Self Love 6: Use Self Love to Heal and Grow: Colt & Stransky

Episode 52: The team of Colt and Stransky investigate the meaning of the fifth key in the book Ani Colt authored: Self Love as Spiritual Practice, 9 Keys to Loving Yourself. 
At about 26 minutes in, Ani talks about “Spiritual v Religious”. There is a recent article printed in VOX about a poll to try and get a handle on this issue.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/11/10/16630178/study-spiritual-but-not-religious

Here is an excerpt from that article: 

“Yet, each of the people I spoke to agree that spirituality, in some sense, is beneficial to them, even if they see that spirituality as opposed to organized religion. Their anecdotal evidence bears out another element of the PRRI study: Spiritual people are, generally, happier, than nonspiritual people. According to the study, 61 percent of spiritual but not religious people and 70 percent of spiritual and religious people reported being “very” or “completely” satisfied with their life, compared to just 53 percent of those who were religious but not spiritual, and 47 percent of those who were neither.”

Transcript

Episode 51: Self Love 6:
Use Self Love to Heal and Grow:
Colt & Stransky

Introduction

Ani Colt  0:06 
Welcome to our Growing Old(er)! podcasts. Here we look to share some of the growth and getting older, share some of people's special experiences and showcase the amazing lives and life process of people of many ages. Especially us older folks. Let's get the best out of our elder years and share our wisdom. I'm Ani Colt, a woman who has gone through many life changes and transitions. Transitions are a real time for soul searching and for growth. My partner, Preston Tyree, also known as Ty, is also hosting these podcasts. We may do some together. Ty and I were married in August of 2017, and are working to create change and healthier lives in the spirit of We Are All ONE! WAAO!. Now let's get started with our next conversation.

Conversation

Ani Colt 1:06
Truda Happy New Year,

Truda Stransky  1:16 
Happy New Year to you.

Ani Colt  1:19 
It's exciting to start the new year. Today's the second, following up with the series we started on self love as spiritual practice.

Truda Stransky  1:32 
I agree. It's a new year, it's a new opportunity.

Ani Colt  1:38 
So for those who possibly are listening to, this as the first podcast in our series. Truda, why don't you tell us your point of view, you know where you're coming from in these conversations we have?

Truda Stransky  1:56 
Well, I don't have your spiritual background. And so my point of view is much more associated with My professional background, which, as a practicing analyst. I enjoyed learning about this because it's all about the internal life. And that is where the majority of my work occurs as people's internal life. And their spirituality is internal. It's not external. So I see it as a really good fit. And hopefully they can enhance each other and help people. So we'll find out I guess.

Ani Colt  2:38 
And you're a Jungian right?

Truda Stransky  2:42 
Yes, I am a Jungian.

Ani Colt  2:45 
Yes, so it was really terrific in our last podcast which was with the fourth key Accept Yourself and Your Feelings. The paragraph in self love and spiritual practice, which is a book that I co authored with spirit that's hard to explain except you know, used to hear a lot I used to hear these messages and write them down word by word. But in the part of the book where I, I do commentary, it starts a Carl Jung said “the most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” Now, we're going to turn to the next key. And it's titled use self love to heal and grow. I heard myself talking about this with my husband and co-host for our podcast, Preston “Ty” Tyree about healing and growing in a podcast we did yesterday. And I'm looking forward to listening to it again. But I before I dive into some of the things I've said, how do you relate to healing and growing and how they are intertwined from your, your work?

Truda Stransky  4:19 
Well, people come into psychotherapy, usually because they have something they wish to heal something internal. And there's a differentiation between people who want a cessation of a symptom they find uncomfortable, or do they really want something transformative do they want to embark upon a different path, a healing path, and that incorporates a lot more internal kind of work. It's not my job to tell them what they should do. That's their job to figure out what's right for them. So whatever it is that they select that they want to do, you know, if they're feeling sad or distressed about a something or another, we take a look at that something or another and try to figure it out. But if they really look back and believe that they have some kind of faulty paradigm, from whence they generate every path they take every selection they make, and they would prefer something different. That is a different level of work. And I see that is more of the growth, part of healing and growing. And I think healing is a lifelong process. People don't just heal instantly, particularly from emotional or spiritual trauma or wounds. This is our lifetime.

Ani Colt  6:00 
It is it occurred to me in preparation for this in my thought process, that in my mid 60s, I was I was bartending, I mean, I was a barista at at Starbucks, it was an amazing experience I had. Being a barista with just recent high school graduates. But anyway, during during this time, I ended up having to take six months off, because I hurt my back and I let it get too bad. And it was just terrible. And I had a wonderful doctor at the time who taught yoga. So he was a little bit un-traditional. And one of the things he said to me is the body is designed to heal. And I, I state that and follow it up with a question. Is the mind is the spirit designed to heal? Are the emotions designed to heal? And what does it take to heal them? What does it take? Is it that it takes something external? Does it take something internal? Does a form of spirituality that includes love? Does that help? All these things? You know, on? Really, if we're designed to heal, and we're certainly designed to grow?

Truda Stransky
Yes, I agree with that.

Ani Colt
You know, it's like, if you're not growing, you're dying. It's like plants have life cycles. And, and, and all that. And, and as Ty likes to say 40% of our DNA is the same as trees.

Truda Stransky  8:09 
That's a happy thought. I have a lot of respect for trees. Yeah, I feel better about us now.

Ani Colt
It is a happy thought.

Turda Stransky
Yes,

Ani Colt  8:23 
It is a happy a thought.
I've had a love affair with trees as long as I can remember, and I understand it better now. And trees have a process of growth and dark, more dormant times. And they have a lot that goes on that we can't see particularly underground, I particularly think of when I lived up North and the ground needed to get cold enough. So some of the things happened underground that was were for trees from that climate and of course climate changes really are making nature have to adapt. So there are seasons for healing and their reasons for healing. And certainly, I guess I buy into if you're not growing, you're dying.

Truda Stransky  9:20 
I would agree. I that interesting metaphor of a tree Jung. Certainly utilize that and the roots in the ground. He sort of postulated this shadowy kind of self. And that which is emerges in the light is sort of not your shadow self. That's more of an authentic self and you want to integrate a lot of that. I think I think the idea of self love can be very healing because what impedes healing is self discipline. Like, self disrespect,

Ani Colt  10:04 
self distrust.

Truda Stransky  10:07 
Correct. And and I think growth occurs from healing. You know, if you never go to anything that's challenging for you really have to dig, very sort of deep inside yourself and figure out what are my internal resources? What are my strengths? What can I bring to bear on what has happened to me at this moment. That's growth. Whereas if you've never had to do that, you stay at a same place. And so all of these challenges that we have right now, the pandemic, and climate change, these are all opportunities for real growth. We just can't stay still, we have to go inward and figure out what can I bring to bear that could be healing, what could I personally do

Ani Colt  11:11 
So in some ways, the book self love as spiritual practice comes from an energy model. And that's something that I am looking forward to teasing out amongst all the messages in this book, cuz I haven't, I haven't coalesced, kind of the various messages of We Are All ONE! and everything is love. And God is love and you are love and, and however, as we understand quantum physics, now, if the science and some of the concepts that come through this book, I think they're going to coalesce. So in healings, there are many, many people who talk about feelings, or thoughts, and how they affect our health. And Deepak Chopra is very big on it. And you and I are both familiar with Louise Hay who talks about emotions and health. And I loved it when you said you referred to her, when you're going through something recently,

Truda Stransky  12:40 
correct. I had an upper respiratory virus. And it was very clear to me it she was right. My life was out of balance, I was doing much too much work. And I needed to rest. And I needed to pay better attention to that in my life. You know, I differentiate thoughts and feelings and thoughts.  mean, we we've all made ourselves anxious through our thoughts. That's pretty routine, human experience. We all do that. I think feelings. For me, I believe they come from our unconscious, we just have to let them flow and accept that something about them might have meaning for a second or two. But we're doesn't mean we have to land on them forever. There's something about the movement and flow of feelings that I think has some potential for healing. I don't know as a spiritual person like yourself, if that's consistent with things that you've worked on.

Ani Colt  14:03 
I'd say sometimes I'm much more able to approach things through the lens of love and energy. When I'm thinking about how I'm handling my challenges, not to speak of diet and exercise and fresh air, however, as important as diet of what we eat, what we drink, fresh air, sunshine, some of these good air is as much as they are, there is another side and that is a much more internal and we might say spiritual process. So, I'm going to read a poem called dis-ease And it's about using self love to heal at the core.

Dis-Ease

When you are at dis-ease
How can your body not respond?
The ill content you feel,
A strong state of state of mind?
Enmeshed with hard feelings.
Naturally your body responds.
What would you do to heal?
How would you heal
Superficially, or to the core?

To heal the depths
Of your discontent?
The Ages of your pain,
Known from years and lives past
Means embracing the illness.
Go into its very core,
Embrace it with
All the love you can muster,
Then love it even more.
In so doing, you're deepening
Your self love with a compassion,
I would have you have always.

These worldly pains you carry
Come from life's infections
With the misconceptions
Of life's worth, and my love
For you, My children?

Could I shield you from
All life's worlds misperceptions?
Would I stop you dead
In your tracks? No.

This freewill planet
You think of his home
Is a blessing with a shadow.
Just as clouds block the sun and
The earth shadows the moon
There is one shadowless light
That is the flood of my love
For you. Each and every
One yet personalized to you.

As you flood your illness
With self love, know, I AM too
Loving you in this moment
To usher in the healing
You desire. So desire deep
Complete healing, total all
Now and always

Bless the illness even as you
Send love to heal the core
Core healthing requires nothing more,
Nothing less than all the love.
All the love you are I AM

Take the time,
Create the space
To heal at the core,
You are worth it.
You have MY love,
Receive it fully
And it will speed the way

I tend to still be blown away when I read these messages, because there's so many levels of them. And there's an approach that's different then you come from somewhere else.

Truda Stransky  18:25 
Yes this to heal the depths of your discontent. I think Shakespeare was spiritual because he spoke about the eve of discontent and what it does to humanity. And so I think through the ages of mankind, people have been in touch with what discontent is dis-ease, a lack of balance what it means and then what it means to heal that and to grow. You know, I think it's easy to always think that something that you experience emotionally can only be fixed through a process like psychotherapy, I don't believe that at all. I don't I think people come up with all kinds of ways. And I think spiritual practice meditation practice

Ani Colt  19:34 
so getting back to what my doctor said and this is is, uh, you know, we do have the inner or, you were what's the word you used

Truda Stransky  19:50 
Internal

Internal

Ani Colt  19:53 
Internal life, all these that are aspects of the whole

Truda Stransky
correct

Ani Colt
aspects of the whole, how we're thinking subconsciously affects our breathing in our our blood flow and in all these things that the way it shows up.
The energy of love or knew when I imagine or and or experience the energy of love is is healing

Truda Stransky  20:40 
I would agree,

Ani Colt  20:42 
it's healing and it's growing and going back to a tree. It's like the tree needs the light and the breath and so forth. And babies we know do not flourish without loving and loving touch,

Truda Stransky  20:58 
correct? I yeah, I, I think I think being ill inspires so much anxiety for people. And I, myself, I experienced that, when will I get better? Why do I feel these symptoms? How will I in a start feeling better and generates impatience and fear and none of which is terribly helpful in this process, so that kind of acceptance and just loving yourself for that exact moment, the space where you are.

Ani Colt  21:48 
Yeah, so, this is not a definitive conversation am I going to read the the other message in a poem,

As you heal, so shall you grow. 


And as you heal,
So shall you grow?
Are the healing process is thus
As you heal, you come back to
That which was your natural state.

So as you heal, think of yourself
As healed. Bless the process.
See yourself as whole, rich
And filled with the joy of full health.
See yourself as filled with love,
My love for you. Your love for Me,
Your love for you. And yes,
My love for Me.
For My love is for all
We are all One.  And this love
Is All and All encompassing.

I would have you heal
As I would have you grow
Into the full love you are
Out of the misperceptions,
And complications
That hurt your mind first,
Then body and spirit.
In that feelings too are so involved
In healing and in illness
And dis-ease, injury and death.

Know your feelings.
Feel your feelings as your strength,
All your feelings.
I repeat, All let All
Flow and flourish.
Share them with me as an offering.
As you do feel joy
As an underscore
To less than joyous feelings.
Feel the joy of Our love.
Know, I receive your offering
Of hope and trust in me.

Then, then my dear Children,
My oneness my beloved offspring,
Then allow yourself to heal.

Say, “I allow this healing
I put nothing in its way.
I joy in this healing and offer it
up to Godd the Divine, the One
See yourself as healed and whole.
I do.
Give thanks. I do.

I love you

Truda Stransky  24:30 
I like that the poem referenced a natural state of being which is a state of balance and wellness and health. And I think that it's easy to lose sight of that.

Ani Colt  24:51 
You know, no, I think it talks about feelings in a way that's very important. Know your feelings, feel your feelings is your strength, all your feelings, and we don’t, we like certain feelings and not others.

Truda Stransky  25:11 
Correct. And when you fight with your own feelings, then you have conflict, and you have an out of balance experience. And, you know, we've touched on that before these inner conflicts, lead people to make all kinds of choices and paths, that they may not ultimately be in their best interest. Or what they truly want.

Ani Colt  25:48 
As you know, and some of you listening may know, I published this book 10 years ago, and I had the most of the material in the book for at least 10 years before that. So I have been with someone who has this guidance, and I can tell you, you know, if I were to give myself a grade, I probably wouldn't be much better than a C, you know, in doing this, sometimes better than others

Truda Stransky
correct.

Ani Colt
And, and it we really are extremely complicated creatures, we're human beings. And something is way off in our human beingness that we are destroying our air and our water and two things the body can't live without our air and water.
And the ingredient of love, and a sense of love and belonging in oneness, is it you might call it spiritual, dynamic. And statistically, many, many more people claim to be spiritual, rather than religious these days. I, I think I'd have to check that for accuracy. There certainly are many, many people. And they do surveys on this, you know, how many people identify with a religion, versus how many people call themselves spiritual without any particular religious affiliation or practice? Yet I was discussing it with my friend who's in another podcast yesterday. And we were talking about what what is God? And this poem refers to the word God, and what is God? And I remember being so conflicted about what God was as a young girl. Very, very conflicted, and very conflicted through Christianity also, which was the the, I was almost a nondenominational Christian because I was in a community church. It was called Congregational, but Jesus and Easter and Christmas were a part of it, but not in the same way as we've talked about before in the Catholic Church, which Protestants and Catholics at that time in the 40s were the dominant religions in the United States. And Judaism was also fairly important Course. Now we have many, many people have many, many more religious backgrounds, because of immigration and people coming from all over the world. And so it gets down to what is God you know, is God even a positive word to use. We were discussing it yesterday. And this perspective of God that loves us unconditionally is something I remembered being said. Yet that early conditioning that didn't make God work so well for me was stronger.

Truda Stransky  30:25 
Well, there's a conflict, because although they may say, God loves you unconditionally, religions are nothing but a bunch of conditions that judge towards, any connection you may have with your higher self, or spiritual self, or creative self, or whatever people like to think of God, as it's filled with conditions, you have to do these nine things. So you don't get that

Ani Colt
10 commandments,

Truda Stransky
or, you know, do this or behave this way or believes this. That's the only way you get into heaven or you get, you know, the benevolence of God. And it doesn't seem to fit very well with unconditional love.

Ani Colt  31:18 
So judgment. I remember at one time when, you know, in this spiritual path of mine, that I received a message that went to the fact of judge not, he shall not be judged, well, guess what you're taught about a judging God. And there's a really conflict. And sitting here with my analyst, friend, we all judge. And we can't help. I don't know what the mechanism is, but we can't help and so the spiritual guidance was to judge gently or, you know, it'd be just… Not so reactionary about it in just mellow out a little bit, the judgments going, something like that.

Truda Stransky  32:12 
It is easy to judge and, you know, biologists believe that's part of the higher primate brain, that we're able to differentiate somebody different than us, therefore, somebody must be better or worse, or higher, or lower, or smarter or dumber. That you know, that's part of the higher primate, we differentiate colors and sizes and space. So with that  jumbo cortex, we haven't quite integrated that. Maybe we need to do that a little bit less. Or maybe not in such a pejorative way. As an analyst, it's self judging. That I think is hurtful for people. And I think people feel a diseased state a state of unbalance, like, I'm no good. I did these bad things, or I'm flawed to my core.

Ani Colt  33:20 
Or my mother didn't love me so well.

Truda Stransky  33:23 
I'm unlovable.

Ani Colt  33:28 
So, yeah, it's certainly extremely complicated.
You know what, it might be nice to end with a really cool message, alright. Because this is, this is not necessarily an upper to talk about.

Truda Stransky  33:57 
That is correct.

Ani Colt  33:59 
This is a poem and it's under Use self love, in other ways, okay. And this is a poem that came through that's very appropriate for starting the new year. By the way, if you happen to listen to it in the new year, it's called

Finding Your Passion

Life is a passion
Through love
Even through pain.
What is your saying
No pain, no gain.

It is difficult at times
To unleash passion.
It hides behind pain, doubt,
Long, tiring days,
Empty nights
In bed alone
Or two too alone
In bed together.

We would have you know
Your passion
As we would have you know,
More love.

Passion comes from
No inner conflict,
In that you live with
Conflicts aplenty.
Passion’s stem is cut.
Passion’s flowers are bruised.
Passion’s roots are harnessed
In a pot too small
For the depth of passions hold.
Passion takes a peculiar twist
When harnessed and thwarted
By little space and conflicts enter.
But passion does not die.

Remember, you have passion,
Send love to your passion,
Even if unknown and unnamed.
Feed your passion with this love.
Imagine the passion unleashed.

Know your passion will be
Of more life, light, love,
Letting loose, lifting from
The harness of your strife.
This simple act of loving
Yourself in this added way,
Will nurture your passion,
Strengthen your love,
Help untangle the conflicts
Open the way to a life
With more passion.

Truda Stransky  36:14 
In this way, you were describing passion as a type of vitality, a life force.

Ani Colt  36:19 
Yes. Or it describes, the poem describes as passion that like I guess that's an interesting thing. Because passion probably means different things to different people.
I think it does.
And I'm glad you brought that up to acknowledge that. And this certainly is considering passion is a positive passion.

Truda Stransky
Correct?

Ani Colt
Not as a misguided,

Truda Stransky  36:52 
right or aggressive?

Ani Colt
Yes.

Truda Stransky
Or any of the kind of ways that yes, passion?

Ani Colt
Yes.

Truda Stransky
And yes, lead to a path that's not right for somebody.

Ani Colt  37:05 
Yes. And I'm glad that that came up in conversation. However, I want to go into this part about passions, stem is cut passions, flowers are bruised passions, roots are harnessed in the pot too small for the depth of passion whole. And it speaks of conflicts inner. And I think that that is almost a fact of life to have inner conflicts?

Truda Stransky  37:50 
I think it is, I think we take in so much data. And we run it through all of our filters and our lenses. And it gets conflicted, because there's probably 1,000 Different micro steps that are out of our perceptual range that just occur instantly. And then you take the conclusion as something solid or just or correct or right. And maybe had you stopped it, you know, along the way, you would draw a different conclusion

Ani Colt  38:40 
I get lost in thought and I didn't hear everything you said. Did you see me kind of glaze over. i It's very thoughtful. And there's another poem in here I would I want to save for another time and see how we, I can gently bring this to a final message. And where I'm going in my thought process is this whole thing. Practice. Self love as Spiritual Practice. It's a practice thing. And in in the era we're in with yes, many people living very well but and over the whole earth there is so much that is so troubling going on whether you're having a good day or not. That it really needs to be part of feeding ourselves and And it's like drinking water.

Truda Stransky  40:03 
Absolutely
I agree with that. I think that so much of our life is crisis intervention, we put out the brush fire that's in front of us. And the practice of self love, gives you some moments, to take a long view to look at the horizon. Am I leading the life that's authentic for me? Am I being my authentic self? Is my internal life, lining up with my external life. And that long view takes a quiet practice of self love, not a frantic practice, or putting out brush fires. I mean, we all have to do that, at times, a crisis happens, you have to take care of it. But you know, how we just lead our life like conflict, conflict, crisis intervention. And I see the practice as a chance to take a long view, sit quietly, because your wisdom will come through and tell you what you need. But it only happens in quiet moments. For me, that's my experience.

Ani Colt  41:20 
So let's have a shared intention to practice, practice loving ourselves. Practice connecting to our oneness

Truda Stransky  41:36 
connecting to those trees, that Ty said we share so much DNA with.

Ani Colt  41:45 
Truda thank you again.

Truda Stransky  41:47 
Thank you.

Ani Colt  41:48 
I'm so glad we're doing this together.

Truda Stransky  41:50 
It has been a fun experience to share ideas.

Ani Colt  41:56 
Well, I think there's more ahead.

Truda Stransky  41:59 
It's so fascinating when people read the exact same thing, same paragraph, or hear the exact same poem. And what it means for one person is so different than for somebody else. So I hope that people who read this derive their meaning through their lenses.

Ani Colt  42:24 
Thank you. I think that's important that it is stated today. Thank you very much for that. That's why it's so great to be the Colt & Stransky show.

Truda Stransky  42:41 
I guess you're right, okay.

Finish

Ani Colt  42:46 
That's the end of another interview about growing as we age, with the changes and declines as we each go through the years. We hope that these podcasts and then focus on growth and the perspective of growth can add your own personal journey and help you have a wiser perspective of life over the years. We hope you will listen to all our episodes and tell your friends to listen as well. Growing Old(er)! is a production of WAAO Inc, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit