Erica Tucci

Finding bliss in the challenges

Finding blissIn my last blog post, I asked the question “Can you accept and love yourself just as you are right now at this very moment?” I would like to delve into this further and hope you will join me.

I was reading the foreword to the book What Really Helps: Using Mindfulness and Compassionate Presence to Help, Support and Encourage Others by Karen Kissel Wegela, PhD, and it conveyed a similar message: “accepting the realities of our lives with an unconditional yes.” I can’t wait to dig deeply into the book for what it will teach me about really accepting things as they are. For when we can gracefully accept things just as they are, that’s when transformation happens. I truly believe that!

I feel that it all starts with learning to live in the present, not fretting about the past or worrying about the future, but cherishing every moment. Savoring every minute of every day, even as you are reading this! I’m sure you have heard this probably a hundred times or so as one of the “truisms” of the day. As have I, so many times that I get tired of hearing it, even though I wrote a chapter on it in my book Radiant Survivor.

I want to take a slightly different path in my discussion of this topic, using Byron Katie’s The Work as the driving force behind what I wish to say. If you know anything about Katie, as she prefers to be called, and The Work, which has helped millions globally, you are familiar with the four simple questions she poses:

  1. Is it true?
  2. Can I absolutely know it’s true?
  3. How do I react when I believe this thought?
  4. Who would I be without the thought?

I’m going to use my situation as a model in answering the questions that will hopefully give you some insights on how you might answer the question “Can you accept and love yourself just as you are right now at this very moment?” I will go through the questions Katie poses, looking at my feelings and thoughts about the drastic life changes I have had to make since my stroke.

  1. Is it true? – Yes, it is true that my life won’t be the same as it was before my stroke.
  2. Can I absolutely know it’s true? – Yes and no. On an emotional/mental/spiritual level, things are very different. I no longer am driven primarily by my inner masculine energy, as my feminine energy emerges and is now my compass. And this is a good thing because it will eventually create the harmony between the two energies, which will in turn create inner “wholeness”. However, on the physical level, I still have fears of not being fully functional again, of not fully recovering.
  3. How do I react when I believe this thought? – I have an emotional meltdown when I have the thought of not fully healing, crying and crying and crying, after which I feel purged of the thought…until the next meltdown.
  4. Who would I be without the thought? – I might be a fully healed individual if I didn’t have the fear of not fully recovering. You have probably heard the saying “what we resist, persists.” If I am resisting getting better by focusing on my fear, I will be captive in its grip and that thought of not getting better will become real. So it seems that if I don’t allow myself to fall under the fear’s spell, I would be free of its mind games. And if my mind isn’t chattering fearful thoughts, then perhaps there is room for loving thoughts of acceptance instead. Does that make sense?

And there is something magical that happens when you can move past the fears that a situation may have evoked in you, and come upon the placid waters of compassion and acceptance of the realities of your life. By having compassion for your predicament, you allow your issues and crises to yield naturally to change. You begin to see the richness of your experience, and the wisdom that it has endowed you with. Perhaps you begin to feel as I do, that your trauma was a gift from the heavens for what you have learned from it. You feel “transformed,” as you have gained a greater awareness of what is really important in life. You begin to purge negative energies that may have kept you living under a cloud of doubt, fear and anxiety. That doesn’t mean you won’t encounter crises anymore. It means that you will know how to deal with them in a much more conscious way.

So, returning again to the question “Can you love and accept yourself just as you are at this very moment?”, what would your answer be? I will tell you that it has taken me a long time and a lot of hard work to accept myself as I am right now (and I still have bouts of doubt), but the journey of self-awareness that I have been on (trying to recover from my stroke) and continue to move through has been well worth the effort. Will I gain full physical function again? I have great hope and faith that I will, and my Tarot readings about my condition always point to great things! And I really believe that the Power that created my body will heal my body! So with that kind of conviction, anything is possible! But I will accept myself right now as I am, knowing that everything is divinely orchestrated.

Please comment below, as I would love to hear how you answered the question. And if you would like to enter a dialogue about some mental stress or anxiety that you are feeling, I would love to help you get through it to the best of my ability. Click here  to contact me if you would like a FREE 15-minute consultation to see if there is a connection between us and to see if I can be of assistance.

Also, as you might know if you have been reading my posts, Tarot has become very significant in my life. It has played a big part in my journey of self-awareness, providing me with guidance and suggestions on how I need to navigate through the waters of my psyche, maneuvering around the craggy rocks of my unconscious. It has given me answers to life questions in all aspects of my life – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It has helped me develop my intuition as the sacred feminine within me continues to blossom. Bottom line…Tarot has become my guiding principle in my life. And I would like to give you the opportunity to experience what Tarot can do for you. Once a month, I will be giving away a FREE one-question reading to one lucky female from my sacred feminine community. All you need to do is send me an email  and tell me what it is you would like the Tarot to give you guidance on. I will then draw from the names of those who respond and announce the winner in an email to my sacred feminine community. Then I will email the winner her reading within the week after the announcement. I hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity.

One final note…I was on a very dear friend’s radio program this week. Lisa Kneller, of Bring Me Bliss, and I have known one another since 1967 when our fathers were colleagues in the Houston Symphony Orchestra. If you are interested in listening to my interview with Lisa, where we talk about bringing bliss into our lives in spite of challenges, click here. I feel that it was one of the best interviews I have had so far because I was able to talk about women’s issues also, not just about my stroke survival story. Helping women find their Yin Radiance is what is most near and dear to my heart. What I do find fascinating is that I developed my “Yin Radiance: Journey to Inner Balance” program before my stroke. But it took my stroke to make me go on my own journey to inner balance. And now that I am experiencing that journey myself, I feel that my work with women will be much more meaningful because it truly comes from the heart, not the mind. We can all teach something if we have some intellectual knowledge about it, but I feel that until we have experienced what we are teaching, our teachings are simply intellectual exercises without passion or spirit underlying them. What do you feel about this? Do you feel the same? Please comment below and let me know your thoughts.

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