i am a brand-new shivanaut (yeah! i love titles! i love groups!) and have found the changes in my life in the past four days to be…well, when i tried to describe them to my loving mother, i had to preface it with, “i know it sounds like i’m stoned…but it’s just shiva nata!” but actually, it’s not so much like they’re changes in my *life*, more like changes in my understanding of my soul. i kind of did think i’d be perfected from this practice–you know, all the rough ways would be made smooth and all that. but really, it’s more a matter of uncovering the pure heart and intention that was behind each of the patterns i’ve seen so far–because all those weird bumps and glitches really, really did all start life as something that wanted to protect me, or make me happy, or make things easier. and now of course, some of them need to examine if they still want to be walls now that we all are a little wiser…

last week’s parsha was ki tissa, which i have always loved–the golden calf, betzalel, men with hearts of wisdom, whiny israelites…and this week, it really hit me that false idols (which i’ve been thinking of for years now as the demons of TV! and Consumption! and Celebrity!) are really things that we engineer to simply feel more secure. we make like the israelites, and beg someone else to make us something that will Fix Us and keep us from the horrible hungry monster of worry. Just something external that will help us stop thinking about the horrible gaping hole inside of us.

this week, i began to think of the internal ground of parshat ki tissa as a moment where we were asked to find strength inside ourselves. not forever, just a moment that would begin to help us build our own security muscles. and we fail, collectively, because we need a false idol, a transitional object. we get so scared and unwilling-unmovable, really–because we can’t see that there might be anything positive or tender or sweet about the walls/monsters/iguanas living inside of us. we want them out, and we want something to make us feel better. for me, i’ve always worshipped the False Idol of looking and dressing perfectly. now, i’m beginning to ask the question: what makes me want to start melting down all my earrings to make a pretty little golden calf in the first place?

sorry! so long! ah! but seriously, havi, shiva nata in all its mystery might be the best thing to have happened to me since EFT, the fluent self and yoga came along. which is to say, it is a Very Good Thing.

b’vracha! hamon!
jessie

Just yesterday I had a deconstruction deal going on. Only I hadn’t looked at quite like that until reading this.

It went something like this.

“Why is this weight thing a constant head rear-er?” (insert appropriate nasally “Waaaaa” here)

I worked through an exercise from Mark Silver’s book and it got dusted off more and more until I was sitting with this essence of APPROVAL.

And from there I was aware of how often and varied are the ways I get approval in every day life and I brush them away, shrug my shoulders, INVALIDATE the person approving.

I am given the gift of approval daily in small and sometimes very large ways but I’m so worried about getting approval I had closed the door to receiving it…sort of…or never truly sitting with the need; so not acknowledging.

Or something like that.

It probably makes way more sense in my heart than in these words, but you know…
CJ

Why? Because I keep judging myself and putting myself down and thinking I’m horrible and ugly and all these bad things, but, it’s like that’s just all the outer layers that I’ve heaped on myself through the years, but if I get down there and clean myself off and let the gunk go, I know I’m going to be this shining, beautiful thing.

It’s just going to take time to strip all those layers away and to let those layers show me what’s at the heart of them. Let them teach me what they did for me.