Orion on Reframing Our Models Of Understanding
Recently we had several clients who, we feel, benefited
from ‘looking again’ at their models of understanding - information they were
given; the ‘stories’ of their situation; of their lives. We’ve
A client often felt ongoing issues connected with their birth by cesarean section, which they thought of as traumatic. They held the ‘working through trauma’ model with some somatic energy work they were participating in. The trauma would emerge in dreams, with a sense of father being less aware and mother being totally asleep. They associated this with a sense they carried of dis-regulation, of being in separate spaces; not being seen or heard, with this sense often emerging when alone.
We asked them to explore with us this imagery of isolation and trauma. It is indeed a powerful image one gets of a child lifted out of the mother. There are medications, Mother, naturally in an altered state, hospital noise. Yes, what can be sensed as a traumatic event.
Yet, if we consider looking at this in another way, another aspect can be seen of this moment of trauma - one can see it also as that of a child being saved; a child being lifted up into life. And although the client still carries a sense of disorientation and disconnection of ‘Where am I in space and time?’, this other perspective could invite them to feel into the child also recognizing they are being lovingly lifted into the light, into this world, into Life itself.
In fact, there are many images and rituals of babies being lifted up to the sky, to the sun. Again, one could look in another way and see there are many birthing rituals and christening type rituals where the child is held and lifted up.
Our client had been examining this earliest experience in deep body work where the orientation is, indeed, of releasing trauma. Some ideas hold that typical birth through the birth canal creates a distinctly needed direct experience for the child entering into life. Yet, most surgical births are required for the health of mother and child. With an expansive view, we can consider that coming into life however one does, is fully be aligned to that child, in ways we may not know.
As we think of our client specifically, we see a person who has a wide receptivity; who experiences other realms of being. One who listens and attunes to the others with great astuteness and empathy. So we offer the image of them as the uplifted child. And although they did not have the same body experience as more typical, we feel the child recognized one’s self as being lifted up into further connections; recognizing the Vastness in life. And perhaps that very experience was part of what oriented them to their life as a person consciously living with spiritual awareness.
So allowing another consideration of the model given, can add a balancing element, an expansive element to one’s understanding of that most early experience which one feels has defined many aspects of their living.
Another client, is journeying through the changes in their long-time life partner. Changes in speech, language, memory. Together they are doing all that is suggested; have gone through evaluations and so on. Yet, our client finds it can be hard to stay balanced within the ‘language’ of the condition. And it is true, so often the language of the models of health and longevity, have become overwhelming. Not too long ago, just the word ‘cancer’ meant no possibility of recovery and that energy is still lingering with that word.
Our client is being beset with the models carried in the words ‘aphasia’, ‘dementia’, fear of ‘Alzheimers’. It is a challenge to step-aside from the typical used terms; they will be the describers that professionals use, but each term can be imbued with layers and outcomes that, actually, may not be one’s own experience.
Yet, in your daily life
you can work to use more neutral terms instead. Once could say there is
difficulty with finding the words when speaking and some memory changes that
may be related to age or may not. Allow yourself to not focus on a challenging diagnosis until it is an actuality.
With this approach, you may find that energy of the whole experience begins to
shift for you; to feel more expansive, more open.
One may find living from an open emotional space, with more neutral descriptors of one’s situation as it is, rather than a whole arena of possible definers held in a word, that one is more able to live more easily through your own situation and the changes that emerge and the balance that may be actualized.
Reframe the models you are given. Let yourself reframe the words you choose to use. This is not avoidance or denial of the proscribed terms, rather it is aligning language to be more reflective and your own actuality and words that are more supportive to your approach and attitude toward living with an emerging or ongoing challenge and change.
Lastly, a client has to face that their mother’s treatments are no longer effective or supportive. She now has difficult physical reactions to treatment which brings the decision to stop them and the idea of ‘hospice’ is brought up. It is difficult because that term, too, has been imbued with what can be a limiting energy and the idea only of loss. Hospice, instead, can bring a support to the whole process of being with the body’s need to move into another way of being; even another realm. The root of the word hospice is of a guest house, a retreat. And indeed, there can be a great need to retreat from illness.
Our client especially wanted to support family members who were the main caretakers, as ‘hospice’, implied irrevocable loss would be approaching. Yet, when we looked into the energy surrounding the moment, we saw for the mother a great release from needing to continue the ‘fight’ through the treatments. Another way to look at it, is when her physicality could no longer work with the medication in a restoring way, the intense physical reactions she suffered, gave her an inner permission to listen to her body, without the guilt of not ‘doing’ enough or ‘giving up’ - inner models she, as many, carry - and now she could let herself in agreement with stopping treatment.
In our view, she felt the truth of her situation and it allowed her to embrace the inner and outer permission to align with the journey of the body. To us, our bodies are the anchor here in this realm of physicality. Our physicality holds deep knowingness and awareness of the journeys we make, including our final one. Our conscious mind may get glimpses of it; some people experience a vast awareness. But it is the body that truly, deeply knows and it is, indeed, the body’s journey. To us, she eventually moved toward her radiant self and in that, a vast ease.
It is absolutely true that all of us at some time will feel the distinct absence of the physical presence of another; their passing from this realm of physicality. We even feel this when people we know of in the world pass; those who have influenced us or delighted us with their talents and personalities. Of course, it is deepest with those we love and are closest to in all the ways that can be.
Our physicality is its own unique vibration and each person has a distinct resonance and energy. We may even find we can have awareness and experience of them in ‘spirit’, as it is said; but even then, it is another energy and, in that, we shall continue to feel the loss of their distinct physicality vibrations.
Yet, if we can keep our models of the journey of change open, even if it may lead to loss, we may discover another way to be with the experience and understanding of these changes; perhaps far different than the models direct us to.
When we face challenges; when situations ask a lot of us; when we think we have the fullest understanding of a situation; it can be so useful to ask our questions.
’Is it just as I think it is? Is it Just as I feel it is? Is there more for me to see here?’
‘Is there something I have no idea
about?’ and then add:
‘I am willing to see further, differently, in addition to what I understand’
Our questions reach out, dance with the real World Wide Web of the fields and energetics; the links and alignments we are all part of. And like asking ‘AI’, you can really ask the intelligence we are immersed in, the knowingness within Life, your queries and concerns.
And you will find that ideas, considerations, intuitions, answers - will flow to you. Perhaps they will ‘pop up’ into your mind. Perhaps you will wake up from sleep with a new idea. Perhaps you will meet someone or read something or be prompted to ask a question of another.
Again, as we remember to question our models; to consider looking further than we know; when we allow ourselves to really be at ease with the ideas that ‘Perhaps I don’t know. Perhaps I don’t fully understand. I just don’t know’, we begin a process that invites knowing, sensing awareness to align with us and share new knowings with us.
And in your times
of not knowing, be tender, kind and gentle with yourself.
It really isn’t your job to have to know or be
responsible for everything, even if that is what culture may tell you.
Just let some queries come along on your journey and you will find the alignments that open into Flow. And in Flow, we find strength, awareness, support, and so much of what you may need at any given time.
Orion
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Orion Material from personal sessions is excerpted and edited with express permission of the participants
As always, I hope you find Orion's sharing supportive and useful. Elisabeth
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