Steps to Resolving Conflict

Posted: January 24, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Energy Medicine DNA | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Sure it hurts, but if you love someone, you forgive them.” Blanche
“Somethings you forgive, somethings you never forgive.” Kate” 

Neil Simon, Brighton Beach Memoirs

Recently at Interplayers Theatre, I saw the play Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon. It was an incredible performance that exemplified the topic at hand – conflict.

The story is about Eugene, an adolescent, Jewish boy in 1937. He recalls his memories of living with his parents, aunt, two female cousins, and his brother at a time when he was going through puberty, sexual fantasy, poverty, and living in a crowed home. In this play, Eugene Jerome, played by Nich Witham, gave an over-exaggerated sense (in a fantastic performance) of not being heard and doing what he could to find his place and get his needs met in this family.

Brighton Beach Memoirs

This play was a great backdrop for me to expound on how to resolve conflict and the pitfalls of communication. Here are some helpful steps.

Clear with this person on an energetic level.

1. Ground your energy. Here is a video that will teach you to do this. http://bit.ly/wBHJbh

2. You have an aura around you which is part of your energetic self.  Imagine pulling your aura in around your body. Pull it in about 6 – 8 inches around you.

3. Focus in your heart and bring your attention out of the top of your head into the heavens.

4. Image the person there with you. At this level, send them love from your heart. You may also imagine sending them golden white Light from your heart.

5. If you can do this without anger or negative feelings, talk with them at this level

6. Come back down, image yourself filling up with golden white Light and release any leftover energy down your grounding cord.

Steps to resolve conflict in person.

1. Write out the situation in your journal and then re-read it the next day. Sometimes it helps to do this a few times, so that you can become clear on what happened and what you want to communicate.

2. Become aware of your own part of the situation, even if you perceive it to be minor in comparison to the other person.

3. If you are angry, look at where you may be feeling hurt or fearful. These emotions are often right under the surface of anger. Feel your feelings and let them go. Journal them over and over if need be.

4. Contact the person you are having conflict with and use clear, direct, honest communication. I suggest you meet in person (not via text or email) because this allows you not only to read the body language, but also to open your heart.

5. Give the other person the chance to communicate their side completely. It is helpful to use the words, “I heard you say,” and repeat back to them what you heard and let them clarify. This helps them to feel heard. You can hear what someone is saying without agreeing with them. It is important that you hear.

6. Once the other person feels heard, share your side. They may not listen well and you may not feel heard. If that is the case use the broken record method. Continue to say the core message again and again, “I hear what you say, and ______.” Yes, that is true, and _______.” Do this until they are able to understand they are not hearing you.

7. Make a request of the person such as “My request is we put this behind us and go on from here,” or “My request is that we continue to meet and talk weekly until we can resolve this.” You can use whatever it is that you desire.

8. Trust your intuition, and use as many of these steps as you would like. If the person is not willing to meet with you or clear the situation with you, then move on and let it go. No longer allow them into your energy field and set healthy boundaries.  (I will share more about this in a future video and blog.)

Sometimes people have a hard time clearing conflict because of negative communication patterns.  Often these reactions were learned in early childhood as a survival response to a dysfunctional family. In this case they may triangle in other people to take sides, or become passive aggressive and rather than talking with you directly, they will be passive in their aggression in a subversive manner.

One of the books I recommend for healthy communication is Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg

You can find other valuable information at http://candesscampbell.com/books/self-help-toolbox

The Saboteur’s Moon (Understanding Karma)

Posted: January 8, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Energy Medicine DNA | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I am delighted to share with you this great information about the Saboteur’s Moon by Jon Waldrup, an Incarnational Astrologer. This is especially significant to me because I work with Karma and Clearing Karma. He explains it so well! 

The first Full Moon of 2012 is tonight, January 8th at 11:30 PM Pacific Time.  This is the Saboteur’s Moon.  It wants to help us see how we compromise our heart-knowing in order to be comfortable, functional, accepted, etc.  It wants to show us how allowing ourselves to feel vulnerable and exposed by our truth helps to set us free.  For whenever we do ignore our heart’s truth in favor of fitting in, we close the karmic loop and make sure we go for another lap.

And with the Sun in Capricorn, what we would prefer to say is that our heart’s truth is always loving and light, so why would we ever disguise it?  And how could there be shadow in our hearts?

There are so many angles to come from on that.  If Romeo and Juliet is the world’s greatest love story then fatal co-dependence is love?  I would say probably not, but it is a story of two people who lived from their hearts.  They were certainly not afraid of being vulnerable, were they?

One of the shadow aspects of 20th century spirituality had to do with how many ways we were taught to suppress our karma, rather than live in it.  Karma itself was given a bad name – who wants to deal with karma?  The truth is that karma is actually the bridge between fate and destiny. It wants to help us to live Alive in Heaven on Earth.

If you are driving your car through an intersection and someone runs a red light and creams you, this is an example of Fate.  The karmic piece of it has to do with how you deal with the emotions involved in the aftermath.  Fate gives you the opportunity to work with your karma in order for you to grow towards your destiny.

Your karma is the particular tone of the shadow you are working with in this lifetime – rage, depression, dependence, etc.  The karmic piece is the emotional piece.  Our destiny is to understand the oneness, the perfection, of all of life – including fate and karma.  Then we are on the spiral instead of the wheel.

So, it was fate that brought Romeo and Juliet together, so that they could explore the shadows of co-dependent love.  And they did!  And that is what makes their story so compelling.  There is so much about their story that we could call unhealthy – we can look down on such organic, emotional, exposed ways of being.

But is that life?  Why did your soul choose to come in to this plane, to have a heart that can be broken, that can lead you astray, that can expose you to shame and torment?  Fate gives you the chance to live in your heart.  Karma seeks to teach you that Life itself is Heavenly.

What I think is that because he went “all the way” with what his heart was asking him to do in response to the fateful relationship with Juliet, in his next life, perhaps Romeo was able to live quivering inside with gratitude for having had the chance to love so deeply – he was able to taste the anguish of loss and find it delicious.  He was able to move beyond regret.

Will you accept The Invitation?  Or will you live on the wheel of emotional avoidance?

Here is a smaller example.  What if you know one thing and say another?  Maybe something that you’ve expressed as truth for a long time turns out to be false.  Maybe you’ve put a lot of heart into a certain moralistic stance and new experience points out the failings of your dogmatism. There is real vulnerability in admitting that you were wrong.  And yet if you can, if you do, life springs forth from that and you find yourself further up the spiral.

The wisest person I have ever spoken with said to me, “I am most grateful for those times in my life when I was most out of control.”  In other words, when the shadows in his heart came out, when he was most vulnerable to that sanitized, patriarchal way of looking at things that wants us to remain “in control” (i.e. Sun in Capricorn).  Sometimes we have to say we’re sorry.  So that we may grow.

The Saboteur is in us to point out ways in which we hide our truth.  The patriarchal response to that is to suppress those aspects of ourselves which are outside the comfort zone.  In that way of looking at things, those who live “with their heart on their sleeve” are to be looked down upon.

The truth is in your heart, and keeping it hidden keeps you on the wheel.  When you express your truth, you go up the spiral.

This Full Moon, the first of 2012, is helping us to see how we have kept our truth hidden so that we may live within a dying civilization.  How many laps on the wheel does it take to show us that the comfortable ways are getting us nowhere?

Tonight at 11:30 PM Pacific Time, the Moon, who teaches us our karma, is in the 19th Degree of Cancer.  The Chandra symbol for this degree is, “An opossum comes out into the moonlight.”  Let your vulnerable heart be seen.  Allow yourself to experience your emotions, and to find life itself through them.  Oh, it can hurt!  Are you afraid?

Believe in Heaven, and that is what you will see.

Jon Waldrup
Incarnational Astrologer
(208) 290-8578
jon@senseofvisionastrology.com
www.senseofvisionastrology.com
Enjoy the moon tonight!

Bless your heart,

Candess