Choosing from Woundedness vs. Choosing out of Love & Freedom
Arriving back after two years on the road in the East, we had literally no money. We had used it all on many enriching adventures, and so we decided to go to Italy to stay close to family.
We booked our journey back to the West—a flight from Delhi to Oslo with a couple of nights in Oslo, a flight from Oslo to Milan, a train from Milan to Bologna where Robert’s mum would pick us up for the remaining hour’s journeys back to her home in the Apennine mountains.
What we failed to take into account was the 10 euros we needed to catch the bus from the airport in Milan to the train station.
Dumbfounded, our bulging, worn, rucksacks still on our backs, we fished for coins in our pockets as the bus driver waited for us to come up with the sum needed for the ride.
“Oh, just go up,” he gestured to us, smiling mischievously at our lost faces.
What followed was a long year of trying to make a life in our new home in Italy.
When you’re in the wrong place for yourself, everything else is coloured by that choice.
Reflecting on the days when we barely had enough to pay the rent, and we used the last five euros in our pockets to buy ice cream, I ask myself: why is it so difficult to avoid what’s not good for you and save up for better choices in the future? Why does it seem so much easier to do so when you have more to spare?!
I didn’t really need the sugar, and definitely not the milk. Why was that ice cream so important??
Clearly that five euros wouldn’t make much of a difference to my finances, but it’s the state of mind that baffled me.
More than that, what I’m curious about is that urge to fish for some joy in remnants, as if enchanted by some greater force.
When we’re hungry we rarely choose out of love, joy or freedom of being.
When we’re hungry, the memories of luck stored in our body swing into action, directing us towards that which most closely resembles the good times. This can often poison our clarity.
When we’re hungry we are animated by fears such as ”What if I won’t have another chance or a better option?!”
When we’re hungry we lose patience, we’re impulsive, and can’t resist the biology of survival that takes what it can.
Hunger is a survival skill that reminds us that the real task of life is to keep our river of being clean and flowing
A woman looking for love in relationships with partners or friends that don’t see her in her fulness and can’t answer the needs of her heart; a woman seeking the flavour of love in accomplishments disguised in social validation and public reassurances; a woman craving for love from her children while holding them to herself as if her life depends on it is a woman who’s fertile feminine is broken.
There are two kinds of hunger—a divine hunger and a wounded hunger:
The divine hunger, for women, is the existential need to protect and nourish the fertile feminine so she can radiate her internal and external beauty and keep celebrating her wholeness.
A wounded hunger is not just an empty stomach. It’s all the memories of love deprivation stored in her body, blinding her intuitive sight.
The most powerful love that can condition you into a life-long hunger is when your mother was the one who didn’t see you for who you are or couldn’t care for you in the way you needed her to.
I’m going to elaborate on that in my upcoming FREE WEBINAR, dedicated to:
SHOOTING THE HUNGER TO BE LOVED
Without getting caught in shame or resentment
It takes place on June 14th, 18:30-19:00 CET.
You can reserve your place by clicking the button below.
How to know that you’re driven out of hunger rather than freedom and love
There are many ways to know whether your approach to filling up your cup of love—in life, work or relationships—is one that comes out of hunger-habits or out of freedom of being.
It should be first mentioned that choosing the how before knowing the rooted why is only a partial solution.
Yet there is one single thing that will always work to stop you in your tracks.
In Buddhist psychology, there is a notion called the near enemy.
The near enemy is an experience that feels like the real thing but it’s not the real thing.
It’s not as easy to recognise the near enemy as the far enemies. For example, the far enemy of compassion is cruelty, but its near enemy is pity.
You might say “I feel sorry for her” and think you’re experiencing compassion while what you’re really experiencing is pity that’s rooted in comparison, fear and maybe event childhood trauma.
Love that is satisfying exists independently, unafraid to come close to the unfamiliar or the unknown
Borrowing on this beautiful Buddhist perspective, I’ve come to realise that the near enemy of the divine hunger to be loved—the one hunger that is absolutely existential and will always lead us to our next level of growth—is the fear of missing out.
The voice of this near enemy can sound like this:
“What if I won’t find another opportunity like this”
“What if I won’t ever be able to find the right partner for me”
“What if I’m exaggerating and I should tone my needs down”
“What if I’m too much for them”
“What if I can’t really fulfil my dream”
Next, you negotiate your deep needs, accommodate them to these ‘what-if’ scenarios.
Fear has the skill to narrow down your vision while love can only expand it to the infinity that is your inheritance
Become familiar with the voices of your fear (fortunately, they always sound more or less the same) and when you next reach out to something that smells like love out of fear, your awareness will strike a bell of awakening from the trance.
Shelly’s helping women on a healing journey of the mother wound who are struggling with the ways it affected their sense of self, relationships or the success of their calling and want to reach deeper levels of healing and step into their wholeness
Learn more about Life Alignment
Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash
