Juliet and I show up in this episode feeling some tenderness but we get curious about what we know helps and what doesn't help when things feel difficult. We recognize that when we get insights or breakthroughs - they rarely come from trying to figure things out. We see how anxiety about the future isn't helpful. We explore what we see that does help: shifts in consciousness.

Here’s what we explored:

• noticing where our hearts are hard: 'how can people do that? how can people say that?

• hard hearts tend to create judgment

• we all have the capacity to be compassionate and hard-hearted

• can we see how we're the same?

• trying to be a better person or a better citizen rarely creates change

• a shift in consciousness goes to the heart of things and transforms our experience of self and others

• sometimes we have to hit the bottom before we can breakthrough

• there is a kind of disintegration, a devolving

• the caterpillar completely disintegrates - that is part of its soul's code

• we are afraid of devolution and disintegration

• jumping in to try and fix people when something is trying to die and be born, can get in the way

• the disintegration phase can be frightening, lonely, and sad and that's all legitimate

• that is understandable: you are letting go of a way that no longer serves

• we have a soul's code, just as the acorn has the blue-print to be an oak.

• surrendering to our soul's code

• a period of anger and resentment can give way to a period of sadness which is a relief

• when we break open and allow ourselves to embody our feelings it can be a very raw and tender place as we wait for what might take root

• and when we want to avoid that tender place, we can use things to numb us out, like social media, alcohol, etc

• the hardening, softening, ripeness, rawness, tenderness are all cycles of being

• maybe life is not linear but cyclical like everything else in nature

• winter is a time of gathering in, going into hibernation

• in spring the soil warms up and new life emerges

• as we find ourselves returning to old patterns of thought or circumstance looks to be an invitation for our relationship to our experience to transform

• look for the gifts in experience from simple curiosity, a gift for its own sake not for self-improvement

• what is there that is not the story of my conditioning, something that is just new and fresh?

• all around and within us we see the hard shells and we see the potential if we can just break open

• the hard shell is all about fear - we're just scared

• when we see the fear, we can have so much compassion for self and others

• the hardness of heart is made of thought: fear is made of thought

• we all have the capacity to have hard hearts and soft hearts

• hardness of heart is not fixed: it comes and goes like the ebb and flow of the tide

• the heart opening is just a thought away, knowing that fear can dissolve at any moment makes everything up for grabs

• seeing ourselves in others and them in us

• when we're in battle, it is fear fighting fear: we're both fighting phantoms; we don't see the other person, we see our fear

• George Pransky in his book, The Relationship Handbook tells of being in the military and how, when there is an argument, combatants were made to stand one each side of a window, and clean the glass. Invariably, the conflict fell away as they began to really see each other

• Carla talks of recognizing that the feeling of hopelessness is simply a feeling and how that knowing is really helpful.

• Seeing that a feeling of hopelessness can lift all of a sudden, for no apparent reason

• the misunderstanding that the strength of feeling is a measure of how urgently things need to be fixed

• fixing feelings looks like a way to control things but in fact that control is an illusion

• Carla talks about wanting to stay open battling with feelings of wanting to shut down or figure it out. The only thing to do is surrender and stay tender.

• Carla recognizes she doesn't need to shut down, there is nothing to fear.

• Juliet asks, 'Who is suffering?'

• Recognizing the difference between 'being in the sadness' versus engaging with all the stressful thinking, 'what about this and that?'

Quotes and References

• Book: The Soul's Code by James Hillman

• Satday Soup for the Sista's Soul podcast by Cheri Gillings - Less fixing, more feeling

• The Insight Space, London

• Book: The Relationship Handbook by Dr George Pransky

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.” T.S. Eliot