When re-engaging with previous relationships, or those that come with some history (and emotional memories) it can be really challenging to stay with what is happening in the moment – without comparing to the past or imagining the future. To protect you (and itself), the mind wants to bring you all the warnings and what-ifs and chemistry to avoid any future pain – and close off the heart. And yet if you deeply listen to the quieter whispers of heart, it might be saying “lean-in, go deeper, open a little more, experiment, be brave”. 

I have noticed when I am able to stay in the now, I feel ok, excited, open – and sometimes scared, uncertain or wishful. When I stay in the now, I have less expectations and more compassion for both of us. When I stay in the now, I am curious, and allowing, and free – to feel, to choose, to move. 

However, when the fears and expectations become overwhelming at times, and I just want to run or hide or find all the reasons why not engaging is safer, easier, more predictable – I have been consciously (with great effort I might add), slowing it all down, watching, noticing, feeling – and turning it around. I ask myself questions such as: 

• What am I thinking and feeling? Look for the consistent patterns or loops. 
  
  
• Are these familiar, a theme in my life perhaps?
  
  
• Where are these thoughts coming from? Fear, ego, intuition?
  
  
• What am I really deeply feeling or afraid of? 
  
  
• Is it real? Is it true? Is it happening right now? 
  
  
• What is the internal state of being or frequency that I am resonating at? 
  
  
• How could I be creating my outer experience through my inner constructs of the world?
  
  
• How would I view the person, situation, relationship, if I consciously chose a different more empowering approach – one that allowed me to be honest with my feelings and needs and express these without judgement or fear – and just allowed them to be? 

 

If I sit with these questions consciously without letting myself off the hook (sometimes for hours in the middle of the night or a long walk in the mountains), something lifts, I find possibility, my heart opens just a little more. I access another level of being – and I am reminded that there is nothing to lose – or be afraid of. No-one can take what is most important to me… and the future is unwritten .. and I am able to create it .. with my beliefs and dreams and energy I put toward it.

And when to say yes, no or not now or a different way???

This is for me practicing radical responsibility. If life or a situation is not working out for me – how am I creating this – at some level?  

– – –

I (Mandy) take it a bit further after doing deeply reflective processes like Debbie details because I think it is critical to give attention and energy to what we truly want for ourselves in every part of life, and so I ask this question:

What is my highest excitement in the area of life that I am reflecting upon? 

Many times I have realised that I’m not sure because I’ve been giving all my attention to the challenges I have been experiencing in that realm. In this way as I open my heart to explore questions like Debbie details above  I also allow myself to welcome a re-connection with what I truly desire, for it is only when I have a conscious sense of my highest excitement that I can then be acting on it to the best of my ability.

If you follow Bashar you will recognise this as the first part of the formula he provides as guidance to living one’s most fulfilling life. The second part is to surrender any insistence and expectation on how your preferred reality presents. In all the coaching I ‘ve done and in my own life, ‘letting go’ or surrender is something many of us struggle with, but that is exactly what the process Debbie details above is allowing one to practise!!

So this is how I practise radical responsibility – by always closing the reflection work with my heart and mind focussed on how I want to feel and be and experience life.

 

Till next time! 

Loads of Love and Light
Debbie & Mandy