Sorry it’s taken a few days for me to get to this next part. I held off so we could enjoy a celebrity interview, you know, break it up a little. 

I have a couple of announcements to make, First, I’ll be on Thanksgiving holiday until Monday so after today, posts will start then. Second, if you have any “Erik Encounters” to share, please go HERE. Everyone loves them! Last but not least, please join our private Channeling Erik Facebook group.This group was created to give us all a safe place to share spiritual matters. We’re a tight-knit family, and most of the members there are funny, inspirational and supportive. By supportive I mean that if any one of them is suffering in any way, physically, emotionally or spiritually, they all come together to help. This goes for family members and friends, too. It’s pretty cool. Here’s the LINK.

I can’t close these announcements without wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for so many things: my health and that of my family, the fact that I have a roof over my head and food on my table, my morning Lattes, my little dog, Bella, the fact that my relationship with Erik continues and so much more. I’m also thankful for my husband and five kids, including Erik, my sisters and my other relatives. Last, I’m thankful for my friends, and I consider you part of that lovely, loving circle. Thank you guys! Be sure you stuff  not only the turkey but yourselves, too!

Now for the post:

Me: Sometimes it’s really difficult for people to face their demons and take a hard look at themselves, flaws and all. What’s up with that?

Erik has a baseball cap on, bill skewed to the side.

Erik: Being emotionally dishonest with yourself is about not being able to see the forest for the trees. There’s too much shit in the way.

Me: What are the trees?

Erik: They’re anything that blocks you from looking at yourself. A lot of times, our environment conditions us to hide from how we feel about ourselves. Gotta perform, perform, perform! Dance Monkey Boy, dance! You’re taught to reach for ideals that you didn’t really create for yourself so you ask all sorts of questions that are rooted in uncertainty like, “What if I’m not meeting the mark?” “Am I doing this right? “Am I in the right place?” “Did I perform good enough?” Sometimes you feel your safest bet is to not even look for the answers.

Me: So where did the ideals come from?

Erik: From your environment. Parents, teachers, siblings, peers and the whole fucking society. Go back to the trees. Let’s say you find this hollow burrow under some big-ass tree roots. You know there are a bunch of rabbits in there. Some of them are all cute and soft and snuggly, but some of them will rip your fingers off in a second. So are you gonna wanna take a chance and stick your hand down there? Are you gonna want to see which bunny you’re going to pull out? If you’re emotionally dishonest with yourself, you’re just going to say, “Fuck it,” and go on your merry way.

Me: Wait. What are the bunnies?

Erik: First, the burrow is your heart. The bunnies are your emotions, your emotional state, how you feel about yourself, how you define yourself, how you think you fit into the world and all that shit. So when you’re emotionally dishonest, you put blinders on thinking they’ll protect you from rabbit fangs. You don’t want to come up against anything that might even remotely cause you pain. You want all of your fingers.

Me: So we’re emotionally dishonest because we’re afraid of what bunnies someone else’s ideals might have created. Hmm.

Erik: Yeah, but on a deeper level, it’s about trusting yourself to know which bunny you want to keep as your own and which one you want to release back into the wild. Which bunny is the authentic one that you wanna keep as your pet? Which is someone else’s?

Me: Sounds like the choice is pretty clear. Still, it’s hard to know which bunny is which.

Erik: That’s because you’re disconnected. When you’re not honest with yourself, you’re disconnected from the burrow, from your heart. You’re disconnected from the trust you have in assessing your own emotional state. You don’t have faith in the natural intuition you have about yourself. Because of all this, you just can’t decide if you’re the best version of yourself so you stop even looking. What happens? You get lost in this darkness. You become emotionally blind. You become uncertain about who you are and how you feel, but intuition is what helps you become more emotionally honest. By intuition, I mean what you feel on a heart level. You know how that feels. You know when something is the real Truth. Think about it this way. When people get into this state of chaos, instead of it being a nice breezy day, they turn it into a fucking tornado that’s going in all directions. Everything seems so random in its pattern, and the human mind is wired for patterns. It looks for consistency. It needs consistency, and if our brains don’t pick up on consistency because everything appears complicated or out of order, we become uncertain. We don’t know what choice to make. That’s where intuition has to come in and guide you and help you look beyond what your brain can’t recognize as certain. Mom, we have to rely on our intuition more than what’s external to us and more than the logic, which can be influenced by that external environment. Now when you’re emotionally dishonest with yourself, you use justifications, rationalizations, denial and blame shifting. That’s logic based. That’s thinking first and feeling second. It should be the other way around. Feel first, then think, then act. Doing that is what helps you see things more clearly, including how you feel inside.

Me: From my standpoint, I was raised to bury my feelings, or I’d get hurt. Shut up and be nice. My parents would actually beat me if I tried to express any anger. This made me have a hard time looking inside myself and saying, “Damn, you’re one angry woman.” That’s probably why I have a hard time expressing anger to this day. The funny thing is that when my father died, all of that anger and resentment started to come out. I guess that’s because I know he can’t hurt me anymore. He’s in a jar on the mantle, for god’s sake.

Erik: If I had to say the main thing you’re emotionally dishonest about it’d be your relationship with Pappa.

Me: Really?

Erik: Yeah. You started the relationship as the one who wore the pants. You were the survivor. You came in and saved him, and the relationship allowed both of you to become wonderful people.

Me: Yeah, he didn’t speak much English back then, and he had a job that paid less than minimum wage, so I guess I just wanted to take care of him. He seemed so innocent and lost. Sometimes I worried that he couldn’t feed himself properly, so I’d bring him sacks of groceries and cook him dinner. I figured you can’t subsist on a daily diet of macaroni and chopped up hotdogs. I didn’t really realize until much later how much strength he had and what a force of nature he is.

Erik: Once he started growing, the tables started to turn, and he wanted to reclaim a stronger position in the relationship. He wanted to do man things. He learned the language, and he learned about the culture, and he discovered what he wanted to do when he grew up. When you met him, he didn’t know. He thought he did, but he didn’t.

Me: Exactly. He didn’t know.

Erik: So he found his voice, and when the power in the relationship tipped toward him, it became hard for you to adjust. It’s not about holding your own, Mom. You hold your own, and you don’t need anyone to take care of you, but you have a hard time sharing your emotions verbally with him whenever you feel like the relationship is out of balance. Instead of expressing yourself, you’re putting your head down and biting your tongue, but you also ask yourself honest questions like, “I need to let him know how I feel.”

Me: Yes, I do that. I’m completely aware of what I need to say.

Erik: It’s not that you’re afraid to. It’s just that you don’t want one more fucking thing to deal with. You’re done with a lifetime of conflict and drama, so you tell yourself, “It’s going to be okay the way it is.”

Me: Yes, and then it comes to a point where I explode. So what can people like me do to become more emotionally honest with themselves?

Erik: You have to make a conscious effort to be self-aware. When you feel uncomfortable, look inside. Be aware of what you’re feeling and why. Being uncomfortable is grounds for self-reflection and change, but most of the time people are so good at toughing it out that they don’t even recognize when they’re feeling uncomfortable. For those hard-ass people who are more logic based than emotion based, I would tell them to ask themselves, “Why am I toughing it out?” “Why am I putting my head down and pushing through?” It’s all about the fear of being authentic with yourself, and that comes with the responsibility of holding your “true self” accountable. It comes with the responsibility of putting that “authentic you” out into the environment, out into the situation you’re trying to tough out. You just gotta grow some fucking balls. You gotta be okay with being vulnerable and open with yourself. Do that while knowing everything is going to be okay. No one can truly hurt you just because you’re being honest with yourself about what you feel and what you do.

I chuckle.

Here’s another Erik quote from the talented Helene Remøy! For some reason, I can’t get it to include all of the text, but I hope you can read it anyway. Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone.