Coyote Portal Fast Approaching!

Hello Everyone!

Just a quick note to say that the Coyote Portal Workshop is just a week away!  It's Friday  August 23rd in the evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday until 5pm.  We have just a few spots left--if you were interested and would like to come, please let me know.  Click here to view the flyer.

Coyote is the fun loving, mischievous trickster, who is also family oriented, and a shape shifter.   I am REALLY looking forward to knowing Coyote better and learning the tools to be able to step into Coyote consciousness at will.  And apparently this workshop feels like a weekend-long party.  Who wouldn't want that??

If you've had an interest in shamanism, but do not want to commit to a full wheel, or needed an introduction this is a nice way to go.  You will learn great skills without needing any prerequisites, and each workshop, although in a series, stands alone.  Please reach out if you have questions.  Click here to learn more.

Much love,

Elaine

Coyote Portal in August; Can an Empath Learn to not Take Life so Seriously?

Hello Everyone! 

I hope you are enjoying your summer!  Thank you to everyone who recently signed up for my email list after listening to the Integrated Empath Summit.  I appreciate your interest in my work!  I will be returning in a few days from summer break, and I'm looking forward to getting back to my practie.

I've been excited over the past year to host my shaman mentor, Marv Harwood, and his wife, Shanon for the Raven portal last year, the Buffalo Portal this past March, and now the Coyote Portal this coming August.  Raven taught us how to access Timelessness to heal our regrets and worries, Buffalo taught us how to stand strong in the face of opposition, and now Coyote teaches us how to not take life so seriously.

Shanon described the Coyote Portal as one long weekend party.  Given that my husband and I just celebrated our 50th birthdays, we thought that holding the Coyote Portal next would be appropriate to keep the celebrating going. 

Now that I've been to two Portals, you'd think that it would be easy to describe and advertise for these workshops, but they are so experiential that I am still finding it a challenge!  I know that saying, "Come, and find out for yourself," isn't very helpful, but it actually does apply, you will build your own personal relationship with the animal emissary. 

For many of us Empaths, we tend to take what happens to us very personally, and that in turn leads to us being serious and sometimes being melancholy.  Learning how to not take life so seriously becomes a life skill and a life line.  We Empaths can identify with being sad because we tend to focus on what is lacking in our lives.  On the one hand this is helpful because we know exactly what we want to fix and what we would like to create.  On the other hand, being in that emotional state much of the time can be hard on our systems, which in turn robs us of our vitality.

Imagine learning simple tools that involve both body movements and music that would allow you to shift out of that state and into a new state at will whenever you needed an extra boost.  This is what these Portals workshops offer--tangible tools that shift us immediately and experientially into the mythic and out of the emotional.  Imagine being able to shift into the sweetness of life, the fun of life, and maybe experience some mischievousness as well.  Coyote is ready and willing, as your ally, to offer you this skill.

The wonderful aspect about these Portals workshops is that there are no pre-requisities, they can be taken in any order, and they stand alone.  In contrast, many series need to be taken in order, and a medicine wheel needs to be completed or else we can get "stuck" in one direction.  The tools you learn in the Portals workshop are yours for life, to use and deepen as you wish.

If you have been interested in shamanic training, but are hesitant to commit to a program, this is an excellent way to see if this work is right for you.  If you are an experienced shaman and interested in learning from a new tradition, Marv and Shanon are two of the few who were given permission by the elders to teach in the Blackfoot Tradition.  They have been teaching and in practice for decades; you will be in good hands.

Here are a few words from Marv and Shanon:

Throughout the ages, Shaman have walked many paths - all leading to "Portals".
Portals are Shamanic gateways to worlds beyond our consciousness;
worlds where true healing exists and miracles happen.
Come walk the animistic and the energetic paths in tandem to amass the
knowledge and skills to create an Amopistaan - your personal animistic mesa.
This in-depth series of 9 seminars (portals) is an on-going program of theory & practical hands-on work.
The portals are designed to facilitate the successful assimilation of information and skills presented.
As the student gains and demonstrates proficiency they will be given rites of passage at each level.

Come and play with the fun-loving, mischievous trickster known as Coyote and get to know a surprising new
side of him. See what this adaptable, family oriented shape-shifter has to offer to you and your life!
The "Portals" Series is open to everyone. No pre-requisites are required for any of the individual seminars.
You may attend them in any order, at any of our teaching locations. Welcome to the journey!

Please do not hesitate to contact me for more information.  I am happy to chat on the phone to answer questions about the workshop. 

WORKSHOP DATES: August 23-25th, $399

Friday Registration 4:30-5pm, Friday Class 5pm-9pm

Saturday 9am-8pm

Sunday 9am-5pm

at the Multnomah Arts Center in Multnomah Village, Portland, Oregon.

My interview airs this Friday! And Portals Workshop August 23-25th

Hello Everyone!

I hope you are enjoying the end of the school year and the beginning of the summer holidays!  Just a reminder that my interview with Karyn Kulenovic airs this Friday through the weekend; if you haven't signed up yet please click here.  Karyn has interviewed 18 Empath experts, and you can listen for free, with a replay of all the interviews the last weekend of June.

In my interview I talk about animal archetypes and how we can build an individual relationship with these archetypes to help us in our daily lives.  I have hosted two of these workshops here in Portland, first for Raven, and recently in March for Buffalo. Our next animal archetype workshop is the weekend of August 23rd for Coyote.  Coyote teaches us how to not take life so seriously.  Supposedly this workshop feels like a big party all weekend.  I am so looking forward to it!  If you are interested, don't hesitate to contact me for more details.

much love,

Elaine

Empath Summit Season Three with Karyn Kulenovic starts June 8th!

Hello Everyone,

I'm so excited to be a part of the Empath Summit Season Three this year!  From June 8th through June 23rd you can listen to 18 Empath professionals who have used their sensitivity and gifts to build lives and businesses that they love For FREE!  My interview airs June 21st.  I talk about the workshop series with animal archetypes that I host here in Portland, and how each archetype gives us tools that can give us assistance in various aspects of our lives.   I hope you will join us!  Please click here to sign up.

Drama and Stepping into Timelessness

Hello Everyone!It is very strange to me that August is already here, and ironic since at the end of the month I am hosting a workshop all about stepping into Timelessness.  Time seems to have sped up for many of us with all our obligations and our busy lives.  Stepping into Timelessness isn't just useful for relieving ourselves from the busy-ness of life, it is also useful for stepping out of Drama.We Empaths can get stirred up with our own internal Drama after we've made a decision, especially if the decision is a firm No to someone who is stuck in Drama themselves.  I had the opportunity recently to work with a client who was prone to Drama, and then to see how stepping into Timelessness can stop the Drama right in Its tracks.My client had been in a years-long friendship with another Empath who happened to be stuck in Victim.  This person had managed to blow little innocent incidents into hurtful, unnecessary Dramas with various people in her life.  After one incident too many involving my client's spouse, my client and her spouse finally and firmly ended the relationship.  Of course, her friend found her unreasonable and unforgiving, and since this friend was stuck in Victim, considered my client a Bully and attacked her verbally.  All her own Shadow issues of jealousy and envy had been projected onto my client in one vicious last swoop.  My client already knew these issues were in play, but had hoped her friend had managed to get control of it and would take responsibility.  But this friend didn't.  It was easy to see that this friend was dangerously carrying around a metaphorical loaded shotgun, and was unconscious to the harm she did to others firing it off whenever her own stuff was triggered.  My client was relieved to let the friendship end, and she was also surprised by how free she felt afterwards.  (This is a typical feeling once we've given up a vampire relationship.)Predictably the former friend wanted to repair the relationship, and she contacted my client once or twice.  My client very wisely ignored her.  She simply wasn't interested anymore--her freedom, and the relief of friends around her was too valuable.  (She didn't realize how much discomfort this friend had been causing in other lives until they confided in her afterwards.)Naturally the Victim friend pulled in a Rescuer who was identified with Rescuing women who had put themselves in dire straights.  This Rescuer was doing his personal work so he could become an energyworker himself.  However, like many people who feel called to the healing arts, he had to work on his tendency to Rescue, and on his identification with being a Light Worker.  As many of you know from reading my blog and my books, shaman are not Light Workers.  Shaman can help assist others in owning the projections of their Shadows so that they can create lives that they want instead of what they create out of their Shadows. My client had the talent of being the social glue for people she loved, so excluding anyone from her life was very hard for her to do, which was of course why she allowed this former friendship to continue for so long in the first place.  The former friend was missing out on community events my client hosted on a regular basis.  The Rescuer saw this and wanted to help.  He contacted my client and told her that this relationship was in need of deep healing, and if she was willing to do the work, then this former friend could be included once again.  Luckily for my client she saw the Rescue right away and didn't turn into a Bully and lambast him for interfering where he didn't belong.  She simply told him that No, she wasn't interested, and in fact there were others that would be negatively affected too, and she didn't want to lose their company either, so No.  The Rescuer in this situation was very disappointed--he unconsciously thought to not only Rescue the former friend who held the Victim story, but to Rescue the friendship as well.  He thought that of course if you are doing your personal work, all relationships could be healed.  (This is a very common faulty belief.)For my client she found the incident amusing at first, because she knew this man was working hard on his Rescuer tendency, but she had also taken on the Rescuer's surprise and disappointment at her firm No.  (Remember, if you are stuck in Rescuer, it's hard to see others clearly--everyone is either a Victim or a Bully.)  In her head she started defending herself and her position, she started going over what exactly had happened in the past to cause her to break off the relationship with the Victim, she started getting annoyed and angry at the Rescuer for breaking boundaries and approaching her when he didn't even know her.  In short, she spun out into her own internal Drama--internal because she was wise enough not to act on it, but she was suffering anyway.  (If you are an Empath, you understand our tendency to slip into this type of suffering.)The solution for her was to do a sandpainting and let Mother Earth transform it, and then she stepped into Timelessness.  Sitting next to her sandpainting, a hummingbird came and hovered in front of her face for a few moments, reminding her to step outside of time, drink only from the deepest nectar of life, and remember that life is in these precious nows.  Then the Drama was done, and she could laugh at the situation again.  Every person has their Shadow to work on--she could go back to being compassionate to everyone involved, including herself, without having to get back into a literal relationship with anyone stuck in Drama.  What a relief!If you related to this story, and you would like to learn how to step into Timelessness, there is still time (haha!) to register for the Raven Portal Workshop taught by my mentor, Marv Harwood, and his wife, Shanon in Portland from Friday evening August 24th through Sunday the 26th.  Just contact me or visit the homepage of my website:  www.elainelajoie.commuch love,Elaine   

The Empath, the Narcissist, and Favors

I’ve had a few questions around situations in which a relationship with a narcissist has ended, and ended badly, and lo and behold, a few months later, or even years later, the narcissist makes a request for a special favor despite all that had gone before.  Clients come back to me stirred up, old wounds uncovered, resentment brewing once again.  How can this person have requested a favor; what the heck is wrong with the narcissist?  Empaths must remember that if we are healthy we tend to understand how a person is feeling, and we tend to respect boundaries, so we naturally do not ask favors of those people who have told us to go away.  When we are healthy we understand that our feelings and needs are just as important as others’ feelings and needs.  But for the narcissist, the narcissist simply cannot see anyone in their lives as important as themselves.  The narcissist simply doesn’t care how other people are feeling.  It is the narcissist’s feelings, needs, and requests that are important.  Everything else takes second place to the narcissist.If you have read my book on the Fan-Hero Family System, you are familiar with the Enneagram Type Three, which I like to call the Hero.  When the Hero is emotionally dissociated, the Hero usually starts behaving as a narcissist.  While the healthy Hero is in pursuit of self-improvement and acts as an inspiration to others, the unhealthy Hero believes in the image he has of himself and of others in his life, and tries to protect that image even at the expense of others and in direct contradiction of reality.  In the Fan-Hero Family System book I described the adult son of a Hero who broke off contact with his narcissist father because his father could not treat him or his family in a way that wasn’t damaging and hurtful.  The son, my client, had explained to his father that his father seemed incapable of seeing that there were problems in the relationship, and therefore no change could occur.  Unless those changes happened, my client couldn’t afford the negativity and crazy-making behavior from his father in his life.  My client asked for no visits, and no contact unless the behavior was addressed.  Basically since his father was incapable of even admitting there was a problem between them, the relationship was over for my client, even though the narcissist father wanted the relationship.As you can imagine, this breakdown of the father-son relationship was extremely hard on my client.  It had taken him years of hard work to become clear enough about his family to see what was really going on, and to see how shallow many of the family relationships were.  In his family, like with many unhealthy Fan-Hero Families, he was expected to serve the family and the image.  He was a support person, not the person who should get the attention and glory, which always goes to the Hero.  His wife had been punished because she had seen what the dynamic was, and then his children had been neglected and ignored.  On one level my client had allowed this to happen, which had caused him major grief within his marriage.  On another level, this was the set up of his family, so once he did his personal work he was able to release himself from these contracts and behave as the man he always wanted to be.  His marriage repaired itself, and his children were free of any generational contracts from his side of the family.  He knew he had been lucky to escape, and he only regretted that it had taken him so long.A year after he had ended his relationship with his father he received a letter from him asking for help.  His father wanted to remove his son from his will so he could give that money to his current wife, who was likely to outlive him.  His father had mismanaged his money, and wanted to fix the problem this way, but didn’t want to do so without his son’s approval.  My client, who had assumed no inheritance was coming anyway, was angered by this intrusion and had the urge to write back to his father and tell him to jump in a lake.  He was surprised that his wife found the letter hilarious—she encouraged him to not respond at all.  While my client ended up deciding not to respond to his father’s request, it was a good opportunity to look at the mind and motivations of the narcissist, especially the unhealthy Hero type Narcissist.While a healthy person would feel extreme shame and embarrassment at writing such a letter, the narcissist has no problem with this sort of request because he is too emotionally dissociated to feel uncomfortable feelings of shame and of embarrassment.  He doesn’t have that natural check in place that the rest of us have, which is the main benefit of being able to feel and to handle our uncomfortable emotions.  Because the narcissist only considers himself, he doesn’t consider what effect writing such a letter would have on his son, or even on his wife for that matter.  He is only fixated on getting his own needs met, which is to have enough money in his bank account so that his young wife won’t go back to work and possibly leave him in his old age.  Also notice that in this case the narcissist also avoids responsibility for his mismanagement of money and for the ensuing consequences by asking his son to give him his approval.  By making it a joint decision he doesn’t have to shoulder all the responsibility for his actions.  The narcissist also doesn’t see that his letter simply reinforces his son’s conclusion that he is incapable of having a healthy relationship.  He doesn’t see or care that he makes it appear that his wife has only married him for his money. Another point Empaths don't realize is that the Narcissist can make such a request because he has nothing to lose.  Since he doesn't feel uncomfortable like most people would, there is no cost in asking for a favor.  Either way, he wins.  In this particular case, the narcissist wins no matter how my client responded.  The narcissist can tell himself that he did his best in contacting his son if his son doesn't respond, and it's his son's fault for not helping him.  He wins if his son contacts him and says go ahead since he can then share responsibility for fixing his mismanagement of his money.  He can tell his wife that his son knows about the change in the will, too, so she won't feel like she's imposing on the father-son relationship.  But he also wins if his son says no because he can tell his wife that his son cares more about the money than her financial security.  In all three cases the narcissist avoids responsibility, can transfer blame, and also lightens any emotional discomfort that may be pushing through his repression.While my client was angry, and while he understood on a whole new level how deep the narcissism ran in his family, he was grateful he had already ended the relationship with his father.  If he hadn’t done his personal work and had still been in contact with his father, he would have had to deal with his father’s financial problems.  It would have been enough to end the relationship at that point, but then his father could blame the ensuing rift on his son’s attachment to money, rather than deal with the cleaner break my client had made months before.  The narcissist’s behavior isn’t surprising here, even though many Empaths are revolted and baffled by such behavior.  Narcissists have no compunction asking for favors that benefit them to the detriment or discomfort of the people around them.  If you are in relationship with a narcissist, keep this in mind.  A narcissist is too wounded to be able to care about you as you care about him.  He is simply incapable of doing so.  He may say he loves you, but remember that his love for you is secondary to his own needs and feelings.  Staying in a close relationship with such a person without keeping this fact in mind can lead to deep hurt and betrayal.  Don’t expect a narcissist to treat you as you would treat him—that simply misses the point of what it means to be a narcissist.

Working Those Imprints! Manifesting What We Want rather than Our Fate

I had several questions from clients this week on why working an imprint is so hard.  An imprint is a belief system that has become so ingrained that it manifests outcomes for us unconsciously rather than consciously.  People come to me to unravel imprints because the outcomes are painful and unwanted.  However, it is possible to unconsciously manifest great outcomes.  The key to remember is that all imprints come with a belief system attached.  If we have faulty beliefs, we will wind up with unhappy outcomes.

When we have an unhappy pattern in our lives, an imprint with its faulty beliefs is at work.  This imprint can come from cultural beliefs, archetypal beliefs, family beliefs and personal beliefs.  Personal beliefs are the easiest to change, and many times we can change our personal beliefs without outside help.  Clients come to me for underworld work usually because of hidden cultural, archetypal, and family beliefs.  These hidden group beliefs tend to run our creations without our ever knowing we have these beliefs.  The shaman can go into the subconscious mind (the underworld) on behalf of the client and begin dismantling the imprint and its corresponding belief system.

However, even with shamanic intervention, it is up to the client to make sure that his words and actions reinforce his new belief system.  If that does not take place, we will still manifest unhappy outcomes because of old habit.  It is this conscious work that so many people slip up on.  Too many clients expect the shamanic work to magically take away unwanted outcomes.  However, the client creates her life, so it is always the client who has to make sure that the change on the energetic and mythic planes comes down to the mental, emotional, and physical planes as well.

Our relationships with our family will change, as well as how we belong within our culture.   Most of the time other people in the group are enslaved by the same imprint and so do not appreciate our new behavior.  They want us back in our role and they will feel betrayed and confused that we are no longer playing.  As you can see, this is deep, hard work.  Change on this level is difficult and challenging.  Too many of my clients expect easy, graceful, magical change without these repercussions.  While that can happen in some instances, working at this level take tremendous courage and practice.  I say this not to be discouraging but to encourage my clients who are in the thick of dismantling sticky family and cultural imprints not to give up, to keep plugging through.  It is worth the effort to create a great foundation of supportive imprints and beliefs.  Then life does become easier and more magical.

We begin throwing off our predetermined fate and more options and outcomes become probable for us.  This is the heart of personal work.  I hope this helps to answer why this work can feel so hard and confusing. 

much love,

Elaine

The Empath and Self Sabotage

The past couple of weeks I have been working on an ebook just for the Empath and what it is like for the Empath to go on a conscious healing journey.  Most of you are subscribed to my blog because you are that Empath, or you love that Empath. One trouble spot the Empath commonly encounters is self-sabotage. We have a hidden belief that we should not succeed—that our success causes others suffering, or that we will be punished if we succeed. At the same time, we have so many projects and dreams that we desperately long to pursue and manifest. We can become stuck in a double bind of longing to pursue our creative endeavors but being sure that we will fail somehow.

Where does this belief come from? As I discussed in my ebook, Empath as Archetype, many Empaths were raised by Fans (Type Six on the Enneagram.) If we were raised by an unhealthy Fan, we had to make sense of crazy-making behavior, which in turn heightened our senses, helping us to become Empathic and intuitive. However, because unhealthy Fans are motivated to distract themselves from their fears, Fans tend to act in ways that do not make sense. Fans, in an attempt to avoid consciously knowing their fear and anxiety, come up with rationalizations for their crazy-making behavior that feels off to the Empath. As a consequence, the Empath tries to make sense of the situation and creates a faulty belief.

I have been working with a client who was raised by a Fan who suffered from OCD. Her mother had to be in control so that she wouldn’t come into contact with overwhelming fear and anxiety. Whenever my client during childhood wanted to do something that her mother did not want her to do because it would make her feel anxious, her mother made sure that my client would fail in the attempt. Then her mother would blame my client for the failure, with the unconscious motivation to ensure that her daughter would not trigger her anxiety again.

As an example, when my client was twelve years old she, like many kids, wanted to make a batch of cookies all by herself. Her mother hated to have any one in the kitchen but herself. Having anyone else there making a mess, opening the refrigerator, dirtying the oven, caused her terrible anxiety. However, her mother, who knew full well that it was normal for a twelve year old to want to bake in the kitchen, could not give her daughter a real reason for saying no. (Of course, her mother could have said, “No, honey, your baking in the kitchen makes me too anxious. I know that is unreasonable, I’ll get some help as soon as I can with my fears,” but most unhealthy Fans cannot admit to being fearful. So, my client was allowed to make cookies. But in the background her mother made sure to sabotage her daughter’s cookies so the batch turned out so badly that she would never want to make another attempt.

The belief my client took away from this was, “I should have never wanted to bake cookies. I should have never had insisted. It’s because I wanted to do this so badly that it came out badly. This is my fault. Because I wanted this and made it happen, it came out all wrong.” Now, did her mother intend for her to pick up this belief system? Of course not. She just didn’t want her daughter in her kitchen. But, like most Fans, she couldn’t directly tell my client so.

Because her mother couldn’t be direct, her daughter made up a faulty belief to make sense of the situation. There is nothing unusual about kids wanting to make cookies. But her mother sabotaged her daughter’s cookie dough because her own need to ameliorate her anxiety motivated her more than her need to support and encourage her daughter’s independence. My client took away from that experience that not only was she a bad cook, but that she shouldn’t do what she longed to do. What my client should have taken away from it was that her mother was anxious and angry about letting her make the cookies. My client did not notice the sabotage—what child can fathom that their parent is setting them up for failure?

This is the terrible curse of having an unhealed wound—we have to attend to our wound and the twisted need that it creates in us at the expense of other people, even our children. This is why we must work hard and attend these unhealed patterns in ourselves so we don’t continue to hurt ourselves and others. But here is what my client took away from this interaction, which was reinforced by many interactions over childhood. She internalized the saboteur.

It is very common, in fact, it is the goal of parenting, for our children to internalize parts of us, so that those parts keep our children civilized and also inspire them to pursue their gifts. However, so many of us internalize not just the gifts, but the wounds. My client who wants to write novels, paint watercolor, learn how to hike through the backcountry, has this awful sabotuer always at the ready to smash whatever dream she longs for. If she gets on a roll, then she can be sure that she will create something to trip herself up. She no longer needs her mother to do it—she learned the lesson so well that she does it to herself. The more her Heart thinks it is fun, thinks it is expansive, thinks it's a little risky, the harder the sabotage, the more she drags her feet, the more she blames herself for wanting to make that break out of what is really her mother’s rut into her own expansion.

It is to my client’s credit that she broke out anyway. During her teenagehood she had to be angry, demanding, and forceful to have the energy to overcome her mother’s fear and objections. It would be easy to continue to be angry at her mother, to blame her mother for her emotionally crippled state. However, it is important to realize that Fans become Fans because they feel so unsafe in the world. Her mother had good reason to feel unsafe—she was brought up in a family that didn’t have enough after war time, her natural mother died early, and she was raised in a family with several other children. Her mother, being a human being, was bound to come out wounded from those experiences.

This is simply an example of my client’s mother’s wounds passing to my client and setting up her own self-sabotage pattern. For my client to heal from this wound, it’s good to have the consciousness around where it came from, but more importantly it’s good to dismantle the belief system, get the soul retrieval done to bring back that part of her that wants to embrace life and have some crazy, out of the way, kind of fun; the soul retrieval returns the unwounded soul part that has never been sabotaged by her mother.

If you have a strong saboteur within you, and you are an Empath, take a look and see if your mother sounds like my client’s mother. The sabotage may not be as extreme as in this case, it may be more subtle and harder to pin point. Chances are that if you have a Fan as a mother, then you have a very strong saboteur. Realize that that voice inside of you comes from a weak and scared person who is not you! Realize that life doesn’t have to be boxed in like it has been—you can change this belief system and emerge ready to pursue your dreams.

Overcoming Our Ingrained Patterns

These past few weeks I’ve had several women email me about problems they have been having with other women.  These cases were interesting because they each involved a generational imprint that was passed from mother to daughter.  While the imprint causes problems and misunderstandings in the mother-daughter relationship, it also leads to those problems being projected onto other relationships with women. 

When I work with my clients long term, I have my clients get to know their imprints or patterns intimately.  The reason for this is so that they can gain enough consciousness to change at least one little action in the pattern the next time it arises.  Each change little by little leads to a dismantling of the pattern.  Catching ourselves before we can take the actions that lead to the unhappy outcome becomes a practice.  It’s a difficult, confusing practice because our intuition and our instincts are inaccurate when it comes to navigating the pattern—otherwise we would have mastered it long ago and we wouldn’t need to consult a shaman.  Deliberately questioning our instincts when we’ve worked especially hard to accept our intuitive side can be highly confusing.

This is why each of us must get to know our patterns and how we tend to project those onto our relationships.  The place to start when we notice a pattern (an outcome that has repeated three times) is to ask ourselves when we first experienced the pattern or felt the feelings in the pattern.  Usually it stems from early wounds in childhood—many times because of a misunderstanding or a trauma inflicted by one of our parents, intentionally or not.  Many times these traumas are handed down generation after generation, so that energetically, emotionally, and mentally they carry the extra force of our lineage.

In one case this week, one woman had worked hard on a mother issue that manifested as her giving her power away to other women she thought of as peers.  Somehow the relationship would turn from one of peers to one with her in the one-down position as either lowly apprentice or mentee.  The outcome of this pattern was that she rejected the woman who put her in the one down position while feeling betrayed and embarrassed.  To prevent this pattern from manifesting the same outcome of suffering and a broken relationship, we had to look at where it came from.

This client had a withholding, selfish mother.  As a consequence my client consciously and unconsciously sought approval but was usually shot down by her mother.  Without knowing it my client put these other woman peers in the mother-position.  Usually what would happen is that she would ask for advice in an area especially dear to her heart, expecting to be treated as a peer.  But the advice hardly even felt like it came from a peer.  Somehow the other woman wound up in a more powerful position than my client and abused that power.  Part of this is vibrational, (after all, she unconsciously came to these relationships as a supplicant for her mother’s approval), but we also looked at how my client asked for and received the advice.

She had to assume that she was going to set the situation up unconsciously to unfold so that the other woman would belittle her.  While an important and essential part of healing this pattern was to work directly with her own relationship with her mother with soul retrieval and underworld work, my client had to carefully look at how she operated within peer relationships with other women at the literal level as well.  With these deeply ingrained patterns, ones that we’ve been living out for several decades, we have a sort of body-memory that we must overcome.  We must also look at what we do, think, and feel as the pattern unfolds.

My client had to assume that when she felt betrayed, annoyed and confused the pattern was in play and that she wasn’t seeing the other woman clearly.  Walking away from the relationship was the last step in the pattern.  Did she really want that outcome this time or could it be avoided?  Much of the time the pattern came about because she was asking for advice as a peer, but the advice came back with her in the one down position.  She had to look at how she was asking for advice.  What language did she use?  Was her subtext one of supplicant asking for a favor?  Was she inviting a shift from peer to mentee?  Changing her language so that she remained in a strong peer position also helped.

One aspect of the mother-daughter relationship that my client didn’t see without outside help from her shaman was that her mother had her own insecurities that she projected onto her daughter.  Because these patterns have a strong energetic component, my client’s pattern meant that unconsciously my client would pick a peer that was likely to project her insecurities onto my client and then put my client down, just like her mother did.  To be on the receiving end of this would be no fun for anyone, so it wasn’t a big surprise that my client ultimately walked away from these relationships.  However, before she walked away she spent considerable time wondering if she were imagining the abuse of power when everything had begun so nicely.

However, walking away without consciousness around the pattern only set up the next iteration to manifest in the same way.  Unconsciously my client was looking for perfect advice from a perfect mother-substitute, but was doomed to disappointment because no one can give perfect advice and no one can be a perfect mother.  The rejection of her mother took place through other women but wasn’t a resolution because the original wounds and unconscious beliefs weren’t healed.  Doing the soul retrieval and underworld work helped to heal those wounds and beliefs, but now she had to work on taking different actions when the pattern unwound itself again.

The same feelings and thoughts arose when the pattern came up again, but the difference that next time was that my client could say to herself, “This is the pattern.  I’m in a peer relationship with a woman that I really like.  At some point I’m going to set this up so that she’ll project her insecurities on to me, and then I’ll have reason to reject her.  I’m going to be aware for each of these stages.”  As my client practices she catches herself at the last stage and can avoid rejecting the friend but sets better boundaries about asking for advice. 

In the following iteration she catches herself feeling those feelings of betrayal but notices in time that in a peer relationship she can take advice or leave advice, but she shouldn’t shoot the messenger and so manages to not act on those hurt feelings.  In a later iteration she might catch herself asking for advice but then notice that she herself has set herself up as a mentee instead of a peer.  In a later iteration she might notice that she’s picking insecure women to be peers with even though they might be highly qualified in their fields.  She might then choose not to get too close to them or she might not be completely taken by surprise when those women project those fears and insecurities outward.  Each iteration of the pattern is an opportunity to master the pattern until finally it is broken and my client has taken her power back.  She’s also managed to grow up a part of herself that still needed approval from her mother.

Sometimes we have experiences with soul retrieval and underworld work that are so spectacular that the energywork session clears everything up on the emotional, mental, and literal levels.  I love those.  But, with an unhappy pattern that’s become well ingrained by taking action again and again in the literal world, it usually takes several practice attempts at the pattern to fully unwind it.  Staying conscious, giving ourselves a break for having to practice at it, and making those small changes again and again means that we heal our lives and give ourselves freedom.

Next blog post, an example of a mother-daughter imprint shifting to the next generation and how to prevent that outcome. 

Family System Reinforcement Essays

Hello Everyone! I hope you enjoy the labor day weekend.  Here in Portland we're planning on enjoying a bbq on Sunday despite the rain in the forecast.  I just love autumn! This week I've published several new essays on my website around Family System Reinforcement.  These essays follow one Empath through a Family System and show her path in healing from the typical Empath wounds of rejection and abandonment so she can form her own happy marriage and family.  If you are an Empath, these essays are for you.  If you are an emotionally dissociated Hero these essays may also be helpful in seeing how the Archetypes of Empath and Hero interact.www.elainelajoie.com/EmpathyandRelationshipsBook.htmThe new essays are toward the bottom of the page under the heading, Family System Reinforcement.Enjoy, and have a wonderful holiday weekend!much love,Elaine

Transformation on the Blog

Hi All, A few months ago, NeoInsight wrote in asking questions about his marriage to his Emotionally Dissociated wife.  If you haven't been following the comments that followed the post, NeoInsight has not only divorced his wife, but has also left the Drama Triangle, too, which meant leaving another friendship behind as well.  You can read about his journey in the post entitled Questions about Emotional Dissociation which was updated just today.It is an interesting thing that our difficulties in our relationships always come back to ourselves.  It's very easy as Empaths to see the Emotionally Dissociated friend or partner as the problem, and believe me, they can be really aggravating.  But, the more interesting question is why are we in the relationship?  What are we getting out of it?  What is our part in creating the problem?  These questions take the focus to where it belongs--our own healing.  And when we heal ourselves, we change our vibration, and then everything around us changes, including our relationship that was the original focus.  Sometimes the relationship ends, but sometimes it also magically transforms.Elaine

Changing the Collective Nightmare

Hello Everyone,Yesterday one of my clients asked me,  "How do I stop feeling guilty for all my blessings when most of the world is in pain and has nothing?"   While I didn't channel the pain of the world as my client has done, I did have guilt that kept me from really enjoying and embracing my life, when I was first getting started in my personal healing. After years of schooling in physics, and then teaching, I used to feel guilty that I was able to stay at home and work on my own dreams, write, and play, and do tons of self-care required to heal enough to be creative. (At the time I wanted to be a sci-fi and fantasy writer---I had no idea that I was going to be struck psychic and a practice as a shaman was coming.) From the outside, from external comparisons, I looked like a decadent weirdo.  I had friends who were resentful and jealous that I was sponging off my first husband; I didn’t have to work as hard as they did.  And I felt guilty and defensive, and yet, a really cool life that I dreamed of living was a life that included creativity, play, and not working very hard at dreary jobs. The reasons I felt guilty and defensive were that I also bought into the belief system that I had to work hard, that life was a life of suffering, and I wasn’t putting value on the spiritual and the creative aspects of life.  No wonder I felt guilty! What I had to realize was, if I truly wanted a life of joy, I had to insist upon it.  I had to use the circumstances I was born with---born into the middle class, given a great education, given a very well developed mind---as the foundation stones to make my life into the best life I could have. What I discovered as I did so was that Yes, there is a collective nightmare out there.  And that nightmare is horrifying.  All of us are part of the collective, so we are all susceptible to being caught up in it.  At the same time, when I focused on what my Heart and Soul craved, life for just me became much, much happier and brighter.  Because I was willing to commit to myself, I found this beautiful, universal, and intelligent creative force was matching my efforts and bringing me more and more. I discovered that the beliefs that we hold to be facts, and the emotions contained inside those beliefs, are what hold us prisoner in the Collective nightmare.  When I decided to wake myself up, I was stepping out of the collective nightmare.  What also began to happen is that my immediate circumstances began to change for the better.  The people with the old belief system went away to be replaced with others with expansive, life-is-good belief systems. I have worked with clients who have invented their own prisons just by the beliefs that they keep.  I have also worked with clients who are subject to the group think beliefs of their culture or family, and have a terrible time creating the lives that they want because the group think is so strong.  And yet, every once in a while there is someone that breaks free of the collective.  In every case that is because they were strong individuals, deeply commited to their souls and to their hearts. What this made me decide was that my feelings of guilt were a mistake.  Somehow I was a product of my own culture's group think, too.  That was just part of the start-button for all human beings.  Freedom comes in learning how to cultivate that Soul Strength, that precious originality that we all have.  And when we do that, then we become these magical creatures. The really neat thing that happened when I got this was that I found that the people around me started picking up on the changes going on inside me.  My vibration was affecting the vibrations around me.  By my healing myself I was healing others simply by my presence.  I'd hear stories later of how I inspired them when I hadn't intended any such thing!  It was now the reverse of where I had started from: one individual being beaten down by my local group think---I had now grown so powerful I could actually change the group think around me instead! So, perhaps the way out of feeling so guilty is to say, Yes, the world is as it is.  It is full of pain, it is full of horror, it is full of unfairness, and very few people out there have purposefully created that for themselves consciously.  That is all true.  But, each of us has the power and the resources within us to gain personal freedom. You can gain personal freedom by acknowledging your own power.  Ultimately, if you *do* commit to your soul, that will mean that you will have to indulge yourself in the best life has to offer you, and that might feel decadent.  But it is precisely that mechanism that makes your Soul strong and allows you to change the collective nightmare into more of a collective dream of bliss.  And man, do we need that!!!! I think each of us has the potential to change the world by our very presence.  But to do that, you have to really commit to living a wonderful, happy life, revelling in it, engaging in it, and not denying the hard parts, too.   I guess I don’t feel guilt at the state of the world any longer because I know that each of us has the same internal resources to heal themselves.  And I also know that each of us must come to that healing in our own time and in our own way.  And I know that it is a mystery how that happens!  I know what I must do, and I put all my energy in following the calling of my Soul.Feeding your soul, commiting to your Soul's Journey is the surest and most honest way of changing the Collective Nightmare that I know of.Elaine

May 2008 Newsletter

Hello Everyone!I've created a new newsletter on my website for May.  Included are topics around self-care and the challenge of healing work.http://www.clearreflectioncoaching.com/May2008Newsletter.htm  Enjoy!!Elaine

Letting the Heart Break Open

I had the honor of assisting a client through the beautiful but difficult process of letting her heart break open.  Like most of us, she had many defenses over her heart, and yet she wanted to bring a soul mate into her life.  I very clearly had seen for her that she was going to have this beautiful soul mate after she jumped off the cliff into her path as a shaman healer, and that they would travel together.  The man in the reading looked like the actor who plays Superman, so we called him Superman fondly.            As my client settled in to clear those places in her life that were holding her back from stepping into her calling, wonderful opportunities began to manifest for her.  She brought in a job that would solve her financial problems which required a relocation.  As she was waiting to relocate, she decided to follow her heart and try new and fun things.  She met some wonderful people to whom she connected on many levels.  She knew these relationships were temporary because of the upcoming job, so she let herself enjoy herself in the moment.  And she started a very close friendship and connection with one of the men she had met.            Because she was in the moment and she had told herself it was temporary, none of her defenses were up, and she was able to deeply connect with this man, and he with her.  Her heart was opening, and yet she was fearing the loss of having her heart break if she really let herself love him, since she knew that he wasn't ultimately for her.  I encouraged her to let her heart break all the way open, to let herself truly see and be seen by this man, to let herself love him with no strings attached, if she respected, admired, and loved him as much as she said she did.  It did not matter if he wasn't Superman, what mattered was her being authentic and willing to be truly intimate with him on all levels.  The truth was that she loved him, she knew that he loved her, there was nothing preventing declaring this except wanting to spare herself pain and grief when it came to an end.            And she went for it!  She held him in a beautiful heart space and told him she loved him.  He didn't respond immediately with his own declaration of love for her.  She was able to not take it personally that he didn't immediately declare his love, because the open heart does not need to take everything personally and understands the soul is on journey.  Because her Heart Space was so wide open, it allowed his to open, and he declared his love for her the next day.  Then their relationship blossomed, they could see each other as life partners, and an exciting future together was very easy to plan out.   I had actually felt the shift in my client from glancing at their picture in between sessions on accident and knew she had jumped off that cliff and found her Superman.  Before she took the action and made the declaration, the energy of the picture was completely different.           It was the Open Heart, the willingness to act from that space, and the declaration of love that changed her into Superwoman ready for Superman.           But my client remembered that the original reading told her that he wasn't her soul mate.  So, she was in a bind of fearing that she was giving up the destiny that she really wanted for a man that she loved who wasn't meant for her.  She was conflicted and confused.  How could what she had with her lover not be the relationship, how could it not match up with her path as a shaman healer when everything about it now felt fantastic and right?  She still was leaving for her new job in just a few weeks, but even the long distance didn't matter, they were both confident that it would work.           When we next spoke she was reluctant to discuss with me her relationship because she  wanted to become clear that she was hearing her own soul before I added any more information.  It was with the great pleasure to confirm for her that Yes, this was it!!  And that she had made it possible with her huge open heart.                  It was part of her journey to walk the painful path of opening her heart without a guarantee of success.  It had been a possibility that her lover wouldn't have responded with his own open heart, and wouldn't have stepped in as her soulmate.  Ironically, it was also part of her journey to feel the conflict of apparently going against what she had thought was her path versus what she knew to be her path.  Now she will know for the rest of her life that she can trust her heart, and that she can trust her soul to guide her.  She has the visceral experience of knowing what was right for her soul versus what was an old interpretation that didn't fit the new energy she herself had brought in.  My client will Source from her Soul now instead of from anyone else, even her shaman teachers.            I am so excited for this couple, I was laughing and crying as she was telling me her good news.  What a joy!  This is the magic of the Open Heart.  It brings healing and expansion to relationships, it literally pulled in a joyous destiny that was unavailable without the Heart Space to activate it, and it is the only guarantee to a rich and meaningful existence.

Client Success Story

Hello Everyone, I just had the great pleasure of connecting with a former client of mine, Jagger Cook.  When we worked together a few years ago he had mentioned his love of music, especially songwriting and singing.  I'm so happy to announce that he has an album being released in just a few months!  The songs are beautifully spiritual, but they are definitely Rock.  I just love it!  You can listen to four of them at http://www.myspace.com/jaggercook   The making of this album is a tale of synchronicity and grace---Jagger I hope you'll share more!!Elaine