The qualities of a Tangle
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Barbara McGavin and I are in the first day of our Treasure Maps to the Soul retreat. Let us take you with us for the beginning…
We like to start by talking about the concept of a “Tangle.” That’s an area of your life where you feel stuck, confused, at odds with yourself, sometimes frustrated and even powerless… Do you have an area of life like that?
Here are some of the qualities of a Tangle:
· It is a highly complex situation.
· There seems to be an inner struggle going on.
· You can come up with solutions but none of them work.
· There’s self-criticism and “should’s” involved.
· Frustrated, despairing, trying to be hopeful…
· Something shameful maybe, or not wanting to be looked at.
· A persistent feeling that there must be something wrong with you.
· It feels like there’s so much you don’t know, including how to change it.
· There is a deep sense of longing.
And that’s only a partial list!
If you have an area of life that feels like that, the first step is to acknowledge it. You might also want to acknowledge how it feels to have it. You might get a sense of a bit of relief, just from doing that.
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A Tangle is an area of life where it tends to be hard to be Self-in-Presence. Instead, we fight, we struggle, we try to fix or
solve, we withdraw or push.
But as soon as we notice that we’re not Self-in-Presence, then we can acknowledge that… and we’re on our way back again.
We can say “I am the space in which all this can be as it is.”
We can start to feel and embody qualities of acceptance, patience, caring, and empathy… toward our own inner places.
Eventually, everyone inside us, all the aspects and parts, will have something to contribute to us. There are no enemies inside, only partial-selves trying to find their way back to life-forward energy.
