Postcards from cave time

I have been nudged and pushed by the inner voice to do a workshop on divine guidance. But I resisted this task a lot. So, I thought it would be a good idea to look at the resistance. Where does it come from?

With this intention, I entered into cave time.  I felt that I first needed to make peace with life and all the loss and pain that is part of the spiritual journey (- think of a caterpillar in the chrysalis stage grieving the loss of the former self), before I could move on with the task of creating a workshop.

Here, are  some postcards from the phase of cave time about the patterns I have experienced.

1. Feeling confused while in the midst of it
   I find it hard to make sense of a phase when I am in the midst of it. It is much easier to look at a difficult time in retrospect and then see what it was good for and what I have learned from it.
2. Connecting the dots in retrospect
   As I read through old journals, I was able to see common topics that came up over and over again. For example, one of them was “Learn to express your view and set boundaries even if that might upset others!” Maybe this is why I am guided to continue blogging?
3. Working through old stuff goes roughly backwards in time.
   First, the most recent ‘forgiveness opportunities’ came up, like anger at work. After that, the older stuff came up for processing (like the painful and crippling rheumatoid arthritis I got after the birth of my first child). Last, some unpleasant childhood memories came up about being treated unkindly in a hospital at the age of 3 years.
   So, that goes roughly backwards in time. However, the whole review process was triggered by a disturbing past-life memory that was revealed to me.
4. Reframing, witnessing, faith
   In order to make peace with emotionally upsetting stuff from the past, for me, it usually comes down to reframing in order to find peace of mind. There is probably some gold nugget in the experience that I must be determined to find.
   For current surges of emotional pain, the witness position was often the only peaceful place to be found.
   When nothing else helped, like with physical pain, I got signs by the universe to just have faith that things would improve over time.
5. The universe uses WordPress
   Whenever I had an urgent question during this time, there would soon be several posts in my WordPress feed which contained an answer to my question. God listens. How comforting!
6. Lists
   Besides journaling, I have found it helpful to make lists of all kinds. The list of recurring issues in my life. The list of things to be grateful for. The list of things my higher self would enjoy doing (sharing my experiences fearlessly) versus the list of things my personality self would enjoy (sitting safely on my couch and reading yet another book).
7. Sharing
   Though I did not blog during the last 10 months, I journaled a lot. But somehow, this was not enough. Whenever I had moved through a topic, someone appeared with whom I was prompted to share. It was as if I was encouraged to spell out for someone else what I had experienced and learned or where I was stuck.Thank you to everyone with whom I could connect during that time!
8. Honoring my inner knowing
   When sharing my process with others, they often felt compelled to suggest solutions to my issues. Often, that was helpful. However, in some cases I had to politely decline their advice and rather honor my own inner knowing about what would be the appropriate next step for me – even if I was sorry to see that the other person felt rejected and disappointed.
9. Advice to others is advice for myself
   I often found that when I gave others suggestions about what I guessed would be helpful in their situation, that was the very thing I needed to tell myself in the next difficult situation.
10. Circling at the fork of surrender
    For me, there is a fork in the road. Surrender and do the workshop on divine guidance and all that is connected with it –  or avoid it.
    On the path of surrender, I need to face much fear.
    On the other hand, the path of avoidance does not face the fear and I could stay in my comfort zone and feel safe, but this only leads to circling and coming back to the decision fork in the road over and over again.
    Unfortunately, the path suggested by the higher self is not always what my personality-self prefers.
11. Twisted memory or jump to another timeline?
    Twice during the last ten months, I had the experience that current facts do not conform to how I had remembered things. Very odd! Is this my lack of memory or is it something like the Mandela effect and the jump to another timeline? Interestingly, both experiences seem to be connected to decisions which made me come into better alignment with my higher self.

What happened to my resistance after all of that cave time? It is still there and I still don’t know exactly where it comes from or what it consists of.

Now, I am back to the former mode of pushing through this workshop task with obedience and self-discipline.

At least, I have set a deadline now. A  pilot version of the workshop on divine guidance with a very small number of participants will take place end of March, 2017.