Awareness That Heals

Today, Dave shares his shyness and vulnerability around being uncomfortable with how tall he was growing up. His defense around this sprouted in the form of the excessive need to please, often at the expense of himself. This action robs one of being mutual. This episode exposes the need and importance of being able to share our insecurity and humanness. Then have others take care of you as much as you take care of them. Those around you may take you for granted and assume you do not have needs. It becomes a quagmire. Maybe you don't even know you have needs. Insecurity is only one trigger and can be reborn over and over again. Everyone has their versions of this and how they find ways to cope. It takes awareness to see our patterns and patience to continue to peel off layer after layer. We hope that you gain insight and perspective while listening to Robert and Dave's challenges and how they meet them. The key is to go back to the insecurity or vulnerability, value it, and appreciate it as sensitivity. There is so much goodness in wanting to give when it is balanced. Normal is usually trying to be popular. If you are not normal you have the guarantee of feeling some rejection. Some people will think you are weird, withdrawn, nerdy, philosophical, or cool. If you think on your own, following your own drummer will create a different set of challenges. The underlying gold of discovering and following your truest needs is that it holds the potential to lead you to connection, fulfillment, courage, maybe even inspiration and all kinds of other meaningful qualities. Are we here to be mostly happy or are we here to pursue something deeply meaningful? The world has so many obstacles that we cannot afford to be normal living in our own isolated dreams and think we are going to live a deeply satisfying life. You can guide yourself to be more fulfilled if you ask questions, listen to the answers, experiment with them, and have the courage to break free from the ordinary conditioning to find your truer self. We invite you to visit us at AwarenessThatHeals.org for access to the free Introspective Guides that will serve as a starting road map to 75 of The Most Challenging Emotions and Core Needs.

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e all have conditioning, whether we recognize it or not. Layers upon layers of influence from our parents, friends, and culture. We are generally led in the direction where the biggest variable is personal achievement, financial security and family loyalty, and rarely do we focus on some kind of greater interconnectedness to the world. It is so important that our identities grow beyond our immediate circles and recognize that we all need to be responsible because our planet is in jeopardy. Slow down with Robert to ask some central questions we often speed right past. What really would inspire me and allow me to be most connected to myself and others? Am I living the life that I believe is going to be the most fulfilling, especially considering I'm living in the 21st century? Taking time regularly to concisely ask these introspective questions will enable you to follow your own wisdom and become your own authority.

Robert reminds us how crucial it is not to ignore the fact that we are only here for a little while. Acknowledging our mortality can open us up to inspiration and creativity to use our unique talents, time, energy, and resources to create opportunities for ourselves and others and in return find deep fulfillment. We are living at a time when our planet and democracy are deeply threatened. If we do not change our identity as world citizens we are likely setting up a planet that is in serious jeopardy of collapsing. The stakes have never been higher and because of this, we are going to have anxiety, emptiness, and insecurity.

It takes a lot of courage to face our challenging feelings and then to pause so we can be clear what they are telling us. Insecurity shows the desire to feel secure in a variety of areas. It's a feeling that shines a light on what you need. If you can spend some time with your anxiety rather than rejecting it, like a disease, you have a chance of finding sources of peace and relaxation. Using the Introspective Guides and real examples Robert and Dave invite you to support yourself to open to new depths inside yourself.

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The baseline of the majority of people throughout history, barring many of the indigenous peoples of the world, has not significantly prioritized how to live a connected life to both our planet and those less fortunate than us. This baseline definition of normal has meant serving society's main values and standards such as success, wealth, taking care of family, being popular and having some fun. It has not prioritized taking care of the ground on which we live as a whole or supporting the most disadvantaged. Mostly support is kept very much relative to those closest to us.

Robert and Dave are attempting to provide a contemplative bridge from our normal conditioning to find a deeper fulfillment, rather than just satisfaction as a possibility. Although our current state feels natural, there is another level that has to do with interconnection with the world, interconnections with people that are suffering, and awareness of what we each consider to be our best self. The Introspective Guides are a great place to begin to access a more nuanced literacy to taking care of ourselves and others when faced with life's challenges. By extension, this process enables a greater capacity to be present and open to a more meaningful connection with your inner circle and the global community to increasing degrees. This is a particularly vital time when we are facing global warming, potential nuclear war, terrorism, and shootings.

The recognition we want to care for where we are, and then also we want to care for others is really the foundation of the Awareness That Heals process. We hope that you will download the Introspective Guides if you have not already and that you'll see this as a way to move your life from a limited kind of caring to provide for new levels of fulfillment.

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In this episode, Robert and Dave discuss the experience of anxiety that is prominent for so many and highlight what to do when you are experiencing it. Many people's initial reaction is to distract and run in the other direction, but suppressing anxiety will only make it grow. When anxiety arises, take some time without trying to change it. Let anxiety breathe so you can increase your acceptance and awareness. It is important to dignify the human experience. This allows us to have enough contemplation to realize we want to care for ourselves instead of giving ourselves a hard time for feeling anxiety. This is a great time to bring in The Introspective Guides. This can set a whole new trajectory. Instead of being frozen in anxiety, there is a partner to help care for ourselves, to befriend ourselves as we are. It could be that answers come up like, I need to call the doctor. It is time to stop running away from anxiety and not wanting to deal with feeling threatened. Anxiety for virtually all of us is involuntary and it deeply deserves our caring. That is the internal part where you are continuing to encourage yourself and recognize, over and over again, your innocence. You're not doing this on purpose. You don't deserve to be punished. You don't deserve anything but to support yourself and to do your very best to breathe, bring calmness, keep asking questions and respond in a way that will best care for yourself. This can be done with accepting thoughts, actions and developing different ways of caring for this challenging feeling.

Through Robert's words, he is attempting to empower you to sit in the seat of your guidance that can look and see what your feelings are and what your needs are. As you listen it is very helpful to have the list of The 75 Challenging Emotions and Essential Needs from The Introspective Guides that can be found on our website.

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Welcome to the start of a new series of The Awareness that Heals that will be working directly with The Introspective Guides for "Challenging Feelings & Emotions," as well as "Essential Needs & Qualities." Both can be downloaded for free on our website awarenessthatheals.org. These guides will help identify a list of the most common needs that we all have, are often unaware of, or unable to articulate. They will also assist you in becoming more aware of challenging emotions, which can then become a lucid guide to your core needs by learning to ask what is missing or most needed. This is something that most of us do not have literacy in. It is a time we can find our way to be humble and receptive. Therefore, it is helpful to have access to these lists, even as you are listening to the podcast. These guides are an invaluable resource for teachers, therapists, clients, and anyone who wants to clearly understand what they feel and what is needed to take better care of themselves and others. Most of us understand the words, feel and need, but the depth of application, especially while we're living it, is much more subtle and difficult to achieve.

This episode deals with the most simple yet profound linkage that each of us can make between our challenging feelings and our needs. Learning how to discover and follow our needs is a central way to break free from how others in our past, our culture, have defined for us what they think we need or the values we should hold. The most crucial part of this series is to identify the most frequent feelings that challenge you. Emotions like when you are afraid, how do you move in a direction of safety or courage, or when you're feeling weak or inadequate? From there, it guides us to be able to pivot in a direction of taking care of yourself by breaking old patterns. Join us for this podcast and upcoming episodes to see how to implement this tried and true process to find your challenges and guide yourself to whatever will improve your quality of life.

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It is a pleasure to have you join us for this final part of the series centered around Robert's book, Awareness that Heals. Here we will continue to develop a greater capacity to have a more healing response to emotions rather than becoming trapped in conditioned reactions that each of us has. Most of us get confused and think we are the imprint of our conditioning from the way our parents raised us, our siblings, our society, our movies, and our sports. If we can find our awareness beyond this, we have the potential to be free.

Normally, our conditioning is like a tornado, moving us along. The work we are doing here, together, is to strengthen our aptitude to think for ourselves, question ourselves, listen to what the answers are, and respond. Don't let yourself get too grandiose. Instead, relish the little steps as the big accomplishments that they are. Robert and Dave will finalize the book with a summary. As well as providing the context of the eighth chapter with all the chapters and how they integrate and support each other. As Robert and Dave review, don't just hear it, but glimpse it from your life experience and ask yourself questions from the heart. With your wisdom, you can bring both your wisest thoughts and your best qualities together to guide your life. The most important thing isn't to appear developed. The most important thing is to authentically be right where you are in your development.

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Robert continues his guidance in developing our capacity to move outside our conditioning and reactive emotions. Most of us behave based on how we were seen or unseen by our parents or by others in our society that we model. We often identify with the heroes that are athletes or actors in TV shows. Amplifying these skills to inquire who we aspire to be independent of our conditioning will allow us to question ourselves, listen to what the answers are, and find ways to respond. This episode, on the surface, may appear to be mostly focused on one lone case study, the gradual steps of healing, and how it applies to various concrete examples. However, Robert makes it clear that the primary emphasis is you being able to find your own needs, starting with your challenges. While listening, seek the potential benefits of expressing what you need rather than staying with what you are against in your resistant state. There is no one size fits all. Sometimes you need to find a way to communicate sensitively. Sometimes you need to find a way to resolve it internally.

The case study discussed is a couple that has been with Robert for 10 to 15 years. When Adam came to work with Robert many years ago, his main complaint was that his wife was self-centered and angry. What he wanted was more open heart communication and more connection, but his tone was hostile and angry. With that kind of tone inevitably an endless power struggle would continue. With some resistance, Robert was able to help Adam realize he was not just an innocent character in all this. Through several sessions, Adam gradually became aware of his feelings of abandonment, his hurt, his aloneness, his loneliness, his dependency, and his desire to be intimate. See how Adam's story unfolds into a renewed relationship with his wife. In contemplating this case the central focus is to see your patterns. Remember a point in time either that has happened recently or throughout your life and use Adam's story as a mirror to look at your relationship with anger.

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This week Robert and Dave go more deeply into the seven steps to transform anger. The podcast coincides with the final chapter of Robert's book, Awareness that Heals. We all have loads of hypnosis or conditioning from our parents, our culture, our movies, and our friends that lead us in directions that make anger a divisive force, rather than one that can be directed in a way that serves everyone. This show is zeroing in on how to find a spaciousness inside us that can choose to guide us in our anger and resistant emotional reactions.

It is normal (but not healthy) to be in the heat of our anger as most of us have rationalized that the other person or circumstance has caused it. We feel so deserving that we are not aware that our repressed or suppressed anger is our reaction rather than learning how we can find a beneficial way to contemplate it. When attempting this pivot, everyone needs to cultivate awareness of what we need. If we don't, it is inevitable that we will express ourselves insensitively when in this state of mind. We are aspiring to find the best sides of ourselves, find ways to be sensitive, balanced, and aware of the process that can move us toward this kind of healing. Robert and Dave offer tools and concrete examples of how to cultivate this inner spaciousness.

For many of us, it may be hard to be aware of our anger until days later or even suppress it for a lifetime. It's never too late to be aware. It's never too late to be aware of a part of you that wants to care. It's never too late to evolve to the next step of finding and expressing our needs sensitively. The idea is to be balanced and recognize that we are not suppressing anger. We are feeling it in a safe way inside ourselves. Or, when circumstances allow us to go to a safe location to feel it as totally as possible and use it to find our strength and capacity for intimacy. We are not suppressing vulnerability. We are using it to find a more gentle, tender, caring side of ourselves that can be expressed in a balanced way when we are with someone who can handle honest caring communication.

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In the last episode, Robert and Dave focused primarily on containment. This week's episode is focusing on giving some personal examples of containment and penetrating even further into transforming anger and resisting emotions into intimacy and strength. For most of us, feelings are central. Here, we are being guided and given options to how beneficial responses to our feelings can be vital to long-term happiness. It can be a bit like a lobotomy at the beginning to think and question ourselves outside of our conditioning, to stay frozen or fixated in our feelings. Once we can begin to listen we can recognize that these guidelines can be a much better definition of who we are. Containment is that pause between feeling and reaction. This is not something most of us have been taught to do and therefore must be applied again and again until a new habit is formed.

Robert and Dave offer up real places in their lives where they struggle with frustrations and impatience. Join them as they reflect on their own conditioning to illustrate how they use containment and other tools, such as the 75 essential needs, to help them navigate through their personal challenges. Getting through feelings does not always mean getting over them. As you are hearing their stories, take this opportunity to look at your difficult feelings and see if you can find a place that still wants to care for yourself, others, and learn how to implement this caring. This is not a standard, but because you realize it makes you feel best when you can allow awareness of challenging emotions and the intent to heal coexists. This opens the door for a direction of healing that otherwise wouldn't occur.

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Join Robert and Dave as they take a deep dive into the process of containment. Many misunderstand the word. Containment is not suppression. It is feeling as fully as possible in a safe place where it does not hurt anyone, including ourselves. It helps us not to become paralyzed in withdrawal or lost in a wide realm of expressing feelings that have fight as an element inside them. Containment requires us to have the self-control to pause in the midst of uncomfortable feelings. Anger, for example, if we do not misuse it by dumping it on others, or by suppressing it, can have a great vital energy. It gives us passion. It gives us intensity. It gives us juice to live our lives. To move into a state of containment we must break free from being trapped in conditioned reactions that each of us has to automatically express or repress.

If we can remove ourselves from the situation and let ourselves really be present with our intense feelings we can learn to use them in positive ways. While we are feeling raw emotion we can also ask ourselves some inquiring questions. What vulnerable feelings do I have that are also underneath this? What is it that I really need that this anger is showing me? What is it that we need to do to best take care of ourselves and the significant others with us while we are in this state of anger? Containment is the 3rd step of a 7 step process. Stay tuned as Robert will be covering each step in future episodes.

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