Your Best Year Is Coming
All anyone ever wants is to feel safe and loved, to feel they are growing and serving their community. Pretty. much in that order, and when you find someone who lives in anger more than love, you know that their "safety" needs are not met. Physically, emotionally, economically or politically, they feel threatened.
The answer? Handle those safety needs. Look at the chakras: survival, sex, power, love, communication, intellect, transcendance.
Any level of human interaction or existence can be mapped along this six thousand year old pattern. Simplify it to "belly brain" "heart center" and "head center" and you have just three major "centers" that represent everything human beings are, want, and need.
People who open their hearts BEFORE engaging survival, without healing wounds from oppression, abuse, and neglect, can attract predators, OR do something just as damaging: want their love partners to compensate for those wounds. And while we are all damaged by our interactions with life, there is a range of healthy to unhealthy here. What is collaboration and teamwork, and what is co-dependency? THAT is a conversation for your therapist.
What cannot be argued with is that the healthier WE are, the better we know and love ourselves, the healthier our relationships will be. And that means "lighting up" our survival drives, and THEN opening our hearts as widely as we can, to feel as much love as life has to offer us.
We need ABUNDANCE, in the same way that the ant knows it needs to store grain for winter, even while the grasshopper believes "enough is enough." When winter comes, the grasshoppers have to beg the ants for grain, and a good-hearted ant will indeed offer support. But a wise ant would also, in springtime, remind the grasshoppers of what happened last time, and that they need to prepare for NEXT winter.
You need MORE strength, energy, and mobility, more HEALTH in your body. Why? Because you ARE going to miss sleep, get sick, fall down. When life exceeds your comfortable movement options, you injure yourself, or degrade to the point that you cannot support your self or family. YOU NEED MORE FITNESS than your daily life demands. A safety zone.
You need MORE self-love than "enough to get through the day." Why? Because the Hero's Journey tells you STRAIGHT OUT that you WILL fail, will bottom-out emotionally. The "Dark Night of the Soul" is an inevitable part of moving from one level of skill to expertise, or from expertise to mastery. You have to BELIEVE in yourself, in something within you that is strong and smart and good enough to roll with life's punches and keep going. You need enough self-love to be willing to FIGHT for yourself, and your dreams.
And the fastest way of doing that might just be FIRST contacting your survival drive (breathing) and then to open your heart with, say, heartbeat meditation and/or The Ancient Child meditation.
This diving into the heart, if done well and in a veil of safety, allows you to heal a lifetime of uncertainty and abuse. But it demands two things: contacting your Warrior/Protector energy, and DEDICATING that energy to protecting your "child" self.
In other words, being the protective, loving, nurturing but DISCIPLINED parent you needed, the internal "Mom" and "Dad" who would have created a cocoon in which your greatest capacities, your latent genetics or memetics could blossom.
If you were not hugged and told you were precious…
If you were not lovingly but sternly disciplined to learn the basics of life
If you were given conflicting rules and laws about who you were and what life was…
If you were abused, neglected or damaged by family or society…
YOU HAVE TO BARE YOUR TEETH AND FLIP THE SWITCH. Decide you'd rather die on your feet than live on your knees…
And then take that mommy tiger, that daddy lion, and dedicate that force to the protection of your own heart. There are many paths to such healing, and I pray you find one. We offer one, the FIREDANCE path.
You must first focus your will sufficiently to BREATHING for sixty seconds an hour, deep slow diaphragmatic breathing at least five times a day.
You commit to 1% weekly improvement in body, heart, and mind. The Three Centers
The rest are the reasons to do it, and the methods. We take you into the "MAGIC Formula" and the Three Gates. Find other resources from other disciplines and philosophies--and you are deeply encouraged to find your own.
But do NOT ignore these basics: breathing, committing to self-protection, opening your heart.
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The "90-Day Love Feast" was, on the surface, designed to improve your relationship by focusing on the partner rather than on what you are getting. That would be transactional at best, predatory at worst. To give without needing to receive implies FAITH in the character of your partner, yes. But more, it requires you to fullfill ALL your own survival needs. This can mean external resources, yes. But it also means making peace with your own mortality. Your partner is NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR HAPPINESS. If you can leverage your way there, then you are safe to give. And what Tananarive and I discovered was that in committing to each other, we got back even more than we gave.
And if you are in a relationship with someone so damaged that they cannot feel love sufficiently to move out of fear? Well, you know that relationship is doomed, and can make plans either to care for yourself within a toxic life…or play your escape.
No matter what, committing to protect and love yourself has ZERO downsides if approached within the ethical structure of the Three Gates. And you will maximize your chances of healing and growing if you map it across the MAGIC formula.
Whew! That's a lot to say that we will be finishing up 2023 today, and getting ready for the next 90-Day push. You could commit to a relationship. To your own heart. To your health, or abundance. ITS YOUR CHOICE. But every quarter of 2024 we're going to encourage you to FOCUS on self love, self-protection, and then the love we share with others. On creating MASTERY of body, emotions, and mind. Why settle for less?
Please join us. Get on the mailing list at www.stevenbarneslist.com
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Steven Barnes is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: FIREDANCE
Time: Dec 30, 2023 12:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
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Dec 30, 2023 12:00 PM
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