Manda Scott

And I choose to do that because I think this is essential.

And I've had a lot of practice and huge amounts of therapy.

And I have 40 years of shamanic practice and guides that I work with on a daily basis.

So please hear me on this.

Work with the small stuff.

Don't try the big stuff unless you are 100% certain that you're not going to get into trouble.

There are people out there whose job it is to help you do this.

And as I hope you've seen, there is plenty of small stuff to work with.

And even doing this helps our systems to become more resilient.

I am saying this again and again because I want it to land with you.

And there are places where we might get stuck.

Simply looking inside is hard for some people.

Allowing feelings to be felt is hard.

If this is you, then practice it gently and practice with the good feelings as much as with the feelings that are frightening.

Practice with joy, practice with awe, practice with compassion, practice with gratitude, practice with whatever makes your heart sing before you begin to look at the things that might make your heart close over.

And then it can also be hard to make the distance so that we don't get lost in our fear.

Quite a lot of us are afraid of being afraid, or we have parts that judge our fear and tell us that we shouldn't be afraid in the first place, that being afraid is worthless or pointless, or there are much bigger things to be afraid of, so why are you afraid of the fact that you didn't feed the ponies and you're a bad person?

All of this work requires a capacity to look inside and have a sense of what's going on.

And the only way I know how to get that capacity is to do some form of meditation.

We've talked about that quite a lot on the podcast and definitely in the Accidental Gods membership.