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Showing The World The Real You

August 3, 2020 by Must Love Crows 2 Comments

To know who we truly are takes a lot of work. To show who that person is, once we begin to do the work of understanding who that is, is another feat in and of itself.

Who am I? The question haunts us in whispered echoes throughout our life experience. As we bounce and bump into others, we are given opportunities to understand the answer. And we change it a lot. As we feel the comfort of belonging within the context of a group setting, we may lose sight of the answer entirely. In fact, the answer may at some points in life, if left unchecked or unquestioned, be entirely dependent upon what the group asserts itself, and us, to be.

Fear of rejection, of not belonging anywhere can take us down paths that lead us astray from answering the question, Who am I? It feeds desires that don’t belong within us; that serve as bandaids for the cracks in our foundation formed through choosing the comfort of belonging over the transformative discomfort of understanding who we are in the absence of all the noise of the collective.

Yet, we ARE the collective. We are part of it all and everyone. We are, for lack of a better phrase, cut from the same cloth.

And we are all here for different reasons.

We aren’t here to adhere to groupthink about “makes sense” or how we “Should” feel, think or act.

We are here to question the beliefs of the very thing within which we undeniably belong.

It is through that questioning that we uncover fragmented insights into who we are and what we are meant to do.

The work of human life is to put the fragments of intel we receive from our experiences into a story – the story – we are playing out in this incarnation.

Some of these insights come from really difficult experiences. Some come from joyous ones.

The universe doesn’t discriminate with good or bad in this area. They are ALL guiding us towards something, or, repelling us from something.

Every experience we have is a road map – every event we experience is a potential pivot point. The intensity matters to our human minds, but to the universe, they are all simply gifts of varying intensity, guiding us in the direction we are meant to go.

When we come closer to knowing the truth of who we are, our foundational awareness is solidified through the act of giving the world a glimpse of who that is.

When we begin to offer ourselves to the world as we inherently are, even when afraid of how that version of us will be perceived, we say to the universe, “I am beginning to know who I am: please send me experiences that solidify my burgeoning understanding of my purpose and align me with experiencing my desires.”

To do this, we must stop offering versions of ourselves that other people are comfortable with.

We must abandon the group and not just risk being rejected for being ourselves, but fully accept the experience.

We must willingly move into experiencing how it feels to not be accepted for who we are, in order to envelop the full energetic expression of WHO we are.

Even though this courageous act may be something we choose to do, it still triggers feelings of abandonment. This great severing of our roots, this powerful choice to choose the road untraveled, to live within the unknown and the discomfort of others not understanding or accepting that you are uncovering your path, feels like a loss. Like being left out for being YOU.

But the universe rewards leaps of faith. No act of courage goes unrewarded through its eyes. And the power that resonates from your choice to act beyond the scope of all that you know – all that was once comfortable yet feels less and less so as you begin to know yourself inherently – leaves an energetic imprint that motivates and empowers others to walk the same courageous path.

xo
A

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Intuition vs Instinct – What’s the difference?

July 24, 2020 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

The concept of intuition and instinct can cause confusion. We don’t know the difference and we use the terms interchangeably.

No one explains it well, including me. They just say, “Follow your instincts; follow your gut.”

That’s hard to do. I mean, we are all so jacked up nervous system-wise from social media and the intensity of living life in a pandemic-laden world, it’s hard to know what we feel.

We are triggered – a lot. Control – of others and our experiences – is becoming a serious issue. And being with ourselves without some sort of noise distracting us from how we feel is difficult. It feels a lot easier to avoid knowing how we feel. We just log on to Netflix and binge away whatever feelings are trigged within.

It makes it harder for instinct to do its job when we’re consumed with the intensity of energies lambasting us on social media, on TV or on the internet. But it still manages to show up.

Instinct comes from a very specific place in your body – the 3rd chakra area.

This is the energy centre responsible for primal instinct. The feelings that tell you to change lanes, lock your doors. I refer to it as the hair on the back of the neck notification. “Hmm…something isn’t right, or safe, here. Better <enter activity> to protect myself.”

While instinct and intuition are most definitely linked, in that they come from a place beyond the finger pointable, this-is-what-this-means, human-demanding realm of needing to have proof of their legitimacy, instinct is easier to accept than intuition.

We get stronger hits with instinct.

We can feel it more clearly and there is less of an inner debate about its legitimacy. Mostly because it comes in hot, ie with intensity (funny enough, instinctual hits often give you a cold feeling in the body.)

Very hard to deny the goosebumps that occur at the same time your “gut” tells you something is up and you need to be wary.

Sure, you can try to deny it. But think back on all the times you thought, “Damn! I should have followed my instincts. That experience sucked!” Yeah. We learn the hard way that instinct is here to serve us.

Intuition is not so welcomed or easily discernible in the 3D world. It’s quieter. It’s less abrasive in its delivery.

And – big surprise – we don’t value it as much because we try to compare it to the hits we get in our 3rd chakra with instinct, which are, and no disrespect to instinct, more obnoxious.

We are trained to think that if intuitive insights don’t come hard and fast and large, they aren’t worthy of our attention.

But that’s the thing that trips us up.

Intuition isn’t obvious. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a legitimate form of guidance and insight.

The little bits of insight it offers lead to BIG THINGS.

Intuition is all for aligning you with where you need to be. And it wants you to respect its power, ie it doesn’t want you to investigate its legitimacy.

Intuition does not want you to compare it to its cousin, instinct.

It wants to be taken just as seriously as instinctual, loudly-felt responses are. It wants the subtle feeling it sends to be respected as much as the slap in the face ones.

It wants you to jump when it says how high, for the elusive pay off of, “You’ll know why at a later date.”

Seem risky? Maybe. But more like it feels risky. ‘Cause we humans have been trained since we were in diapers to not trust what we can’t see.

We’ve also been trained to demand the answers now, like entitled twats.

Ok, ok. That was harsh. But I needed to lighten things up here. lol!

So we’ve been taught to question what isn’t clear. And sure, it works with some things, like contracts and people who leave out pertinent details.

But we can’t work with our intuition that way and expect it to work in our favour. In fact, we minimize its power and effect when we do.

Or else – and this is super fun (jk) – if we don’t listen to the subtle hits our intuition offers, it forces our hand.

Big tower moments show up, where things fall apart in an intense way, so we’ll have no other choice but to pivot in life.

Intuition doesn’t care that you want proof that it knows what’s up.

It doesn’t understand why some humans will sign a contract filled with technical jargon that screams of desperation to convince you it’s not a shitty deal, instead of following a whisper of a hunch that something’s up that comes from a place you can trust WAY more than a lawyer: your higher self.

Intuition is like, why don’t you at least wait and think about it a bit, and I’ll send you some more signs telling you that this direction ain’t the one for you? mmm kayyyy?

We wonder why the hits are so subtle. Why don’t they yell in our faces the way primal urges to react in order to protect ourselves do?

Why should they?

They need to be different. They aren’t providing the same service.

When our safety is at risk, the universe forces itself through our cluttered up human minds and speaks to us through the 3rd chakra. It’s a primal message, delivered to keep us alive and safe.

Intuitive insights have a harder time poking through the density of the human experience because they aren’t associated with immediate life or death stuff.

They aren’t given such intense energy to be delivered through, we just think they should.

What’s more, intuition has a hell of a time coming in hot and how you’d like it because of the density of the 3D energy that we live in.

It’s dense AF here – Believe it. It’s hard for guidance to come through.

Our energy is weighed down and clogged up with thoughts that are extremely dense energetically: money, groceries, rent, jobs (the way you make money) career (the thing you dream of doing), that thing Trisha did to you in high school, that abuse you experienced in your childhood, the fact that your parents sucked at their job, and still do.

Try to get through the obsessiveness of your thinking about all of these things long enough to focus on making dinner, let alone allow your intuition to get through it. Nothing easy about it.

Intuition is competing with some seriously dense information. It wants to be heard, but we have our energetic walls up – to our detriment.

The mind runs our show, and it has no idea how to run it properly. It’s like the shittiest showrunner – ever.

No one knows when to come to set. It’s just a big old mess. That’s what’s helping to clog up your energy with the nonsense that blocks the inflow of solid intel from your intuition.

The mind also keeps us from experiencing what we want.

I enjoy the analogy of making room in my life, mostly because it’s played out so flawlessly over the years. If I really want to experience something I need to make the space in my life for it to come in. An example:

If I want to make more money, I can’t clog up my thoughts with worry over not having enough or focusing on not knowing how to make more money.

I need to remain energetically open to the in flow, so the idea about the how and the money can actually come in.

My personal favourite technique that I use in every area of life:

I need to set the intention and then be ambivalent AF about the outcome.

If I’m being real, it makes me feel like a badass when I do this. Just letting it go with some swagger – I mean, it feels cool.

So If I want a new relationship, I know I can’t use up all the energy within me thinking about how I’ll never find someone who relates to me. My energy needs to be free and open to receiving this new experience.

Your energy needs to be free to receive what you want to experience.

So then, the question must be: where is your energy going every day?

An example I have relied on many times from my life: I had a friend I’d known for much of my life. We cared for each other very much. But as the years passed it became clear that we were on very different paths. It just wasn’t a good fit anymore. If we kept it up, we’d be enabling and keeping each other from required growth.

So after much soul searching, I cut ties. It was very painful. The night it happened I cried – a lot. I slept fitfully, thinking about our last exchange (yeah…it wasn’t great). Yet I woke up the next day feeling freer than I’d felt in months. Less exhausted energetically. And when I checked my email later in the morning, I notice a new client had purchased a $2000 dollar consulting package overnight.

😉🗝🤯🤗

To add some icing to my story: the same friend reach out a while later, hoping to salvage our relationship. When I again cut ties again (some more ouch) I received another new client.

I use this analogy because it’s a motivating one for us humans, as it relates to something we all want: the great money hack and the potential for financial freedom.

We are all very driven to create a foundation of money for ourselves and our families. To be released from money fears is a very powerful thing. That freedom is hella enticing.

And so I will reiterate that to receive what you wish in life, you have to free up energetic space within you, so it has room to show up.

To summarize…

Energy needs to be free in order to manifest.

The work required to make that happen = taking stock of what your energy is being put into, and questioning if it could be blocking what you want to come through.

Intuition is not loud. To hear it, you need to quiet the mind.

The mind runs your show, but it doesn’t have the credentials to do the job, ie it sucks at it.

Instinct lives in the 3rd chakra. It’s not the same as intuition: It yells at you.

Intuition subtly pokes you with thoughts when your mind gets put in its place.

Love, love, love,

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Fuel for The Work We Are Here To Do – Collective Reading

July 9, 2020 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

The entrance to forgotten inner realms of knowing become uncovered when we allow ourselves to discover the pathway to our own pain.

When we don’t cover it up by busying ourselves with attempting to controlling others; Rather, we choose to witness all the ways in which fear of our current experience goads us into behaving in the absence of awareness of our true motivations.

More – the way in which we fight with all that we cannot know goads us into trying to control others.

We attempt to control in funny human ways: in a grocery store line up; power-tripping on the highway; seeking issues where none exist in the comments section – our desperation to declare our belief in true fiction to the world – “I have some power in this; this too shall be conquered, by me, through ways that have never worked before in history, but still, I will try.”

It drains our life force. It uses up the fuel reserved for the work we are here to do, in this skin.

Ludicrously, our experience repeats itself. We don’t look beneath the inches we take backwards when busying ourselves with believing energy-draining control mongering will create an ability to tell of a future in which we are comfortable – that a fictitious affirmation will arrive from the skies, telling us what we want to hear: That we are safe from all that terrifies us; that we will experience what we want, rather than what we need in this life, to grow.

Dangerous times exist within our capacity to ignore all the steps backward we are taking when we refuse to take a step inward, and witness our true motives when we attempt to control everyone and everything around us, instead of seeking to understand our fear and discover why it exists: to teach us about ourselves and what we are here to learn.

We are all trying to run from the human experience of learning how to keep our hearts open within the unknowing. Within the fear.

Doctors can’t save you from this lesson. Neither can masks or gloves. Setting the intention to understand what drives your unrelenting desire for control: That’s the way home. That’s the work. I dare you to do it with me.

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Collective Reading – June 19 2020

June 19, 2020 by Must Love Crows 2 Comments

There is a process to this that many people don’t like. It’s the breaking of a thing, so it can be rebuilt.

Most people reject this process. They don’t see the value in it, they only see the fear – that which they don’t know.

The breaking can be violent and awful to witness and feel. And it often is. It feels unsafe. People feel vulnerable.

But the true vulnerability lies in the human that refuses to budge – who doesn’t allow space within them to see that there is a spark being created by every act of destruction.

The energy within the calling out, the naming of that which needs to be changed is incredibly powerful. It can carry us through the times when we don’t know the answer; when we don’t know what will happen. And all the fear that comes along with that experience.

Within the scope of the unknown is the fear of abandonment. If we don’t know, how can we create a sense of home – of safety – within the context of all that remains unclear to us? How can we live there?

The answer: create a sense of home within ourselves.

It’s within the remembering of the spark that exists and is created through the violent assertion of all that can no longer live in the way it’s always lived, that we garner our fuel and support. It is the source upon which all of our strength can be accessed.

We needn’t run away in fear or lash out in response to the unknown. We must only remember the spark that ignites and lights up all that is required, to do what it is we need to do, to evolve.

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Acts of Desperation

June 5, 2020 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

To learn to withstand our own feelings is the most powerful act of defiance against those that have committed atrocities.

All abusers are desperate to escape how they feel, and their acts of desperation can be catalysts for us to learn how to be with ourselves.

An abuser is driven by their commitment to avoiding how they feel. Their desperation to not feel their own pain motivates them to seek a sense of power through the violation of others.

The path home is through the pain.

Consider the moments when you’ve reacted to your own inner landscape, in ways that didn’t take into account the repercussions of said reactivity.

You might not realize the extent of the pain you caused. Perhaps the person who was hurt by your actions went home, and, afraid of and disgruntled by how they felt, disregarded their child’s needs. As a result, the child felt abandoned by the parent – unsafe – as any child will feel when their inherent need for love and support from their parent isn’t met.

This is trauma.

Humans have strong opinions about what is and what isn’t traumatic. No matter the degree we deem it to be, trauma does not go away by ignoring it. It must be witnessed and felt in order to be transmuted.

We do not think when we are afraid of how we feel inside. We only react to it.

Our desperation to avoid our own pain can cause more trauma, or it can be transmuted IF we commit to doing the work of witnessing it.

Everyone’s pain must be witnessed. Avoided feelings are catalysts for abuse.

It starts with us.

We cannot control others, we can only control ourselves.

We cannot continue to believe the lies that we have been taught: that our feelings can’t be trusted; that it’s not OK to feel.

Now’s the time to learn how to be with ourselves.

We must be our own parents. We must be there for ourselves the way a parent is for a child, whether we had that experience as children or not.

Many didn’t have this dynamic and need it recreated, within themselves, in order to heal and end the perpetuation of trauma.

We must prove to the children within us all that we can be counted on, that we will be there for them, and that we will stop ignoring their needs.

We must allow ourselves to witness and experience how we feel, and honour every human’s right and need to do the same.

The true warrior brandishes no weapon. They courageously look within at their own pain, and say, “This is what lives within me. And it’s alive within all of us.”

—

If you feel inspired to do the work of the warrior along with me, there is a course being offered through Sounds True which can help support you.

It’s called The Power of Awareness and is being offered by Jack Kornfield & Tara Brach, beginning June 8th.

I don’t make cash when you click the link. Just sharing a resource that helped me and might be helpful to you, too.

Power of Awareness | Jack Kornfield & Tara Brach

Tales From Mid-Life Crisis During The Apocalypse

March 26, 2020 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

Leading up to this huge shift in our world, I’d been going through what is labelled, rather blandly and boringly in my opinion, a mid-life crisis.

Last spring a brand new energy began coursing through my body, and it’s been reliably screaming at me in variable decibels depending on the day:

Are you gonna do what you’re here to do or not?

It’s a very “shit or get off the pot” vibe and it has accompanied me throughout all of my experiences over the last year and remains with me today. It feels like a tough-love best friend who constantly reminds me that settling is no longer an option.

This energy has made it a lot easier to end things that are keeping me from experiencing what I want to experience.

I can stand up, take up space, and protect myself in ways I used to feel incapable of doing. I feel bold in my ability to self protect.

To be clear, I still get freaked the fuck out when doing it, but there is no other option with this energy: I HAVE to take action.

I’ve never been a wallflower, but I tried to be one for a long time – to hide.

This mid-life crisis vibe is refusing to let me dabble with playing small.

Sure, over the past 6 years or so I’ve been steadily shifting & changing – transforming. But over the last year, it’s been undeniably next level.

My understanding of who I am and what I’m meant to do has been flipped on its freakin’ head.

It began super randomly. I remember sitting in front of the TV early last year, watching an actor on some show. And I remember intimately feeling the emotions of the scene while this wave of acknowledgment came over me, infusing into every single cell in my body. It said,

If you do this, you will feel free.

Shortly after that experience, a bunch of synchronistic events occurred which resulted in getting signed to a talent agency and working on a movie. These moments came with such velocity and speed I barely had time to breathe.

OK, I had enough time, I was just SO fucking nervous my chest felt incapable of appropriate degrees of expansion for breathing to occur. But the consensus amidst all of the new experiences and the ever-present difficulty drawing in air was,

I am meant to be an actor.

Something about being on set lit me up, which was wild to realize because up until that point, life experience taught me that I was better off in the company of the most minimal of people.

Tons of people on a movie set. It’s chaotic and crazy and volatile which in my day to day life, is an environment I would steer clear of. It takes so long for me to shake stuff like that off: I’m empathic to the point of impairment at times.

Yet I remained so detached and unaffected by the chaos when it occurred on a movie set. It felt like I’d been there before – I’d done this kind of work before – and I knew how to handle it.

Whatever I felt resonated because whenever someone found out I’d never worked on a set before they were surprised. And as far as acting – at that point background performing, which is acting without words, where many actors start out to gain set experience and connections – the consensus from many people, including the director was, “You’re a natural.”

Acting with actual lines, I received the same results. After a few classes and huge degrees of fear-based hesitancy were worked through (who am I kidding? 😂 They are still being worked through!) acting came very naturally to me. I can tap into strong emotions very quickly and rather seamlessly integrate my flair for the comedic into improvisations.

Before this whole mid-life crisis inspired questioning-of-my-purpose began, I had zero inclination that acting would be my thing.

The people from my past who weren’t my biggest fans? They might have a different view of it. 😂 I mean, I was known for being dramatic. I understand why now, from a compassionate place, but for a long time it was a point of self-shame for me.

It was something that people judged me for. For the outsider with no understanding of the repercussions of trauma, or through the lens of those who see women who speak up and take up space as a negative, who I was wasn’t a celebratory thing. Just the opposite.

Sadly, for a very long time, I was the outsider.

I was the person who thought women shouldn’t take up so much space. I hadn’t done the digging into the reality of my childhood experiences, to see how they had conditioned me to abandon myself and my fellow females, and how they were inspiring my dramatic outbursts that no one seemed interested in witnessing.

I had no understanding of why I behaved the way I did, why I couldn’t just blend into the crowd. I just hated myself for it because no one seemed to like me in that form.

And I hadn’t built any foundation of self-esteem or self-love to see the power in my capacity to live from a deeply emotive state. Nor had I been able to see that the people I was drawn to were incapable of valuing the well of emotions that existed within me, or understanding how they could be channelled into powerful creative pursuits. I mean I didn’t know how, so how could I expect the people I was partying with to know?

But then came last spring when I realized that all the moments I was dramatic and over the top, either in my eyes or in the eyes of others, were for a purpose.

They were indications that I was meant to utilize my flair for the dramatic and my ability to be seen and take up space productively, through acting.

One of my driving forces in life is to share content and stories that make people think. To trigger them (this isn’t always fun to do but it comes with the territory when you speak out) to look within and ask WHY.

Why do you feel this way about that person? Why do you feel that way about yourself?

It’s in the willingness to answer those questions, and question everything we’ve normalized that transformation begins.

Asking why is one of the most powerful acts of self-love.

I’ve done a lot of work on myself to be able to get to this point. I used to be driven by a desire to lash out, do drugs, overeat and argue. I now know how to self-soothe, so all of the above isn’t as much of an issue for me.

I work hard to take ownership of my pain. I call myself out on what I need to work on instead of spreading it all over everything I touch and see. Even though I wince when I have to look the undesirable stuff in the face, especially when I have to head in the “what’s alive in you is alive in me” direction, I do the work.

It’s my job. I’m here to break the cycle of abuse I come from.

There are days when I can see that I’m being co-dependant, judgmental, or jealous. Angry. Resentful (now that’s a destructive feeling to hold near and dear. And I realize I need to process it in the company of no one, stat, so I don’t place the energy of those emotional states onto other people.

Sometimes I fail.

I always feel bad when I do. Guilty. More often than not, ashamed. I’m always trying to do better. But I remind myself consistently that it’s really about the art of the attempt – the intention to do better with this kind of work. And that takes me out of the inherited shame narratives I was taught to own.

The pathway to transformation is within and through your willingness to do better next time.

But now, after giving myself permission to embrace the performer within me, I channel ALL my experiences into my creative life. Even when I’ve been a grade-A asshole to my love, or felt survivalist narcissistic traits trying to take over a conversation or a choice: I don’t let those experiences go to waste, I utilize them so I can learn from them.

I see acting as an opportunity to transmute destructive feelings, both within myself and within others.

If I can give the feelings within me a chance to be witnessed and worked through via a creative performance, I can perhaps help others see and feel their feelings, and transmute them.

Connection through performance is powerful. It can incite empathy. It can inspire people to think and try to do things differently. To ask the inner questions that need to be asked.

Acting has given me an outlet for my capacity to feel.

All the years of absorbing what went unspoken and dealing with the trauma that came with my ability to do that can now be channelled into character development and scene work.

Realizing the power of this channelling of my abilities has been cathartic. It has inspired self-forgiveness.

I felt ashamed and guilty about my empathic abilities for the majority of my life. I had no clue why I couldn’t get a handle on the anxiety and depression, and the addictions I relied on to try to escape how I felt.

I felt inherently flawed which was affirmed by many people, including my parents, doctors and the media. I was lambasted with toxic medications that made me shake, and labels that made me cower in the corner.

I tried to outrun it all and it almost killed me.

Now I see the power in my experiences. They can be used to make art.

When I am rehearsing a monologue, I feel actualized. Like I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing. On point with my purpose. When I write a scene for a potential web series, I feel aligned with who I am.

It took me a long while to get there. I spent a good section of my life believing life was all about money – how I could make money. I wrestled with the toxic ancestral narrative: “You need to make money at what you do, all the time, or else there is no point in doing it.”

My mid-life catharsis, in conjunction with this apocalyptic state of the world has helped me see how the money-centric narrative needs to end.

Money first, life purpose second is not meant to live within me anymore. Or on this planet.

Since this pandemic began, I’ve been steering myself in directions I’m meant to go.

I’ve given myself permission to follow what my heart wants to do.

Every day I wake up and work on my fostering my creativity in some capacity. I make an effort to do something, no matter how small.

I research. I read a book. I rehearse a monologue. I watch a movie that inspires me or helps me formulate a character. I join a free webinar. I write. And write and write and write.

And I think a lot.

Through this viral outbreak has come an opportunity to disentangle with the stories that tell me I need to keep trying so hard at things that tell me to abandon myself.

I’ve been given an opportunity to be who I am to the fullest.

To be able to stop feeling ashamed for not doing what other people taught me I needed to do, in order to be able to accept myself has been fucking soul altering.

Mid-life crisis and this covid-19 outbreak have taught me to stop being led by something that isn’t meant to lead me.

They have taught me that resistance to change is viral.

So much change is happening as a result of this pandemic. The world will never be the same. We will never be the same.

It’s time to step into the new unknown, whether we feel ready to or not – To face the fear of it instead of letting it lead us.

Full disclosure: there is not one thing I’ve experienced over the past year I felt ready to do.

With every single experience that came up, I felt like I needed more time to process or learn, or someone to consult with before I took the leap and did it.

I received none of those things but I did it anyway. And I transformed.

So can you. We can do it together.

If you feel the pull to share how the alterations to your world – your normal – in the face of covid-19 have changed your life or your views, I’d love to hear from you.

Contact me privately or leave a comment below. 💗

So much love to you – to us all – during this time of unprecedented changes to the fibres of our lives.