IMG_4176The doing arises from the being.

We’re all born of mother: the sea, the lakes, the waters of the amniotic fluid in the womb. We long for actual mother without understanding that it’s the great mother who’s always available to embrace us in her loving-compassion, waiting in the wings of our hearts for the invitation of yes. 

When we drop down into the center of Self, we find that place of inner mother and our self-trust is restored. When we trust in the flow life, we remember how to live. 

***

Summer 2015

It’s my time to write. But I don’t want to write. If I write now it will come from effort, pushing, the time pressure that this is my hour to write so better get busy. Nothing ever flows that feels good from that place. I’ve written enough that the discipline is in place and I can force myself to write, but it doesn’t come from joy or bring joy when it’s forced.

So I sit instead. After a morning of clients, my body wants to sit. Needs to sit. I sit on the couch and exhale. Immediately I notice the congregation of bees outside our living room windows. They arrive every summer around this time to collect the pollen from the purple flowers, and it’s always a joy to see them. My sons love to stand at the windows and watch the bees. It’s better than television. We marvel at their miraculous dance.

I step outside and feel the warm summer air envelop me in her gentle breath. My body exhales a few more notches. The difference between inside and outside is subtle but palpable. Just a few steps away from the house and the calm of nature invites me to meet her rhythm. I sit down on the grass and watch the bees. Hot sun. Hundreds of bees. Their buzz is a symphonic hum of pleasure, the sound of summer.

A dream from last autumn, after the flood, filters up from my subconscious: Rows and rows of bee boxes on our lawn. A thick stream of bees flying west. I want to harvest some honey before I leave but I’m too scared to approach. I ask my mother to harvest some for me and she reluctantly says yes.

And the poem that followed:

My mother is more than my mother.

She’s the great breath of scarlet scarves

who swirls in the sky.

She’s the water who flows gently then

ferociously through our land.

She’s the ancestors who find me in the

night when the veil is thin,

slipping between the worlds to remind me that

I am never – ever – alone.

She’s the woman who dwells in the glade at the creek’s edge,

and even now, when the rubble of broken limbs

clatter the sacred spot

she weaves her worlds in web strands between the

still standing trees

calling to me:

Come, my child.

Do not forsake your land.

We are here.

Walk between the rows of bee boxes that stand invisible on hidden green grass.

Do not be afraid.

Your mother cannot harvest the honey.

Walk the land, my child.

We are here to guide you.

 

We walk the rows.

The bees fly east in thick golden streams

a kite tail of desire,

seekers of nectar who never stop despite our human failure.

Unprotected yet protected by mothers unseen,

I reach my hand into the warm hive.

Thank you, I whisper to the bees.

Eventually I go back inside to get my computer and bring it to the creek to write. The mosquitoes fly near and I resist the habitual impulse to swat them, as I’ve learned from my son. Instead, I ask them to please leave me alone. One lands on the edge of my keyboard and I watch it before it flies away. I sit for the next twenty minutes without a bother. Coincidence, perhaps. I’m happy I didn’t take a life.

I sit and write slowly. I watch the water in the creek, a trickle now at summer’s end. I write a sentence, a word, then stop and look up. I allow for the expression to emerge from the being. It’s the sense that it doesn’t matter, like being slightly tipsy and taking the edge off the urgency to know, to understand, to produce, to find the answer. In the being space of the feminine where there are no answers. Or it’s all the answer. It’s the paradox of holding the opposites, the truth spot where the opposite of yes is yes and opposite of truth is more truth. Where sitting and watching the water or the bees is just as valuable as any piece of writing.

We live in a culture that pushes at every turn. We demand faster results, more productivity, higher paychecks as measures of our worth. We even expect babies and children to comply with developmental milestones and send parents into a tailspin of worry if their child isn’t walking or talking or reading or socializing by a certain age. In come the interventions, the diagnoses, the therapies, the medications. If we could simply trust in our own rhythm and timetables much anxiety would be alleviated. If we could slow back down into the wise wellsprings of our bodies and listen, we would have full trust in ourselves and in life.

This is what it means to repair self-trust: to sink into the thick honey-rhythm of our infinite wisdom and live from that place of knowing. It’s there, waiting for you to touch it, to reclaim it.

As Jack Kornfield and Brother David Steindl Rast share in conversation:

Jack: “The invitation is allowing ourselves to shift from doing to that quality of loving-awareness, gratitude, sacred presence, to the mystery of being here.”

Br. David: “This underlines an important fact that the stopping is an expression of your trust in life. When you trust life, we go with the flow.”

Being in the flow, letting go of trying to control the outcome, is so much more fun. It requires a leap of faith and courage to get there – to loosen the white-knuckling grip of control – but once you leap of the cliff into the river of not-knowing and not having to know, life becomes so much easier. When we stop pushing so hard, we allow room for the mystery of being to unfold, and we open up the space for something else, something mysteriously bigger than us, to lead the way. And there, protected inside in the space of non-doing, lies your true Self: the one that knows yourself, loves yourself, and trusts yourself. When we allow for that self to emerge, we know the way.

Join me as we spiral into the center of you, where the touchstone of your self-trust rests untouched and waiting for you to remember, to live the life you’re meant to live. The next round of Trust Yourself: A 30 day program to help you overcome your fear of failure, caring what others think, perfectionism, difficulty making decisions, and self-doubt begins on Saturday, January 9th, 2016. I look forward to meeting you there.

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20 Comments

  1. Hi Sheryl,
    I used to leave comments here under the name Jenny, at the time I was riddled with fear and self doubt about my relationship, but through the years that anxiety did leave the topic of my partner, but I would like to say it remained and became alot stronger in many other ways.

    It is amazing for me to visit your page and see this blog before my eyes because I have to say that after years of anxiety I am at that point that your blog discusses of beginning to trust myself and love myself after years of doing the opposite.

    I always felt like the answers were outside of me, I would seek reassurance from others, others comments caused me turmoil and would plummet me into self doubt and obsessions, it was only until my anxiety heightened that I decided to quit drinking, I honestly felt like I did not make this decision which was scary at first, it was like my body and mind made it for me, I could no longer run away from my feelings, and it was like a moment in time where it was now or never.

    Since then I have had realizations but the most important one by far is that at the root of my anxiety, the very reason for it’s existence is me giving my divine power away, me not trusting myself, not believing in my ability as a person to nurture and love myself and take care of myself.

    I have thought about what got me to this point and certainly aspects stand out, moments in my life when I needed to be loved but more importantly when I did not deserve to be abused emotionally.

    I gave that power away to the person who said I was not good enough, I believed them but the worst part is that I became the abuser in the end because it was me telling myself these things for so long, long after I left home.

    I love your blogs because many blogs talk about how to heal anxiety, accept it etc but not many talk about getting the the root of your anxiety, anxiety is just a word we give so much power too when the power is within us, we are a divine power within ourselves and to be reclaiming this power that has always been within me feels wonderful.

    I would love to take part in the course you offer.

    Reply
    • Wow, Gwen, it’s so wonderful to hear from you, and extraordinary to hear how much you’ve grown since the last time you posted a comment! You’ve hit the nail on the head in terms of what separates my work from many other approaches out there: I focus on root causes instead of techniques that may result in temporary abatement of anxious-pain but doesn’t address what’s underneath. It sounds like you’ve spiraled into a root cause and have taken powerful action toward attending to it.

      I would so love for you to join this program. Hope to see you there ;).

      Reply
  2. Thank you Sheryl, you are so kind and even back then you always took the time to reply, I will look into joining ye!

    Reply
  3. Hi Sheryl,
    I’d just like to say thank you for your work. You helped me get through quite possibly the hardest year of my life. Your work has been extremely important to me and my well being and you are a gift from God. Without you, I would’ve left the best thing that has ever happened to me and that scares me to death.

    Reply
  4. Hi Sheryl,
    That is so beautiful, so beautiful real and honest. I think when you can go so deep into your core. Our mother is there to give us comfort even when we are not able to connect to ourselves. Its a safe a beautiful place to be. I only wish my mother would reach out to me in a vulnerable way. I am her daughter nothing is more important and beautiful of a mother and daughter bonding. Maybe in our next life.

    Reply
    • Many people suffer from a mother wound, and it can affect so many aspects of our lives until we learn to work with that core pain and find ways to heal it – like connecting to great mother is all of her manifestations. Sending you love as you continue on your healing journey, Angela.

      Reply
  5. Wonderful blog as always Sheryl. You have helped me so much over the past 8 months to reach a point with my depression and anxiety where it doesn’t define who I am. It’s never too far away and I’ve learnt to accept that and to enjoy the moments when it isn’t so consuming. With help, I have been on a journey of self-discovery really and I have realised things about myself that I didn’t necessarily know before. I have learnt things that have helped me to understand the sensitive, introverted, intuitive person that I am. You say that finding the root cause of your anxiety helps you to free yourself of it. Do you think it is possible that sometimes it is possible to ‘forget’ the root cause and let anxiety take over again? I feel like sometimes I am in control and I feel levelled out but other times, usually coinciding with hormonal times or stressful situations but not always, I feel like I take 5 steps backwards after all of the hard work I’ve put in. Do you think this is ‘normal’ and all part of the journey on the road to ‘recovery’?

    Charlotte x

    Reply
    • Yes, Charlotte, it’s normal to take two steps forward and one step back, at least for a while. And knowing that the flare-ups are because of hormones is very helpful as it will help you bring more compassion to yourself when you feel like you’re slipping.

      Reply
      • Thank you

        Reply
  6. Hi! Is it possible to lose feelings for a couple of days? It feels so relaxed not having to think about responsibility to change or do something to turn inward. It feels that I don’t want to be with her and to stop the relationship as soon as possible and it feels good being a bit single as of now. Is it that I closed my heart again that I tend to lose these feelings or that I’m not in love after all?

    Reply
    • Being single is certainty easier and more comfortable than being in a relationship, but ultimately you’ll have to do the same inner work no matter who you’re with or even if you’re alone. We can’t escape the inner realm no matter how hard we try.

      Reply
      • Thank you! I’ll keep reading in your site and save my way to avail your course. Sometimes it feels that I want to be with her in every different experiences new things, try going to other places and countries and even visualized my graduation that she’s there with my family. I can’t even imagine why this is so hard to be in, when love suppose to help us uplift ourselves and that should be warm.

        I can’t even understand in one of your article that our partner while we are seeing his/her own flaws and not attracted to them from time to time is the one that we loved more in this world when we are rejecting them. I sometimes think that I’m neglecting my own feelings and just agreeing to whatever she needs and not saying no, whenever I want to. But now our connection is lost and I don’t even want to talk to her. Our actions defend on how we treat our own partner, hell if she’s important to me I rather do something else than contemplating and locking myself unable to function and losing my day-to-day appetite. I’m easily brainwashed to whatever I’ve read or talked to without hearing my own inner child and learning my own navigator inside. It really makes me leave and tell her she deserves a fairytale love with someone else who doesn’t doubt her.

        Reply
  7. Hi Silver im sorry your feeling this way. With Sheryls courses you will make sense of everything. Ive been in your shoes so i know how you feel. From my experience with doing sheryls work you will feel better and think more clearly. I was a mess two years ago then i found the amazing Sheryl and I read others struggles with relationship anxiety, i felt i wasnt alone. I wanted a quick fix but unfortunately it dosent happen that way.
    Good luck. I am sure you will be fine

    Reply
    • Hi Angela. Thanks I really know that I’m not alone. But the pain of wanting the other person but the feelings doesn’t come your way is a very dark place. Deep inside I keep telling myself that I want to be with her but I keep pushing her away. I’m enjoying myself when we fight because I got to do the things that I want without problems. I just want to die and forgot about everything.

      Reply
  8. Hi Sheryl,

    I have found that a lot of your theories make sense, and I want to make sure you agree that this is what is going on in my relationship. I have been dating him for 1.5 years and he is better than anyone else I have ever dated. Our values are very similar, we have similar interests and sense of humor. He will make an excellent father, has an incredible amount of integrity and we are often very happy together. The problem is that I really analyze negative aspects of our relationship, such as how we think differently, and try to imagine all ways in which this could be the wrong relationship as a way of trying to discern and protect myself. As a result, when he does something that upsets me I can get into a downward spiral which leaves me seriously doubting the relationship. In a good place I can see us getting married, but feel that I need more time to really be 100% sure and ready, but when I’m doubting the relationship I feel that after 1.5 years of dating I should know by now. We are currently long distance and I am considering moving when I graduate from grad school in the spring. Since I am not yet 100% sure about our relationship, I am anxious about the possibility of moving too. Do you think this qualifies as relationship anxiety, or is the anxiety present because I’m trying to force this with the wrong man? Thank you!

    Reply
  9. Hi sheryl. My fiancé is amazing to me but I’ve been suffering from anxiety for the last couple of months. No red flags at all but he hurt me with a red flag wayyyy in the beginning of our relationship, I believe 100% he isn’t that person anymore and won’t hurt me in that way again. Do you think that my anxiety maybe comes from knowing he hurt me in the past, even though I know he won’t again? He is completely different and a much better person and treats me so well. So I don’t want to walk away and believe the negative thoughts I’ve been having in the last couple of months.. Sorry I posted an irrelevant topic under this post, it was the most recent so thought you’d be most likely to see it 🙂

    Reply

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