Acknowledge your brokenness

I would feel lost a kid in the joint family crowd that I used to live in - it didn't feel like family but as crowd for lack of better words and people sticking it out together through sheer tolerance and adjustments, and they become our conditioning. While the younger people did that more, the elders got to live their emotional immaturity and to survive this without lashing out at elders felt more hypocritical and far from being honest. All this to just stick it out as one huge family with all the broken people coming together to live in it!!

I am thankful for this in a way because even if my emotional maturity bloomed late, but I got to learn the lesson that in order to be respected as elders you need to start young - you need to work on respecting yourself and not expect it from others - validation from others is not respect and neither is fearful obedience to elders...what's the use of such respect anyway? 

Self motivation became my gradual go to after I have given up waiting on my mother who didn't know how to read my repressed silence, my difficulties with expressing myself and just wanted to focus only on my physical/material upbringing. I wish I had gone to self motivation not because there was no other choice. And exercising that overly stressed me a lot and felt fake to want to appear as if nothing has happened beneath the cracked surface within. But I would rather seem alright than weak and just followed the ego as it made me feel better if not feeling true to myself. And this contradiction kept me limited to knowing what I truly connect to or what do I really desire and so on. 

Ego is not one's life energy but it's sad if one is driven by that more than real self love and self belief.

I can't make the past all alright but by realizing this that it was broken and it lacked the guidance and direction from an elder no matter whoever it is allows me to make peace with the imperfections of life - that life is full and complete in itself and it's what we make of it that adds meaning or pushes us to seek some sense of purpose to our life. 

That people are broken and they need a sense of family to make them feel wanted, respected and so on is an undeniable truth. It's this feeling of real family that I had wanted to belong to and not just the number of members who maybe present in a house. A feeling of being at home is when you are secure with yourself and with how many ever members there maybe with you also adds its charm. And to feel secure with yourself from an early age needs a bit of trust from those who are present in the family - that she is more than just a bunch of physical ailments and that she has a world and hope and feelings and voice of her own. 

I was like the fallen star that everyone in the house wished the best for but with an air of despair and I just kept falling quietly and crashed in my heart's darkness again and again. To rise self motivated was my pursuit for happiness and feeling so empty just accompanied me no matter what I achieved..in repressing my feelings habitually from childhood I just learnt to give up on myself as some sort of reflection of others projected on me and I was quite at the edge of the mountain time and again, as if someone's validation outside of me will keep my self belief alive. 

To feel like you are emotionally dead or dysfunctional is like committing suicide when you are still alive and people in your family hardly notice that - as long as you are physically moving around, that's enough for them. 

To experience numbness for a long time was not part of my agenda, but to become defensive about it added more pain, more numbness than what I could hold in my heart. It's this outburst of pain, of longing to be understood, to express authentically without any fear of consequences, of what others would think, of how they would judge me or validate me that makes my voice what it is - to hear what I am truly feeling and acknowledge it simply and quietly is the best form of self expression. 

I am feeling alive for the past few years now and to feel all this pain, all this numbness that I went through as if it was some sort of rite of passage to get out from all the self imposed walls and ignorance makes me feel more sad but grateful that I am blessed with this life to experience all this as part of my life and not an entire life gone in vain if I were to realize all this at a later stage.

Ego vs Self prioritization

 Inner journey and self prioritization are two important aspects of spiritual growth. It's a process to give permission to your spirit to be free to express itself no matter what the individual ego, illusion, and struggles through ignorance maybe. Fear of letting go all these is what makes one's surrender to a higher energy or God harder - the amount of pressure or stress that the old conditioning(s) can ruminate within the body and create layers of blocks that make focusing on one's reality a big effort is self negation, self harm in unconscious ways. 

Ego weighs heavily from within as if its importance needs to be felt no matter what be the changes in reality and demands to meet them from time to time. Surrendering to ego then becomes an easier option as if there's nothing better expected from us and so ego then gains control of one's life inching its manipulative ways through early mental conditioning and family culture. Whether when one is alone or within the presence of family or friends, ego needs to be present there too, almost all the time. 

Individuation is a critical aspect to evolution but whether we survive as real humans or stay stuck in egoistic personality designs is the question. If it is the latter, then that pattern wants to stay embedded and suck the life energy into growing its maladaptive and shape shifting structures which unfortunately is what becomes of the creator given life - we keep creating more space for allowing ego to control our lives and become more and more blind to God within us while searching for God outside to fulfill this imbalance from within that we are responsible for. 

Being true to our ego is what we learn and relearn and letting go ego or releasing clamped emotional responses and mental conditionings becomes anti nature or it feels like something is shifting in us and we want to go back to feeling what we felt before letting go holding onto ego so much.

This anxiety, this self made stress is again a crucial stage in spiritual growth and is a slight maturation from the dense feeling of mind fog. This movement, this jangling of our nerves continues until we release all those fearful feelings and letting ourselves out from the darkness that we put ourselves into - it's a new birthing of sorts as baby steps, slowly and steadily, and picking oneself up over and over is the basic effort from our end. It's here that we need to open ourselves up and let out all the stuck stuff to God and truly surrender to the peace and calm of non thinking, non analyzing and just stay as a quiet observer as we become tools to God's handiwork when He takes over and when as humans we think we have tried our level best and simply give the power over to His grace and time through which he threads our life's knots out from the dark karmic holes. We don't become lifeless, instead we are reminded about our core energy and life purpose from every breath which gets woven through His design for our transformative lives. In essence we are both the damaged goods and also the recreated ones.

It's difficult to hear anything except our thoughts (we all know) but our thoughts don't run our lives but it's us who run behind our ceaseless, restless thoughts and feel drained out of energy. After all thoughts need energy to thrive within us and the more we feed them that, the more they colonize our awareness and consciousness. And what is awareness? It's a realization to be aware that we don't need so many thoughts to bridge our ideas with our reality and all those intermediary worries, anxieties to get our ideas or self expression out is just that - just simply anxiety and worry for not being our highest selves at a given time and personalizing this as my worry and my anxiety makes it egoistic and complicated and layered. 

We owe ourselves this much mindfulness that we become slowly aware of what we are thinking and why we think the way we think. The best part about this stage is that typical responses, typical emotional reactions from others don't get stuck on us anymore as this slight detachment from ego makes us loosen up even in the way we have perceived all these reactions all along and we begin to observe more deeply our own responses and ruminations and all the shelf life that we have given for so long.

Self forgiveness truly is a hard thing to do but it's much better than lack of self prioritization.

This calm after the storm is an empty space - something has gotten cleaned up from within and there feels no need to go back to reliving the hurts and anger and fear - this power to be free, to express my true voice from within is an acknowledgement of this state of life. I do feel tired but it was worth it as this insidious battle with myself within myself had to end some time. 

I don't know about new beginnings but it's better late than never and inner journeying is the way to enjoy this travel.

Goddess Bala - the heart of the inner child

Goddess Bala Tripurasundari is an embodiment of one's inner child. The deeper the emotional wounds coming from the inner child, the more harder it is for the person to grow up from within. Goddess Bala as she is fondly called by her devotees teaches one to go to these places in one's heart and open up the numbed feelings, neglected hurts, blocked up tears and nudges us playfully to release them and invites herself in going by how pure, how sincere is the seeker's heart to bear it all to allow her to wipe them clean. She strengthens the root in us, the root that makes the person who he/she is, and for that she needs the complete truth, even at the cost of feeling fully naked and really vulnerable like a child from deep within - no filters, no superficialities, just plain innocent truth is all she wants and to simply surrender without any doubts just like how a child instantly trusts his/her parent/caretaker to guide or take care when in fear, pain, or hurt.

It's this childlike trust that she connects to as she can easily see through the many layers that prevents one from admitting to one's flawed conditioning and unhealthy patterns of thinking and behaving that starts from quite an early stage of one's life. She begins from the start and when she does, she becomes a playmate, a reminder to not get bogged down by life's current situations and past dense emotional wounds and hurts, but to accept the present for what it is. Goddess Bala teaches you, if you allow her to, to actually grow up once again.

She is radiant divinity and endearing smile and purity clothed in beautiful clothes and adornments that befit a girl child. She is the deepest yearning come true for the childless, she is the gentle mother for an emotionally hurt inner child, and she is a joy to grow old with.

In a sense, Goddess Bala adopts us irrespective of whether we have a child or otherwise and is truly the 'Child is the father/mother of the man.'

Muruga - Motherhood Embodied Spirit

 Lord Muruga has been the mother in my life's making. He has been the silent witness and the invisible guide who makes me feel understood and protected whether in the midst of my family, friends or strangers. He is not just an external idea who clicks and then goes back in hiding in my mind's darkness but the reason for my existence and a second chance at staying alive and feeling life in an all new way.

There's so much to share but so little words to make up for his sea of compassion that has kept me afloat no matter what be the ups and downs of the tides of life. 

Where there was bitterness there is gratitude now and so what more can my heart want from this God who is all unconditional love and motherhood embodied in spirit? It's overwhelming sometimes to try to comprehend the depth of his care and support for all those who believe in Him..I do like to think that I am one of the lucky chosen ones to stay close to Him and be a speck of His creation on His feet. 

My yearning to want to belong somewhere, to feel cherished, accepted unconditionally and feel visible all got wiped out gently and eventually as Muruga's divine essence through His songs composed by great Tamizh poets, authors, and spoken by scholarly masters are so interwoven in what I see and hear and feel like a wide and open minded channel to house the Lord in His beautiful images that flash in my mind's eye and also shed light to find my way through the crevices of the caves that I sometimes get lost in. 

What you see is what you get - in mind and in your day to day life support - inexhaustible beauty, kindness, and a vigilant teacher who teaches through your life challenges and the wisdom you start to see and experience through every new challenge which then become a way to see His pattern of testing you and releasing you from the grip of your programmed fears from your past, negative habits, toxic dependencies as His Vel, His lance, pierces through all your layers of blocks that have kept you imprisoned and restless in the shadows of your subconscious mind.

He can see you just as you start seeing Him in all your trials and the means to the problem lies both in you and undoing you through you to lead you to your solutions end if you allow Him, choose Him to do so.

Enmeshment

Enmeshment is a soul sucking phenomenon where the essence of one person gets stuck on the conditioning of the others and hence the 'need' for sustaining this enmeshment as a way of being conditioned and being limited and assuming that that's the truth for oneself is what is called enmeshment - it's like one is nt clear on where one ends and where another person begins. It's a dangerously thin line of selfhood that one has weakly created or drawn only to be surrounded by the otherness of the other person who he/she is enmeshed with.

Self without an idea of the self is like contradicting oneself and living an abstract sense of life where things feel almost real but not quite so. 

Enmeshment is not connectivity with oneself even though aspects of living like earning, nurturing oneself, taking care of family, building on learning and skills, networking with people are felt like they are done but by being disconnected with one's true essence and drawing on energy to facilitate all the above functions through the other and thereby staying enmeshed and not secure as it supposedly feels.

It is in other words practicing staying absorbed with oneself at the cost of not being aware of what it feels being authentic expressing, sharing, and demonstrating life in action in whatever way that be. Living away from oneself is not a great place to be and to expect that others understand and empathize this hollowness of oneself is attracting more misunderstanding than the opposite. 

So, self destructive is also owing to being enmeshed with another person in thought, belief, and even actions at the cost of minimizing one's boundaries, second guessing one's decision making, and getting anxious to take responsibility for oneself, and ultimately stay unconscious of who one is within one's body and mind which is numbing oneself in other words substantially.

 Dark energies are not from outside as much as one makes space for repressing oneself, second guessing one's decisions, feeling anxious and sad for not being able to express and create one's organic version of who he/she is from within. It's not acknowledging that the darkness exists and learning to get comfortable to lying to oneself that the unconsciousness of one's existence and living doesn't hurt one's feelings - in short it's losing one's personal integrity in order to be an ideal package in the eyes of others.

Where there is ignorance about knowing oneself and why they have blocked themselves from feeling hurt, and that's where the shadows outgrow the person's true purpose of living and that is to discover oneself in complete honesty and integrity. Ego can do only so much but depending a lot on it to make one feel secure, accepted, and understood is allowing for being insensitive to oneself and arrogant with others as ego just projects what you want to be but who you are not deep down and helps to fool oneself longer living the ego.

A Note to the Survivors/children of narcissistic parent(s)

People who feel they are entitled for respect because they have aged, or that they had suffered a lot in their past and hence feel deserving of others respect, and who blame others and not take self responsibility where it warrants are not only emotionally immature but are also narcissists.

For them, their self image is everything and they want that others respect and look upto that image they have in their mind or have projected it onto others minds through skillful interpretation of their emotions and feelings conveniently in order to retain their image. This in turn implies that they have to continue to retain a a sense of  victimhood or herohood wherever possible and not outgrow that as they need to keep people working for them in whatever way they are related to the narcissists.

Everything works and it works for the good of narcissists according to their life experiences. Be it poverty, health issues, relationship issues, they can manipulate it in such a way that they continue to remain the unsung heroes that they don't mind blowing their own trumpets or exaggerating their struggles just to carefully present it in such a way that it is all the others fault and conveniently dodge taking personal responsibility for anything regarding these situations.

And the sons and daughters who are the real victims of such 'heroes' who don't have a choice but to respect such parents for respect's sake as they are never loved for love's sake unconditionally as children. It's a tiring feeling to steer oneself clear from the heavy layers of image building for the children of narcissists as it's complicated to separate their own individual feelings from their parents as children get sucked or drawn into the parents image building activity from childhood, and children are impressionable at that. And even as they grow older they feel helpless some times or feel choiceless but to love their parents(as the parents don't outgrow their self image which they have preserved all along and expect their children to respect that image) and not bring upon any misunderstandings in their relationship with their parents for this reason.

The mirror can only reflect the truth as is but for a narcissist, the mirror of selfhood has their dramatic retelling and reliving of experiences and making others believe in this stuck reflection for years and years. Now, any ounce of criticism or a pointing at truth at their direction that things have not been so bad after all for instance would break this self image of 'victim herohood', and this they will not allow no matter to what great extent they can go to preserve their heroic tales and the standard way to react would be to make people feel guilty for bringing up the truth of their (the narcissist's) immaturity in the present times. 

Narcissists may have crossed many a mile in their lives but the fact that they use others to get to where they want to go and that does not exclude their children is the painful truth and the narcissist's journey in short. To go along in their journey is not a journey of self discovery for the children of narcissists but a journey of getting lost and to understand how far they have come away from themselves is like looking at a lost cause. But to personalize that lost cause by being mindful to it and setting up boundaries wherever possible and going deep within one's life to unravel the uniqueness of being an individual self is the best form of self care that becomes crucial for the survivors or children of narcissistic parents.

All is not lost yet and don't just lose your will to live to the fullest is my reaching out to the children of narcissistic parents. 

 

Mind Maintenance

 The body holds memories of trauma, physical or emotional. Mantras act as the interface for dissolving those painful memories that seem lie dormant in pockets in our bodies and the sounds that emerge from the seed mantras, whether you listen to them or chant, seem to awaken the pockets and stir them until they get clean and get restored as pure spaces in the body.

The constant bombarding of sounds from the seed mantras can uproot one's knots that interfere with the patterns of day to day living. For instance "Om Dum Durgayei Namaha" is an example of toxic repellent where dirt gets accumulated in the form of thoughts and festers the consciousness to get toxic. It's a slow poison, our toxic thoughts, and time to time detoxing like these beej mantras help unearth them from the dark crevices of our minds and bodies and make us feel clean from within.

Our minds become the seat of mindful channelizing and tuning with our reality, moment to moment as we feel driven and know where we are trying to go. It's like the mind becomes the vehicle by which we move with our lives from one point to the other or also get stuck and keep blaming the vehicle for not taking us faster and making what we desired for to happen. Vehicle maintenance is part of the journey and the journey of a lifetime needs all the more discipline and awareness to understand the signals that how fast are we speeding or how much we can slow down to keep the movement nevertheless going. In which direction we want to go and what is the point we are trying to reach can all be understood if we keep track clearly instead of going haywire in all the directions and not reach anywhere.

Therefore one's consciousness is the inner compass to rely on and maintenance upkeep of the mind is the way to do so.