminate or whine.

The memories of feeling isolated and abandoned without support haunts me in silence,

I find comfort in the truths of my soul which speak softly to assure deep guidance.

My soul reminds me to speak to the repressed voices within,

To accept plainly their pain, their unspoken fears, sadness and anger without triggered spins.

To believe that I deserve calm and love and support is entry into my core,

The silence after this storm held me in its arms as I paddle my way to a new shore.

 

Release self doubts, embrace your truths as they are

 Self doubt is one of the worst diseases of the mind. It devalues a person's potential, her ability to look past her fears, blocks, negative thoughts and so on as one's self doubt keeps all these aspects alive as they all compound to self doubt.

It's a meaningless wandering where there is a never ending dead end and yet no way out of this loop of feeling stuck. How easily, how effortlessly is the submitting oneself to this dark void where the possibility of light is shut out by the individual herself. 

I have gone through 5, 6 years of submitting myself to the fires of truth, inner reflection, journaling, releasing, and so on, and yet have not gotten through the test of such times? The severe pain of emotional numbness is something I have realized over and over again and it leaves me feeling sad, tired at times, and in order to distract myself from this pain I binge watch some series or the other which is again another way to keep being emotionally numb but with a bit of awareness that I can't get too lost in that and need to find my way back home to my heart. 

I need some goals to translate my inner realizations into actionable activities and be true to my energies through the process. 

I have the courage to face my pains repressed through emotional numbing and have been blessed with beautiful divine guidance and intuitions, but now when it comes to holding myself as a sovereign being who's a culmination of all her experiences, good, bad, and everything in between, then why does the impulse, the desperation to get a job for my financial independence become a pressing factor in my mind. 

I take pride for my efforts, sincerity, and perseverance, to work towards self realizations of my inner world as much as possible, but without Lord Muruga's protection, Ramani's support, Amma's support in her own way as well, this wouldn't have been possible. 

I need to stand by this becoming of a new self as the shedding and letting go of the old has happened and is also a work in progress. I can't keep criticizing my past life with the awareness, realizations of today. Looking back at the past was/has been a compulsion, but the more I feel connected is when I stick to the present and be open towards future with hope and not anxiety.

I am okay today for who I am and the meltdown of the past has given way to acknowledging my inner wounds, but to keep ruminating on it or have doubts on how will I go further in life with self doubts, anxiety and so on is not going to help either. Just keep walking until I find a path that would help me stay grounded and also flowing in my consciousness and I believe that path has already opened and I am on it, but with triggers now and then about what will happen in future, how will I manage without this support, and how much can I rely on myself are something that comes and goes. It's ego at play probably, but as much as I learnt to trust myself through my own brokenness while bearing open my emotional wounds and feeling them, grieving them, and slowly finding the strength to let go of them, it's these that I need to remind myself as I have withstood the utter distress, depression, sadness, anger, and so much more of emotional numbing, and it's through the healing of these inner emotional wounds that has given me inner strength gradually, that the same inner strength will help me cross over and be the bridge to a mindful present and a promising future.

It's time for procrastination to go!

 Procrastination has been my placebo so that I can avoid getting sick as being out in the sun has for many a time caused headaches and nausea. But the underlying stress of getting criticized, emotionally abused has weighed far more and made me withdraw so much so that just procrastinating felt like the only way to sustain this want to explore life and come out of my addiction to comfort and getting caught in the need to seek validation from others if they find my health alright enough so that I can proceed with full confidence in working on a job.

In this way I had adapted to loneliness so much that whatever creative energies that could possibly flow on a regular basis got all stuck and stagnant owing to my old habit of procrastinating and self doubts.

It's so boring and so much a dead end when I am being supported nevertheless but there's nothing at this time left for me to stay inspired and dig deep into what I can offer creatively. 

I feel so exhausted for lack of goals, lack of vitality to want to seek out goals if possible, and simply submit to binging tv shows or Netflix series, as if I need to just spend time and not invest wisely on some healthy pursuit of a hobby or an activity that's enriching my mind. I feel equally sorry and sad and also angry and helpless as if the direction that I had set my sails for was so very seeking the shade of safety and not the risk of trying being under the sun.

I tend to give in to my mind's negative chatter without learning to shut it down from time to time. Staying absorbed in tv shows is not going to help silence my inner chatter, but it's just another way of unconsciously interacting with the dialogues, script, and flow of the content on tv or computer. It's absolutely exhausting even if I stay stuck in a spot for a bit longer than needed and not restful. It just gives me another distraction, another excuse to stay away from consciously interacting and creating and getting involved with creative pursuits possibly.

What skill, potential or creative outlet that was unnoticed, and completely neglected almost by my mother, my uncles/aunts and hardly appreciated is the very weakness that I have nurtured negatively in my heart for a long time and the weight of not being validated cannot capsize my creative strengths, no matter how oblivious my parents might have been. 

To see myself truly, fully, with warmth and empathy as I had wanted to just be spontaneous, give my opinions, be vocal about my confusions, fears, health challenges, and so much more has been so silenced by me out of lack of trust, lack of security at the house that I grew up in with so many people that my chest can't hold the overflowing pain and emotional hurts from numbing anymore. A big price to pay in trying to want to fit in with the crowd that I lost my voice, my confidence, and just kept being "nice" and quiet, and easily understanding, flexible, and everything that I maybe not. 

What's painfully real is how much I couldn't live for myself and self prioritize owing to getting caught up in all these programming. As much as it's on them, my parents. their emotional dysfunctionalities and in whose presence I tried to survive, but it's my choice finally to self sacrifice without any reason. For whose sake did I do that? And what did I gain by doing that? Just more trauma to bear, to repress, and stay entangled in them as if I can be as equally invisible as these insidious patterns. I am a product of such patterns anyway and I can't feign ignorance on the level of self sabotage that it has done unconsciously.

To put living to another day is the most disservice I can do to myself and no matter how much I can attribute to my past and getting so warped and deluded by them, the fact that I have let my life go a lot and have managed to live, if at all, is through my impulses, sudden flashes of ideas to cook a dish this way or that, sing thirupugazh, draw sometimes, but it's only when I do some job, some service for another that it feels meaningful. I do try to place others first since I am used to living through the collective conscious way and going with the others flow is what I do best. But the more I try to justify that it's working towards others and putting others before me first is all very ideal but it doesn't always sit well with me. I do this just to escape taking personal responsibility for my individual actions towards building my life and most often than not end up feeling scattered. 

Procrastination is not some safe keep deposit that will yield better results tomorrow - it's just a delayed way to come to terms that nothing will change even then unless some movement, some initiative is taken today. I can offer all the excuses I want, but staying stagnant without much excitement towards my life is pretty pathetic, and I can never expect support from others when I don't brace myself to support and work on self belief as a strong foundation to do so. 

Believe in your inner healing

 My mother put me through a lot of emotional abuse and emotional neglect as if I deserved them for being physically sensitive. Her trauma for being emotionally wounded for her expectations of wanting to stay with her partner, my father, got cut short so suddenly in 2 years time from her marriage and specially when they were pregnant with me, it was a sudden tragedy of losing my father to a massive cardiac arrest while she was 3 months pregnant. 

Her trauma seemed to fill me up from the womb that even if I got separated from her physically as an individual, my inner voice, my mind, my sense of self had gotten so saturated with her repeated outbursts of her trauma at her at each and every episode of my health problems, no matter how small and not so terminal it might be, but she enacted my getting sick as a way of lashing out her frustration at my absent father and being left all by herself to deal with me, that her technical way of taking me to doctors at each and every instance of my health problem was the only glue for me towards her as there was no sense of real love or acceptance from her for me.

 She thrived on sympathy from her brothers and their families and left me all by myself to deal with my repetitive ruminations about my past health issues no matter what be the circumstance for today - whether I do well at a job, whether I decide to change jobs, whether I think of stretching myself more for a particular goal/project etc, it felt like my past trauma of being shouted at by my mother, my emotional numbing at that time, and my unspoken and conflicted emotions had all been so bottled up that I kept repeating them in my head as means to stay stuck in trauma myself which has been so severely self limiting and has robbed me off of my precious self trust and belief in my self. And when my relationship with myself has been compromised, so convoluted with the frustrations of my mother's emotional projections from her tragic past, I internalized the same pattern of staying stuck in trauma as a way of criticizing my self and learning over and over again to adapt to my "limitations" -  adapting here in this case means trying to fit into my mother's super narrow perspectives of me and my life to the point that I got disconnected from my real sense of reality.

I was feeding off off her trauma so much so that I preferred punishing myself with negative inner talks, repetitive ruminative of past illness, and unfavorably bringing them up in my present day as if more and more loneliness, and such dismal inner darkness, and not knowing how to reach out for help and just staying stuck with self neglect, self doubt, abandonment, and continuing to adapt to my mother's sense of power over me which was not physical assault but giving into her emotionally abusing me over and over and shaming me for having weak health and making me feel guilty for the same at each and every health episode even if it be small one. She made my life a tragic reliving of her past and which I believed was true for me which just severely restricted me from knowing what my true sense of reality, choices, facing challenges, and learning to grow.

My mother may have been a recipient of severe emotional neglect and abandonment herself from her parents, her siblings and so on, but what she did to me cannot be taken in casual light, but is not the centre point of my life's concern either. I have healed better and grown better from within to realize that my life completely exists outside of hers and that I am not a subject of her emotional projections, no matter how tragic or sudden it might have been - it's her trauma and hers to handle. She is half foot in the grave now and has lived off my life by absorbing my ideas, objectivity, and even concerns. All that I am not is because of my withdrawing from taking personal responsibility for my life and expecting others to fix it for me. My mother assumed she was fixing it but all she did was break me further from my core. She only knew so much and I was not ready to outgrow my expectations at that time.

Being toxically interconnected through trauma which is mostly projected on me by her is not my moral obligation anymore and it's been made explicitly clear in my own ways. She has asked for a meek sorry for the same but that doesn't change the fact that she's still completely oblivious to the damage she has to me and to my mind. 

Now as I have worked on myself and with my God/Guru's blessings as well that I have realized so much of my inner pain and trauma that it feels like I am on the path of healing but through the suppressed and blocked road of pain which has now been opened and released for ease of navigation and flow of energy for over a few years now.

I may or may not get completely healed, I don't know, but trauma is never more important than one's truth and the truth is that it's never easy to let go pain, to be free from trauma and self doubts, but the more I embrace this truth that self love and genuine kindness towards my self changes my inner landscape as it has already begun to change, my relationship with myself feels different. All the unreleased understanding and blocked love from myself has slowly begun to open up and it makes me want to believe that I too can feel well from inside, I too can really heal, just one day at a time.

The answer to many a prayer

 Lord Muruga is a fierce protector and a kind guardian who makes you feel seen completely under His all encompassing eyes. He knows you better than you do yourself. Knowing Him can be your blessing if you allow your heart and mind open wide and embrace His wisdom to navigate through your pain and attain peace and reconciliation with your life, struggles, sufferings in it is what makes Him the true alchemist of your life experiences. Your willingness to submit your ego and persevere through your life's highs and lows with this newfound equanimity and acceptance is what Lord Muruga's grace feels like.

There's so much beauty in His compassion that it would melt the hardened walls of your heart and make you open to being truly kind to yourself and soften it so that His tests, His ways of letting you get closer to Him or vice versa makes it life changing to say the least. His kindness and acceptance of who we are just as ourselves is what moves us to try to work more towards letting our hurts, fears, anger, judgements, criticisms, revenge and so on go. This release is what is beautiful, unpretentious, raw, and simply authentic to each of our life experiences.

For lost and lonely souls who can do with a bit of support to get through the pains of their past and whose human lives in their human bodies feels unbearably heavy, dense, numb, and dark, His guidance, His different ways of loving and supporting you is like a soothing balm on insidious wounds - His mighty weapon, the victorious Vel, His spear cuts through the chords of all those layers knotted as roots of those wounds. 

My life in all entirety has been His blessing and His many miracles have kept me alive o matter how sudden the health issues. He has been my silent support even if my mind was ridden with so many voices, each dialoguing between one another and making me crave for living outside of this noisy space. Muruga's grace silences even the harshest critics in one's mind and it's a redemption of who you are, just as you are, and that's simply good enough to love Him, to be grateful for His myriad ways of being there for you.

He is the father that I never had, He is the friend I had always wished I had, He is the confidante who holds multi universes within His cosmic domain, He is the answer to many a prayer, and truly unconditional love in all His forms and names.

Don't get cornered but put the distractions in its place

 Distractions are needed to cope up with the stressors of one's life but getting so lost in distractions is leading oneself to the dead end of one's consciousness and mindfulness of reality. 

To experience self denial of one's true awareness of one's reality which is inclusive of goals, challenges, hurdles, and some joyful, healthy detractors that helps not get stuck in the trials of disappointments, delays of manifesting of one's goals and aspirations is in short to say denying the opportunity of opening oneself up fully to living.

Living is how well you experience, endure, learn, let go, and move on in response to life. This learn and play ground has room for all of us students to explore, create, have fun, and just keep trusting ourselves for how best we can do what we can and release what we cannot to get through to the end of our lives exploration as an all inclusive experience.

To continue to lighten up through the myriad dense layers of our past, of what can be changed and what cannot, and true acceptance of being a human through it all is what makes this journey a work in progress. Only when we are okay within ourselves to let go our heavy attachments to our toxic habits, hurtful memories, old habits which all put together are consistently and yet unproductively repeated and which acts itself out in our ways of being, behaviors, life choices is the start to our real transformation.

 Distractions then as means to cope up with the pain of real, deep change from within does not reduce the pain of letting go but to stay under the make believe fear and stickiness to our used to living from the past has to be addressed. Loosening up on the intensity of life transformative changes is important but not to the extent of losing focus of who we are in this process. 

We still continue to remain the core subject of our lives and no amount of objectification of people, places, things and so on as priority over ourselves helps. Therefore discernment with distraction is the need of the hour and the ask ourselves how we feel, what we think about changing situations maybe day to day or periodically is a huge way to bank on ourselves without losing trust in our inner strength, our efforts, and how far we have come so that self prioritization remains the core subject of our lives.

To be absorbed by the other and not have enough space for self is severely limiting and hence adapting to such a self defeating and unproductive habit is something I have been personally working on to let go. Many a distraction takes precedence whether it's social media, the neighbours, friends, family and so on, but to keep reminding myself that I am worth all the inner work in progress puts the distractions in its place. 

Home is where the heart is

 When you don't see your pain the way it needs to be seen and you expect for another's empathy to see your pain face to face, then it's most likely a way of blinding yourself to your own conditioning and trade pity or sympathy from others for acknowledging your pain as it is. 

And there's no better person than you to see and feel your pain with kindness and acceptance possibly and treat it with some level of personalized and truthful commitment. Stop expecting apology from others specially those who hurt you as a quick fix to heal your inner wounds which might have festered and become numb for long. 

To bring yourself to humbly accept your own level of ignorance, innocence, or even arrogance, stubbornness, and denying what's truly painful within yourself is to give away the opportunity to live life to the fullest whereby it's not just the joys and happiness which make memories but those mentioned above as well create some unforgettable memories which leave behind scars.

We tend to express how traumatized, lonely, and sad, not understood we feel when we tend to focus on the scars which is nothing but the shadow side of pain or pains in our heart. Staying stuck on the inner scars wounds us even further and disconnects us from our core inner wounds which we may not have addressed accurately for lack of articulate emotional expressions. But still it's a wound not tended or cared for and the more the wounds, the more the numbness, the more the depression that envelops the clarity of our thinking, feeling side.

The inner wounds need to come into light, into the truth of our awareness and what's repressed, stifled, shoved under the carpet has to come clean and plain without the drama of stagnant ruminations. 

Truth of who we were when we stopped choosing authenticity over collective consciousness needs to come in front of our naked eyes without the influence of rose tinted glasses of our preconceived notions, programming, and habitual perceptions of our reality on a day to day basis. Because reality of how deeply we have been hurt and how harder it is to process, regulate, release, forgive (oneself and the others) is exhausting from a soul level, but the fear of getting hurt by such truthful contemplations either by oneself or as guided by spiritual interventions, therapies and so on is what makes the rising of this unique and spiritually transforming aspect of the self so challenging and yet incredibly rewarding, and not to forget life changing.

To bear the dead weight of who we are not when alive is a bigger block and self sabotaging at the least and hence to resolve to commit to being true to this profound and deep healing within oneself is the most liberating and cleansing. 

The fragile interwovenness between one human to another within a family, community, country and so on are held together by truth which stays unbreakable no matter what the age, era, timeline - truth does not change, but the way we are held together by it as a human and living consciousness in this given time does matter. 

Our souls speak and listen in the language of our inner truths and that home is where the heart is. No shouting from the rooftops needed here, just a warm, simple, honest space where the soul can thrive and speak freely.

  

I give myself permission

 I give myself permission to:

Be true to my feelings whatever it be

Be true to my emotions, highs and lows, and take personal responsibility for how I connect to my life

Let go patterns, habits, heavy energies that bring me down.

To stay away from people and maintain healthy boundaries whenever the "holier than thou", "smarter than thou", more of this and that than thou" attitudes are implied in conversations.

Be kind to myself as I deserve to be in the limelight of attention I give to my body, mind, and soul.

Not ask for another's validation regarding my pain, conflicts, trauma, and inner landscape, whatever it be.

Be an individual who also learns to ask for support wherever required and not expect too much perfection from myself and refrain from staying in inner critic mode.

Be goofy, childlike, naïve, innocent, sincere, unassuming, moody, crazy, witty, adventurous, spiritual, simple, honest, and be a human finally.

Be playful and creative with my imaginations, creativity, and spontaneity. 

Be more forgiving, less harsh towards myself and give myself time, space to heal, grieve, release, rest, and connect with my life not as a numb duty but as a mindful and aware alignment with my mood, feelings, and emotions as a human on a day to day basis.

To snap out of patient mode and healthily embrace being highly sensitive, energy absorbing, intuiting, spiritual, observant, emotional, blocks releasing person. 

To believe that my present is healthy and well and that my future would be healthy and well as well.

To snap out of self doubts and stay true to what I sense, feel, and think about a given situation with openness.

To prioritize my life, my emotional, physical needs, my wellbeing, peace, balance and calm, and to stop making others, be it anyone my priority just to feel "more" useful, productive, and satisfy their expectations and so on.

To not focus on missed opportunities to become the individual that I could have been but put together all the efforts, struggles, brokenness, perseverance, courage, sadness, anxiety, creativity, spirituality, faith in a higher power and finally faith in myself to be the individual that I am today is all that matters.

Move past the pains of who I could have been and focus on who I am and what I need from time to time.

Remind myself every now and then that I am not a mechanical, impersonal, coldly objective, and self neglectful person that I had gotten used to be habitually and that doesn't serve its purpose anymore and that this way of my being has to CHANGE and change is for good, and that I am a beautiful work in progress.

Be a gift to yourself

 I was never seen as a child who would grow up eventually but had to be the mature one as my mother simply treated me as an infant who refused to give up the trauma and the overwhelm of delivering a baby without her husband by her side (and her having to bear the weight of pregnancy all by herself with my father's sudden demise during her first trimester) was something I could get to experience long after that episode had occurred and if I had grown up much more than the infant she still wanted me to be -  all easily manageable and pretty perfect when she used to go to office while the caretaker took care of me as an infant. But as I grew up and had a and still have high sensitivity as in bodily and also emotionally, she found that to come in the way of her functioning as an office goer smoothly and without any stress, and she made it a point to complain before everyone (her brothers wives with whom we both lived in a joint family) and made it a point to get sympathy for the situation she was in whether I had migraines, fevers, abdominal pains during pains and so on, her constant whining and feeling frustrated that she had to take care of me all by herself made it hurtful, confusing, and I started to feel more and more abandoned and wanted to remain invisible as a way to cope up the way my existence, my life was being projected as if I was a constantly repaired toy that she was really fond of but was irritated that it gave her lot of stress for being the way it is.

I could relate to myself as an 'it', as if an object which needed ultra high protection, but was treated like scrap whenever ironically I was feeling well and didn't have health problems as she would never bother talking to me any more than few lines of formal, courtesy questions just to check on me.

The how's of learning to love myself was something I looked upto from my mother and felt more disappointed, drained, confused, sad and so on as she could like me if not truly love me for who I was without any health issues, and this hardly happened even if I tried to suppress how I genuinely felt about anything in my life as I thought by suppressing any health problems, I would be better accepted.

She made me feel stressed for being who I am in whatever form of health that be and this truth I could not understand as I was not that aware back then and just tried my best to cope up with the circumstances.

She was in fact inadequate emotionally with her (im)maturity as she was not working on preparing herself to grow along with me and I had this unspoken sense of not able to be a child but to have to step to be grateful, obedient, and physically healthy in order to try to fit in into the shoes of my growing up years. I got stuck in those shoes and that affected my steps forward as it deeply affected the relationship with me and how much love and support I could provide to myself through organic self love.

Self love would only manifest if I give up the need to feel small, believe I am wrong and responsible for other people's mindsets, and genuinely let go the many layers that I had surrounded and engulfed myself in which is a constant state of disbelief for loving myself for who I am as I believed all my life that I would be loved only if I am so and so. 

And so self love is such an ignored, abandoned concept that I had disconnected from that I didn't realize that I would self sabotage my health, mental wellbeing further with one foot ready to move forward with the next steps towards my life advancement and another holding me back that it's too effort consuming, energy consuming, and that I am already sensitive and somewhat weak and so removed myself from investing myself into anything constructive for my life and wellbeing.

The intuitive nudge came in 2019 when a voice from within said that I was not true to myself and from there on my efforts started to come together but without genuine self belief and kindness towards myself, I just did the inner work of actualizing my suppressed feelings and blocks but had a lot of anger and sadness attached to it. 

It was only gradually and some 4,5 years into truth seeking that I could get a sense of how far I had moved away from myself and how important it was to move closer to myself and no amount of closeness to divine energies and gurus was enough until I felt deep down good enough about myself and had more strength in my faith.

Faith is your true and open love to your inner self and the God who lives in it and the more I started looking inward, the more it made sense that truth helped me bridge all those parts that I was disconnected with and also helped me reconcile truthfully that there's only so much I can mind and that I am not some repaired toy to be frustrated and criticize about the way my mother behaved with me.

I am a separate self, an individual who has her personal space, her energy boundaries, and there's no better way than to tend to it, take care of it, and be there for it more than trying to adapt to being there for others in order to perform as a daughter, as a niece, as a cousin, as a granddaughter, as a friend and so on which I was doing and living this way in a loop until recently. 

I do feel bad for this younger , innocent version of me who felt under pressure to be, to perform a certain way so that I could get accepted for who I am. I could never accept me for who I am without seeking validation from others. But this is a thing of the past and all this has been possible owing to my sensitivity and intuitive nature which helped me connect back to my inner truths and it has been a life changing and beautiful turn of situations, circumstances and also my choices which have all added up to becoming more and more self aware and kind to myself. 

My being open and kind has been a precious gift  which I have either given away unthinkingly and has been a thankless job, but the more I stay true to it with awareness, sensitivity and kindness, the more this gift is what I feel good about and proud about. 

Karmic Teacher

 My mother-in-law's toxicity and inner garbage has reached all new heights of psychological pollution for those around. She resists being the disinfectant that she can be and is so consumed by her own addictive need for dramatizing her emotional baggage that others can't bear weight of anymore and sends dense vibes effortlessly which others including me wish to keep away from. 

She is the pest in the garden of acceptance, forgiveness, and letting go because she can chew away on all the supportive manure and leave her root to rot and expect other flowering plants to sympathize and stop their individual growth in order to support her. She can't support herself let alone enable others in their growth. A damage beyond repair is the state of her inner emotional and mental damage and she is responsible for it.

She resists inner introspection, honestly asking herself about her behaviors, thinking patterns, and wants others to dive and sink with her in her shallow, dark insecure, moldy waters and that's really not possible, and she knows all too well but cannot resist drinking and spilling over from those same waters even if many a pot has broken completely, unable to carry the weight of her stuck emotions, mood swings, vengeful tendencies, comparing and belittling others and playing the victim card herself - I wonder how less perturbed can one be and not get overwhelmed at all by the grossness of her past traumas which wouldn't have trickled down to the gross level had she developed and strived for refining herself and seeing herself stronger and inspiring in her own way, rather than proving a point or two or more about being the victor in the victimhood and expecting her family and relatives to sympathize with her over and over.

Her traumas from her past have hardened her to stay stuck within an angered, helpless, victim mode rumination which she has not snapped out of and is a negative source of energy wherever she goes. She looks at life from her own lens and can never look beyond and see bigger at others struggles or even bother knowing how others cope up or had dealt with their respective traumas, because there's almost everyone under the sun who has gone through challenges and traumas and it's the way each of us responds which makes us who we are from within. 

And so challenges are not given to corner you or anyone in particular, but it's life's way of testing your resolve, your strength, and in helping through them for your soul to take home lessons and experiences.

My mother-in-law has been a challenge and a pain to me but has been a karmic teacher in her own way for giving me the above lesson on inner strength, as it took a lot of it, trust me, to see her for who she really is and not get infected by her toxicities.

Reconnect with your soul

 My connection to how much I made believe my lies to be true and self gaslighted into victimhood expecting freedom from her trap from those she made herself feel small with in order to adapt herself with others and that means literally everyone. I didn't know the first thing about being myself and was neglecting that until it gets invisible for me to really tune to so that I can let that slide as if I don't matter yet again all over again for all these decades of experience of doing that to myself.

It got so thick and numb in me that I just couldn't cut the layers, the root of those layers, and the space that it took within me eating my insides out as if an infested bacteria that was feeding off my emotional pain and physical sensitivities. It was as if I just had to give in in order to stay true to adapting to this self created limitation pattern that got woven into how I was looking at my life, and so much of it seeped into past wounds as if they have been empowered to define me. And the real pain was that it had stopped hurting - it stopped hurting to not be genuinely myself, my moods, highs and lows, frustrations, fears, anxieties and so much more.

What truly stood out for me was how many times I had gotten saved, cautioned, protected, guided, reassured and so on through divine interventions -  just quick, clear messages coming straight out of nowhere and landing when I really needed to hear, feel, or see them, but it took me long to realize that I was not willing to see how close I was to the spirit world and was seemingly burying myself with the smallness of my adapted limitations that I had repressed myself to fit into.

There was nothing new about my life and I had taken chances to try something new but only to want to have the old patterns of thinking and old habits to stick through for me as if they had to be my close friends to see me through. And they did do that but there's only so much that old friends can come along specially ones who are not good enough for you and you are just holding onto them because you think you need them, and they have just pushed past your boundaries to indulge, utilize and misuse your big, giving, creative, kind space.

It's true then that it's not who you were that matters now but who you are and who you want to be and become that matters. It's just work in progress and at whatever timeline that really kickstarts doesn't matter as long as you keep going and are sincerely committed to it.

You can restart your connections - what makes you feel hopeful, feel like your heart expands in joy, like your tears wipe out the dust from the limiting layers collected from the past, like you can trust to talk, to cry, to open your heart to your God, your guiding energies, your higher self, because you deserve to have a moment or two of quiet, of truth, of love, of gratitude, if you really mean them in any particular order that maybe or even not and have a bone to pick with, but truly spoken from the heart, from the crust of innocence, from the clear voice of your inner child, is all that matters. The validation that you are heard, understood, loved, protected is a beautiful gift and not something to let go of if you discover them from deep within your inner core, from your God within.

It's just one life we have got we think or we maybe like this from many past births, but not being the same old self making the same old mistakes and feeling like nothing new is happening is a loop we can break free from at least in this lifetime. We can recreate ourselves if we allow that to happen by willing to change how we see ourselves, what we think of about ourselves, and what are the words, the inner chatter we go through to create the narratives that makes our life stories what it is in our minds. We can if we put our hearts into it change our life narratives and take immense pride, responsibility, and trueness to this purpose if we channelize how to delimit ourselves, how to reconnect with our soul, our inner soil, and grow fully, unconditionally, and with all the love that you choose to nourish it with.

Forgiving myself - a big bucket list 🙂

 To forgive myself - the hatred I had harbored for my body because it was/is "too sensitive".

To forgive myself - for seeking constant approval for my health conditions and emotional support for helping me regulate my emotions and feelings.

To forgive myself - for abandoning my true feelings, frustrations, emotional pains, sadness, anger, hurt and adapting to environment by repressing them.

To forgive myself - for not trusting my inner strength enough and seeking validation from others for who I am, my personality, individuality, and weak boundary setting, and giving in easily my will power by not working on my resilience and constantly staying in a state of numb repression and robotic way of functioning on day to day basis.

To forgive myself- for thinking I can't put forth my opinions and shutting down on my individual voice and just obliging with an ideal picture of myself in order to adapt to others expectations.

To forgive myself - for lying to myself every day just so that I can stay in the victim mode and keep expecting empathy or understanding from outside world and form judgements that I stubbornly stay stuck to.

To forgive myself - for depriving my self of genuine self respect and trying to justify others definitions of who I am and who I should be.

To forgive myself - for not honoring my life space and taking control of my life as my responsibility and choosing to disconnect, stay indifferent at the cost of my inner growth as a person.

Self forgiveness through Ho'oponopono

 We are not victims bound by life, we are our mind interpretations of how situations, context, people in it are received by us through the mind based projections -  the mind has a looping into truth make believes which seems to stick to the web of our karma (either from past births or from present). We exist not because of our mind's perceptions of what life should be, but how many unresolved emotions and unrealized feelings and experiences it had amounted to in spite of our mind and its cognizance of our reality through stacked up memories which need to be lived through and connected with in order to live our lives fully.

We need the past until we free up our consciousness with release from triggers, traumas, and silent sufferings which continue to haunt even in the present and while being technically alive physically at one level, but keeping the portal of the past open much longer than what's needed is a stumbling block in the flow of individual consciousness.

Ho'oponopono, a Hawaiian practice of forgiveness and healing is the point of conjecture where things, memories, triggers, hardened emotions, and stumbling blocks that need to be diluted, let go of to facilitate the flow in the present is enabled through chanting repeatedly "I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you," in order to receive clarity for what can be done today and how to be at peace with oneself.

After all it's not what hurts or who hurts that matters but how long do we hold on to it that does. It saps the energy, the vitality, the vision for our lives from us when we get so stuck on how we should have been treated, or how things should have turned up as per our expectations, and in short all the heavily weighing down rotten fruits of our individual life trees that any how will drop to ground lifeless along with shedding leaves shrouding them as blanket, but before that a small bucket full of ripened life experiences need to be held on to. And all this if we stop looking at our life trees with regrets alone but take pride in how far, how long we have come and how tall we still stand in well earned pride for who we truly are and for what fruitful experiences we bring to this earth.

Ho'oponopono is the mantra of loving release from the grip of unconscious mind as and when it's applied to challenges and problems that are not toxic as we make it out to be, but needed uplifters, blessings in disguise to stir us up and wake us out of the thoughts template that we become accustomed getting stuck in thinking.

The prayer for loving release, seeking forgiveness from our inner child, from all those tightly held memories, dense emotions, echoing triggers and so on is what this ancient Hawaiian mantra is all about. The simple act of self forgiveness for depriving ourselves of embracing our inner truths however unexpected, ugly, too realistic, and utterly simplistic it may be, but the more that we bow our heads in humility to our guiding truths which are our inner wisdom to help us navigate better and travel lighter.

The mind tries to call it the shots as it stages what it perceives as right and does so as a victim, as a bitter, negative, suffering, disappointed role plays and enjoys all the attention it gets by mere daily rehearsal of these on day to day basis as we end up doing and enable the mind to direct us as people and  direct our lives.

We choose to helplessly watch as audience as our life unfolds as the mind takes over and performs for garnering all the pity, sympathy, attention and throws light on others by blame shifting, manipulating, slandering others name and fame, harboring jealousy, greed, and so many other twisted facets that keeps the mind at work under wraps while life happens to us and not through us.

We forget that we are not here for long but hold on to our past negative memories as paraded on centerstage as if our feelings about it is the only important thing that exists and nothing or no one else other than our narrative and projection counts for anything.

Our feelings and emotions around it matter too but the longer we wish to justify hanging on to it and get stuck by not letting go, the harder life feels. Life is here for us and we are here alive participating in it and it's not against us - all it wants from us is to allow for genuine truths to surface through the debris of our echoing shadows, to listen and acknowledge it, to allow the light of our inner wisdom through expanding on our truths guide us far and beyond what the fearful, conditioned mind can conjure up. 

And it's a start of sorts to unwrap the gifts of your life with gratitude because you earned it, because you are grateful for it, and it's a lifetime like no other.

Life unfolding

 The disintegration that has led my self get so fragmented and so "other" centric and less focused on my real self has been a lot to process and accept as my programming, and I cannot go back in time to "fix" this and have no choice but to accept this truth. I have had a broader sense of me as placed in the flow and energies of others and making way for them and allowing for them to determine my adapting to them as if I don't have a will and boundary of my own to determine. 

Making way for others is so much part of me that it becomes detrimental to my self growth and the more I have learnt to do so as means of coping up, as means of my laziness, as means of giving in to stronger willed and controlling people, the more I thought I fit in with the joint family set up that I was a part of. As long as people approve and appreciate my efforts in doing so, then that much I feel validated.

The root problem is my very own ill self validation and lack of vitality and allowing myself to rest and get used to this feeling that this is who I am anyway, all thanks to the physical health issues I seem to have gone through and just giving in to my mother's narrowed way of looking at my health and wellbeing as a way of being loyal to how much money, materials she had brought for me and just repressed my true feelings to come out for decades together.

To become the 'other' in my life is something I am so used to doing and so much so that I completely dissociated and felt forced to want to be alive in the body I am given which I seemed to despise, all thanks to the fears, insecurities, ego, will, possessiveness of my mother that I had absorbed and was attached to and didn't know how to break free from this absorption and enmeshment.

My mother saw me as damaged goods much similar to how she saw my father in the same way and because he had passed away leaving her pregnant with me, her anger, disappointment, a sense of betrayal just took another form while seeing me grow up and having "over sensitivity" and "weak health" as she was apparently frustrated, belittled my health problems in front of other family members, made me feel guilty for being sensitive, and her anger spilled over as no matter how much she tried to control my sensitivity, she couldn't, and I just felt more and more anxious and worried about my next health episode which may again upset her.

This got repeated so much so that I didn't realize I had abandoned my self  and left it in the dark so that I can satisfy my mother by being "good enough" for her. Not wanting to discover my true feelings, moods, and my likes, dislikes and so on became my pattern of living and just numbed myself to adhere to becoming the other in my life.

I had to make way for my mother, I had to stretch my personal space to empathize with her and so much so that my personal space became a territory that she could walk in and out of on her own will and wish and even if this were some years ago, but it hurts me, saddens me, as I feel so exploited, so manipulated to give in to her controlling my life as if it were damaged goods that she can poke and prod into and try to fix it and made me feel as if I had no say in it by the way she made me feel.

These are pieces of my fragmented life and I need to acknowledge them as they have made me who I am today -  someone who has mourned her past, who still mourns for it, who is trying to forgive herself for who she thought she was and for absorbing and taking in my mother's projections on me more seriously than what I really thought and felt about myself. Mourning also for feeling disempowered as a result and even if my bouts of anger, sadness, breakdowns have come and gone, I just wish to acknowledge that this is still my life whether I felt like I had any say in it or no, and daughters who are born to such controlling, clueless mothers whose words, deeds, behaviors have a huge impact on their daughters that it's still not too late to wake up and take control of your life in your hands the same way I have done. 

To come from past shadows into one's own light is painful but totally essential to move on with your life because no matter how much the past might have defined me and all the "over protection" of my mother might have confused, made me feel belittled, lost, and broken, but the essence of who I am as a human, as a work in progress is open until the end of my life. I need my backup, self motivation, and lots of downtime, sleep, nutritious food, laughter, good company, silence, meditations, walking, sunshine, nature and so much more to help integrate my essence into my being which is unfolding beautifully one day at a time.

Find your voice and have a say in your life

 Children of narcissistic mothers yearn for true, accepting love from their mother and what they instead find is a person who has no idea where she starts and where her children end. She has no idea of what her identity is outside of manipulating and controlling her children and conveniently wears the disguise of victim just to invoke sympathy and attention from others.

The narcissistic mother may not have been secure and loved for who she is but since her ego has unmet needs and a tendency to want to prove others wrong at the cost of earning her rightful place which she assumes is by projecting a false sense of self and brainwashing her kids to hero worship her while slips her true personality under all the drama which she creates over and over until people believing that it's true -  the truth is that they can't stand to face themselves and need others shoulders to push their responsibilities on and if they don't seem to match to her expectations, then guilt trip them and keep them in the fog and blames them for lack of their responsibility to take better care of her. She intentionally does this so that her own children get projected in the wrong way so that she wins this battle, this competition, this war, so that she survives by wearing her children out, by dehydrating their spirit, and keeps score of how much to give back in unnerving, destabilizing, and overshadowing ways in case she senses that they are on the winning side and have control in their hands, and all the while living in the pretense that she creates that she is quite adaptive to her children's decisions and will support living with them.

She cannot live apart and needs her children to live through them. Narcissistic mothers need to feed off their children's open mindedness and has to find a way to fit in even in the smallest spaces that separates her from her children. Children of narcissistic parents need to develop more self love and empathy for themselves for coming so far with their mothers that all the time, opportunities to explore and have fun in their own ways separate from the intertwined web of living with their mother seems to have gone and there's nothing that could have been done to undo all the time gone by.

The inner landscape of children of narcissistic mothers is a dried and saturated space which has their mother's presence written all over it -  narcissistic mothers can exploit the concept of motherhood to get what they want and go to whatever extent they want to make sure they stay in the center of the child's attention span. The children have to become the grownups in order to accommodate their narcissistic mothers at the cost of giving up on experiencing their childhood and all those precious experiences which would have made lovely memories that go well into adulthood and beyond. 

Being securely attached to a narcissistic mother is next to impossible as she needs you, your innocence, your energy, your trust, your spirit, your attention, your kindness, your time, your life, and your everything in it to sustain her. Feeding her off off you is going to disempower you as the child of such a parent and the more you step into your gut instincts, your intuitions, your nudges, your restlessness, your spontaneity, the better chances you have to organize your life around yourself. You need to keep reminding yourself that your life matters and your priorities in life are different than what she leads you on to believe. 

Let her live under the impression that she is your omnipresent, omnipotent God, and she has gone through whatever she has gone through to make your life what it is today, but never allow her to soften your will. Your will is your power. Don't let her break it and use it against you. The trauma is not in the weakness she makes you believe you have(be it physical, mental, financial health) but in your losing your clarity by being attached to such a toxic attachment and allowing her to win, to control, to manipulate your life and which only adds up to losing a sense of your self, which is a far greater loss than any of these.

Narcissistic mothers need boundaries while you need your balance. Your perspective of what life is for you matters and not their defining you on their basis of what they see is fit and right for you, because what was right for them at some point in time need not be right as time progresses and you start to grow -  not for them but for your highest good which would ideally make them feel good and not the other way round -  using their children's will manipulatively against their knowledge to get what they want and grow off their separate roots and make them become dependent on them unconsciously.

Living for yourself is not a crime and so don't feel guilty if you begin doing so. Self love is not an antidote against narcissistic mothers, but a healthy means to gradually and slowly connect to oneself piece by piece day by day.

You don't have to pay the price for being created by a narcissistic mother, but stay enough motivated and energized to want to invest in yourself and your dreams no matter how small or big it may be. Because it's finally your life and if you don't get to have a say in it, then who does?

Emotional neglect

What does emotional neglect feel like? It feels like you are invisible despite being physically alive. The part of you that craves for attentions becomes cold, numb, and goes to the point where you stop feeling your feelings because you don't know what they are and how to address them. 

I was so trauma bonded with my mother and my mother emotionally insecure more so after losing my father suddenly in a massive cardiac arrest, wanted to live through my blind trust in her and which as a child I thought was what was right for me, but little did I realize that she thrived on self pity and sympathy from others and that's what I was used for in order to project my sensitive health as my weakness so that her brothers and their families with whom she and I lived would continue to feel sympathy for her and with this she can sustain being in her self pity web with me alongside entangled in it.

All this complicated layering was too confusing for me as a kid as I assumed that my presence in her life meant something to her but I felt so betrayed and angered and saddened when I realized this fact that she simply conditioned me to be her shadow and the more enmeshed I lived being one, the more restless, sick, and sad I started to become but kept repressing this as I could not bring myself to process, to understand, to distinguish my feelings separate from hers and all this blur that it created in my life was something I didn't know how to deal with and so continued numbing it going to the extent of self forgetfulness, self neglect, lack of setting boundaries, and constantly seeking a sense of exploration, flitting sense of attachments with projects, creative pursuits, and again detaching myself from pursuing my interests more and more as I was too uncertain, overwhelmed, confused, afraid of stepping into being an individual and living like one. 

And so individuality remained a 'concept' in my life and the more I studied on self help, spirituality, philosophies, psychology and so on, the more far away from actualizing my self I became -  it again became a means to detach from putting in efforts to know myself and give attention to myself. Because I was so used to being emotionally neglected and so used to trying to cope with all the material things given that I didn't realize that individuating is a powerful and needed process to discovering who I truly can be. The material things provided satiated and made me feel stuffed, indulged, and somehow cornered into giving in to all the material comforts as if it will stop occurring to me to pick myself up and channelize my energies into putting efforts to becoming more of me. 

I was less of me and more of my mother for decades together that my consciousness, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and anything or everything that I could discern as me was so convoluted living as her shadow, living off her, and living away from me. All the 'effortlessness' it seems to live in my body but live disconnected from my feelings, my mind, my true desires, whatever that be, have made me sort of a clouded headed person who's trying to wipe the spillovers of her mother's influences from her head screen. 

This basic disconnect and confusion within myself doesn't mean I am detached on an elevated sense, but since I was for long neglecting my mental health, I assumed that seeking spirituality would be some sort of bridge to fill this gap within me. Agreed that God or a Higher energy is all about unconditional love and acceptance, compassion and forgiveness, but to expect that He/She do that for me is again cutting myself from connecting to my core which is love, acceptance, compassion and forgiveness (of self and others) and maybe much more. What is within is what you discover and become more of and what validation you seek from outside does not make you more of you -  it just is a hook to seek external understanding of your life situations and conditionings. And living in the midst of a parent who is emotionally neglectful, who has been passed on emotional neglect from her parents and brothers and who just learnt to make do with it, but wanted to latch on to my life, my energies, and my vulnerabilities and trust from my childhood so that she can get a sense of control over her life and my giving in to her reliving my father's sudden demise, her sadness on seeing me get sick which somehow is similar to my father's health and constitution, was just her way of disempowering me and drawing my helplessness, my cloudy judgements, my lack of being connected to my personal ego, space, will power, as means to encroach and cut through my weak boundaries and constantly live off my forced empathy which was a major source of energy drain for me.

And so detaching from these conditionings of my mother's over shadowing, being an indulgent parent, and becoming aware of self care, self discipline, and discovering ways and means for healthy self expression is a new way of life for me. How much loss of mental health and sadness over losing my time, energy, and giving into the dramatic trappings of my mother and her family was something that prevented me from discovering my inner self. I assumed them to be some sort of protective shield which/who kept me safe when I was feeling sick and tired, but little did I realize back then that living in such an emotionally dysfunctional family environment was making me believe that I was weak, helpless, and that my choice to overcome all these is by hiding under this protective shield. I was in fact blocking my natural flow of creativity, spontaneity, and all the ideas that I used to brim with, but since there was a blatant lack of support from my family including my mother in order to help me with a bit of support mentally, emotionally so that I could have opened up freely to talk to them about what I am feeling and what's holding me back, I just caved in, became more and more lazy, dissociated, and ruminated in a make believe fantasy world where I am honest, bold, assertive, communicative, and unafraid of speaking up my thoughts, opinions, and feelings.

I feel like I was some sort of a body without a head, without a sense of direction of where I should go. The intuitions that seemed to whisper, sometimes yell in my ears, and sometimes is an uncomfortable feeling, seemed for me to come from outside, but I only realized gradually that intuitions are answers from a different source, agreed, and not thought out from my mind, but they are responding to what I truly need and are talking to my soul. Since I felt so non existent, I could not piece these sudden messages that seemingly came from outside as I felt and were more or less divinely guided. Although I was not so ritualistic or religiously following pujas or activities and through which I was going closer to the divine energies, but it is their protective energies and guidance and timely blessings that have helped me remember my place here on earth in the midst of challenges, learnings, growth, and reflections, and so on, and so made me understand that I am not entirely all alone as I assumed myself to be. 

Do not allow emotional neglect to grow on you and eat their way into your roots, your life energy, your spark, and your personality. Because emotional neglect keeps you in the dark of your own feelings and emotions, your needs, your highs and lows, it's like an overdosed tranquilizer that seems to cut you off from being human which is all of these and so much more. 

Thriving in emotional neglect is trauma and it cannot be compared to the traumas and challenges of others no matter how big or bigger others problems may seem, but it does not give anyone the right, the power to belittle your struggles, your emotions, and your growth through thick and thin. Because your fights within yourself is real, your restlessness to want to break free from the numbing walls is real, your sadness on having to cope up with others lack of emotional and mental support and for their lack of time, attention towards you is also real, and all these hurt and break you down, but the perseverance to want to rise and stand up and be your own friend, support to become the individual and the human that you can become is also beautifully real. Embrace all this. The most potent antidote to emotional neglect from your parents, your family, your friends, neighbors, and so on is self love.

Self love through awareness of who you are as you discover yourself more and more, your basic likes, moods, opinions, feelings and a lot more is opening that window for genuine self expression, and when being yourself with all these feels just fine, then you don't have to seek approval from outside, because you are enough with what you have, what you don't, they are all part of you. And so, embrace it kindly and without criticism because you deserve it.

Self love - the joy of being yourself

The joy to want to live to the fullest and explore life with all its charm, unexpected glories, and beautiful surprises is what I had wanted to live for and still hope to live for. The sadness of an unexplored, unexperienced, unfelt life is huge and words can't explain the vastness of this vacuum. I lacked the willpower to be true to my life and what it could maybe unfolding. A closed bud is part of nature as well but unless it wants to experience its growth through sun, rain, heat, breeze and so on, it remains an unopened creation who is too absorbed in her past pattern of remaining closed in due to her fears, worries, tall expectations from herself, and staying stuck in whatever comfort levels of her daily life so that she can resist growing and discovering her true beauty inside and out.

I am more accessible to my mood swings, anxieties, and frustrations now having realized that they are a healthy part of growing up and do not repress in order to want to 'fit in' with the concept of ideal someone or the other. My parents' collective trauma from their individual personalities and from that of their families on them is part of my DNA maybe but the joy to being true to myself by exploring my inner world, mental, spiritual landscape is something that was not all joy at first but an unexpected yet spiritually awakening journey which asked me to affirm my true self and courageously embrace my faith in myself and on the Higher Self and Divine energies which have been guiding and protecting me from falling back into the traps of numbed feelings and unresolved emotions and fantasizing my way to make-believe reality in my head which involved my consciousness, imagination, time, and energy on that. 

My reality is still a distraction away from facing myself and sitting down with what my goals are and how can I work towards them and that distraction I assume comes in the form of tv, mobile, content surfing, making grocery lists and buying home essentials from time to time, and putting my focus also on getting stuff which my mother needs from time to time. It's like as much time and space I have staying away from my true intentions and work towards manifesting them, then that much I can just forget or neglect to concentrate on myself which is and which has been my way of living -  as if my feelings, frustrations, expectations, highs and lows don't matter - they do and when they have been repressed so much by further staying distracted in day dreaming and fantasizing it's like I've deprived a part of myself which is as true as the other random parts which all come together to make me who I am. 

My mental health needed support but it lacked the voice to ask for help and am happy I have found my voice in reaching out and expressing what truly I am going through not just from a physical perspective but also mentally as well. 

Maybe this is self love - Learning to connect with your own voice and expressing yourself through the passing situations and what I experience through it all in my own ways is key to unlocking this stuck, stagnant part in me which I have begun accessing.

When you learn to love yourself in thousand different ways and more and honor it with a well deserved space in your life, then you have understood self respect and the many beautiful ways to be grateful to yourself for being blessed with this opportunity to know yourself more and more. No one can provide that space and no one needs to approve of this space for yourself in your life. You are enough to do so.

Crab in the well

 My mother in law is a hard to please and high on expectations to want to be pleased person. She is like on this constant roller coaster where her emotions run high and become the reason she gets on a high and swings all her worries to the air no matter how self centered she might become in the process. She feels this deep unlovable her over and over and wants others to love, care for, and nurture her back to being loved almost every single day. She is the most cantankerous inner child that she can be at best projecting her feelings, fears, hearsays, sadness, anger, tantrums, stubbornness and more assuming the world at large would just have all the time to carry it all with maturity and grace that she never wants to learn to embody anyway.

Loving an insecure person is hard. And that she knows deep down is the reason why she doesn't seem to draw the right people who can make her feel good enough about who she is  -  she is not prepared to receive the honesty in people's feedback and would rather shy away in her well of hopes of being liked, cherished, respected and keep wanting others to reflect on her projections staying in the well and give her what she needs. It's like people see her all over being in the darkness of the well trying to silently scream loud enough for people to hear but they are too lost in their own voices and only respond to their judgements on her rather than who she truly wants people to look into -  she has become the ripples in the well in trying to make noise for people to pay attention to her and has lost her own unique flow. She has cut herself off discovering who she could have been had she chosen to venture out of the well but instead sought comfort in the darkness of the well and not feeling inspired in the true light of her actions once she totally and fully decides to come out of it.

She is crabby at best and can only know what feels best for her -  the deep dark waters of the well or the sun scorched sands of a life outside. She needs to seek her shell and take a pause on how far she wants to venture out and discover life outside of her choppy emotions, insecurities, comparisons with others, and a slow burn toxicity which has made living in her space more and more restrictive and instead of coming half way to meet herself and her true aspirations, she has chosen to rest in her past glories and pursuits and interwoven them with the duties of her present and chosen to stay away from staying att peace with her present.

There's no treasure trove in the past life diggings for her but sadly she relates doing that to fetching value for herself and proving how right she is in doing so and lost track of her reality in major chunks of time here and there. It's like she can tire people out by being who she is but feels hurt when others suggest ways to sort of undo that -  she can't be a blessing onto others just because she has survived many a trauma in the past and assumes she has done a favor by being in our presence or in our lives. 

The race to outrun one's true desires and feel low and lost when others don't fuel her enough is an exhausting job for herself as well as those who try to look out for her. She has chosen to lock her potential and has not worked on earning the grace that time brings into one's life and hers is no exception. 

To age gracefully doesn't fit her crown and as much as she expects others carve it out and place it with all the love and respect that she thinks she needs, her genuine love and respect for herself is so lacking that no jewel can fill this chest or head.

I have tried liking her and I do in some aspects but it's still an effort honestly to respect her for who she is and I have just accepted this fact for making peace with myself. Age is just a number and things only add up when efforts are taken and channelized from time to time, and if she has given up on that as she seems to have evidently and wants to rest on her past laurels, then she is technically living but not willing to respond to many other challenges, and trust me she has seen a lot harder ones in her earlier life and should have found enough will and confidence by now to take on the rest which are nothing in front of her past problems.

But instead she has become bitter, cynical, manipulative, vengeful, and that doesn't add anything to her overall life resume which could have been truly wow had she learnt to move past her past traumas. She has allowed that to define her potential which is far greater than any financially limiting situations, challenging relationships, physical sustenance testing phase and so on. Her greatness does not lie in speaking at great length of the miseries that she wore until they worsened, but changing into a fresh new attire with some new sets of attitudes without waiting for someone or the other to make  it tailormade for her. 

Let old hurts be just that. You can't keep wanting to fix them so that they would somehow give you the healing you need. There's no bigger remedy than peace and wanting to be ready to release the wounds out and just allowing oneself to look at life from a new perspective could be life changing and she didn't seem to want to choose that - to let go her past would mean to forgive people, to accept her own lack of awareness, to come face to face with the fact that not everyone is going to like us or accept her, and that she is the protagonist of her life and choosing to play the role of a wannabe role model without tons of drama would have been some sort of do over, at least from my point of view.

A crab that wants to stay in the well and is sadly stuck in the well for she is so caught up in the slippery moss of her own unresolved feelings that she has not found her grip to get her teeth to hang on to life by reminding herself that 'let all things go to hell and I am just off making my way out of this well' would be more of the nurturing that she might need. 

Realizing Lord Muruga...

 Lord Ganesha, the beautiful and generosity personified God who has earth as his belly it seems and unshakeable roots to want to hold on to - something high and above us as his presence holds strong ground and reassures us that our faith in him be as unswerving and organic to learn to accept, confront, and come out stronger through our given lives with him by our side.

Invoking Him is a clarion call to hear our prayers out as he raises his elephant faced trunk in blessing to take on life ahead no matter what obstacles come our way.

Lord Subramanya, the divine sibling of Lord Ganesha is the beauty, grace, and compassion of a thousand beaming peacocks. It's a breathtakingly beautiful sight to behold as Lord Muruga (Lord Subramanya has several adorning names which never do him enough credit but each has a divine calling to the discerning souls) with his mighty, shining Vel stands tall and ready to pierce through the darkness of hearts dried off love, courage, and wisdom.

He is the fountain of jet springs of hope bursting from an aching heart that has been in waiting to be touched, blessed, and protected from being abandoned and is the essence of true love that heals all wounds from within and out. He breezes through his mercurial speed slicing through the blue and grey blanket of a fuzzy sky and enchants us onlookers as carpets of rainbows welcome Him to new beginnings and fair endings.

The new beginnings lets us know that there's still time ahead to love him truly and deeply and no matter how broken our connections within us, but a thread of honest surrender goes a long way in sewing ties back to the evergreen divine canvas of enchanting Lord Muruga.

Everything and everyone has a space in his lifelike spread of his presence as he gently guides us while wearing the universe like a glove.

When he casts his eyes on you, listens to your deepest sighs and cries, and is present with you as you rise to meet the demands of the day, it feels like all the pain and heaviness was worth it because he makes you feel held, feel loved and understood when no one else would, he alone is enough for you to live life fearlessly and to the fullest and choose the peaceful feeling that this reassuring energy brings that it's going to be okay now. It's in so many here and nows that he waits for you to pour your heart out and comes in as a gentle breeze to dry your eyes as gratitude, love and so many unspoken but difficult to express yet raw emotions find their way through the walls of your heart to his.

It's bliss to discover that your heart cannot hold the amount of love for him as much as it wants to and just wants to hold on to his feet as a way to balance yourself …it's a journey of many miles to go ahead and with Muruga by your side, it's rest assured that you will not be alone moving on.

 

Hardened bubble bursts

 I have never created a schedule, a personal flow f activities of sorts which could be applied on an everyday basis. It's an abstract concept, this schedule thing and since my individual willpower to work towards that was broken for long, I am on the building it from scratch without superimposing acquired knowledge from outside to strengthen my willpower.

My choice to stand on the sidelines and see life happen for others has been so deeply etched that I feel drained out just thinking for how long I have been doing this to myself but did not know then due to self neglect and wanting to stay in invisibility mode, but know now that the vitality needed for living a life as fully and wholly as possible is a choice, a decision, which stems from the roots of strengthening individual willpower as much as possible.

It's not a life well lived if I don't risk it -  risk the losses, mistakes, learnings, finding ways to trust myself and picking myself up to move on as part of the process of living and living it all inclusive of the consequences of risking to want to genuinely explore myself. Sometimes it could come at the cost of unsettling others or being misunderstood. But unless I go full way into getting my feet wet, I will keep looking back the footsteps that I could have chosen to walk maybe in some other way in order to have avoided mistakes, in order to be error free, in order to just be an unreal, analytical concept of self who is stuck in overthinking and stagnation and is tentative on taking the plunge all the way through the ups and downs.

It felt like my health, my body was some sort of mistake back in my childhood days and the best way I thought to move on from that feeling was to neglect that but it kept coming back to me in the form of my mother's fears and insecurities which she knowingly or unknowingly rubbed it on my face and there was a major hit to my ego over and over and I assumed just going with the flow as I am responsible for making her feel frustrated over my health and sensitivity and hence lived in stagnation and just wanting to escape feeling miserable and guilty but in vain.

A dent to one's ego is not how one lacks strength in perceiving oneself but how one is made to feel and when one starts to believe that to be his/her truth. 

"Too sensitive, weak, " and so on was something I grew up listening to over and over and at one point stopped fighting with it from within and just started to imagine, fantasize a stronger, assertive, and bold person which was some sort of go to but I ended up getting sucked more and more into this make believe world which was a pleasant or a different space to be in and which didn't require me to directly get in touch with myself, my core feelings, and I eventually ended up losing vitality or that spark to live an authentic, real life which is just which it is and not what I project it to be.

There were tonnes of layers of stubbornness, fatigue, sadness, anxiety, suppressed anger, ruminations that I had picked up as a result of trying to sustain a fantasizing life and started to get irritated or thrown off balance when reality with its own challenges kept calling in some form or some situation or the other where I had no choice but to be present to it.

I read self motivation books, poems, short stories, anything feel good just to want to stay stuck in this hardened bubble. But nothing hurts more than the truth that the more I look back and grieve over missed opportunities, not being understood enough, not working with more focus on building myself through my core willpower and just compulsively was perseverant in order to tolerate my sensitivities, pains, and sufferings, which just made me want to stay numb and stay disconnected from who I am, the more I realize that life is about learning from this second chance at living through awareness and that such knots and blocks are ways to arrive at awareness.

This pain of realization is better than having lived fully under some conditioned fog and these tears of truth is just a beginning to lift them up layer after layer.

Because what I put myself into, I need to get them out as well. And quite simply, we can't escape from our karmas and as much as time catches up with us leading us towards our end, karma too is not done until it does what it intends for us. To choose to work for one's higher good and for that of the environment that one lives in and the society/community that one is part of facilitates for the template to work on our karma but when done without holding onto expectations too much and within the time given to us to make it happen is all that matters.

Personal ego

 I didn't realize for the longest time that personal ego was such a main ingredient in one's making good decisions and my lack of vitality which I used to feel in almost every aspect of my life was due to a poor personal ego. I was too afraid to be my own person but tried to acquire skills, studied some courses and tried keeping myself busy with something or the other, but this numbness which felt like sadness didn't go away. It felt as if I kept shooting arrows in the dark and was forever lost in a space that made coming home to myself harder, specially as I didn't know how far I had moved away from myself.

I played the group person part very well because it was there that I had to be the listener the most as I got used to being one and that became one of my hiding spots of sorts as the real me can remain in a shell and just go along with the flow of people's opinions, discussions, and not that anyone cared to know my opinions truly but I didn't take efforts to put forth what I genuinely felt but just sided one person or the other or gave a neutral response which was layered with diplomatic niceness. I never confronted either. On second thoughts, it never struck me that my mind, my ego was something that actually mattered, and just repressed it almost naturally as if it didn't strike me to have a voice of my own. I yearned to have my very own individuality but was not having enough back bone to back it up and expected that I would be supported by my parents but I was viewed as a sensitive, weak person, and the more that I avoided talking my heart out with anyone in the family, the more denser, crowded, and noisy my inner world became.

It increasingly felt like I did not have a say on my life and lost a sense of joy and adventure in exploring my life. It became more and more wired to shoulds, should nots, ideals, other peoples approvals and so on. I deserted myself for the longest time in search of finding the true me. What's right within me is my right to feel connected and inspired being myself and that has been work in progress for few years now. This is not to prove anything to anyone, but just find closure to my stifled voice and bring myself to say that life is really short and the more time I had wasted in being someone else's idea of good enough was never truly enough to be my very own person. And so, stop trying to fit into shoes that don't fit and wear your legs out with your own decided journey to live, laugh, let go, respond, forgive, and most importantly love - love yourself fully to be able to acknowledge or respect the other for whoever they are. 

No amount of knowledge, no amount of learning will make you prepare better for life because they mostly don't. It's what you learn hands on when you make mistakes which is what makes you true to your life and not how insulated and error free you encase your life and be so afraid to fail which is what makes the moving on harder, the drawing the lessons more painful and letting go the mistakes of oneself or the others a ruminative drill in one's head.

Now I get the reason why I took to proofreading, transcriptions editing as some sort of personal mission was because I could get to fix errors and completely sacrifice my time at that and pack the content in some sort of encased, formatted, client friendly document, and each such attempt was a means to bring my broken self together but only for so long. Because not wanting to be wrong, not wanting to make mistakes, and wanting to be accepted was something that I had taught myself from childhood and it robbed my authentic and natural sense of freely expressing myself no matter what. And when that didn't feel possible on a personal level since my personal ego was almost invisible, I tried hard to latch on to something that would/could make me feel like I belong somewhere, like learning some courses, working on some skills, and so on but just remained to live in some sort of void within me as I was not strong willed to make my individuality happen and gave in to the flow or the situations around.

Personal ego makes you who you are and to feel like you are worth it from within is a personal decision to acknowledge your mistakes, to accept yourself, and to stay connected with your essence.

  

 

Don't neglect your Soul purpose

 Emotional neglect to a child in a middle class family is like wolf in sheep's clothing -  the material things are provided and in exchange for making the child feel "comfortable" enough to sustain neglect from parents as a day to day conditioning and thus making them believe that that would be enough to support the child and it would not probably incur any complaints from the child.

The child grows to believe that it deserves the neglect for the way he/she is being if the child does not satisfy the parents expectations whether it is through health, academic grades, extracurricular skills, survival skills, smart personality and so on.

It's like the parents simply don't acknowledge their lack of awareness and just want to manifest their expectations through the child or children. The child is expected to grow by itself, emotionally and mentally, and no support whatsoever is given meanwhile to understand the child's adapting to neglect, and the survival skills if any of the child is to brave it through all the emotional neglect and live in some sort of inner frozenness and lack of trusting and opening up and expressing of what he/she truly needs from the parent(s).

This is why the priority for self care for the grown up person who has gone through severe emotional neglect feels almost alien and overwhelming. 

To uncover such thick layers of parental indifference as in my case was quite painful. I am raised by a single parent and was also part of a joint family consisting of my mother and her elder brothers and their families. It seemed like the elders at our house were so full of themselves and their silly egos and wife controlling habits and simply disrespectful of one's boundaries, whether it is of a child or a grownup, their all pervasive control (specially the uncles) was worthy of numbing myself and shutting myself down to avoid any sense of interaction with them unless it was absolutely necessary.

Joint family broke the image of "my family and my people" for me over the years as it was simply a bunch of broken and temperamental people who needed help and who were of no help, no guidance to us youngsters back then. A lot of projection though from the elders as they liked to believe that they were unique since they all chose to be (mindlessly) together and simply liked the appreciation from friends and their families for still being in a joint family and this was almost 4 decades ago when joint family concept started to crumble more and more.

Emotional neglect is a real pain; it's not imaginary and it's totally true to one's difficulties in coping up with lack of attention and acceptance for who one is from the environment where the child is raised. It's not just parents who raise the child to an extent, but it's neglect that ironically the child learns to grow up to fall back on and gets used to being neglected. 

Self care is not just putting back the care and attention in the self all over again but learning to do so with kindness and patience as a soul/sole purpose of living. It's as much about discovering your inner wounds that were born out of your parents neglect of you and also learning step by step to reparent yourself each and every day as much as it's possible.

Your inner wounds when truly empathized with makes you feel seen, makes you feel whole, and no better person than you to look within yourself. Just choose to be there for yourself over and over as if your entire life depends on it. It truly does matter no matter how late this inner journey might start for you. 

Remember that you are alive to feel your life, so don't hide under the "comfort" or shell of self neglect.