My Source Brings Light to a Toddler Temper Tantrum

My son is nearly 3 years old, and I have been through quite a few ups and downs of parenting. One of the greatest blessings of being a parent though, has been to see how my son helps me grow in ways I would have never imagined. I am highly committed to both self development as well as parenting, and only recently have I started to realize how these two interests of mine support one another. When my son was born, my first reaction was, ‘there go my meditation sessions, my yoga practice, and my self-development group meetings and so forth.’ I resigned myself to being with him 24/7, and putting off self development in favour of being a devoted mother. I am grateful however, for a wonderful experience I had recently which reassured me that self development and parenting are not two separate roads to travel but that experiences in one can serve as wonderful triggers for learning in the other.

One morning my son started to throw a tantrum, and grew increasingly stubborn and unreasonable, demanding that I sit down and build a car with him. I did not want to give in to his request since I had explained to him how this was an activity that we could only do in the evening together. He threw himself on the floor, face red, and started crying very loudly. My mother, who also happened to be there with us at this point suggested that I just let him lie on the floor and cry for sometime, and that he would get over the tantrum by himself. I did not have the heart to do that and yet I did not want to give in to his request either, because this would re-enforce a belief that crying could get him whatever he wanted. So instead, I just cuddled him into my lap, let him keep crying and played a ho-oponopona song (a Hawaiian meditation song) to listen to. Then I tapped along on my EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) points, and just stayed present to all the flux in our energies that was shifting around. I mentally called out to my divine source and asked source energy to come and bring light into this current situation, and simultaneously I worded out aloud to my son how I was really sorry I could not build the car with him now, but how I still loved him lots anyway. The ho oponopona lyrics (which consist of four repeating phrases, ‘I’m sorry’, ‘please forgive me’, ‘I thank you’ and ‘I love you’) and the wonderful tune and music of the song helped me to say I’m sorry and genuinely mean it simultaneously maintaining a loving intention in a strong but pleasant way. I realized that from my sons perspective he could not understand why it was not possible for Mama to build the car with him now, and how he might have found that I was being stubborn and not giving in. So I genuinely apologized to him for having hurt his feelings. Slowly he calmed down, and then I started massaging his legs and feet, helping his body move some energy around and then he calmed down further and dropped off to sleep.

I loved this experience, because I knew that a potentially distraughtful moment was turned into one of learning, by just being present and consciously calling the divine source energy into the situation. When source energy comes in, there is usually more than enough to go around for everyone involved in the situation. I also felt a huge release of pent-up emotions from myself, and I realized that as much as this experience was about my son's tantrum, it was equally about my own breaking of some old energy patterns and habits. I was reclaiming power back from an energy pattern where I had locked away some of my inner power by labelling it, 'as being under the control of something outside of me'. This was a wonderful reminder to me to remember that I attract into my experiences situations and events that I can learn something from, and that parenting is a wonderful and colourful setting for spiritual learnings to unfold. Because of the purity and innocence of children and their emotions, interactions with children are ideal settings for our own limiting beliefs and energy patterns to come into light. I also realized that although some very strong emotions come into play in many parent-child interactions, the dominant emotion remains that of Love, and this makes it a particularly great and safe classroom to take on some of our own emotional baggage and deal with it effectively.

Links to some terms used:

EFT- Emotional Freedom Technique

“EFT is an emotional version of acupuncture wherein we stimulate certain meridian points by tapping on them with our fingertips. This addresses a new cause for emotional issues (unbalanced energy meridians).” - http://www.emofree.com/newcomer.htm#Newcomers

Ho oponopona – Hoʻoponopono (ho-o-pono-pono) is an ancient Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. A simple way of practicing it is to say silently, “I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you”

http://www.hooponoponohelp.com/

Overcoming Fears and the Voice of Judgement

Oooohhh…I am super excited to be sharing this story with you because it is such a wonderful experience of this very tough but very enjoyable journey of coming into WHO I really AM. It is slowly but consistently becoming easier and easier for me to learn to distinguish between my higher-true selfs’s voice and my VOJ (Voice of Judgement), a term that I borrow from Michael Ray, which is driven by fear and old habit patterns that no longer serve me. In my case there is a direct link between most of my VOJ, and my parents opinions (or what I believe at least is my parents opinions), and many times when I catch the VOJ running in my head, I can almost hear it in the voice and typical word choice of my mother or father. You see, I have a very different vocabulary, and choice of words and phrases when I am speaking or writing from my own self, versus when I do so from my VOJ! J.

For many years I had been turning to my gut feel to guide me and take decisions, but it is only very recently that I am realizing that my ‘gut feel’, is as often from my fear driven VOJ as from my real intuitive self. Being regular and systematic in some of my body awareness practices (like yoga and like Eckhart Tolle’s suggestions on inner body awareness), have helped me distinguish between the accompanying vibrations in my body when my VOJ has taken over or when my higher self is in command. And this ability to distinguish based on the body vibrations is really really giving me more and more confidence as I go on in this sometimes tricky track of following my gut feel. You see, my mind very very easily fools me and it is very difficult to tease apart thoughts that come from the VOJ from the higher self. I usually follow a thumb rule that anything framed in the positive is usually from the higher self, wheras anything framed in the negative, which is driven by fear, or judgement and putting others down, doubting them etc. is driven by the VOJ. But it is very difficult for me to catch my VOJ red handed when once it has taken my mind over and I find it difficult to confront it with my mind alone. This is because my mind is so fast and clever to very quickly churn out associated arguments like, ‘oh Ramya, times are bad’, ‘all these people are frauds’, ‘you should be very careful of people who try to trick and cheat you’, ‘you are so gullible you don’t know the ways of the world’, etc….(I can hear all of them in my mother’s voice today). And then my mind starts doubting, and gets into this loop of doubt, caution, judgement, and I cant pull myself out of all these logical thought traps by the logic of my mind alone. This is why it is SO SO SO wonderful for me to have learnt to catch the VOJ on the basis of the fear like vibrations that it creates in my body. And when in doubt like today, I know I can surrender to my source, feel the bliss and joy when THAT SPECIAL CONNECTION is open, and KNOW that it is INDEED MY SOURCE I am connected to, again because of the accompanying physical vibrations of bliss in my body. There is no FEAR when my SOURCE connection is activated. ONLY BLISS.

Okay, so here is an amazing (and perhaps one of the toughest) example of how I am using this newly honed ability to distinguish between my VOJ and my higher self’s voice and take a step in a direction I truly want to.

Yesterday was a wonderful day of getting two very timely reminders on GLOG: 1) a quote “when the going gets tough, the tough gets going”, and another post which was a quote by ‘Neald Donald Walsh’ which said that God had a message and that was : “making a commitment means more than saying "I'll try." It means saying "I'm all in. I'm totally committed here. Even if the going gets rough. In fact, especially then." “Someone once said, aging puts wrinkles on the body. Quitting puts wrinkles on the soul. You will not have to think but a second to know exactly why you received this message today”.

I did think for a second and I knew I had received it in the context of a certain commitment that I had made. There is a certain spiritual group which I have been wanting to join for a long time now, the group really just celebrates life in a meaningful way,....But I have been toying with the thought for like nearly 10 years and I have made several friends with people who are part of it (asked so many questions, done a basic course, etc.), have had several chances to join in with the celebrations and service projects , but have always self-sabotaged myself...with skeptic like thoughts .....and so till today I haven’t really joined this wonderful community in any of their events or activities.

Last week I consciously released some of my limiting beliefs that were keeping me from joining this group when I was doing my yoga, and when I came out I immediately ran into a person I had met just once before, who invited out of the blue me to a celebration of a series of events that this group is holding very close to my house. I knew it to be a sure sign from the universe - and then I toyed with my source asking for more and more proof… and I kept getting them, almost like a game. Silly of me, but here’s how skeptic I tend to be sometimes. J . This is what I wrote to myself that day, “I'm utterly intoxicated and dizzy with joy today! I've had a wonderful experience of loving communion with my source and I have had a huge miracle that can only be divine intervention because i was so naughty I kept asking for signs (to make sure it was not a series of coincidences), and the signs kept coming. I was being really naughty because I think I was pushing the button by insisting on proof,...but I think God/source/universe does also get into a playful mood and play along sometimes....and so I got all my proofs ! ....What absolute fun! More details later....I'm too giddy to write very sensibly you see”.

So I then shyly signed up for a very small part of the celebration…..(note how one part of me is really trying to hold me back). I had been feeling a bit of resistance and fear etc. rising every now and then since I signed up, and I knew yesterday, as I wrote to Debbie, that THIS is the COMMITMENT GOD is asking me to SHOW. The mini-event I have signed up for is on three evenings, starting today , and my soul is flying to go, but there is also a fear and resistance from the old me. I KNEW why I received this, and I knew the commitment GOD was asking me to make this time. Just SHOW UP for the event without making excuses J.

When I reached home yesterday, my mother started saying, ‘do you have to go for this for three evenings,.. and she started listing reasons to keep me back including childcare related, emotional and judgemental reasons and she got my father to back her too,… and I was about to get trapped into reacting and then I suddenly saw it!. I saw this as EXACTLY what it was…it was the obstacle (lined up perhaps by my own VOJ), but I had to go past this one and stick with my commitment. So rather than react emotionally back, I just calmly said, ‘I have signed up, and now I have to do this’. Lets see how I can work around these things you mention. I was so so amazed at the way I reacted. It was almost like a new me! The old me would have got into the drama, and built it up with thoughts like, ‘oh no! Mummy always does this’ or argued back into the logics of the reasons she was offering for me not to go, or accusing her etc.. (a one line context to my parents reaction is that they have always been wary and uncomfortable about my getting involved in anything spiritual). Indeed, this time, in a matter of fact way, without even slightly getting into a conflict mode, I lined up additional resources and made a few arrangements to show that I could address the concerns she had raised without needing to cancel my plan. Wow! I was SO SO SO SO impressed with myself, with the calmness with which I dealt with the situation, and with the ease with which the alternate arrangements fell into place. The amazing thing is that the moment I faced the situation squarely, all the pain around the issue just disappeared. My mother and fathers resistance and arguments just collapsed like a pack of cards and they were pretty normal and even cheerful after that. Nobody spoke about it anymore and all the impact had gone out of the bomb like it had never occurred. It only perhaps stays on in my memory now, but I hold on to it as a trophy of having come into my own and let my true presence gently assert the truth of who I am and what I want to do.

That was yesterday evenings victory! Today morning my VOJ started a new course,…..nervousness, anxiety, judgment etc. You’re not going to believe it but as I was taking my son to school in the morning, my thoughts kept going in strange ways and I had thoughts like, ‘Why do they have to charge xxx for the session’? ‘is it going to be worth it?’, ‘Do the proceeds really go to charity’, ‘Do the organizers get to attend for free’. …etc. etc. My mind was on a roll! But luckily, the air was so fresh and the spring flowers along the path so innocently alive, that like a flash I caught myself again! All these things were NONE OF MY BUSINESS! These concerns had nothing to do with why I had signed up to go and so why think about them now. I had been told what the price was, I had been more than willing to pay that much for a certain experience I wanted to be part of and it was JUST THAT! All these other tangential thoughts were my VOJ at play again! J

I got to school, searched for the directions to the venue hotel and there my VOJ took off again! ‘Why organize in such an expensive hotel’, ‘I feel out of place in grand places’, ‘oh my dress is’nt correct’, etc. etc.. I was so off my composure, and so annoyed at myself for having signed up, so starting to expect that it will be mismanaged, that I will be disappointed and then my parents will say, ‘we told you so’, etc. etc. Wheeew! Caught myself at it again. I don’t want to labour on the nervousness and fear and irritation I was feeling because I don’t want to focus on them again. I told myself it was absurd to be against some group because of the choice of a particular venue,… etc. etc….and I caught my judgment tones, and did some EFT tapping on myself. Then I did a quick breathing pranayama to connect with my source and once the connection came through, All the fear dissolved! The big picture came alive, the role of my VOJ (which I am writing to you about) became obvious and I realized how it was my tuning into my bodily vibrations that had helped me catch some of these moments. I also felt a need to cut the etheric cords of fear and judgement that were connecting me to each of my parents at this point in time and so I did this. (It’s a very simple process to do. I just closed my eyes and visualized energy cords that were connecting me to my mother and I covered both myself and her with white light and then used an imaginary scissors to cut the cord. Then I released her to her own light and sent her more love and light. I repeated the same process with my father). Doing this, I felt a huge surge of relief and release and for now my VOJ has been driven away! J. I gave thanks to the divine grace that equipped me in advance to deal with the mammoth churning out of old beliefs and judgements that is happening today. I also realized that I don’t even need to worry if my evening is going to be worth it or not anymore because I have already grown so much and learned so much and come into my own so much further as a result of having signed up and then watching my VOJ try to sabotage it! What a marvellous experience.

There was another ‘coming into my own’ incident that happened on Saturday which I think is also a part-consequence of having signed up for this event. Very very impulsively, on Saturday evening, I suddenly told everyone to sit on the sofa in the living room and cleared some area to be an improvised stage and I said there was going to be a dance performance in 10 minutes for the whole family. I have never done this before and I had no idea what got into me and what I planned to perform. I didn’t even give them an option of whether to watch or not, I just said it like an order. I had no idea what I was going to do! My son promptly ran and sat on the sofa and said, ‘I’m ready mama’, and so with quizzical looks on their faces everyone followed suit. My husband tried to make light asking me what they should drink as they watched the dance, and I just said, ‘drink whatever you want’, but the dance is dedicated to the Divine! Till I said that I didn’t even know this was going to be a spiritual thing. Then I quickly improvised a lively costume in less than 2 minutes (something I don’t normally wear but which speaks my personality’)and my mother even came to help me and she churned out a matching flower accessory with some ribbon for my hair. Then I played a soft ‘bhajan’ ‘devotional song’ on youtube, dimmed the lights and danced my heart out. I was so shy (I am very shy to show my feminine side in front of my father), I kept my eyes almost closed, but it was the most wonderful experience ever. I often dance alone, and have danced on stage even in my youth, but this was different. I felt like I was making a statement about myself and my interests and my being, and I was doing this in my HOME, in MY way, and to my Father and Husband and Mother. I could not finish the dance because my son got restless and wanted me back in my normal clothes, and I yielded,….quickly abandoning the whole magical setup and becoming the ‘normal me’. However, I had danced for almost five minutes and I felt like I made a more powerful statement in those five minutes to my family, that I have done all my life. I realize on hindsight that I had been feeling a need to somehow bring my family to see me as who I am and to share with them my most passionate interest in life, which is to commune and play with the divine, and so I did it this way. My father sat through the dance silent and after it finished he just went about normally pretending nothing had happened. My mother said it reminded her of when I was a little girl and she liked it. My husband said nothing until I asked, and then said a one word, ‘nice’. I didn’t ask my father and he didn’t say anything but I believe the silent statement has been made on my part and that this has moved me into a new level of confidence with coming into my own and expressing the essence of WHO I AM!

Whew! long post….., but I am loving it that I can share this journey with you lovely people everyday as it is unfolding! I feel like I am doing this with all of you as my witnesses! Makes me that much more determined to do it in my best Avatar! Do pray for me and Wish me the very best for the event I will attend today! I know it will be great fun, I know I will love it. I also know my VOJ (voice of judgement) will make an attempt or two to raise its head again, but I am alert and aware…….and I know the trick! – just slip into body awareness and the imposter thoughts and imposter intuitions can be easily caught! J

Tons of love

Acknowledging, sharing our best moments

I learnt something very interesting today. I think I understood why it is so beneficial to take the time and effort out to share and acknowledge our ‘moments of flow’, ‘our successes’, and ‘the times we can connect with our sources’ etc. I am reading a book called ‘The highest goal’ by Michael Ray, and I just came across his wonderful reflection on this, and he calls it one of the core discoveries he has made in his creativity studies (p. 40) :

“You can consistently live from your highest goal by simply paying attention to the times when you are connected to it”. …..”Every time you pay attention to your own creative acts…you increase the probability that you’ll live from your inner creativity in future situations. It is analogous to what sports psychologists call ‘muscle memory’. When you watch a videotape of your own or someone elses perfect performance, you increase your ability in ways that are equivalent to hours of practice in which every move you make is perfect. That’s the beneficial cycle I’m suggesting. When you act from the highest goal and acknowledge and celebrate your breakthroughs, you develop more strength for dealing with new challenges. Keep doing this and you are developing your path.”

This has been an amazing insight for me. Yes now it makes sense from the ‘law of attraction perspective as well’. Its just that somehow a lot of us have been programmed to think that’s its vain or showy to talk about our ‘successes’ and ‘wonderful experiences’. At least that’s how my mind used to be programmed. When I started sharing my experiences on GLOG I was so uncomfortable of appearing like a show off or someone showcasing her experiences…etc. I could only do it because (1) my source kept nudging me to in ways that I could not pretend not to hear anymore, and (2) I did it anonymously so at some level I was okay if I appeared vain !:-)….surprise surprise…….! I only got back more and more love from all of you and I only saw my creative moments and flow experiences increase and expand! 

THANK YOU UNIVERSE….NOW I WANT TO HELP EVERYONE KNOW THIS TRUTH …..
…It IS OKAY TO SHARE YOUR GREAT EXPERIENCES…….IN FACT YOU HONOUR YOUR SOURCE WHEN YOU DO THAT! :-)..Why did I every believe otherwise?.......

My Wonderful World

Today I saw my wiggly toes
And the beautiful arches of my feet
And how they synchronized with several muscles
To make me stand up from my seat

If this orchestration is natural
Then nature is a miracle for sure
And I am part of this marvellous miracle
A gorgeous creation, perfect and pure

I saw a bird glide on its wings
I thought how well it sometimes sings
I saw a tree stand strong and tall
I saw delicate moss growing on a wall

I thought of how I sometimes walk
Right through life without seeing it all
How big and wonderful my world could be
Unless I chose to imagine it small!

Joy in the NOW

I am grateful for the sunshine, the lovely morning at home, Mummy Daddy's love, Siddharth, the friendly porter, the duck pics on the bus stand, the Awesome people in Siddharths nursery and the great garden he gets to play in, the breathtakingly beautiful flowers I spotted while walking, For running into Andy just out of the blue, for the great bus ride, for my wonderful school, for the skip in my steps, for the light in my heart, for the twinkle in my eyes that makes everything look wonderfull... and for the great ZEN quote I read this morning which says, "What, if anything is lacking in the present moment?"....And the answer I feel - nothing -nothing-....absolutely nothing!....

The mountains I desired were inside of me,
The free flowing rivers are inside of me

For years I chased a golden experience that I had for the first time as I lay on a rock in the Himalayas by the side of a fast flowing assi-ganga stream, looking up at the twinkling stars!

For a long long time I wanted to re-live that experience, linking it first to the Himalayas itself and wanting to go back there, then linking it to nature, and wanting to be in nature all the time, and now after almost 20 years I have re-found that experience and I feel that bliss and joy and contentment NOW,.. and it need be linked to nothing that is outside of me although it matters not what I link to; for when I am living this wonderful experience all that I bring into it only shares and becomes a part of the wonderful experience.

A Vision of My Magnificence

Today at the end of my yoga session the picture that came intuitively was all of natures wonderful magnanimity, the great mountains, the delicate flowers, fast flowing gorgeous rivers, red and orange volcanoes bursting forth with energy, the mighty oceans and its colourful life-forms, the grandeur of every single tree… and I got a message, ‘this is the splendour of the universe, the beauty, the grandness, the power , the magnanimity, the generosity! And I got a feeling that this was me – this was the power and beauty of my source its capabilities, and so it was my power and grandeur and capabilities as well. All this power and creativity and capacity and more was within me. I was the only one preventing myself from realizing this poer and grandeur. Because of this nothing was possible, no dream was too big, anything I could imagine or conceive of was possible,…….it was a divine dance and game and art….i could do anything I wanted in beauty and grace… and I felt this connection again when I said, ‘ppornamadam shloka ( a shloka which confirms the wholeness of the universe)’ at the end…. That this grandeur of nature, of mankind, of all creation was IT! The source, and within me was the source too, and no matter what you took from where and put it where… the completeness and magnanimity of the source remained in its maximum splendour and IT ALWAYS WILL!
Om!
Love …
Ramya