Shifting Into Secure Attachment

We each live with different forms and variants of trauma. How we react to the experiences we have been through is what makes or stifles our healing and integration. The coping mechanisms and survival strategies that we have used to create walls around our minds and hearts throughout our lifetime in order to protect ourselves, we find are no longer protecting us but blinding us and separating us from what it is we truly desire. Connection, love, safety, stability, and trust. On this journey, we learn ways in which to transform our burdens into the building blocks of personal growth, transformation, resiliency, and relational evolution.

Transcript

So,

The topic of detangling the human heart is very near and dear to my heart and the creation of this pathway for me,

Anyhow,

Came from a lot of obstacles in relating and mostly in relating intimately.

Intimately.

And intimately does not just mean sexually or sensually,

It could be intimately within the context of a family,

In the context of a close collaboration,

Maybe even close workmanship.

And what I found for myself was that for so many years of my life,

There was this undercurrent of pain beneath all of my actions,

All of the ways in which I related.

The words that I spoke,

The hobbies that I chose,

The people that I chose to befriend,

The lovers that I took on,

All of these choices that seemed very sovereign in nature were very connected by dissonance.

It's not to say that my entire life was an illusion,

Although we can say that,

You know,

There is a lot of elusiveness to our lives,

But it is to say that there was an unconscious undercurrent of dissonance that wasn't really brought to my attention until it was so dissonant it was screaming.

And something that I want to offer here in the path of detangling the human heart,

I had this realization the other day,

I was on a run and I was running through the forest and I get these whispers in my ears and my mind.

And sometimes they come in poetry or they come in quotes,

Or they guide me to look at the metaphor in life through nature.

And what came through was echo.

When you are not meditating,

You become so full of echo,

You become so full of this persona,

So full of this identity,

That there's no relationship for God,

There's no relationship for life,

There's no relationship for space.

And in a way,

You become so codependent with your persona or your ego,

That there is no space for other healthy relationships like your relationship to capital S self or to God or to nature or to love,

Whatever we want to call it.

And this was a huge remembrance for me,

Because we think so much about codependency in terms of other people.

We think,

Okay,

Me and my partner,

Do we have codependency tendencies,

Do I have this with a friend,

Do I have this with my family?

But the reality is,

If I am so full with myself,

If I have not emptied my own cup out of myself by meditating or sitting in stillness or silence,

And then somebody comes along and they try to pour themselves into me,

I become even more full.

I'm running over with myself,

And now I'm running over with them.

There's no spaciousness.

And so our meditation,

Our silence,

Our stillness,

Our individuality in a way,

And in healthy ways when we individuate,

Can help us to make space,

To feng shui our inner being.

And so for me,

Detangling the human heart has a lot to do with creating space.

If you actually think about crochet yarn,

And if you've ever seen a bundle of it on the floor,

And you pull at one part of it,

And it just starts to make the whole thing tighter,

And it's so difficult for you to get the thread through the fingers and to dethread it.

The same thing with the human heart.

If I am constantly filling myself into myself,

Meaning I'm full of all my worries,

I'm full of all my desires,

I'm full of all of my own unmet needs,

And there's no space for my relationship to God,

Which is also relationship to uncertainty,

Because whatever your relationship is to Source,

It is uncertain,

It's intangible,

It's intuitive,

It's clairvoyant,

It's a feeling,

But it's not something we can put our hands on and take.

So if we don't have a relationship to Source or God,

We don't have a relationship to uncertainty.

And Tantra as a path,

And this is one of the lineages I come from in Shaivism,

Tantra as a path is the embodiment of the mystery,

It is the embodiment of God,

It is the embodiment of uncertainty,

Meaning I let uncertainty pour into me and realize that I'm not in control.

You know,

Even if I am in control of when I meditate and when I eat,

I'm not in control of the uncertainty of life.

So a big part of detangling the human heart is coming into right relationship with the embodiment of uncertainty,

The embodiment of the great mystery,

The embodiment of God,

Source.

When we think that we are in control,

We will also try to control others.

When we think that we are in control of what's happening within us,

We will also try to control others.

And this is when we are vulnerable to codependency.

It's when we're vulnerable as well to becoming people pleasers,

Letting others control us.

And so within detangling our hearts,

It's really looking at and not thinking so much but feeling deeply,

Feeling,

What do I need in this moment?

What do I feel in this moment when I look at someone or something?

What do I feel about my job?

What do I feel about my lover?

What do I feel about my friends or my family?

And then under a microscope,

But not a hypervigilant microscope,

An empathetic microscope,

Look at the ways in which you're relating to the people that you love,

The people that you care about in your life.

Are you trying to save them from uncertainty?

Are you trying to save them from the great mystery,

From the unknown?

When we're looking at somebody that has disease in their life,

That has a sickness,

Yes,

We want to help and we want to find the best care,

But also there needs to be a trust and also a surrender to the uncertainty in life that we ourselves cannot control what happens in that person's body.

The best that we can do is love them and give them our attention and our presence and the spaciousness to feel what they feel instead of filling every moment with information and knowledge,

Knowing every single thing about that ailment or that disease and becoming a doctor ourselves.

How do we surrender to the great mystery,

But also not give up?

We're not giving up hope or faith,

But we are trusting in our very finite part of the entire tapestry.

You know,

Instead of what's wrong with the situation,

Can we look at what is right with the situation?

If somebody's sick and we might be in a place where it's just not the moment to look at what's right,

We are in deep mourning.

We are in that anticipatory grief.

We are in deep pain and loss.

But in that moment,

Can we look at the rightness of feeling,

Of loving,

Of our attachment to the beauty and the awe of that being?

And instead of being stuck in the rumination of the anticipatory grief,

Can we revel in the present moment that we still have?

For so many people,

When sickness comes or transition of death comes,

Loss comes,

We actually already run ahead and we lose that person or that thing or that moment.

We run ahead.

Instead of being in the present moment when the person is still here,

The moment is still here,

The relationship,

The breath,

When the breath is still breathing life into the situation,

Into the person,

Into being,

We're already at the moment where the breath is lost,

The presence is lost,

The person is gone,

The person has passed or the person has left us.

And so we are taken out of the present moment.

And this is the only thing that we really have.

When we look at it,

History,

The future,

These are all illusory because we'll actually never experience the future.

And we've never experienced the past.

We've only experienced the present moment.

This is the only thing that we ever actually experience.

And we can go back into the memories of the past or the projections of the future.

But the only thing that actually exists is this moment,

This breath.

So let yourself take a deep breath in,

Deep breath out.

So in detangling our hearts,

We also have to really clear our minds.

You have to learn to sit more still.

And see the beauty of silence,

Not the emptiness.

There's such a depth to silence and stillness.

And give ourselves the time to empty ourselves of ourselves,

To empty the personas,

To empty our gender roles or our racial roles or our societal roles,

Our party roles,

Our government roles,

Whatever the masks are that we wear,

That we take them off.

And that we simply allow ourselves to be sentient beings,

No longer mothers,

Fathers,

Sisters,

Brothers.

And grandparents,

Children.

But that we allow in that moment the beauty of life to breathe into us and to feel and to breathe deeply and softly.

Yeah,

And to appreciate the present moment,

Because there will be a time when life is no longer breathing into us and we forget this.

This is such a deep contemplation to keep in mind,

Is that this breath,

This intangible,

Unseen source that's constantly breathing in and out of you,

That is penetrating your being every day and choosing you and saying,

Yes,

You,

You.

That that doesn't come forever,

Eternally,

That in this moment you have a body and that you have lungs to breathe and that you have eyes to see some of us and you have bodies to move and work.

And either way you're here,

You can hear these words.

And there is such a gift in that and we,

We run ahead because we want more.

We always want more.

And this is a big part of detangling the human heart,

Is to actually see that everything is at our fingertips and everything is really the breath.

So really breathing in through your nostrils,

Letting the breath move through the body,

Filling you,

Fulfilling you.

And really finding gratitude in less.

We're here now.

And there's something here about rupture.

Another beautiful part of the path of detangling the human heart is to know that we are resilient beyond rupture,

Meaning in any relationship,

There will be rupture,

But there is also the opportunity for repair.

That just because we have a rupture,

It doesn't mean something ends.

It means that in its way,

In the phase that it's had,

There is time for change.

Time for a new chapter.

I was saying to someone the other day around relationships,

Intimate relationships,

That every time we're in an intimate relationship and we're in love,

We think that this is forever.

This is forever and forever and ever.

And it could never end because it's so good.

And I'm so in love and I'm so attached.

It could never,

Ever end.

And in a way it doesn't.

When we think of time as non-linear,

More paradigmatic and fractal,

We have died,

If we're lucky,

So many times in this life.

We've had losses and griefs and breaks that have ruptured us so deeply and fractured us so widely that we haven't come back the same,

That something else has been conceived there.

And so in those moments of rupture,

A new conception has come forward.

Something has been birthed.

And so what I was saying to this friend is,

Huh,

You know,

When we promise forever to someone and then it ends and we feel so surprised,

In actuality,

If I look at it,

I've had forever a few times,

A few loves,

And it was forever.

I gave that person forever as that version of myself.

But in the moment that that version needed to die,

There had to be a transition,

A break in the connection.

And if we're lucky,

Sometimes a part of us dies and we're able to stay in connection and write a new chapter with someone.

And sometimes the person is just there for that chapter.

We're not actually meant to hold on.

We're meant to write that chapter with them and move forward.

And so in a way,

I have given forever to a few people and a few people have given forever to me.

And when I look back on those chapters,

I actually,

Even though the love was so deep and it felt like forever,

That person that they were in love with doesn't exist anymore.

Therefore,

If it was in the present moment,

It wouldn't be the same.

So we had to let go of it when it was time to let go.

So also a part of detangling the human heart is knowing when to leave,

Knowing when to transition,

Knowing when to surrender.

You know,

Something that I heard some time ago that I really appreciated,

Someone said,

What if instead of seeing a failed marriage as failed,

Maybe we saw it as a successful marriage because we left when it was the right moment.

You know,

Maybe a successful marriage is leaving in the right moment.

And I really appreciated that because there's so much shame and guilt that could go on leaving a marriage or leaving a relationship or leaving a job or even letting go of a loved one that is dying.

We could think,

Oh,

I should have done more.

I should have pushed them to fight.

I wasn't there.

But maybe the success in that moment is actually really loving and letting go in the right moment and knowing,

Okay,

I've given enough and now is the moment to let go.

So there are so many ways to detangle our hearts.

And I think for myself,

The biggest piece of medicine I've given myself is stillness and silence and feeling over thinking and emptying my cup of myself,

Really emptying the echoes out of my cup and letting God,

Letting Source pour in and wash away all the stickiness that comes with my over-identification to my persona,

To my ego,

To what I'm supposed to do as the being in this body,

At this age,

In this place.

Because as we are here in the human experience longer,

We collect more and more masks or we get really solidified in the ones that we have grown to wear.

And so in detangling the human heart,

It's also we strip ourselves naked.

We bear our souls to being and we breathe and we exist and we learn to let go,

Not to only of others,

But of ourselves.

One of my biggest realizations when going through my training to become a death doula was,

Oh wow,

I eventually have to break up with myself.

And that was a huge realization for me.

I was like,

Oh,

I've been spending my whole life in therapy and trainings and certifications to learn how to let go of others and to not be codependent with others,

With family,

With lovers,

With friends.

But wow,

I'm codependent with myself.

I'm very attached to me.

I'm very attached to my identity,

With this body,

With this mind,

With this heart.

And yeah,

We're in a great relationship and it's much healthier than it's ever been.

But in the end,

With my existential nature,

I have to learn to break up with myself.

I have to learn to let go of even myself and to give my last breath to life.

And to eventually fall back into uncertainty and the unknown and traverse the deepest breakup that we ever have to go through,

Which is that with our own human life.

And to don't forget in these moments where we get so wrapped up in the upsets and the anguish with our loved ones when they don't do what we want and how we want it and how much we want it.

Look at the existential nature of yourself and those that you love.

For we're here for a very limited moment of time and we're not guaranteed even a long human experience.

And so the next time you're fighting or you're upset or you're holding onto a grudge,

Do your best to see the existential nature in other beings and enjoy the moment,

Even if you're in anger or frustration,

Or even if you're grieving and that person is dying in front of you or they're leaving the relationship.

You know,

Now when I go through breakups,

I have more of this attitude.

And of course,

I'm a human being and I love love and I get attached and it's difficult to let go.

But when I go through breakups,

I have that feeling of,

Oh,

I'm alive though.

Yeah,

I'm in agony and I'm in pain and I don't have the person that I want so deeply next to me,

But I'm alive.

I have breath.

Life is breathing into me.

And so even in the moments of deep,

Guttural mourning,

I can hold myself and just,

Okay,

Breathe,

Breathe.

And so then in that moment,

When it's so difficult,

I make myself a cup of tea and I go about my existential nature of life.

And I enjoy the little things because in that moment of death,

When I lose somebody I deeply love through a breakup or through death,

I am reminded that I'm still being chosen in this moment,

That life is breathing into me and that all of the that left,

They gave way,

They gave space for us to be here.

So all of those beings that have lived,

Because more humans are dead than alive in this moment,

If you think about it,

In the history of humanity,

More have passed.

So we are all passing beings that are just still here.

And so in this moment,

Life is choosing us.

And so many have given their last breaths for spaciousness for new conception.

And here we are as new conceptions in each moment.

How can we create value of this space?

How can we bring more beauty to life?

Yeah.

And when we are breaking up with ourselves,

When I say in the end of life,

Yeah,

We're breaking up with the body,

This thing that we've become so attached to.

We allow ourselves to kind of fall back into uncertainty.

And this is my feeling,

Who knows what that last moment will be like.

But it's to me,

I see it as a great returning.

I think of the crying child when it comes into the world.

I always hear of crying children.

And it makes me think that they were really happy where they were before,

Wherever they existed before,

They were quite happy.

And they didn't want to leave,

But they get used to it here.

And they become associated with their identity and all the masks that we give them.

But I have this feeling that,

You know,

The crying child that has been taken from home is being given back,

Is returning home to where he or she or they or we began.

So yeah,

On your journey to detangling your own human hearts,

I really encourage you to feel more and to think less and to appreciate the present moment and do your best to not get pulled into the past or into the future.

And that you allow yourself to ride the waves of your breath.

And if you get lost in the day,

You get lost in thought or fear or deep breathing,

That you ride the internal mantra of breathing in,

I am aware that I am breathing in.

Breathing out,

I am aware that I am breathing out.

Breathing in,

I am aware that I am breathing in.

Breathing out,

I am aware that I am breathing out.

Reviews

Dear one/Our Echo, thank you for having put effort in this authentic recording. Many topics resonated, listing a few:
- the feeling more and thinking less (I do tend to think (☺️) that this is also about speaking. I love wordless connected communication.
- the ‘breaking up with ourselves’. And that you’ve coupled this with uncertainty (made me remember a meditation on IT from Thomas Richardson and wonder if you are aware of each other).
- the referencing of (I suppose buddhist(?)) tantra - the relevance of the bodily experiencing.
- the contemplation about what is a successful ‘marriage’/relation; I’ve been thinking (🙄😜) a lot about the ‘waves’ in relations lately.
- your personal twist to all this.

Thank you again, it was very enjoyable!

🌞✨👋

Thank you 🙏 for your beautiful perspectives. I’m making a cup of tea 🍵 to contemplate your wisdom. Blessings Mark.

So much wisdom and peace. Thank you for being a service to the world.

Wow. As I prepare to return to Montreal tomorrow, to see my mother as she struggles in the hospital for over 3 months, her body and mind deciding if she can continue. Your messge again comes to me at the perfect time, reminding me to be present with her and not be a doctor. Forever grateful for your offerings. Thank you.