Real World Healing

Real World Healing

 

Introduction

 

Good morning and welcome to Real World Healing, a guidebook to enhance your journey of self-discovery, self-love, and ultimately what it means to be at home in your own body and in this world. We all awaken to the need for personal change at different times and for different reasons. Whether you are here because of loss, trauma, frustration over one’s own circumstances, need for support and understanding, or a deep-seeded desire to discover more about yourself and become a full-bodied person, you have come to the right place. We are all meant to heal. The initial reason for realizing this is the dark before the dawn, and like the sun’s slow but certain rise, your heart is destined to open and your wounds to heal. Today is meant for you, and the whole world is glad to have you here.

 

If you have had any prior exposure to the healing world, you have probably come across the notion of conscious and unconscious living. There are many levels to what this means, but at the root, conscious living begins when we realize we have the potential for foundation in our own body. Prior to that, we live less certainly. Like a child, we may feel most at home next to or with someone else, yet at the same time, lost as our values, decisions, and inner most knowing become muddled in the values and decisions of others. Have you ever left a family or friend gathering only to return home, feeling even lonelier? Or perhaps laughed at or said something you didn’t really mean, mostly because someone else did? This is not uncommon as much of the mainstream world has pressured people to fit in and group together, rather than take the time to heal and get to know oneself. Through healing, we become confident in who we are, grounded in our own foundation, and comfortable in the boundaries we need too. The love and answers are all within. We just have to take the time to become our own solution.

 

Despite the fear stories you may have heard, there is no such thing as disorders passed down, and in fact, no such thing as disorders at all. Let any and all of that harsh thinking go. It takes just one person, conscious now and willing, to wake up out of the unconscious stream. In building your own foundation, you become your own parent, person, and navigator. No more hereditary stories or label lies. No more limiting beliefs and lack of hope. All values, morals, and cleansed heart ways are up to you. Like the rays of light reaching up toward the sky, your inner child can heal and shine.

 

This open foundation is vital to healing, which is why this guidebook begins and ends with a thorough exploration of what home means to you. Like the birds chirping in the dewy morning leaves and the doe trotting seamlessly between the trees, you will rediscover what it feels like to be in tune with yourself and the natural world around. This does not mean you will wander off and lose all your family and friends in the process, but on the other hand, it could, if a more autonomous life is healthier for you. There are no judgments along the healing path. As we each come with our own reasons for awakening, we also come with our own baggage and trauma to heal, some of which may be connected to other people. Through the maturation of your own personal path, this guidebook will offer a variety of support as you learn how to face the darkness without fear, extract wisdom and beauty wherever you can, and let go of the patterns, stories, and people who are holding you back. First and foremost, you matter. As a stardust descendent, you are more than your bloodline, and your spiritual growth and gifts are nothing less than a miracle to this world.

 

All in all, this guidebook is here for you. Healing is deep-rooted and real. You will not find bandages, masks to cover up, and you will certainly not find pills in here. At its heart, this book is an invitation back into the natural world—beyond the fabricated layers of society—where food is nutritious, water the source of life, creativity your life force, and your body a safe refuge. Within these pages, you will find seven sections, each containing two to three chapters with a specific goal to illuminate focus as you explore the various levels of healing, starting from the absolute basic necessities of life all the way up through the deeply personal, social, and spiritual embodiment of home. Real World Healing does not skim over or shy away from any aspects of life. This guidebook is multi-dimensional because life is multi-dimensional, and yet, the flow of wisdom within these pages is refreshingly universal. There is potential for light and freedom within each one of us. Nature has the power to re-inspire and reawaken that personal healing source. Each chapter offers “Questions to Consider” along with a couple note pages at the end to encourage self-reflection and personalization to enhance your journey. Your spiritual growth is the journey, and everything needed to support that path is now in the palm of your hands. Welcome to the dawn of a new day—your new day--and the start of your brilliant future.

 

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Chapter One: Safe Shelter

           

Chapter Goal: Explore and dedicate some personal healing space for your inner work

 

As promised, we are going to start by exploring home, whatever home feels like and looks like to you right now. This sense and very real structure of home comes in two main forms: internal and external, both of which affect one another and raise valid points as to what qualifies as safe and secure. An inner home lacking self-compassion and connection, for example, can hinder the possibility for a true outer home, and on the flip side, trauma and troublesome relationships within the external home can most certainly challenge the growth of the inner home. The common healing truth across all circumstances is that we need our own ground to begin. Like trees, we really can’t root into our own knowing until we allow ourselves the space to connect and heal trust within ourselves.

 

Let’s take a moment now to feel into our current home situation and begin the work of paving open our personal healing path. While most healing work comes from the inside out, we also don’t want to deny the outside reality and factors that may be a hindrance in our home life currently.

 

Questions to Consider:

1. If you share your home, do you feel safe with the people you share it with?

2. Do you feel you have some sheltered space to call your own?

3. Does your home offer the necessary freedom to begin your healthier and happier life?

4. Do you feel you have the basic shelter needs met?

 

These questions include the word “shelter” not to instill guilt or fear, but rather to open up possibility. Think of nature. Think of our ancestors and our cousin countries closer to the wild. We humans, deep down, really don’t need much to survive. A good foundation, four walls, a roof, a means for heat, and a door. Sometimes, even less to begin, and beginning indeed is where we are. Your psychological safety is just as important as your shelter safety, which is why remembering the bare bones of what you truly need on the outside can be liberating for your insides. You have options. If your current home is dangerous or not ideal, you most certainly don’t have to stay nor do you have to make any big immediate decisions right now. Nature is close for a reason. Whether in a park, a backyard, a hike through the woods, or a drive’s distance away in your car, opportunities for safe time alone are available. Let yourself discover that safe space you need, so that in time, you can develop the confidence, inner-foundation, and resources to make real your outer home too. 

 

If these questions have opened up a new appreciation for the home you already have, let that sense of liberty flourish too. A place to lay your head at night, a roof to protect you from the rain, a space to call your own, and a coziness or wild freedom to it that you can now feel. You don’t have to own a whole house or rent an entire apartment to feel this way. A room that is solely yours can be enough, or the safety of your car or van for now. Whether temporary, permanent, in the works, or ideal, you have what you need to begin. There is no judgment along the healing path. We all have our own back-stories, financial means, and reasons for what feels most safe and home to us. A person living on their own, no matter how substantial the outer structure, may in fact be more deeply inner-rooted than someone living in a broken family system within what appears to be the perfect home.

 

All in all, there is no need to scramble or cling. Healing space. Everyone needs it, and if you can’t find it within your own home, let yourself explore the natural settings around you or take a drive to a place in the woods or along the beach where you feel safe. The freedom of nature is, after all, the very best setting for your healing work. All you really need is a blanket to lay claim to your spot on the grass and the willingness to devote time for yourself. Whether you go there for a couple hours a day or once a week, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the healing space is there for you and you have dedicated some ground now for your inner work.

 

Questions to Consider:

1. How close am I to my own inner foundation?

2. Are there any substances in the way?

3. Can I promise to arrive here, in my healing space, just as I am, a little more vulnerable and open each day?

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Chapter Two: Food

 

Chapter Goal: Explore your relationship to food

 

So easily taken for granted and forgotten for its nourishment roots, food has the potential to be one of the most colorful and spiritually rich foundations of healing. For many, however, food can be a source of stress and anxiety for a variety of reasons, everything from difficulty in accessing food to eating and body issues. No matter your situation and where you are starting out, there are healing solutions. To begin, let’s spread out a blanket, claim our healing space, inhale, exhale, and drop the following questions in to explore our relationship with food.

 

Questions to Consider:

1. How does food make me feel?

2. Do I feel comfortable with the amount of food I’m able to access and afford?

3. When I make myself a meal, what are my intentions?

4. Do I have intentions?

5. After eating, do I feel closer to myself or further away?

 

 

At the most basic level, it is important to have safe access to food—in fact, it’s vital. This area of exploration is not relevant to everyone, but for those who live more rurally or who make little to no income, make sure you educate yourself and explore your options. A safe shelter is not so safe if the nearest town is a distance away, and transportation-wise, you have no way to get there. Even if you are well-educated in living off the land, it is wise to have backup options and reliable sources of food from grocery stores and local farms. Similarly, for people who make little to no income, it is important to explore the options in your area. Most towns have churches and food pantries that offer free food on a weekly basis, sometimes more often. You can find out more by stopping into your local church, visitor information center, or you can plug your zip code into www.feedingamerica.org/need-help-find-food for easy access to free food. We all have a right to eat and live.

 

And for those who may not have even considered that kind of scenario, you too are not alone if the topic of food stirs up a bit of stress for other reasons. Just like with shelter, food has an internal and external reality and affect, and for the majority of us, we live in a world surrounded by commercially processed products and seductively unhealthy foods. For this reason, be gentle with yourself. If you are beginning this journey with eating issues or body relationship struggles, know that the root of it is not your fault. In a world where food is pushed as a temptation and void-filler at every corner, we have to re-raise ourselves and grow whole enough within to see through it all. The better you get at facing your trauma wounds and loving yourself genuinely, the better too your relationship to food will grow. This takes time, practice, and patience, but there is a waking point light we can focus on now.

 

Recalling the notion of unconscious and conscious living, have you ever taken the time to step outside, beyond the television screens and restaurant ads to question it all? Many people live their whole lives by default, allowing the food world of the mainstream to influence how they eat, never stopping to ask why they feel sick and disconnected from their own bodies. This is unconscious eating. When we eat against nature, we eat against ourselves, and unfortunately much of the human world is far too focused on addictive products, diets, and profit to care about the big picture. We are not mindless consumers—starting today, not anymore. The waking point happens when we decide to shut off the television and step outside beyond the food external world built around us to remember again our own soil-deep roots. Where best to learn how to eat for our bodies (as opposed to against) than within nature itself?

 

Trauma and wounds aside, let’s try something wildly unconventional. Starlit sky to cool-washed skin, when was the last time you felt inspired to take yourself out to the sandy rim of the ocean or in an open clearing to bathe beneath the moon? This may sound like completely unrelated advice within the chapter of food, but in a world polluted with factory farming, addictive additives, and diet-trends revved to sell, maybe an otherworldly light is what we need. And in truth, isn’t the “other world” the one blaring on the TV screen and buzzing through electric signs, promising a fast meal?

 

Most of us have forgotten, but the natural world is where we came from and where we belong. A dip beneath the full moon light may be all the mind needs to remember, even just a little, how it feels to be connected to that world again. We have to cleanse out what has been conditioned and lay our own natural ground. Close your eyes and imagine the full moon now, the glow of mystery before you and the way your whole being suddenly feels possible and soothed. Can you feel the moon’s gentle pull? Can you allow the light to bathe you open, as wildly at home as the warm evening breeze and the crickets chirping in the nearby grass. You are perfect here. You are a part of it all and loved just as you are.

 

Take your time in reopening your eyes and returning to the space around. How did that feel? That is, to for a moment, forget all diets, food fears, thoughts, body image, and worries, and to simply embrace your life on this planet? It’s a deep remembrance. One that can feel bitter-sweet and soul-level relieving. Flourish this remembrance. Take it home with you and flourish it everywhere. Allow the moon’s energy to remind you that you are one of earth’s natural blessings, and tonight, when you go to the kitchen to make yourself dinner, try adding up health benefits rather than counting calories. A meal made with love and recognized for the love it gives will no doubt be received with love. The same is true about you. Go for the raw and real—go for variety in vegetables, wholeness and texture in grains, protein in nuts, seeds, and legumes, healthy fat in oil, and added flavor in herbs. For your very next meal, allow nature’s most vibrant and peaceful offerings to inspire a colorful combination, and then serve yourself a generous portion. We were never meant to obey serving sizes, fear calories, and feel trapped within a hunger-binge battle. We were always meant to graze, pick, harvest, and gather freely, as in harmony with the earth as with our own mind, body, and soul.

 

All in all, by surrounding ourselves consciously with real plants, open skies, and landscapes, we change both our exterior and interior world, food-wise, for the better. This re-connection is so important and so often lost along the way of life. At times, it can seem easier to drift back off into that addictively enticing world where television screens distract the mind from the body while simultaneously feeding messages to indulge in foods that make the whole sicker. It’s a trap, but one that appeals only until the pattern of it is overcome and the truth revealed: we are just as much our mind as we are our body and soul. Forget surface-level. I mean muscle, organ, spirit, and heart deep. To begin awakening and connecting some of the human whole is to begin awakening and connecting all. And once the whole—mind, body, heart, and soul—learns that food exists that not only tastes good, but is good for you, the entire charade of addictive food ends.

 

Once nature is remembered, why would the mind, body, heart, and soul ever want to go back to the previous ways?

 

So, welcome this gradual shift and allow it with open arms. It’s okay to love food. Have you ever met an animal who didn’t? And as this is a spiritual journey, allow your intuition and creativity to guide. Today, feel the moon and put together your grain, legume, and vegetable bowl full of love, and tomorrow, perhaps try feeling something else—the rich smooth of a spinach leaf still growing on the plant or the wind how it stills between the cornstalks of a ten-acre farm. Let your meals reflect your journey and become as creatively inspired as you would like. It is up to you how deeply and spiritually you want to lay the foundation of food in your life, and it is also open to you. Eating is a life-long journey and it does not stop with achieving wholeness and connection within. The learning continues as the body awakens and heals on a cellular level, connecting deeper and with more empathetic wisdom to the world around. The more you love the natural world, the more you love yourself, and vice versa. Food is this connection and nourishing healing point.

 

Extra Food Healing Tips

 

• Reduce and/or eliminate alcohol completely.

• Be mindful of and reduce caffeine.

• Aim for natural ingredients.

• Eat peacefully by reducing and/or eliminating animal product consumption.

• Drink lots of water.

• Eat plenty of vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains.

• Avoid processed wheat products (they lack nutrients found in whole grains and can be addictive).

• Do not fear oil! Healthy fat in the form of plant-based oils is good for your brain, skin, and digestive system.

• Buy a vegetable plant or two, or if possible, plant a garden.

• Invite creativity, spiritual meaning, good intentions, and abundance into your recipes. Positively-inspired and well-loved food will be received full-heartedly by every cell.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Three: Water

 

 

Chapter Goal: Explore your connection to water

 

 

To wrap up The Basics of Foundation section, we are going to explore the most sacred and essential component of life: water. We need water to survive, we need it to replenish and cleanse, and we need it spiritually. So, grab yourself a big glass of water, take a seat beside a flowing river or a natural pool, if you can, breathe in deep, claim your sacred space, exhale, and let’s begin.

 

 

Questions to Consider:

 

1. Do I feel safe and comfortable with my ability to access water?

2. How do I feel about my overall beverage intake? How often do I choose water?

3. Is water something I cherish, or is it an afterthought, nearly forgotten?

 

 

As usual, we all come with different circumstances and lifestyles, but the heart of the healing remains the same. For those who live more wildly, the first question may ring most important while the others feel almost like a given. On the other hand, for those who live more integrated and established in society, running water may be secured, while intake and personal connection may stir some doubt. The heart of it all is in the flow and making sure that we are both readily able to access water and quenching our mind, body, and spirit on a regular basis. To keep this flow channel open and clean is to support what it means to be alive.

 

Whether you have plumbing, a local spout, a river nearby, or a town with all the conveniences, water source is essential to completing your safe shelter home. You can’t settle or survive without making sure you have access to running water and the means to filter and purify your source first. If you are filtering and purifying by hand, make sure you have the tools and knowledge necessary to do so. A mountain-high stream may be appealing in small raw amounts, but in the long run, boiling your water and adding a purification tablet or using a hand pump to filter will be your safest bet. As our original connection to the earth has changed, so too has our biology and earth itself. With pollution and industry waste to keep in mind along with micro-organisms we are no longer evolved to handle, we need to be smart when out in the wild. Water needs to be a source of life, not a source of fear.

 

And for those arriving here fully equipped with safe plumbing and regular access, let’s venture on to how often you actually take a cup and pour open the spigot. When was the last time you had yourself a pure glass of water? Not a sip, not a clouded remembrance brewed caffeinated and hot, nor a rinse after brushing your teeth. I mean a tall, clean glass of nothing else—no added sugar, flavors, or other ingredients—just water. An hour ago? A couple of hours? A few days? With the endless variety of mixed beverages available, water can easily be lost as nothing more than the base for other more exciting ingredients. But ask yourself—what is the purpose of those other ingredients? Are you as conscious here as you now are with food, or is this the first time you are really investigating?

 

Pause for another centering breath as you take up your glass of water or dip your hands into the running stream before you. Simplify. There is no need to investigate or stress about anything if you start from a pure beginning. The more comfortable you become in drinking clear water, the more your taste buds will adapt back to nature. Water on its own is both quenching and delicious. This is how every plant and animal feels. Can you picture a potted herb now, soil moist, green stalks firm, and leaves frayed out openly? Now imagine that same plant without water, how the soil would dry up, the leaves would begin to droop, and the stalks to bend. It wouldn’t take long for the life-force inside to grow tired and dejected, but once re-watered, it wouldn’t take long either for the whole being to regain its brilliance and roots. We too need to be watered. Skip the additives and extra sugar. The more often you reach for pure water, the more your cleansed energy and spirit will shine.

 

And this is when the cherishment component comes in too. In order to continue this journey of healing and really embark on it openly, you are going to need this quenched energy and spiritual flow. Consider each cup a way of drinking life. When you wake up in the morning, begin the day with a cleansing glass to awaken the bowels and clear out all toxins. During the day, carry a water bottle or two with you wherever you go and keep yourself as hydrated and vibrant as the watered plant leaves. Water is clean energy. There is no rapid charge up or sudden drop down. Unlike caffeine, water energizes by nourishing, not by activating and stressing out. Allow this pure energy to remind and align you back up with life’s natural flow as often as needed. Like the leaves in the air and roots in the dirt, you too have growth to discover beneath the soil and in the atmosphere. You can heal and overcome just about anything when the body is well-nourished, the home safe, and the spirit free to spill open, unbounded as the river.

 

Cheers to your new foundation and to the continued journey your soul has in store for you. Trust in both subtle and big changes, allowing all steps to overlap and blend into each other.

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