Posts by Valerie Varan
What is “Essential” Parenting?
I’m moved to write this post after meeting with so many clients who were raised by mentally ill parents.
They struggle with the idea of becoming parents themselves, worried that they will do what their parents did, or didn’t do. Clueless as to what a healthy relationship or lifestyle even looks like, they feel completely overwhelmed at the idea of becoming a parent.
What is essential parenting? Forget the idea of “good enough” parenting for now. I’m not sure how helpful that concept is in this moment. Let’s focus on what exactly is needed by any child.
Food Addiction: Recovery Impossible?
My colleague Jerry Casados, a nutrition coach in the Denver area, recently sent me the link to a 22 minute video clip of Larry King interviewing Dr. Pam Peeke about the science of food addiction. http://www.drpeeke.com/web/module/video/videoID/54/catid/2/sectionid/580/interior.asp The good news seemed to be that we can be addicted to food, that it is not for some people simply a matter of will power. The bad news was that there is “no cure” for addiction, only recovery and treatment. I have a different view of addiction. I do believe that addiction can be cured because I have seen my clients cure themselves of various kinds of addiction.
Coping With Difficult Transitions
I don’t care who we are, coping with periods of transition IS difficult. Stuck, paralyzed, frustrated, irritable, fearful…these are the emotions that can haunt us during the season of change. We fear the unknown, what we don’t know how to do or what it might be once we do it, the possibility that we might regret leaving the familiar behind. When we are young, the future seems open, unwritten; and sometimes the vastness of this territory terrifies us into indecision. What if we make the “wrong” choice”? What if we “fail”? As we approach middle age, sometimes we are horrified by the decisions we didn’t make, as well as the decisions we did. We may have made choices that kept us safe, but bored, unchallenged and unfulfilled.
Even when we have lived a life that has felt very satisfying, we can arrive at our fifties and feel we want a change, something new. Perhaps we’ve always been on a growth streak, which never seems to end. And we get to yet another time of transition, and we feel inspired to move, but are simultaneously overwhelmed by having to yet again learn something different. We’re tired, wonder if we have the energy for one more change, and in our pause to think, notice our melancholy. If we shift faster rather than slower, we can avoid depression. But maybe we don’t because our fatigue, lack of motivation and stuckness have consumed us. As we near the end of life, we can fear sickness and death. Our bodies don’t quite function as we would like them to, but we feel stuck with our habits of eating poorly, sitting around the house, not moving, not learning, not doing much at all. So how do we cope?
Becoming A More Conscious World
How do we become a more conscious world, when it all can seem so beyond our individual capacities to change it? In short, we do what we can, from where we are, from the inside out. According to a 2009 telephone survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, 65% of American adults express a belief or have had at least one transpersonal experience, and 72% attend religious service at least yearly. About half of us have had a religious or mystical experience or moment of spiritual awakening, more than double the 22% reported in 1962. The point being, that a solid majority of us in the US seem to identify as spiritual people.
Navigating the Spheres of Consciousness…Consciously
Are you are the driver of your experience in consciousness? Most of us are not. Through our lack of awareness, we carelessly allow ourselves to be tossed around by anything and everything. What we experience then is randomness. It is possible, however, to take the driver’s seat and direct our consciousness anywhere within spacetime, or beyond its limits and boundaries. For example, we can direct our attention to the consciousness of our cells. And in so doing, we can enter the mind of our cells. We can stay in this plane of consciousness when we desire, which we certainly will until we choose to transcend it. We can navigate our consciousness into the sphere of our soul body. And from that Self, dialogue with self. We can reach out to the Cosmic Self by driving there with specific intention, and allowing self to stretch until it breaks into Self. the blackberry
What the Shift in Consciousness Means to Us as Individuals and as a Whole
Recently I met a young man in his thirties. As our conversation deepened, he began to talk about how everything is energy, about recent findings from quantum physics, and about having felt the shift of 2012. “It wasn’t a shift like they thought it would be; it was a shift in consciousness. I felt it. Many people I know have felt it.”
The “shift” is a shift in the very fabric of our identity, our values, our motivations, our sense of self. We begin to feel different from most of society and long for change in the world. We question the very foundation upon which our culture has been constructed, and seek to re-invent our systems and way of life.
Just Because We Can, Doesn’t Mean We Should
Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. And, just because we don’t believe we can, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Four Techniques To Remember Who We Are
There are countless techniques we can use to regain our felt sense of who we are at the level of our core self. Let us discuss four of these now.
The Struggle to Figure Out Who We Are
So identified with who we are not, most of us will get dizzy trying to understand this post. Yet I encourage you to pierce through the dense shell of words and letters to the essential yolk of meaning within this writing, for it is there you will remember who you are.
Most of us struggle to feel an enduring sense of identity. We fail to know who we are. It is like we are naked, bare of self. Feeling naked, we grab for the nearest clothing we can put on. Knowing not the timeless and unchanging part of ourselves, we clothe ourselves with borrowed bits and pieces. We “put on” a sense of identity, rather than wear our own. We take on a piece of mom, a part of dad, a little from our friends, a bit of our heros, and a whole lot of what we see worn by society. A patchwork quilted suit of self, stitched together from what we perceive around us, is what emerges from our taking. In our daily lives, we identify ourselves with whatever we believe is most fashionable. Bling. Boats and cars. Gadgets. Big houses. Prestigious titles. Even our thoughts are matched to the popular beliefs of the day. But in doing so, in attaching our sense of “I” to tangible objects or personal thoughts, we feel ourselves to be impermanent, disposable. Without apparent purpose or meaning. And, we set ourselves up for chronic grief and loss.
Junk DNA Really Junk?
Junk DNA really junk? Not on your life. But that is what some researchers from the University of Buffalo in New York have concluded according to the article linked below. They say that genes make up only 2% of our DNA, meaning that only two percent of our DNA codes for proteins. The other 98% they now believe is junk DNA because it is not required by a healthy organism, at least not by a healthy bladderwort. There are alternative explanations. Consider that we have much evolving left to do. And the researchers who have argued that the remaining 98% plays some hidden role are closer to the truth. Especially since ENCODE reportedly found that 80% of our human genome did have some biological activity. For instance, the ability to determine genetic expression, the ability to turn it off or on, doesn’t seem like a “junk” function to me, and likely not to epigeneticists either. The function of this mysterious portion of DNA may be hidden only from our five physical senses, yet revealed at other energy frequencies. Its purpose may be found as we continue to unfold our human potential and evolutionary destiny. What do you think? http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/12/18213982-junk-dna-mystery-solved-its-not-needed