I am…

The most profound and concretizing sentence you ever make. This declares you, who you are and if it is anything less than “an extraordinary expression of the Universe”, then you are needlessly limiting yourself.

In dialogue with clients, I listen for this as it is a self declaration. The blindness with which a person says this can be the key to unlocking the life you want. These are often unconscious, habitual statements that are worth questioning.

I am a worrier.

I am sick.

I am a procrastinator.

I am poor.

Notice yourself making these declarations and the body response. If you are saying things that don’t feel good, you are investing in the life you are trying to change, working against yourself, and ignoring the whole truth of who you are. Language is powerful and worth bringing conscious intention to.

This is where I come in…if you’d like to do a 15 minute call to explore how to create elevated changes in your life, I can listen with a loving heart to how you speak and we can look together to discover where your words could be better aligned with your highest expression.

Big love,

kris

The cost of sovereignty

Many people don’t want to heal from trauma.

The truth is that the perpetual victimization is always, on a shadowy level, immensely pleasurable.

Healing requires willingness, and an acknowledgement both of the rewards of remaining unhealed, as well as the very real costs of healing.

Yolanda Norris-Clark

Sovereignty is about taking full and unwavering responsibility for your life, your self, your circumstances. This is no small thing. Perhaps this is why we see an epidemic of adults who are not adults, but instead are arrested in an earlier state of development or stuck in the stance of victimhood. It takes formidable courage and fortitude to clip the ties of all external authority, as well as keen awareness to see each and every time you are making someone else or something else your parent.

Growing up in this way requires a death of who you have been. There is always a payoff to remaining unhealed, as Yolanda says, or un-integrated is what I would prefer. Even “healing” implies that you in need of fixing, that something is wrong and it is this existential fear that keeps us looking for answers outside of ourselves. It is this existential fear that we are not enough, that we are somehow less than or wrong, that gives power to forces outside of ourselves who do not have our best interest at heart. Standing up to that right now is both harder and easier than ever before. But there is a death, much like giving up an addictive substance. You say goodbye to a certain high, a certain rush, and most definitely a lot of noise.

Are you willing to let go of that? Are you willing to sink into the stillness and see what’s left after the grief? If you are, I can promise you the gift is greater than any reward you received from being that previous version of yourself: the victim, the broken one, the one in need of fixing. The truth is quiet. And more right than being right.

You are a creator. You’ve got this. No one else can tell you what you already know in your heart. It’s time.

Big love,

Kris

The power of NO.

It is curious what we bump up against when we say no to something or someone. The mental flurry of worry.

Have you noticed that? The storm of thoughts and feelings that comes about after taking that kind of stand, when it is your truth?

Let’s meet up for dinner? No thanks.

Will you carpool out to the barn with us? No.

Have you gotten your vaccine? No, I have not.

But on the other side of that mental rush that wants you to backpedal into the familiar groove of pleasing everyone and being liked is something better than you can imagine. I have decided it is the feeling that we are looking for in all the wrong places.

“She won’t take no for an answer.” This was what someone recently told me about another person. How could this be? How could someone not take no for an answer if no is the answer? That’s on you, sister. If you are clear and unapologetic in your no, then how can a person not accept that? She may punish you emotionally, ignoring you or being a little rude. She may talk about you with other people. No matter…she can do whatever she wants. That’s her problem, my friend.

No is no.

To let your mind spin it any other way is to deny your own truth and your truth is given to you by something much bigger than being popular or nice. In a sense, it is none of your business why no is no. It simply is. And you required to show up and say it in order to live YOUR life. As Glennon Doyle says, “these are your marching orders”.

And the flip side is this: yes is yes. Do you know the whole body humming of a real, honest “yes”? There is nothing like it. Every no opens the way for that kind of yes. Talk about decluttering. It is so clean and quiet and right when you make this your north star.

No is no and yes is yes.

The rest will take care of itself. Trust me.

Big love,

Kris

Healthy

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Jiddu Krishnamurty

When we zoom out of whatever situation we find ourselves feeling constricted about, be it the upcoming election in the US, the school situation during a pandemic, the proper measures to take to avoid contracting Covid, we can gain something essential. What is this essential piece that gets illuminated from the higher vantage point of zooming out? Seeing with new eyes what we were assuming to be real (that may not be) and asking the questions that are hidden in the common discourse.

Politics, economics, education, health care…these systems are crumbling. We are being invited to ask new questions, to reframe the so-called debate, to consider possibilities that we have dared not let in previously.

In a recent survey I conducted of 31 parents from different parts of the world (albeit mostly white and upper middle class respondents, thus providing a limited set of insights that cannot be assumed to transfer beyond this subset of society), one of the silver linings that emerged for many was the blessing of living a simpler lifestyle with fewer scheduled plans, less running around, more time with family. At the same time, one of the main concerns was lack of socialization for children.

Let’s look at this.

What are the unexamined assumptions in all this?

1. Children need to spend regular time with their peers. Who decided this? How do we know this is true? Prior to industrialization, young people were engaged in intergenerational relationships. Modern schooling was the start of putting humans of the same age into groups for 30+ hours a week. Is this working? Is this a developmental requirement? Is this contributing to problems and pathologies? What else is possible that this model ignores? Gordon Neufeld presents a perspective worth considering about the damaging impacts of peer orientation in his book “Hold Onto Your Kids” that challenges this assumption in a comprehensive way.

2. After school programming, extra curricular activities (lessons, play dates, classes, etc) is necessary. Who decided this? How do we know this is true? What is this based on? I propose that this comes from the idea that there are “windows” for optimal development and this “given” has led to the highly pressured lives of our young people because, if they don’t learn guitar, another language, sports NOW, then they never will. Is this true? Recent neuroscience is continually revealing to us more and more about the plasticity of the brain. Could this not relieve us of the unexamined assumption that childhood requires exposure to every opportunity and practice of every skill before it’s too late?

3. Family connection and engagement was an unexpected gift unique to this time. The assumption here is that this is not something we have a choice about continuing. Some people may not have this choice, but perhaps you actually do. Are you willing to reduce your income levels, start a home-based business or live with one salary in order to prioritize the life you want with your children? Is there an impulse in you to educate your children, take control of their learning lives, engage them in alternative views, explore self directed learning, and redesign how you live? Maybe it’s closer than you think. Perhaps there is an alternative educational option near you (democratic schools, self directed learning centers, agile learning centers, Sudbury school, Montessori or Waldorf-inspired, home schooling cooperatives?).

What brings you alive around these questions? There are no “shoulds”, there is an opportunity, an invitation for you to listen deeply to your inner guidance. The shake up of these times is a gift in that way. Even if you choose to return to “the way it was” for your family, you may do so from a place of greater self friendship, inner clarity, and presence.

Ask the questions that are not being asked. See where that takes you. We are all in this together and as each of us sees things anew, we all reap the benefits of that enhanced field of generativity. Every act is a statement of belief that contributes to creating the world we want to live in and the world we wish to leave for our children.

Big love,

Kris

War against the self

"Anytime you identify somebody else as evil, you are looking at a mirror. Maybe my fervent identification with being on "‘team good” is a way to cover up my deep fear that maybe I am not a good person. But let me prove that I am.

This is one way to understand the cleavage of our society into opposing poles. It comes from a wound. A wound of self rejection. In compensation for that wound, many of us endlessly seek to demonstrate our worthiness and our virtue and our superiority over others. But it comes from an inferiority complex. What is the origin of that? What is the origin of this wound of separation, this wound of self rejection?

I invite you to feel the presence of that.

Our political landscape is a mirror of our psychic landscape. Each dimension of healing reflects all the other dimensions of healing. You can see the relatedness of personal healing, relational healing, social healing, political healing and ecological healing. Like a holograph. Each part is a map of the whole.

We are really all in this together. “

Charles Eisenstein

It begins with the self. Where does this regime of control get reflected onto our relationship with our own being? We are seeking the enemy within ourselves and then implementing a plan to eradicate the “bad”. Our unthinking response, our unexamined default is to use force against what we think is the problem. As we do to ourselves, we do to those we lead and children we raise.

Rewards and punishments are a form of force and coercion upholding the war mentality.

What are the questions we are not asking? What are the roots? Are we willing to sit with not knowing a different way? Not knowing the answers. Are we willing to feel into the degree to which this is not working? Not with ourselves and not with others? By being with…the discomfort of not knowing…the realization that this isn’t working and we don’t know how to do it differently, we can open up a space from which something new can emerge.

Notice and observe all the ways that you engage in a war against your self. What is that wound? What is the need underneath the strategy of force, of trying to make something happen?

Be with THAT. I will, too. Let’s be in this together.

Big love,

Kris

Being spacious

Self friendship is fundamental. It is what our children need from us. It is what our world needs from us. When we turn out attention away from controlling the outer conditions of our lives, towards the inner life, we get access to something bigger.

Change begins with you.

Self work is the cornerstone of being the parent you want to be and it is essential for being an agent of change-in your family, your community, your work in the world.

Living the examined life means bringing a quality of self inquiry to everything that presents itself to you throughout each day. Welcome every circumstance, ESPECIALLY the challenging ones, the ones that stimulate an emotional charge, as these are mirrors. Every charged circumstance is pointing you towards your Life Curriculum.

And who better to show us the way? Our children.

The situation in the world, being home more with fewer distractions, allows our unfinished self work to become more visible than ever. So try this exercise…

Close your eyes and imagine a situation with your children that was frustrating for you, where you reacted and perhaps felt regret afterwards. You were not who you want to be. Take a moment and notice your body sense, your thoughts, face, belly, breathing, as you relive that.

Open your eyes and perhaps jot down a few notes.

Now close your eyes again and imagine a recent experience where you faced a challenge with your child and you showed up in a way that felt aligned with who you want to be, even if your child didn’t like what you were say. Perhaps you were saying “no”, and you did it with clarity and strength. Notice again your body sense, face, belly, shoulders, breathing, thoughts.

Open your eyes and write what you noticed.

What is the difference in what you were paying attention to in those two different situations? What was the quality of your awareness and how was it different?

Constriction.

This is the quality that parent-clients typically report in first scenerio. This is when you are in fight/flight mode, where your creative thinking is gone, primal reactions abound, you default to your own conditioning, and you rarely get access to your own innate resourcefulness. This state is ruled by fear. This is the small self at work, the limited, willful, constricted self, trying to force something. You are not in choice. There is no learning for your child in this moment. You are being run by false beliefs, assumptions that are not true. Deconstructing these beliefs can lead to lasting change in these circumstances. If you don’t have access to the support needed to do this self work, then at a minimum, your mantra is DO NO HARM.

Spaciousness

This is the quality most often reported by clients in second experience. The body is open and light, and you have access to creative, solution-oriented thoughts. Loving actions flow effortlessly and your child often responds in surprising and delightful ways because this state is ruled by love. This is what you experience when you are showing up as who you want to be. You are on friendly terms with what is. This is the ultimate form of self-friendship. Self-friendship (big you, not small you).

Your state of BEING matters. It leads to what you DO. It comes about as a direct result of the assumptions you are making in that moment. Notice your thoughts as they will point you to what you are assuming to be true. “She is always like this. He is basically lazy. She is going to fall behind if she doesn’t…”

You live in choice. You have the power to shift form constriction to spacious expansion by shifting what you are paying attention to, what you are aware of. The power of awareness is the greatest treasure (and still such a secret) of being human. Because children are less conditioned, they respond to this shift in us immediately, almost magically. So, what are you shifting your awareness to? It can be as simple as: see what’s good. Look for the possibility that your small fear mind is not right, that the negative assumption isn’t the truth.

Another way forward is to create a set of Guiding Principles to lift you out of constriction in those moments. More on that in the next post.

Big love,

Kris

Summary of Talk given at Women Agents of Change online gathering, April, 2020