Hello, this is Hummingbird and this blog post is a recording and transcribed account of an aha moment I had yesterday about myself and my relationship with unconditional love. Enjoy!
This podcast has been transcribed below for those of you who prefer written text.
I need to preface that the end of this podcast did not turn out the way I had hoped. Proving my “PROMOTER” tendencies, AND the fact that I am but a fledgling in the realm of being accepting of others, AND my skills as a podcaster. The real story is that when I listened to the ending of my recording, I didn’t sound as accepting and positive as I would have liked, so I re-recorded it, and somehow, probably due to minimal internet, the final recording didn’t get saved and it has an abrupt ending, that kind of seems heartless. The ending is supposed to say “I accept that! And I wish you a wonder-filled day. This is Hummingbird with A Little Bird’s Podcast.” Anyway, have a listen to the whole podcast to learn how ironic this is.
My name is Jamie Black and today I’m just wanting to share a little bit about my process, about what’s going on in my life right now. I feel like I’m in the middle of really analyzinge what it is that I truly desire in my life and I’m also learning in this course called the Advancement of Excellence with a company called Excellent Seminars International about how I am showing up in the world. Asking myself “Am I showing up the way that I want to be showing up? Am I doing things with a positive constructive approach and how am I doing things destructively.”
It’s really hit home this last weekend, this was our second weekend in the course called the Advancement of Excellence and it’s called Relationship weekend, it’s about the relationship with everything, relationship with significant other and with money and family, how I relate to all sorts of different things, my career. So something that I’ve learned about myself and that I didn’t realize, was that I have this driving need to, I guess the word is superior. I don’t really know what other words can you use but if I define it for myself and what that is I look back and realize all of the constructive and destructive ways that I get that need met. So one example is I have a lot of pride in how skilled I am at things and how much I can accomplish, that time when I’m really good at getting things done I feel very proud of myself . Maybe that’s a given for anyone but for some reason for me it’s even more important. I also get that need met destructively by judging people and when I realized this, I felt like a knife stabbed through my heart because it was embarrassing and it was gross. I don’t want to judge people I don’t want to point the finger and blame other people. I really want to be accepting of people but there was a huge light bulb that came on for me and I started realizing all of the different ways that in my intimate relationship and in my family relationships and all the time that I’ve had people say to me that I have a tendency of thinking “it’s my way or the highway.”
It doesn’t feel so good, and as I was walking home from work yesterday under the moon I was dancing with my shadow and just coming to terms with me that okay this is a part of me. I’m not sure why I got here I’m not sure what’s going on. I was listening to a podcast with Ancient Wisdom Today and there was an interview with another podcast person who runs a podcast called The Confused Millennial and she share this one little piece that I was wondering,
“Can it be? Is this possibly one of the many reasons why I feel entitled and I’m a bit of a narcissist?”
I really don’t like saying that stuff out loud but whoa if I actually own that, if I become accountable for that, then maybe things are going to change for me. So I put it out to this community that I’m cultivating around me that is starting to speak this language of being accountable.
Maybe things are going to change for me.
She said that there is the “Millenials” and then there’s the “Zennials” which is in the age 32 to 36ish range and it happens to be that in the States the recession really hit hard for people there who after getting a degree or their masters or whatever, they ended up not getting paid what they were worth and so they were receiving a low income with a lot of debt and having to work odd jobs for $16 bucks an hour and coming from a place of thinking that we should be making more money but its a time in our lives where the economy just kind of dwindled and we got stuck with minimal income and ended up having to go to our parents for support. Consider that to be a narcissistic kind of way of being, having to cope with expecting to have money handed to us because we feel that we have earned it. I definitely ended up in that loop. If I showed up at my parent’s place and I knew was unable to pay what it was I need to pay for, I came with an emotional reaction to it and they were just like whoa okay we will help you by lending you money. For a few reasons, a piece of me was resentful for that because that, to me at this point in my life, feels like I was fed and given money and didn’t really have to suffer so it’s a weird dichotomy of what I think I went through or maybe the story that I’m making up that I went through, being in a place of struggling. Yeah, I feel like I’m struggling a lot I feel like I’ve been struggling for the last 2 or 3 years and I’m really fed up with it!
I’m done with it, which is why I went back to the
Advancement of Excellence again and as much as I wanted just have faith that things are all going to work out there’s still a part of my story, a part of me, knowing how I’m showing up in the world yet, No I don’t have any running water right now. I live in this really great little trailer but no running water and that’s really tough because that’s why the toilet doesn’t work properly and you know I’ve been dealing with this for a few months because I feel like I can’t afford what is going to cost to pay for fixing it. So, It comes down to, currently my situation is that I’m not making enough money but if I have the capacity to manifest anything I want and all I need to do is pray for is ease and grace and abundance, then that should come. So if its not coming then what’s going on there? What am I resisting and resenting? What am I not letting go of? I’m still right in the middle of that, not really sure exactly how that’s going to go
This is I started this little podcast because I believe in sharing my story and I know that I’ve done it in the past in a lot of people have been positively influenced by that experience and now I’m coming back to stuff that I really invested my time. Only kind of a promoter mentality if you have seen my world on social media. I’ve been right into that for many years and with that mentality sometimes I just don’t follow through sometimes, infact most of the time I have a hard time following through with things. This language of purpose and being accountable is tough.
I was really tickled with somebody who said that a focused promoter is someone who is a force to be reckoned with.
I come back to this driving need for superiority. If that can be seen in the brightest light if that superiority is seen in the brightest light, if that is truly something that is in my world and seen in a positive light, I’m really starting to come to a place of what that means for me. What could that become? How I can be superior but not have a superiority complex and not be superior to others but that I’m just superior in my own being and that I am still able to be compassionate and loving unconditionally. Yeah, it’s going to take me a while, so this is definitely something that stood outfor me this weekend, that is new, very new.
About Unconditional Love
On another note, for years I have given the excuse that there’s no such thing as unconditional love and love is messing I had a meant to say that to me one time but I think I’m just changed my mind about that. I don’t have a full understanding of exactly what I believe about this yet, but here’s kind of where I’m at…
So when I said that there’s no such thing as unconditional love and that love is messy…
That statement gave me a huge out that gave me a lot of sweet excuses as to why I can get away with shit. But if I choose to believe in unconditional love, to me that means that choosing to love and accept people for who they are and how they’re showing up and I can choose to love and accept myself and recognize when something isn’t working for me, that I have to state my boundaries, if that person chooses not to meet me with that boundary then it’s my choice whether or not I have them in my life. I can leave it as cut-and-dry. Maybe that even sounds like an ultimatum, but if I don’t love myself first then what am I doing this for? Why am I trying so hard to make everybody else happy I’ve spent so much of my time in my life trying to make other people, especially family members happy, like what did I used to say all the time,
“what did I do wrong?” “what could I have done differently?”
It was only about two years ago that I actually started realizing that I didn’t need to do anything differently. That person’s having their own reactions. What I’m doing maybe it’s really disgusting and maybe I could have done something differently or whatever. I’m still willing to look at that, but here’s the the piece, if I love and accept myself and I look back at that situation in that moment when I said what I said, when I did what I did wasn’t coming from a place of I’m trying to be superior to them or I’m trying in a negative way or I’m judging them or I’m not accepting them…
Am I actually standing up and saying this is what’s going on for me and then the way that other person takes it is the way that other person is going to take it and there’s nothing I can do about that. Just because they burst into tears, or they try to change my mind, or whatever, I have to stand up in my own two feet and defend myself and it can just be.
I don’t know if it sounds super corny, but this is what I do…
I do a Care Bear stare from my heart and I send hearts out of my heart towards that person, kind of as a protective shield but more so as a way of sending them love.
I’m sending them love I’m just sending them love and still as I’m listening to them taying in my head and visualizing these hearts coming out of my heart, saying “I’m sending you love, I’m sending you love.” It’s very new for me. I used to, whenever anybody would come to me with any kind of reaction any kind of judgment or blame our doubt or anything less than desirable, I used to take it personally I used to take it on. I used to feel bad about myself I used to have shame I used to blame myself for it and that does not serve anyone. I get that if I’m still in practice I’m not perfect, that’s for sure, I’m not Superior in that realm at all. But I’ve changed my mind. When somebody has a reaction to anything that I do, instead of saying goodbye in the way which is which I’ve done for years to protect my own heart, I’ve now take on this Care Bear stare. It feels really good, even come to a place of wanting to reach out and hold their hands and wanting to give them a hug. If they’re open to that or just stay there and be there with them and maybe that’s what I feel.
I’ve struggled with how to have compassion for assholes how to have compassion for a jerk and it’s not about accepting the rude and disgusting thing they did, it’s about just accepting that this has nothing to do with me and maybe I’m the Catalyst to get them to talk this way, but maybe I’m just actually they’re mirror and they’ve got some work to do and that’s none of my business, so now I’m kind of turning this old phrase around… I used to say “what other people think of me is none of my business, and now I’m at the point of
“What I think of other people is none of their business.”
2 Comments on “What is unconditional love?”
Thank you for your thoughts. You have really looked into your pyschy and analyzed your beliefs around your interactions with others. We all do this, I believe, throughout our lives when things go wrong or life feels unsettled. I have made many self-observations and readjustments in my 60 years. It is how I have learned to be at peace with myself at the end of the day and to truly be grateful for where I am. I also know that along with loving with myself, I know to be kind to myself. When/if I do or say something that unsettles my world, I know that beating myself up over it is counter-productive to growth and happiness. I recognize what I have done/said, acknowledge what I could have done differently and let it go. I hope you can feel settled after all the introspection and work you have done. You are loved!
Wow Mom, I am impressed that you shared this with the world. Thank you. I am blessed to have you as my mother, and know that you have got my back through all of what I throw at you! You are a gift to this world and I am proud to call you my mom!