Have you ever heard that saying,
If you think you're enlightened,
Go spend the time,
Go spend the week with your family?
I certainly resonate with the wisdom behind that.
Sometimes it's not so easily to be with family.
I think most of us have some acquaintance with that idea,
That sentiment.
So for me,
I can say that my family,
My parents split up when I was quite young,
Something like two or three years old.
And it was quite a challenging marriage,
Quite a traumatic divorce.
And it had a lot of consequences with challenging stepfathers and a lot of broken relationships on all parts of the family.
And still to this day,
There is difficulty with,
As far as I can see and observe and also hear from people,
With every single member of my current family constellation,
There is some challenge with family.
And at the time of this recording,
I'm looking ahead at my birthday.
I'm celebrating that in a few days from now.
Also Christmas is around the corner for those who celebrate it.
And of course,
We tend to be more with family in these darker days,
Depending of course where you are on the planet.
And by the way,
Time of recording is now,
It's 11 December 2024.
And so I have been starting to celebrate my birthday a bit differently because I don't really like the normal style.
The normal style for us is just sitting in a circle and kind of saying the same things every year.
And I'm not really enjoying that.
So I've been changing it up,
Inviting my family to go to the forest.
And this time we're going to go to an ancient building that has been renovated just to do something different.
And since a while ago,
I've also been starting to take a different approach mentally or psychologically if you will,
To these meetings.
Because coming from a pretty traumatic childhood,
Every time I'm with my family and there's this kind of stuckness in patterns and I've tried sometimes to bring more openness but it's difficult.
There's not always a yes to that.
So then pain still exists.
And the insight I had,
I think it was a year ago,
Is that what if I would treat my family meetings with my parents and siblings etc.
And also the wider family,
What if I were to treat that as if it was a spiritual practice?
And that really flipped the switch for me.
It really made it available to me to be more awake,
To be more mindful.
And if you have,
For instance,
Any experience with going to a retreat or going to maybe a meditation retreat or something like that,
Or just simply yoga class,
You know,
Something like this,
You'll have this experience of,
Oh,
The bell rings or the gong goes or the ceremony is opened and all of a sudden you feel this heightened awareness.
You feel like,
I mean,
I think that's what it is like for most people,
I think,
But you come alive with kind of your best self.
And maybe an example that many people can relate to,
Not me personally,
But going to Sunday church,
Right?
You put your best clothes on,
You're kind of perked up and you bring your best self because there is a ceremony and in a ceremony we want to kind of,
In a ceremony we kind of face our higher self or converse with God.
That's typically kind of the intention of a ceremony.
And of course,
I think that those ceremonies are meant to actually let us practice for daily life,
Like mundane life,
Which of course isn't mundane at all if you are paying attention.
And so to make of life a ceremony is kind of a theme in the back of my mind for a longer time because isn't that pleasant when you're mindful and present and you're very intentional about how you show up in a situation,
Right?
And so when I started doing that,
Having this intention of,
Oh,
I'm going to treat it as a ceremony and just that thought alone completely changes my awareness and my own pleasantness and my own body.
So I wanted to share that as a possibility and you can of course extend this as well beyond family,
Maybe towards difficult meetings or maybe,
You know,
There's some vulnerability with a partner or with a friend.
There are moments where we might really benefit from the intentionality that comes with this perspective of,
Oh,
I'm going to treat this like it is a spiritual ceremony.
And so one important thing that I would,
You know,
Kind of,
How do you do that would be,
Well,
This first part is just very important in itself.
I've noticed just to frame it for yourself as that,
A spiritual practice.
And then what comes with that is you can make an intention.
So for me,
Often it has something to do with,
I want to really be very close to my need for dignity or for my need for equality,
Or I want to really have mindfulness and I want to be not so reactive.
I want to be,
I want to slow down and,
You know,
Weigh my words,
But for you it can be something else.
And so this intention of,
I'm going to approach it as a ceremony that'll just heighten your mindfulness and it creates this possibility to call upon those qualities in the moment and that you do with an intention.
And I would suggest that you use NVC language,
Meaning needs,
What would you need?
Or another way to say it,
What qualities would you like to embody?
And then,
You know,
We can again say things like,
I want to have dignity,
I want to have purpose,
Clarity,
Whatever it may be for you.
And then in the moment,
What you might do is to just,
For instance,
This is just one example,
You can make it your own,
But you can just have an intention to,
Before you answer anything,
Just take a breath to connect with yourself.
How am I doing?
How am I feeling?
So these are just some thoughts.
The main one is to just click this perspective in place of treating difficult,
Challenging family or other situations like it is a spiritual practice.
This will give you a lot of availability of embodying qualities that you would love to embody in those situations.
So I hope that this will benefit you and that you can extract some meaning and skill and bring you a bit further ahead in your life.
I'm very curious what you think,
Kindly drop me a review or a comment,
I'm always happy to read and receive.
And thank you for listening,
Have a beautiful day.
