Editor’s Note: To listen to and read past conversations with Elisa Novick on Planet Waves, please use this link. We’ll be publishing an article by Elisa each Sunday evening. You’re invited to visit her website and Facebook page. — Amanda
I’m relieved Obama won — with huge reservations — but I’m not happy that Proposition 37 didn’t pass in California. And I’m very happy that Elizabeth Warren won in Massachusetts and Alan Grayson won in Florida. I’m unhappy that Monsanto might take down the ecology of the entire planet and I’m happy/unhappy that ___, etc.
I wonder what’s the derivation of the phrase, “getting thrown from pillar to post?”
In the wake of storms and elections, hateful perpetrations, and inspiring stories of courage and caring, it is easy to become worried or unhappy or optimistic or elated about the state of our lives or of the world. ‘E-motions’ truly are energy in motion and can wear you out.
There is a lot of fear energy and many negative thought forms blanketing this planet. Whether you believe the fear has been manufactured on purpose or that the sensations you are feeling are yours only, what matters always is how you move with it inside of you.
How well do you process or transcend or expand or embrace or accept? Can you hold peace, reach out in service with generosity and a smile, be joyful anyway? Can you reach up to find the love energy that is also always available?
It is all perfect, you just don’t like it that way.
— John-Roger
In so many sessions and classes, and my own inner work, I’ve seen that when we lift up into a higher consciousness, we see the perfection. But when we allow ourselves to get dragged down, we lose that perception and don’t remember what we knew.
There is a storyline of the world and there is also a trajectory of the soul. The soul presents a self into this world through a body, into situations which will provide an opportunity to experiment with creativity and its consequences, enhance its learning, and express itself in myriad ways. The world provides the opportunities. It is hard not to be discouraged when we see things happening in the opposite fashion to that which we hold right and wholesome inside. In the end what we take ‘home’ with us is not our misfortune, though that has its effect, but how we dealt with the decisions we made, the lives we believe we squandered, the time we believe we lost and the way in which we allowed others to hold sway over us.
Over and over the message is: you are love, you are the Beloved.
The Game is Rigged in Our Favor
Do you believe that life is for you or against you? That you belong here? That you have a right to live and thrive?
[The soul] sinks into the source again and again to find new inspiration and come back fresh and somewhat new to complete its trajectory. This is true no matter what is happening in this world. That goes on and on, never getting a whole lot of improvement, only one problem and devastating thing after another. Yet here there is a new statement to be found, one that you are standing on and in, that we are only getting better in the face of adversity and leaving alone the greed that leads us down the path to the destruction of our lives. As we lean into a grace-filled existence, we are led astray with nothing. Then we can transcend this world while living here, too. We can be happy anyway.
— Inner Master
What matters is that we keep moving, holding ourselves accountable without blame or scrutinizing ourselves harshly, and loving it all. Can we be kind inside and approach with kindness? Can we remember that the world we experience with our so-called five senses is only a tiny fraction of what is actually going on?
They [the trees] are training you to see the world and the layers of dust or matter (what matters to you) that encompass this reality and then transcend it. There is a continuous loop; a grace-full ascendance through all the layers, that does not require stepping over anything or leaving any of the layers aside. They do it so gracefully; leaping about through the stars, sitting in the ground so patiently for centuries at a time and then flying off to the heavens. No judgment, no letting go of anything to go to the next, spanning the entire continuum.
You have learned that you have to leave behind people and things and causes and different aspects of personality to get further, higher, leave this planet behind. You get miserable with leavings and letting goes. It is not necessary. You can be all things, all places, all times at once. Never let anything go that serves a higher purpose; that of becoming one with the universe, being the universe, traveling gracefully, lovingly, from issue to issue, point to place to time to relationship, etc. And it is all done in the blink of any eyes, so to speak. By being everywhere, you encompass all things and become the totality. They know this, do this, act this and are examples of this.
Go inside and seek out your nascent longing to become everything and give it ‘candy’ — give it what it wants and has wanted all along.
— Inner Master
The Art of Withdrawal: A Powerful Technique
In the Laboratory of Life work, which is the basis of many of my trainings and sessions, we’ve learned that we store memories and relationships spatially. For instance, when you think of someone in your life, they may show up on your left, right, back, front, etc. Those of you who have worked with me or others practicing family or systemic constellations are already aware of the power of displaying relationship by where you and others stand in a room or other space.
One of the myriad ways I’ve utilized this is to develop the ability to step out of a negative energy. You set it up in the room you are in as a field (you can sense where the field naturally shows up in the space) and then move your body out of the field until you feel the relief. I usually like to back slowly out of the field, experiencing each threshold as I move out. Update yourself from no longer being in that field. Once out of the field, an entirely different set of qualities appears. Then you can clear the space (I just ask for it to be cleared) and live from the new place. I have seen many people’s lives transformed as a result.
Some examples include withdrawing from:
• Election frenzy
• Your parents’ relationship
• A relationship, group, institution, culture
• Belief framework
• An obsessive thought: that last conversation, client session, movie you watched, emotion, that you could not let go of.
Get intensely able to attune within and know yourself. This is most important; nothing else exists. Everything leads there; all paths, all lives, all experiences. All your wonders exist within the whole.
Get this straight. In this world, nothing goes easily; it is fraught with traps and distresses and strengtheners and then you die. Your ‘marks’ if you will, are gained by getting through it without losing your loving heart. That is all. It will all be over all too soon. Love yourself and take yourself seriously again. What you’ve gained is yours to keep; no one can take that from you. And you will rise again and then it will be time to get rid of stuff; your own baggage; of trying and failing and not accepting the changes. Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. But your soul is fascinated and fascinating. I love you and have always supported you and all in heaven are glad you exist.
— Inner Master
Elisa Novick, MSS does profound work as a healer, teacher, counselor, coach, minister, and facilitator of workshops and trainings in personal, professional, and spiritual development. She can assist you to clear personal, karmic and genetic patterns that have limited you and teach you exquisite attunement skills so you can become the magnificent master of life and Light that all of us are destined to be. Elisa has been assisting people in their growth since 1982 through her counseling practice and in facilitating over 1,000 workshops in holistic health, human development, family constellation, systemic constellation, organizational dynamics, planetary healing and spiritual awareness. Read her other Planet Waves articles here.
I cannot thank you enough – and the gifting trees too!!!- for this gift!
I have been struggling mightily against being in a position that has been a straight-jacket in grief. A loved one hurling into trouble and I feel so much horror and loss and grief and inability to accept and inability to cope and inability to turn the pain of it off or to remedy or change that person’s crazy (to me) (but now that I think about it what do I know? There could be a “plan” in place? Maybe. ?!?) trajectory.
So I do know that -and I have witnessed- myself being tied to this person in pain, tied by this person, tied by my own heart’s pain. And I have been asking myself over and over, how do I shift to another position? (And I still only want to fix it. I know. I know. But I do want to.)
And then you – and the beautiful wise trees – say to me:
Be Happy Anyway.
Wow. Just Wow. Just Wow.
It may take some reminding. I may have to move a LOT. The “position” seems to like to follow me around, little sucker.
But Wow.
Your – and the beautiful trees- kindnesses in sharing this are AWESOME! Just what I needed just at the right time just exactly perfect wisdom.
Thank you.
Nothing changes here. Nothing. The ruts are worn, the tires hit their track, people follow the blind banister to the bottom of the stairs and find the chill metal knob, thinking it is a door. But in truth, the door comes to you. Repeat: The door is coming to us. Bestill yourself and feel its arrival. Be’empty and look! it is open.
And thank you so much for sharing your technique, The art of withdrawal, here. “One of the myriad ways I’ve utilized this is to develop the ability to step out of a negative energy. You set it up in the room you are in as a field (you can sense where the field naturally shows up in the space) and then move your body out of the field until you feel the relief”. Useful at all times, and it may well save me from going down the plughole (as I always do), when I go back home to the folks this Christmas.
Gosh – thank you so very much for this, dear Elisa. You have packed so much into one piece – there are so many goodies here. “As we lean into a grace-filled existence, we are led astray with nothing. Then we can transcend this world while living here, too. We can be happy anyway”. This sense of grace has become apparent to me only in the last few days. This has been an intense period of worry and stress for me, but it’s as if my practice over these years has really come to the fore. In the middle of sturm und drang, and a lot of fear too – I have finally been able to put into practice what I’ve known for a while now, that it is how we relate to what happens in our lives that is the key, the place where we heal. And I have come to realise that a happy mind is a gift, an act of grace – that doesn’t come from things working out well in ones life – but from a deeper understanding of reality, from cultivating joy and love in our hearts in the face of hardship and aggression (ones own too), and seeking to dissolve reactivity. Thank you again, Elisa, this piece is so so beautiful, so uplifting.
A vision I had as a younger woman:
The question again, nagging at me, no one to ask; who can I take it to, no one. I think of church and how I have taken my deepest pain there during this time—having the place to myself on a weekday or at night—I have gone there—people would think I am crazy—I go there and crawl under the altar and wail and scream and rage and sometimes hold God to my gut like I would a child, a child in unimaginable need of comfort. In my warm bath water the visualization is spontaneous; I see Mary, mother of God, she’s my mother too, and my child self goes to her and leans on her lap—she puts her arm around my shoulders and tilts her head down to me, and I ask her my question.
Kindly, loving me, she shakes her head and says smiling, “I can’t answer it; you must take it to my son; he is just over there.”
I am surprised; I can’t understand why she can’t answer, I was so certain she would know, but I run over to her son, sure this time too, that he will have the answer I seek. He listens kindly, but like his mother, he shocks me by being unable to answer my question. “Go ask my father,” he tells me, and my young inner self is confused but willing, and runs without hesitation directly into the presence of God, shapeless and huge in complete darkness. I have the immediate and intensely physical sensation of scrambling up into a lovely enormous lap. My question pops out with all its attendant grief, pain and suffering. God replies, “I take everything from you that I might give you more of myself.”
“Oh!” my inner child replies, and the answer makes such perfect sense and is so acceptable to her that she immediately clambers down off God’s lap and runs off to play.