Our Divine & Human Natures - Allies in Healing & Awakening

In last week’s Part 1 of this three-part post, I shared reflections and guiding principles for embracing all aspects of our human experience—and the pitfalls of judging or pushing away our human pains and difficulties. I introduced the possibility that each of us has the capability to be simultaneously present with two different aspects within our consciousness—and enter into a real-time, organic dialogue between them.

This empowering realization—that I could cultivate a sacred partnership between two inner aspects—revolutionized my capability to compassionately meet myself with love on my human journey. It also opened a leap forward in my transformational work with my clients. Healing and integration occur naturally when we approach our consciousness—every morsel of our human experience—in a loving, unifying manner. This 2nd post takes this exploration to a deeper level.

I’d like to begin with one of my favorite quotes by Toko-pa Turner:

“There is a special quality of stillness in a person

who encounters their shadow wholeheartedly.

Your body may relax in their company because

it understands, in the subtle communications

of their presence, that nothing is excluded

in themselves, or you, from belonging.

Such a person, who has given up guarding

against the shadow, who has come to

wear their scars with dignity, no longer squirms

from discomfort or bristles at suffering.

They no longer brace in avoidance of conflict.

They carry a deep willingness to dance with the

inconstancy of life. They’ve given up distancing

as a strategy, and made vulnerability an ally.”

Embracing Multiplicity: The Key to Healing & Awakening

In our culture, most of us make the mistaken assumption that at any given moment we only have a singular identity. We tend to identify with our current thoughts and feelings and believe that they singularly define who we are. Thus we say, “I am depressed,” or, “I am angry.”

Yet, at any given time, we are actually comprised of a diverse multiplicity of selves in our inner world. From this perspective of multiplicity, it would be more accurate to say, “A part of me is depressed,” or, “I am feeling angry.”

Your human emotions of depression, anger , etc. are only one aspect of your inner experience. By making this fundamental shift in how you are relating to your experience, you let go of completely identifying your whole self with whatever you are feeling at any given moment. This distinction, in and of itself, immediately brings liberation.

Simply approaching your inner process with this wider lens of understanding, especially during those times when what you are feeling is intensely experienced in the body, affords you more capacity to hold for yourself in a sacred way, to more fully accept and cooperate with the flow of deep emotions moving through you. Ironically, rather than distancing you from feeling emotions, the perspective of multiplicity actually invites a greater level of safety and permission to feel more deeply.

Whenever I feel stuck in my life, and seemingly unable to move forward, it is invariably because there is something about myself that I am not accepting. An essential step to opening to my life flow and my natural timing for change is to accept exactly where I am right now, whether or not I like it.

It’s taken me decades to truly learn that it is those times when I am judging my humanness that I experience the most separation and darkness in my consciousness—when I make my thoughts or feelings wrong or not OK. Yet whenever I allow the loving presence of my soul to meet my humanness with acceptance and compassion … I am afforded access to the depth, wisdom and gifts that my human sensitivity and emotions are ALWAYS attempting to bring to the fabric of my life.

I address the arena of emotions and how they often serve as the language of the soul in my book, THE REAL YOU: Living Your Life From Your Authentic Self—in a rich chapter entitled, Darkness & Suffering as Divine Messengers.

Our Inner Marriage

Additionally, many people are not aware of a profound capability all human beings possess. At any time when we are in pain or experiencing the depth of our emotions, we are fully capable of entering into a rich, conscious dialogue—an energetic partnership—between two aspects of ourselves:

- our most human self; and,

- our most loving & truthful self

It is a natural process to learn how to allow both to be present and interacting with each other in real time. I facilitate clients entering into this healing and empowering dialogue process each and every day.

Having contradictory thoughts and feelings is commonplace. For example, when faced with a new job opportunity in another state, most people have to reconcile two sets of inner experience: one aspect that is thrilled and is ready to move, and another aspect that likes security, is afraid of change, and would prefer to pass on the career opportunity no matter how attractive it appears. And, the greater the emotional stakes you have invested in any relationship or set of circumstances, the more likely you are to experience a range of feelings.

This is partly why it is so liberating to enter into a dialogue between our humanness and the love of our Soul, the Authentic Self. This loving consciousness provides us with so much healing and comforting, as it resides beyond polarization and the distress that often accompanies internal contradictions.

The divine self within us is capable of facilitating compassionate leadership in our consciousness. It acts from sovereignty and is an all-embracing, neutral witness to the multitude of aspects that reside within. As you grow more and more accustomed to consciously living from this center, you will learn how to honor and give voice to all your inner selves and experiences. Healthy multiplicity flows from holding sacred space with your diverse inner community.

As you build a conscious relationship with the wellspring of your most loving and truthful self, you will cultivate greater safety and spaciousness. You are then able to move on from being stuck or over-identified with any particular feeling, thought, or behavior that you are experiencing in the moment. In this way, you can achieve greater balance among these various aspects without being constrained by any of them. This is empowering.

In this context, your Authentic Self serves as the unifying center of your inner world, always present and available as a source of support, compassion and guidance.

Here’s the additional good news: the process of healing and releasing our trauma from the past can also be facilitated by consciously, steadily rebuilding healthy levels of trust in turning to and receiving our own love through the process of inner dialogue I am describing.

No matter how dark or longstanding our early life experiences, the healing presence and guiding wisdom of our most loving and truthful self can be accessed to assist us in the restoration of an abiding sense of safety and trust.

Wholeness & Integration Leads to Maturation & Beauty

This weaving work of evolving our consciousness, which I often refer to as spiritual psychology, has changed everything for me and the clients I work with. In summary:

• Our wounded places do not need to be controlled, fixed, or transcended—they are waiting for a relationship with the Light within us and want to be loved.
• Our trauma, shame, fear, loneliness, etc. are not obstacles to enlightenment—they are invitations and opportunities to heal.
• Our most loving and truthful self (the divine) is designed to be in intimate relationship with our most human self—they can be loving partners.
• These two presences in our consciousness, each with their own reality, can coexist simultaneously.
• These two voices can actually share and listen to each other, can learn to trust and understand each other, and over time become sacred allies.

This inner marriage—the divine with the human—is where wholeness is born. When these two aspects of us come back together, something remarkable happens:

• the nervous system stabilizes
• a quietness develops
• shame loosens its grip
• fear becomes manageable
• we experience an inner sovereignty that is stable yet fluid
• we discover new levels of our inner beauty

The reason is simple:

• our divinity holds the power, the authority, and the consciousness
• our humanness holds the history, the wound, and the longing
• when love meets fear, fear softens
• when compassion meets shame, shame opens and begins to dissolve
• when truth meets trauma, trauma softens and finds its place in our larger life story

This is why I say, again and again, to the people I work with:

• Healing is not the divine replacing the human
• It’s the divine embracing the human

Even now, decades since my traumatic teens, I continue to discover subtler layers inside myself of old insecurities, childhood fears, dream fragments of shame or feelings of abandonment. These pieces still arise often in my life—especially so in the tender container of intimate relationship with my wife, Joy.

Does their presence mean I am “not spiritual enough?” Not at all.

They mean I am still alive, still growing, still becoming. Because the dance between the human and the divine is not something we finish. It is something we practice, refine and deepen in all its subtlety throughout our lifetime.

I remain in awe of this territory—how these two distinct aspects of who we are continue to meet each other, support each other, create together.

This is the heart of my work with myself and my clients. And the heart of my life.

In my next and final post of this 3-part series, I’ll be offering a more thorough step-by-step orientation designed to assist you in more skillfully facilitating a loving, healing dialogue within your consciousness.

An Invitation for Discovery

If you are drawn to consciously explore deeper levels of your own journey that may be stirred by my post, here’s a few journal prompts to deepen your relationship with your human and divine self:

1. When do I most feel the presence of my “divine self”? What qualities, sensations, or experiences tell me that part of me is present?

1. What part of my humanness is currently asking for attention, compassion or love?What does that part of me fear most?**

1. If my divine self could speak directly to a wound carried by my human self, what would it say?
2. Where in my life might I need outside support? Who feels safe enough for me to share my deeper truth with?

And, if you have a sense that receiving my seasoned experience in successfully opening to this profound level of inner work and maturation, I welcome you to visit my website and reach out my way so we can discuss the possibility of working together.

With my Love & Thanks, Gavin