Practicing Self-Compassion
By Sarah Sydney Nash
Nearly ten days ago I discovered the Project Seventh website. The moment was monumental for me because I’d been trying to decide the best way to blog my day to day experiences as a professional clairvoyant/metaphysician and the creator of Cosmic Triage™.
For years I’d written about my world in several blogging venues; then decided to give myself a chance with writing my blend of spiritual consciousness at TruJournal. That attempt de-railed as a result of too many changes in my personal life including a move across country.
When I found James synopsis, “Our lives revolve around seven days a week. When you look back and reflect on the 7th day, what do you see? What I see becomes my seventh day story.”
I felt inspired. I felt free. I wanted very much to write what I see, but I also wanted it to have purpose beyond entertaining a few friends or devoted readers. I wanted it to be more than just bits of information about my family, my job, my opinion. I believe to my core that I see the world very differently than most people and that I have a duty to translate my vision to comprehensive prose, if only to find the one person who can commiserate and perhaps to let them know they aren’t alone. I’m going to give this experiment 52 weeks. However, James didn’t call this Project 52, he called it Project Seventh.
WEEK ONE:
The Marquise de Sevigne said “True friendship is never serene.” Recent events exemplify the possible motivation behind this statement.
The messages that I’ve been receiving lately from The Universe about friendship are intense. I can’t turn around without running into a dilemma between friends in my personal and professional life. My heart was broken by betrayal from a once trusted individual, communication mishaps happened all over the internet, and several times I was called upon to mediate similar circumstances in the lives of clients and my family. What I witnessed in most cases were incredibly stressed out people striving to be heard, yet incapable of articulating with reason.
My emotional well ran dry on more than one occasion. At the height of my personal tribulations, – when I found myself crying bitterly in my back yard near my favorite apple tree – I realized that my tears were the result of frustration and bewilderment. I don’t often find myself without the words to create a healing mantra or to find solutions, and I struggled with making sense of a week of disruption and disappointment.
THE UNIVERSE ALWAYS LISTENS
The good news is that an important development in my consciousness occurred during this process. In my most profound disappointments and at the edge of my deepest emotional turmoil, I discovered what it meant to “give your burden to your higher power”.
It was humbling to admit that I didn’t have answers that reflected the mindful person I have become. I reluctantly pulled myself back from inflicting the same kind of emotional trauma that I’d endured, when I recognized that all of my energy had gone into a dangerous spiral of “lets hit ‘em with all you’ve got and cause some damage” type of retaliatory thinking.
As a practitioner of Spiritual Response Therapy, I’m trained to communicate directly with the “High Self Committee” of my clients as well as my own, and for the first time – yes, the first time in total awareness – I gave my drama to something bigger than me.
ACCEPTANCE & AUTHENTICITY
It was at the moment of surrender when I said, “this is too much for me to bear” that I received a miraculous healing. Pursuing vengeance or demanding justice was only going to create despair in me. What I wanted most was to simply be rid of the pain.
When I couldn’t think of how to accomplish anything constructive or healing, I intuitively heard Spirit say “Walk away from this, Sarah, we’ll handle it. Let it go.”
I’m not a spiritual dummy, and I don’t use the word “miraculous” lightly. I know what “letting go” requires. Faith is the key component. Did I have enough faith that my Loving Universe would really take over? It also meant that I had to follow through with a constant process of “letting go”. I knew I would have to continuously hand my baggage over to an “invisible” source each time I thought I could force or create a solution within this dilemma.
Most of all it meant that I had to have enough self love to want healing more than the satisfaction of watching the culprits of my conflict suffer. Could I truly embrace walking my talk?
With a loving and grateful heart, I have observed many of my clients move into this wonderful place of grace and as an empath, I thought I understood the lightness of being that comes with truly finding the way to heal from a terrible emotional wound. As a survivor of an horrific childhood, I thought I understood all the facets of what it meant to forgive, especially if you combine that practice with knowing our soul plan the way I do.
With tender surprise my eyes were opened to an age-old comprehension that I thought was too trite or simple to be effective, let alone believable as an alternative plan. One that The Source, God, The Universe, – whatever you want to call your Higher Power – has been telling us all along: “You are not alone. Bring your pain to me and I will carry it for you. All you need to do is have the faith and the strength to hand it over.”
RECIPROCITY IS AMAZING!
Teaching others how to walk away from darkness and into light is my calling, and as a veteran of an extraordinary amount of abuse and neglect, I thought that I’d already experienced how to find balance in a crisis. I can say with confidence that I now understand the odd dichotomy of how difficult yet simple the process of finding a true center is. My emotional vertigo ceased the second I said, “I’m done. I can’t do this alone anymore”.
I experienced instantaneous relief. In a decisive moment my entire paradigm shifted because of self compassion and faith. There was no doubt that the sensation was that of coming into balance. As I examined the bitterest of the hollow places within, I allowed grace to smooth the sharp corners of my pain; similar to the way smoke from a sage bundle is used to cleanse a negative space.
I thought of that analogy Sunday afternoon as I stood beside a friendly acquaintance while her father — a spiritual practitioner — used a smudge stick to bless and clean her latest office. It was a small gathering, and as my eyes wandered around the empty rooms soon to house her brand-new business, I compared that cleansing practice to life. We move out the old, and bring in the new with hope for improvement. As we move through the rooms of our existence we learn where things work best, what to keep, what to give away, and how to ask for help.
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