Tag: mental-health

the wolf you feed

by nathaliedanielleLeave a Comment on the wolf you feed

There is a Cherokee legend about two wolves.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he tells the boy. ” It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil—anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good—joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thinks for a moment and then asks, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replies, “The one you feed.”

This story has resurfaced in my life repeatedly over the past few weeks, beginning with its mention in a workshop on polarity dynamics in intimate relationships. I started writing about its meaning as I integrated my profound experience in the course, but the words didn’t flow, so I set it aside. In the meantime, I traveled to a professional retreat, where I found myself surrounded by people who felt completely aligned—who inspired me and shared a mindset of curiosity, growth, and possibility. As I spent more time in this collective frequency, I became increasingly aware of synchronicities. There were so many unusual connections that I found myself sharing them aloud to prevent my mind from later dismissing them as mere coincidences. A few days into my trip, I awoke to a text from someone I hadn’t spoken to in many months. Out of the blue, he sent me a recommendation for a podcast I’d never heard of titled The One You Feed—with a picture of a wolf as the cover art. I was stunned.

Since then I’ve been reflecting more deeply on the wolf parable beyond the original context in which I heard it and its apparent connection to the notion of synchronicity. The story illustrates the ongoing battle within us—the tension between ego and our higher Self, between contraction and expansion, between fear and possibility. It reinforces the Universal law that where we place our attention determines what grows in our lives. And noticing synchronicity is all about attention. The late author and speaker Dr. Wayne Dyer emphasized that every thought carries energy that links us to something greater—a concept I was (not so coincidentally) reading about in Michael Talbot’s book The Holographic Universe the night before I received the text message with The One You Feed podcast. Talbot relays a theory that synchronicities reveal the absence of division between the physical world and our inner psychological reality, and what we are really experiencing “is the human mind operating, for a moment, in its true order and extending throughout society and nature, moving through degrees of increasing subtlety, reaching past the source of mind and matter into creativity itself.” So, when my high-frequency friend in the retreat circle, or soul brother as I lovingly call him, asked whether I thought these interconnected events were happening more often in my life or if I was simply more aware, I decided that it didn’t actually matter. I believe we are all creators of our reality. We are meaning-making machines, selecting what we focus on amid an infinite field of possibilities. And what we feed is what manifests.

At first, I saw this lesson through the lens of romantic relationships—how we show up in intimacy, and how our wounds and attachments shape our interactions. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized it extends to everything—our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with the material world. One of my favorite coaches, Peter Crone, offers that there are three fundamental “prisons” we all unconsciously live in: the first is our relationship to ourselves, where inadequacy manifests as self-doubt and imposter syndrome; the second is our relationship to the external world, where insecurity keeps us seeking validation and fearing judgment; and the third is our relationship to the material world, where scarcity convinces us we don’t have enough money, resources, or time. These distortions are the bad wolf. They keep us trapped in destructive cycles, feeding our fears, limiting our potential, and reinforcing the stories that hold us back. But when we come into right relationship, we shift. We open the field to the magic that is always available to us.

While I used to believe in coincidences, I don’t anymore. At some point in my journey, I realized that belief was rooted in the assumption that life is happening to me. But now, I see the bigger picture: when I take full responsibility, life is happening by me—through my choices—and through me, when I stop forcing or resisting and surrender. And in that state—when I trust, when I tune into the frequency of openness—I find myself aligned with something greater. The synchronicities increase. The messages arrive. The guidance becomes clear and life flows, just like the words on this page after I let the wolves inside me rest in peace.

ordinary-ish

by nathaliedanielle2 Comments on ordinary-ish

Modern psychology has propagated a theory that we all have a core soul wound – a deep emotional lesion, most often formed from a significant childhood event and the ensuing internalized pain. It leads to a principal limiting belief that subconsciously impacts our perceptions and actions towards ourselves and others. As I spent 2024 exploring some of my psyche’s darker, dustier corners, I realized that my greatest prevailing fear has been living an ordinary life. My core wound, irrespective of how it formed, led to the belief that I am not special. As a child, my mother always told me to stop comparing myself. It was a pattern I learned early, before the formation of any conscious memories (ironically, we learn these patterns from our primary caregivers, so my mom was undoubtedly speaking to herself as much as she was to me…but I digress). Despite my lack of recall when or how I fashioned this belief, the tendency to compare and judge myself as deficient relative to others became my default setting.

In my prior post I shared a recent plant medicine retreat I attended the week before Christmas in which I, predictably, compared my experience to that of my peers. The last couple of weeks, amid the flurry of the holidays, I’ve been contemplating and integrating the lessons from that trip. I came to the medicine intending to heal various maladies and anticipating a notable breakthrough, however, in her enigmatic intelligence, she gave me a “nada” (meaning nothing in Spanish). That is to say, I had no visions, no epiphanies, not even any demonic fantasies. In retrospect, however, maybe I rushed to conclusions. In a post-ceremony breathwork session towards the end of the week, I encountered just the kind of profundity I sought from Grandmother Ayahuasca. As our hour of rhythmic breathing slowed and the facilitator prompted us to hold our oxygenated inhale, I saw an explosion of beautiful geometric shapes accompanied by the sensation of floating in total bliss. Suddenly, a clear and distinct message came to my awareness: it’s all perfect. I sensed my mom’s spirit over my left shoulder, and a massive smile spread over my face as I embodied what my intuition knew to be true. When I finally exhaled, the energy was released with a flood of emotion and tears. I cried like a baby – for the light and the darkness, for the joy and the sorrow, the pleasure and the pain. I simply surrendered to it all.

My integration process has revealed that my “nothing” experience under the influence of Ayahuasca was divinely orchestrated so that I could remain utterly lucid and take responsibility for my innate power. The healing I desired indeed occurred, and it all came from me, from my unassuming breath. My sobriety offered the recognition that in my resistance to feeling ordinary, I’ve been attached to the exact things that I’ve been trying to heal. The part of me I thought I put in charge – the self-aware, willing-to-do-the-work part – was a costume worn by the part who has been fighting hard for her brokenness. This genius disguise ensured that my ego self was indeed unique and special, which kept me energetically tethered to the separation, even as I’ve taken all the “right” steps towards wholeness. As author Carolyn Elliott astutely observes in her book, Existential Kink: “Your real power, your real specialness, your actual ability to influence and help others, rests in your ever-more-deeply understanding and enjoying your “garden variety-ness.”  The word “individuate” comes from the Latin term which means “impossible to divide.” And here you thought “individual” meant “unique.” Well, it doesn’t. It means “indivisible” – but the weird thing is…the unity and the “garden variety-ness” of humanity has a distinct way that it wants to express itself through you. That distinction is your individuality.”

Now I see the divine significance of the message I received that “it is all perfect…” I’ve been perpetuating the narrative that something was wrong as evidence of my individuality, and in doing so, denying the flawless totality of just being and expressing as me. Nothing in my life needs fixing; instead, my healing is to love everything as my creation. I forgot that I am the actor in a show that I wrote, playing out an unconscious desire to live it all so that I can return to my whole, indivisible Self. Now that the veil of my own design is lifted, the big question is: what do I choose to create with this magic and how can use it for good in the world? I suppose I’ll start with basking in the joy of just being ordinary-ish.  

The Golden Eternity

It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect.

~Jack Kerouac