S2 EP169 – Creating Your Own Safety Net

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul and Dr. Erika Chopich here with the Inner Bonding podcast. Today, we are addressing what needs to happen for you to learn to create your own safety net – a true inner sense of safety.

(Erika) About a  year ago I suffered a near fatal hemorrhagic stroke in my brain stem. The neurologist told me that the stroke was clearly from COVID long haul and that what saved my life was my active lifestyle and my impeccable organic diet. Otherwise, I would have bled out.

During the stroke,  I was very aware of the presence of God and my mother who had passed. I remember fighting very hard to stay conscious and my mantra was “I am not going! I am not ready to leave! I have animals to look after and people to tend to and it’s simply not my time.” I could feel that I was spiraling down, and I actually could feel my soul trying to lift up. It was frightening but I’m here, and I am healing.

In the span of a single heartbeat my life was changed forever. I retained all my higher cognitive functioning but lost so much. The paralysis I experienced was on the right side of my body and to this day I have difficulty walking on my right leg and feeling much in my right hand. I have chronic headaches and balance issues, but I am here.

The year that followed has been a challenge. In this span of a heartbeat I lost all my musical abilities – playing the piano and the guitar and singing, due to my damaged hand and one paralyzed vocal cord. I have been cut off from my own creative process and my mobility. I can no longer be a chef. My exceptional ability as a horse trainer is probably down about 50% and my ability to express myself verbally is very difficult. I still have difficulty with diphthongs such as ST or TH and I’m not as articulate as I once was. Due to the partial paralysis on the right side of my tongue, I have also lost about half of my taste buds. As a chef, I was known for my creative and delicate sauces and now, I barely taste any food at all. All that I knew me to be and all that I comfortably excelled in has been taken. I had to relearn who I am. Now what?

I was acutely aware of God’s presence during my stroke and my faith told me to rely on the guidance I would need in the coming year. As I began to stitch together my new life without my old and trusted abilities, I slowly came to realize that other abilities were beginning to emerge. My ability and my desire to live my new life rested solely on my trust in God. Overtime, I have realized that my sense of pitch in music has become more acute. My intuition has grown dramatically. I am much more connected and responsive to the needs and feelings of the animals around me, especially my horses. I can literally feel their needs and their concerns and seem to be able to communicate directly with them. My understanding of love, the universe, and God has grown exponentially with no effort on my part. I feel like a blossom that has just begun to fully open.

The safety net I have knitted for myself is deeply attached to my faith, my higher self, and my connection to God. I have a profound belief that whatever remaining years I have will still be just as full, productive, and filled with laughter and love. Those years remaining will be every bit as full, even though they are quite different than what I always knew and quite different than who I knew myself to be. I am on a great journey and know in my heart that I will arrive exactly where I’m supposed to be.

(Margaret) I have marveled at Erika’s ability to reshape her life and build her safety net. Erika was an extraordinary speaker, an amazing wood carver, a beautiful singer, piano player, and guitar player, and she lost all of that. She had to relearn to drive. Typing is very difficult for her now because of the numbness in her right hand. She had extraordinary knife skills as a chef that are now gone.

I watched Erika go through the grief – sometimes crying, sometimes angry, but most often using her humor and lightness of being. She has had and continues to have much grief while stitching her safety net, but her ability to use her humor and lightness of being to heal has been extraordinary and inspiring to observe. She knows that humor and laughter and joy are expressions of the presence of God, and she doesn’t let that go.

Erika makes sure the barn is a healing place, by being there for others in the barn and with other people in her life. She also has new and creative ways of working on our ranch.

Erika has become highly creative with Inner Bonding. Her inner child brings in the lightness of being and maintains her lightness of being and laughter, while her loving adult creates purpose and meaning for her, and her higher self maintains her direct connection to God.

I see her loving adult stitching her safety net each day as she connects with her guidance and opens to latent abilities that might never have been developed had she not had the stroke. She looks at the silver lining in every cloud.

I have always considered Erika to be a miracle in the way she had healed and continues to heal from her deeply abusive and traumatic childhood, and I again see the miracle she is in how she is healing from the stroke. She is truly a role model for all of us.

Here is a brief story about another person creating a safety net.

I was returning from teaching a workshop on the East Coast, and the plane was bouncing hard as we started our descent into Denver. I’d flown in and out of Denver airport many times due to my workshop schedule, and It was always bumpy.

The woman sitting next to me was gripping the armrests and shaking, scared to death. I turned to her and asked her if she would like some help. She nodded.

“Don’t worry, nothing bad is going to happen. We’re safe,” I said.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“If you were to move out of what your mind is telling you that is scaring you, and open to a source of truth, you would know, too. Your mind, which is devoted to trying to control things, is freaking out due to feeling so out of control. It’s this feeling of being out of control that is scaring you. And, of course, you have no control over the plane or over the pilot. But if you tune into your higher source of truth, which is not your mind, you will know that we are safe.

“Imagine that your mind is like your personal computer, which only contains what has been programmed into it. Imagine that the source of truth is like the Internet – a vast network of information that you can easily access. Imagine the source of truth as a beautiful light filled with all the wisdom of the universe. Open to learning with this source of truth and ask, ‘Are we safe?’ Try it and see what happens. Just focus your whole being on wanting to know the truth.”

The woman was terrified enough to try it, even though I’m pretty sure she thought I was crazy.

She closed her eyes and focused on the question, “Are we safe?” A moment later she opened her eyes, clearly surprised.

“I heard in my mind, ‘You are safe.’ Did I just make that up?”

“How do you feel if you decide to believe it?”

“Much better! I’m not feeling so scared!”

“That’s because our emotions are an accurate guide of whether or not we are telling ourselves the truth. Our emotions are a great gift from our source. We will always feel badly when we are telling ourselves a lie, and we will feel happy and peaceful when we are operating from truth. You were terrified because you were telling yourself a lie, and now you are fine because you are telling yourself the truth. Whether you believe this is coming from within you or from without is not important. What is important is to know that you can access the truth. I always ask this question before I fly, so that I know the whole time that I am safe, bumps and all.” 

The woman had a big smile on her face the rest of the way down, even though we were still bouncing around. She had created her safety net by opening to her source of truth.

Fear, whether of flying or of anything else – other than the fear of real and present danger such as encountering a dangerous person – is always the result of what you are telling yourself. Your fear is letting you know that you are off base in your thinking. If you cover up your fear with an addiction such as drinking as a way to get past the fear, then you never deal with the lie you are telling yourself that is causing the fear.

The wounded part of us often scares us when we are out of control of something. This part of us, our lower left-brain ego mind, thinks it can know the truth about things. But our ego wounded self is programmed with many false beliefs that cause much fear.

Truth is not something we can access from our limited lower left-brain mind – it is something we need to open to.

The thoughts of our ego mind will never make us feel safe and will certainly not give us the control we seek. True safety lies in opening to spirit and being guided by truth. The paradox is that in releasing control to spirit, we gain the sense of control that comes from operating from the truth.

The ego wounded mind thinks it can create safety with some form of control. Yet true safety comes from being connected with the source of truth. You can develop your ability to tap into this truth through your Inner Bonding practice.

As small children we all created our wounded self to try to feel safe in an unsafe environment. Our wounded self found many different ways to try to feel safe. And these protections worked to a certain extent. For example, you might have learned to eat when you were scared, lonely, or heartbroken, and eating a lot or eating sweets may have protected you from the intensity of these feelings. Perhaps becoming a good boy or girl and caretaking others protected you from some anger or violence. Most of us became very attached to our various forms of controlling our own feelings and attempting to control others and outcomes.

Now, our wounded self is still convinced that protecting and controlling is the best way to keep us safe. But does over-eating or drinking or taking drugs or being overweight really protect you, or it is causing health problems? Does giving yourself up and caretaking others really protect you from others’ anger or are others now treating you with the same disrespect that you are treating yourself?

Our wounded self does not want to accept that what may have worked to a certain extent as a child, is now causing a lot of pain. It is now our own wounded self that is often making us feel unsafe. Using alcohol, drugs, food, sex, anger, compliance, and judgment, and staying in our heads and closing our hearts, are all ways of trying to control our own feelings and the behaviors of others, but they are all forms of self-abandonment that make us feel very unsafe.

So how can you feel safe? When your intent is to love yourself and others, and you love yourself enough to put clean high vibrancy food into your body, you will be able to open to the constant information that is always coming from your guidance regarding your highest good. Whereas your wounded self cannot possibly know in advance something like not getting on a particular plane, your guidance does know, and will communicate the information to you when you are open to it. Your wounded self cannot guide you in how to heal from the grief and losses of a stroke, but your higher guidance can.

While the wounded self would love to have control over getting this information, it is the very choice to try to control that lowers your frequency and makes it impossible to access the information regarding your safety that is here for you.

You cannot access the information you need to feel save while being devoted to control, because you can’t be devoted to control and to love in the same moment.

The moment you choose to love and to learn about what is in your highest good, and your body is in a high frequency due to eating clean healthy foods, your frequency goes high enough to access the information you need regarding your safety. I know this to be 100% true as it has happened over and over in my life.

So be honest with yourself about which is really safer – trying to control people and things that you can’t control, or opening to physically and emotionally loving yourself? Which is safer – numbing your feelings with substance and process addictions, or staying open to your feelings, your inner guidance system that is one way spirit communicates with you? What if your guidance is trying to let you know that something is dangerous and you are too numbed out from food, drugs, alcohol, TV, or staying in your head to feel the feelings that would alert you to danger? What if your addictions are numbing you to the messages that spirit is sending you through your feelings? Is this really a safe way to live?

Do you really want to go on listening to your programmed and ignorant wounded self regarding your safety? Do you really believe that your wounded self knows more about keeping you safe than your guidance, who has access to all the information in the universe?

When you make the decision that loving yourself and sharing your love with others is your highest priority, and you learn to listen to your guidance and take loving action on your own behalf, you will discover that you feel far safer than with your wounded self in charge.

A few years ago, I read a wonderful book, ‘One Mind,’ by one of my favorite authors, Dr. Larry Dossey. I was fascinated by this book because Dr. Dossey offers so many examples of God – or what he calls the One Mind – from both ancient times to current, according to the experiences of many different people. From the beginning, this book totally captivated me. One of the topics he covered is how we each are able to receive the exact information we need. The One Mind, he states, is not an undifferentiated blob. If we had the capacity to tap into all the information there is, all at once, there would chaos. Instead, the One Mind brings us exactly what we need. In my experience, we get exactly the information we need through our own guidance, whatever that is for you, as long as you are open to learning about love and truth and you are eating clean food, which puts you into a high energetic frequency and a receptive state. It is in this state that we can receive the information from the universe that we need. 

Have you ever had an experience of receiving information in this way?

• Have you had dreams that offered you important information?

One woman in One Mind dreamed that she had breast cancer. Nothing showed up on her mammogram or in examination, but she insisted on a biopsy. The results came back cancer. The surgeon told the referring doctor that the lump was the smallest he had ever seen and asked how the doctor discovered it. “I didn’t,” he said. “She did. In a dream.”

• Have you had a strong feeling about something that you just had to follow through on?

One woman in the book drove the same way home every day, but one day she had a powerful compulsion to go another way – even though it was the long way home. She found out on the radio that the bridge she would have been on had collapsed and many people were killed or injured.

I will never forget the time I was driving home at night after returning from teaching a workshop on the East Coast. I heard a loud voice that told me to slow down. I did and seconds later a drunk driver careened in front of me, missing me by inches. If I hadn’t listened to my guidance, I would have been broadsided and perhaps killed.

Another time I will never forget occurred in 2001 after I sold my L.A. home that I had lived and worked in for 31 years. A week after it was sold, I received guidance to get everything out of the house at least one week before escrow closed. I listened, and the day after I got everything out, construction workers inadvertently burned down my house. I’m so glad I listened!

Now I listen to every little thing my guidance tells me!

• Has someone you haven’t seen in a while popped into your mind and then soon after they called you?
   
• Did you ever have the intuitive experience of suddenly knowing that someone close to you was in a car accident or very ill?

In the book a woman suddenly felt that her son, who was thousands of miles away, was hurt, and a series of numbers came into her mind. She dialed the numbers, and it was the emergency room where her son was being treated after being in a car accident. The doctor told her that her son was badly hurt but that he would be okay.

These are all examples of the One Mind – of the information that our guidance brings us when we are open to learning. While our wounded self believes it keeps us safe by staying in our head, figuring things out, and trying to control things, the real safety lies in staying open with our spiritual guidance.

We live in a scary world, and it’s getting scarier with all the mass killings and the weather problems with climate change.

While we have to accept that we cannot control the external world, when you have practiced Inner Bonding long enough to have developed a strong connection with your personal spiritual guidance, you will discover that your guidance is always looking out for you. Your Guidance WANTS you to feel safe and to be safe and, as you can see from the previous examples, will let you know AHEAD OF TIME when there is something you need to avoid or something you need to do to be safe.

You are never alone. Your guidance is ALWAYS here looking out for you. But if you are focused in your lower left brain – in your programmed wounded self – you will not hear the voice of your guidance, or be aware of the feelings or images from your guidance that are informing you.

To receive information from your guidance, you need to be focused in your upper right brain, which is open to receiving information from both your inner guidance – your feelings – and your higher guidance – the thoughts and images that come THROUGH your mind.

Consistently practicing Inner Bonding throughout a day helps you learn to stay in your “right mind”. As soon as you move out of the intent to control and into the intent to learn, you move into your upper right brain. It is your intent that moves you out of your wounded self and into your loving adult.

Staying focused as a loving adult is the challenge. The Bible urges us to “pray without ceasing.” What this means to me is to practice staying present in this moment with gratitude, compassion, and an intent to learn, rather than wandering off into our programmed thinking. Being present in this moment with gratitude, compassion, and the intent to learn keeps us open to guidance – open to spirit, open to the love, comfort, wisdom, and truth that is God.

There are other choices that can also help move us into our open, learning state. Music, singing, being in nature, doing something creative, prayer and meditation, and being caring and giving with another – all these move us into our loving adult. For some, physical exercise moves them out of their wounded self and into their loving adult. We each need to learn what moves us out of our programmed lower left brain and into our upper receptive right brain. But even if you do all these things, if you have not consciously chosen the intent to learn and are not keeping your body at a high frequency, you will not be aware of receiving information from your guidance. It is your intent to learn – your desire to physically and emotionally love yourself and to share your love with others – that enables you to receive information from guidance. This is what creates the sense of safety that we all seek.

One of the qualities that we often find compelling in others is genuine kindness. When we meet someone who is very kind, we feel safe and valued. We feel this way because kindness is the opposite of judgment. Being judged makes us feel unsafe, so most people try hard to avoid it.

Likewise, to feel safe inside, we need to treat ourselves with deep kindness. But too often we judge ourselves to get ourselves to do things ‘right’ to attempt to control getting kindness and acceptance from others.

Take a moment to tune in to how you feel when you tell yourself that:

“You are not good enough.”

“That if you fail, you are a failure.”

“That if you make a mistake, you are unworthy.”

“That if someone doesn’t like you, you are not okay.”

The wounded self believes that self-judgment will get you to shape up, get approval, and feel safe, yet the truth is that self-judgment creates emptiness, neediness, anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, shame, low self-worth – and a lack of safety. The more you judge yourself, the more fearful you are of being judged by others.

Judging yourself is unkind to yourself – a major form of self-abandonment that creates an inner lack of feeling safe.

You might get caught in a vicious circle of desperately needing kindness and acceptance from others due to your self-judgments, and then judging yourself in an attempt to get others to be kind and accepting toward you. Then, due to feeling inadequate, anxious, unsafe, and depressed because of the self-judgment, you judge yourself once again in order to get yourself to do it right in order to get the needed kindness and acceptance from others. This cycle of inner abandonment gradually leads to more and more anxiety, depression, low self-worth, and an inner experience of not feeling safe.

One of the jobs of the loving adult is to become aware of when you are judging yourself and to move into kindness – toward both your soul essence, which is your inner child – and your wounded self, who is doing the judging. However, kindness does not mean indulging. You can kindly and gently stop your wounded self from judging yourself by consciously changing your judgmental thoughts to kind thoughts. Since your self-judgments are lies meant to control, they will always make you feel unsafe. If you stay in Step One of Inner Bonding, staying tuned into your feelings, you can know immediately when you are judging yourself. At that moment of awareness, you can go to your guidance and ask whether the judgment is the truth, and open to learning about what actually is the truth. Once you tune into the truth, you can tell it to yourself. Telling yourself the truth is kind. Judging yourself is not. There is no safety net in self-judgment – it just causes pain.

You will discover that the kinder you are to yourself in all areas of your life, the kinder you naturally are to others – and the safer you feel within yourself and with others.

Creating your safety net comes from your loving adult being open to being guided by your higher guidance and being devoted to being kind and loving to yourself and to others. The more you practice Inner Bonding, the safer you will feel.

I invite you to join me in my video course, Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom, A 30-Day at-home Experience to learn to connect with your higher guidance.

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my recent books:

• Diet for Divine Connection: Beyond Junk Foods and Junk Thoughts to At-Will Spiritual Connection

• The Inner Bonding Workbook: Six Steps to Healing Yourself and Connecting With Your Divine Guidance

• 6 Steps to Total Self-Healing: The Inner Bonding Process

• And, How to Become Strong Enough to Love: Creating Loving Relationships Through the Six-Step Pathway of Inner Bonding

And we have so much to offer you at our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.