I've been waking up since my young years, had sensitivities I didn't understand, and tried to "fit in" to a world that was trying to make me something that was unfamiliar to me. I revolted at every turn to NOT be what the world wanted me to be. My parents were asleep at the wheel, suffering themselves- German Air Force pilot officer perfectionist alcoholic dad and co-dependent pleasing military officer mom. God love them; they were born in a WWII Germany in the early 1940s. I inherited that stuff. We all inherit our ancestors' stuff....and this book shows you how to stop the perpetuation. GF: From a certain point of view, yes. Still, if I do a good deed, even in the most unselfish way, it’s because the simple fact of doing good permits me to maintain an inner state that’s much more precious to me than what I’d feel after doing evil. I know I’m not alone on this quest for my true self. I’ve talked with thousands of women who want to get out of the fog and live more awakened lives. So oblivious are we that we are living from a false sense of ourselves—fear-ridden and suppressed—that it often requires multiple awakenings for us to face up to the fact. SJ: Exactly. Let’s put aside the awakening and stay within the domain of the relative: it’s important to dream well, to dream happily. If the dream itself is corrupt, there’s not a chance in a billion that it will explode. If people corrected the way they situate themselves in relation to their reality, they’d eliminate ninety-eight percent of their “problems.” That would not be the awakening, but a harmonious dream. They would be close to the zenith of the dream and in a position to burst it.

GF: I see you then as a sensitive, curious, cultivated adolescent-And then the awakening is sprung on you, if I can put it that way. Would you be kind enough to try to describe this non-event one more time? Gilles Farcet: Let’s begin at the beginning, or at least what should be a beginning since, in fact, that experience whose praises you sing is situated outside of time. It is my understanding that even when you were a little boy, unusual inner experiences that others would not hesitate to qualify as “mystical” were common events to you. If you haven't noticed, I'm on a feminist / deconstruct the patriarchy / equal rights for all - races, genders, sexualities, etc. path. I'd call it a phase, but I don't think it will ever end. Until all of us have equal rights, we all suffer - in various forms and varying degrees. So conditioned are women to abandon any vestige of inner truth for the sake of fitting into what our parents or culture want for us that we go through life unaware such a split even exists. Sometimes we may feel a rumbling within that shows up as discontent or in flares of anger, but we downplay these as a mood or attribute them to some issue that ruffled our feathers. We bypass our inner schism unaware that it is creating deep crevices in our lives.When we give into culture’s manipulation, playing safe and playing small, the patriarchy stays in power. The antidote to culture’s suppression is a daring rebellion against silence. There is no nobility in suppressing and abnegating our voice. Such oppression doesn’t do anyone any good. It simply encourages and upholds the dominance of the patriarchy. SJ: To qualify it as such would be improper, since we are at the very center of the person! That’s exactly the paradox, the miraculous paradox. Well, let us say a nonpersonal source in the sense that the ego appropriates absolutely nothing whatsoever. GF: You say the sun rose because the sky was ready. Why was the sky, your sky, ready? For, after all, everyone doesn’t land into the awakening at sixteen . . . Can you imagine how this awareness of a potential threat shapes our psyche? Whether we had a father who simply raised his voice occasionally or one who indulged in mad rages, we learn to instinctively protect ourselves around the males in our lives. This takes a toll on us and fundamentally shapes how we develop.

Fear is the ruling emotion in our fogged-up state. Because we live in fear, we don’t call out the toxicity for what it is. Fear is followed by blame, topped off by shame for feeling such fears and not taking action against them. I saw this cycle of fear–blame–shame in my own life. Each time I didn’t stand up for myself out of fear, I beat myself up for days afterward. It was only when I could own my fear that I began to awaken. Copiii nu sunt marionetele noastre sau pânza pe care să ne pictăm dorințele și așteptările. Sunt propriile lor ființe, cu propriile nevoi și temperamente. Dacă aleg să se simtă plictisiți într-un parc de distracții cu adevărat amuzant, acesta este dreptul lor. Au propriile sentimente. Atât timp cât nu dăunează altcuiva, copiii noștri, și fiecare om, de altfel, au dreptul la propriile sentimente. Când ne eliberăm pe noi însene și pe ceilalți de nevoia ca ei să fie fericiți, comunicăm o acceptare intrinsecă a vieții. Ne dăm seama că e copilăresc să ne dorim doar experiențe fericite de viață. At first, our true self fights for survival. It protests loudly, so much so that we feel nauseated. As we continue to ignore it, the protesting fades until it’s a mere whimper. As the years erase all memory of its existence, the plaintive cries recede altogether. The birthplace of the ego is self-abnegation. It thrives when the inner self is ignored, denied, suppressed, and all but annihilated in favor of a force on the outside—typically the voice of others, especially our loved ones, the culture in which we are raised, or a system of beliefs that captures our imagination. I have followed Dr. Shefali's work and know she is a change-maker and very effective psychologist with her clients. I'm a 55 year-old "young" nurse practitioner embarking on new adventures into ME and life and relationships and connections. I know the value of what she produces and how living an inauthentic life damages your body, brain, and spirit.Whether we are in a toxic relationship or not, or have been physically abused or not, the fact is we are a hairsbreadth away from this possibility. Don’t be fooled into thinking you’re smarter or wiser just because you haven’t fallen prey to an aspect of our patriarchy in a direct way. It’s actually unavoidable. If you are a woman in today’s world, you have felt it in some way or other. You may not recognize these experiences for what they actually were yet, but they happened and, trust me, they had an impact. There isn’t a woman I know who has escaped the crushing weight of the patriarchy in which we live.

I understand when women are pissed off, outraged, frustrated. They have suppressed their feelings for so long that it makes sense when they bubble over and feel the need to scream, No more! Such women are often labeled irrational, emotional, and off the rails. They are likely to be socially ostracized. Scared that this might happen to us, we tend to avoid becoming so bold. Little do we realize that becoming a bold woman is our path to salvation. She often refers to nature and claims things to be a certain way and that's it. That's the only 'truth' and the sooner we accept this 'truth' the 'happier' we will be. Nothing in nature is this simple, there is context, there are layers, complexities, interconnectedness... And yes, men too have layers and traumas and complexities... They are not 'just', or not 'all' hunters and neither are we women just prey. It's not just 'us' (women) against 'them' (men). Human connection (and animals too) is much more compex than that, monogamy is not just imposed by society or a human invention, it also occurs in many other animal species. GF: Isn’t the first step, then, the most urgent, to become normal, to eradicate in oneself the functions that corrupt the dream? It took me years into my journey to accept how much I had allowed my own worth and voice to be crushed by the men around me. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I was so blind and conditioned as to allow myself to be silenced in the ways I did most of my life. I almost don’t want you to know this side of me. I want you to project an aura of perfection, wisdom, and power onto me. Yet I also know that it’s only when I lay bare the honest truth about my own awakening process that you may be able to begin yours.

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Primero sólo pensé que este libro era cero "radical awakening". Luego por los ejemplos que usa pensé que para personas recién iniciándose podría ser útil, particularmente para madres... ¡Pero cuando me salen con esto...! POR FAVOR HUYAN DE AQUÍ. Esto es una visión patriarcal y triste de la sexualidad femenina que sólo puede servir para condonar a abusadores.