By Elisa Novick
Tree Love: Heart of the Forest workshops this coming weekend (July 20 and 21, 2013):
As I read through the comments you leave on my articles and others’ words on Planet Waves, I am in awe at the connections we make. Through the revelations we share and our caring, someone living in a tent by a freeway in Oregon shares on the same page as one living amongst the kookaburras and goannas in a continent far away. One aspect shared by many is the love of trees.
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I will be offering two workshops this coming weekend — Tree Love: Heart of the Forest 1 (July 20) and Tree Love: Heart of the Forest 2 (July 21). Tree Love 2 is for those who’ve attended any of the previous Tree Love workshops. These may be the last workshops I facilitate in my beloved forest for quite a while, as I am considering spending the next three seasons in Bali, Asia and Australia, so if you can come to Rhinebeck, New York, I hope you will join me for one or both workshops.
So many of us are living consciously in multidimensionality now. I’ve just returned from spending time in several relatively diverse groups — Gaunts House in England, where a small community participates in “Profound Learning”; the Omega Institute, where a wide variety of teachings are presented and absorbed by an eager staff; the Fairy and Human Relations Congress, in which they chant “Fey” and invite the devas and fairies; and MSIA (The Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness), the organization created by my own way-shower, John-Roger, to make available the teachings and assistance of the Mystical Traveler and the Christ in our journey into the heart of God, in which the Hu and Ani-Hu chants call forth the highest frequencies of spiritual Light and Sound and empathy.
Though these very different expressions each function in their own frequency ranges, all exhibit loving care for all in the group. All follow of the first two Laws of Spirit (as outlined by John-Roger), Acceptance and Cooperation. All commune as best they can with unseen realms and beings and all are trying to create a world in which love and spiritual awareness provide the guidelines for living. This evidence of good will and desire to serve the good of all is repeated in so many places around our planet.
With so many people living from the heart in these ways, why do we need to do more work on ourselves and in our groups? Because there is still karmic cleanup necessary and we are just learning to co-create together.
Except for MSIA, I facilitated workshops for each of the above-mentioned groups. What I witnessed was that there are some misconceptions that many share and are propagated widely. One is that we have to be open, open our chakras, our hearts — that continuous expandedness is a good thing. Combined with the fact that we’ve had our boundaries invaded and damaged since childhood, (beautifully delineated in Eric Francis’ article “Father Knows Best”), most of the people in my workshops display what I call, “splayed out all over the universe.” Our energy fields are mushy and porous, weak, ill-defined.
The result is that anything can come in easily, beneficial or detrimental. We leak. We try to make up the loss by trying to get energy from others. We become addicted to outside sources of energy. Then, in response to others’ responses to us, we have a tendency to easily feel hurt, abandoned, disrespected, exploited and angry. When that happens, the automatic reaction is either to blow up or turn it in on ourselves. Victims become bullies, bullies act like victims. The energy field gets flared up or collapsed or booby-trapped for the next hurt that might come along at any moment. We either want to do battle or crawl into our holes to heal our wounds. “I need my space.” Then the judgment triggers: “I should be open, but I am not, and therefore something is wrong with me.” The loop goes on.
This multi-layered field, (often called the aura) is our greater mind. It stores and reflects our experiences. And it is an important aspect of our psychic immune system. This system needs to be strong, even feisty when necessary.
The response I often get when I suggest to people to close it down, seal their chakras, come back into themselves is, “I spent my childhood isolated and shut down. I don’t want to go back to that.” Ah, but that is the trick of it! Once I’ve demonstrated the differences between the various states and helped them feel their own boundaries, their own containment, there is a big surprise in store. (I love to surprise!)
When we can self-contain, self-maintain and self-sustain (and I include here the greater Self that is connected to Spirit from which we can draw energy as needed), circulating our own forces, being the love that we are, it is actually easier to enjoy our relationships with others. We can see them as separate and distinct beings and allow them to feel and act as they might, without assuming that it means anything about us or even about them. These things that we do to each other are learned and inherited patterns playing themselves out; they are not who we truly are.
Does this mean we will never need anything from anyone else or be immune to having our hearts shaken? No, of course not. But as a balancing action, this drawing ourselves back into ourselves, results in our being less reactive, more able to respond without leaking our personal, precious forces, and to choose when to expand our fields and when to draw them close and what to allow in and what not to. In exercising these choices we learn mastery.
What I see in my workshops is that once our boundaries are strong and defined, the energy in the room gets so much clearer. We can see each other, as if the edges of our faces got sharper! This is an amazing phenomenon. I don’t know whether our vision gets clearer or we get less blurry, but once I point it out, everyone can see it. We become radiant and visible and so much more real. It is just a beginning, but it is an essential one. From this place, inside ourselves and within the group, we can truly co-create.
To listen to and read past conversations with Elisa Novick on Planet Waves, plus her articles, please use this link. You’re invited to visit her website and Facebook page.
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. You may email her directly at elisanovick [at] thrivingplanet [dot] org.
Elisa, thank you so much for this. Sometimes it is just a simple touch that opens the way for depth of healing – such as when the chiropractor touches you and it’s the first you realize you ache. Today your “simple” suggestion on how to appropriately displace openness with self-clarity has in itself brought clarity. Thank you.
Me too Amanda, me too. A lot of old neuroses/patterns have been coming and hitting me one recently (with this Mercury retrograde in Cancer) – and I’m thinking, oh no, not *you* again! Except that the strength and awareness grows too, which helps to treat them more lightly, with less intensity than before (when possible!).
one thing that continually amazes me is how much practice it can take (at least for me) to get the hang of this. it often seems like each time i think i get it, somewhere down the line i realize that i’ve relapsed, or that i only partially “got it” in the first place. “understanding” a lesson and “learning” a lesson are not exactly the same thing
but then, i guess when one is dealing with *old* patterns that have been reinforced for decades (or lifetimes), one might expect it to take a while to master a new pattern…
Yes, thank you for this brilliant piece, dear Elisa. What you say is so true – and as always, you express it in a way that is so clear and easy to understand. My boundaries were totally invaded as a child, I was both emotionally and sexually abused, and I have spent a good part of my healing process on learning to respect my boundaries and say no to people. Once one has established boundaries and respect for oneself one can then move into a more heart-centred, trusting space, as you say, ” When we can self-contain, self-maintain, and self-sustain (and I include here the greater Self that is connected to Spirit from which we can draw energy as needed), circulating our own forces, being the love that we are, it is actually easier to enjoy our relationships with others. We can see them as separate and distinct beings and allow them to feel and act as they might, without assuming that it means anything about us or even about them” Yes – I’m really working with this aspect right now – your words help so much. Thank you!
Thank you, Elisa for a sublimely timely and insightful piece. You have made the universe seem closer to and more like home. It’s amazing how you integrate the intuitive with the counter-intuitive to actually demonstrate the holistic as a practical truth rather than an elusive concept. There are some people working on the Large Hadron Collider who could use your help as you have helped me today. You are truly a master.
Thank you for this, Elisa.
I LOVE the idea of a feisty aura! I definitely let too much in & have felt as if, as an empathic person, I had no choice. This is a very interesting idea; I’m offering this up to my guides to see how to make this part of my reality. I would so love to just contain myself.
Your perspective is, as always, stunning. Thank you.