Beyond Broken

Self Exploration

I WONDER WHY

As a teacher trained in Special Education I was taught to use every question children ask as a learning opportunity.  “What is that,” the child asks pointing to a stop light.  I would answer, “it is a stop light and watch it change colors, red, yellow and green.  Red means stop, yellow means slow down and green means go.” In recent years, I have seen teachers in the Waldorf School respond differently. When a child asks a question (and inevitably children ask a ton of questions) the parents and teachers are likely to answer, “I wonder.”

Sensing the wisdom of this, I was challenged to change my approach and answer, “I wonder.” And it took me a while to understand the depth of this philosophy of letting children stay in the wonder and mystery of world, and find the answer for themselves when they are ready.

…

Read More

I Can Be Very Mean To Myself – A Six Month On Line Class Begins in September

I can be very mean to myself – A Six Month On Line Course

 Begins in September

During the Pandemic’s isolation, many of us have come face to face with….ourselves.

What we have found is it not always a great relationship.  In fact we can be mean, dismissive and judgmental to ourselves.  In this powerful monthly committed group we will learn how our pseudo solutions to avoid pain create much more pain and that actually going into the center of ourselves and our true feelings is easy and quick.  The result is instant relief and aliveness. This is a practice and we will learn the tools to undo this pattern. 

After attending this workshop series you will never be so mean to yourself again.
It is a promise!

We will meet the first Friday of each month from 11:00 – 1:00 pm EST – The class is limited to 20 people so reserve your spot soon.  We will break the class into partners so that there can be a mid-month check in and practice and I am available as well. The cost is $300 and a monthly payment plan is available.  Please email me at whubbard0@gmail.com with any questions or if you want to reserve a spot.

We will work with the following Pathwork Lectures and additional tools from modern psychology  and neuroscience on the following dates

Friday September 4th  #97  Perfectionism

Friday October 2nd   #83   Idealized Self Image

Friday November 6th  #190  Importance of Experiencing All Feelings, Including Fear – the Dynamic State of Laziness

Friday December 4th   #114  Healthy and Unhealthy Struggle

Friday January 1st 2021  #201  Demagnetizing the Negative Force Field

Friday February 5th  2021  #212 Total Capacity for Greatness

Additional Reading Suggested – Radical Compassion , Tara Brach

What Is Being Revealed to Heal?

Week nine of our respective isolations and aloneness is bringing with it a phenomenon I am observing in many of us.

This iceberg is a classic metaphor. The part seen above the water line is what we are conscious of knowing, experiencing and remembering, and the mass below water represents material that lives in our unconscious.  What is beginning to happen is that as the waters of life have been quieted by our slowing down and staying still, we can see what is below more clearly and more unconscious material is making itself known.  It is fascinating to watch this in myself and in those with whom I work. Here is how things were revealed in some dreams.

I dream I am in the hospital with the virus and I feel its desperate grip on me.  I can feel the moment of choice — will I fight to live or will I succumb?   It is a desperate moment and I am all alone.  I choose life and wake up realizing that I have often made a different choice — one of living with depression and contemplating suicide.  I are now affirming life!
…

Read More

Little Drops of Rain – The Grace of Grief

Walking on the beach yesterday — a beach that is officially closed except for exercise — I started to let in the fact that our summer is essentially cancelled.  Each event was cancelled one at a time and there was a feeling of loss, or sometimes relief. But now there is the empty beach and the empty summer stretched out in front of me for miles.  My mind went to all kinds of conclusions.  First, that I should not feel sad because I have so much to be grateful for, second that we could stay a shorter time here and then go home and third that I was just feeling blah and would get over it.

I came back home and listened to a Tara Brach podcast I have been following Called Sheltering in Love.  She has been a teacher of the practice of RAIN meditation, a profound process of Recognizing a feeling, Allowing it, Intimately feeling it in the body, and then Nurturing it.  As I fought my feelings that arose when I felt the loss of our summer I had hoped for, we usually resist our feelings.  We do this by minimizing them to try and make them small or exaggerating them so they feel too big to handle or by trying to fix them. So naming them and allowing them is so different.  And then giving them space in our bodies and our own comfort — it is revolutionary.

…

Read More

What Is Calling YOU?

It now seems a bit ironic that my last post, at the end of January, was about finding our true pace in what can be such a frantic world.  What I suggested as a task worthy of some thought and consideration has now been imposed on us as we are forced to slow down.  Moving fast through the world with a doingness consciousness can become an addiction.  Most of us have addictive behaviors, but are not addicts.  In fact our addictive behaviors have often served us well to help us cope with and avoid very difficult feeling states or painful situations.  As the world has come to an unprecedented screeching halt, this can be the deepest and most meaningful of times — if we chose to take on the challenge.

We can inherit our addictions, and the one I inherited from my mother looks a lot like OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder).  My mother, whose name was Bernice, was nicknamed Baboo Bee (after the kitchen cleanser popular in the 50’s).  She scrubbed and cleaned everything continuously, including me.  This was particularly frustrating for her and wounding for me because I never stayed clean!  I was a constant project for her and I felt like I was a constant disappointment.  I had a cousin who always seemed to stay ‘put together’.  But not me.  One minute after brushing my hair it would recoil and fly out in a million directions.  ‘Stay on all day’ lipstick stayed on me for about two minutes, and still does.

…

Read More