Recently, I gave a brief presentation at the Women of Santa Fe Networking Group about my work as a Traditional Ka Ta See Counselor. Here it is.
In one of my Ka Ta See workshops there was a woman in her 70s. During the discussion time after the morning ceremonies she talked about how her experience of the ceremonies gave her a way to forgive herself for giving one of her children up for adoption at birth.
At the time she felt it was in the best interest of her child’s future. Since then, she continued, she had carried a sense of failure and grief deep inside.
Her love for her child was so present in her voice and the shift in her countenance from the forgiveness she found in the ceremonies was beautiful and moving.
As I work with people in individual counseling sessions or in group settings I provide ceremonies and spiritual practices that allow people opportunities to choose to experience themselves differently.
Here’s an example of my own journey of healing through the Ka Ta Se teachings.
Jumping to conclusions and holding expectations used to be something I did a lot.
I did it oh so well.
For instance, one day I was waiting for a friend of mine at a restaurant who was late, as he often was. While I was waiting I practiced all the ways I would let him know how disrespectful he was of me and my time. I practiced saying these things in subtle ways that I hoped would make him feel bad. The more I rehearsed and practiced making him wrong the more I believed the lies I was making up about his motive and intentions that day. And so the more I felt I had the right to let him know how wrong he was.
I had been so caught up in my story that I even forgot to create fears about the possibility of his being in a car accident or that he was really sick and forgot to call.
As it turned out, this time, he had a legitimate excuse. I had been so ready to wait for the perfect moment to correct him. My level of energy dropped in the effort to listen to or stop these thoughts and emotions I had rehearsed with such sureness about being right. I could feel that I was still looking for a chance to make him wrong. It interfered with my contributions to our conversation. I lost the opportunity that day to experience fully the joy of our friendship.
What I know now from the Ka Ta See teachings is that every thought, word, emotion, belief that we carry inside of us is constantly being broadcast out into the world.
And when I’m thinking of a specific person or place, those thoughtforms – the energies and information carried in our thoughts emotions and beliefs engage with the targeted person at least subconsciously. Sometimes this information even reaches a person’s conscious mind. Either way it has an impact on their lives.
I know now from experience that it is much more powerful to hold and therefore send images or thoughts, in this instance, of our friendship and what I appreciated about him. Or images of his being safe in traffic and grounded in his passions.
I could have spent my time paving the way for deeper communication between the two of us or simply engaging in things that gave me pleasure.
Each moment we get to choose how we spend our time and attention – our most precious possessions.
In The Ka Ta See tradition, the most effective way to do this is to train ourselves to feel the passion for living at any time.
This is a beautiful skill to develop. It gives us the ability to use our time and attention toward more easeful relationships, and more fun attainment of our hopes and dreams and to help contribute to social foundations that create kindness for all.
Its so much more powerful than holding in our hearts and minds images and pictures of judgments or fears.
At this time in my life I wasn’t able to stand back and see the way that we’ve learned in our culture to make up scenarios about situations or interactions and jump into them and live them in our mind as the truth and sometimes play them out in the presence of others.
But we do throw the scripts that we hold in our minds energetically to others sending thoughts and emotions into their field without their permission.
Wars often hold this kind of energy.
When we are sure that someone is doing something “wrong” often the problem is that we have been holding up pictures to them with instructions about how we think they should feel, think and act – we hold expectations.
And they are not paying attention!!
Its a way of pretending we are in control of the other person or the situation.
A combination of the clarity in the Ka Ta See teachings and learning the skills of unconditional love helped me discover that it was my blind belief about being powerless – that drove my desire to hold expectations and jump to conclusions.
Powerlessness here meaning that I believed I was incapable of learning to choose where to place my attention and incapable of choosing to live from my passion for living – my Song as the Ka Ta See people say.
We humans are capable of these things.
In the traditional Ka Ta See Counseling that I provide, I help people learn to turn to their passion for living at will and to choose their contributions to each moment.
I just mentioned two concepts that I want to say more about, blind beliefs and the skills of unconditional love.
Blind beliefs are beliefs that we’ve never explored to see if they are true, accurate or beneficial for ourselves, others or the world around us.
They are often subconscious but can also be beliefs that we are aware of. They are the root cause of repetitive patterns.
In Ka Ta See, learning to live by unconditional love is a skill. One Ka Ta See understanding of unconditional love is referred to affectionately as the NO NOs. The word “NO” often brings to mind limitations or constriction. But learning to live by these NO NOs provides clarity, freedom and the ability to see possibilities.
Here they are: No judgments, no expectations, no jumping to conclusions, no assumptions, no unworthiness, no arrogance, no blind beliefs. Read more about the NO NOs in my free online class.
To gain access to the free online class, scroll up the right hand column of this page andcomplete the form.
In the Traditional Ka Ta See Counseling that I do I support people on their path to living by these NO NOs.
My learning the skills of unconditional love and having the knowing and experiences of the steadfast and beautiful understanding of self from the Ka Ta Se teachings has been my path for repairing my relationships to myself and others and creating so much newness in my life.
The word Song is the Ka Ta See reference to our truth, our totality, our identity. The experience of their identity is full of happiness, peace, clarity, fun, and the knowing of their vastness.
In the Traditional Ka T See Counseling that I offer I teach people skills that help them distinguish their truth from cultural trainings and to live from their truth.
At the end of the online class there is a Song Meditation. It’s best to listen to this after participating in the class. You’ll gain a deeper and fuller understating of Song.
Here are my commitments to my students and counseling clients:
1) to provide a dependable safe place full of permission to explore the depths of who and what you are and the exquisiteness of what’s possible and doable.
2) to help you find the gifts of the Ka Ta See practices and ceremonies for your daily life and for the dreams you hold deeply.
3) to teach you skills that will deepen your closeness and ease with yourself and others.
4) to guide you to the powerful and effective Ka Ta See ways of building relational foundations that birth kindness for all.
Free 30-minute online introduction to these extraordinary teachings
To gain access to the free online class, scroll up the right hand column of this page and complete the form.
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Barb Culbertson
Traditional Ka Ta See
Counseling, Teaching and Healing
919.452.8490
culb1951@gmail.com