When Nice Takes Over Real

E.J.Hughes Painting

When nice takes over real, we have a world that feels unsafe. Nice cannot be trusted because it is an opportunistic mechanism. It is a currency of conditioned belonging — and it runs mostly below our awareness.

It is our deep need to belong that makes us prone to sacrificing our connection to the soul’s deeper dimensions when in relationship. We have learned to sacrifice the becoming of our soul for a belonging.

We discover our place by being real. First of all with ourselves. How are we feeling? What is our body telling us? How are our thoughts influencing us — or distancing us from ourselves? Our body is our soul’s sanctuary.

We take care of our body not as a thing but as a continuation of our deeper dimensions. The body has an intelligence we have learned to disregard in our top-down orientation to life — where the mind is more respected than the body. But the body is a very ancient intelligence. It is connected to all of life.

I grew up with a deep wounding in this regard. From a very young age I was aware of my soul connection in my body. And I was confused about what I saw going on in the world around me.

I was confused watching my parents relate. What I was seeing felt like an act rather than the real. I learned that the social environment was unsafe for the real — for the truth that we are all one life. I learned to put a wall up between myself and others. I felt safe when I was alone but didn’t trust the contact.

This increased to the point where even when contact was coming from a genuine place, I could no longer receive it. I had removed myself too thoroughly from that possibility.

That is the way with defence mechanisms. Even when there might be an opportunity for real contact, the defensive wall becomes too thick. I have spent the second half of my life understanding my need to defend — to push away the very thing I am yearning for.

Intimacy with life does not exclude humanity. And so, after eight years of facilitating Silence Practice, a Merkaba symbol downloaded in a vision. I now work with that as a practice of as above so below — an inner science technology that allows the mystery to evolve within our relationships and with life itself.

The ICM — the Inner Constellation Mobile — creates conditions for the real to surface. Not by forcing it, but by creating enough safety and spaciousness that the defended self can finally rest. What emerges is not performance. It is presence. And in that presence, belonging and becoming are no longer in conflict.

Nice keeps us safe from that. Real brings us home.

Thank you for reading. Your comments are welcome. I also write twice a month on Medium in a more outward or exoteric fashion: medium.com/@lauramadsen_17353