The words I share below were written in the Spring of 2020 and were inspired by what was happening around that time while also working on a painting I titled "Integrity".Many of us grew up in a world where integrity and authenticity were understood and perceived as qualities that someone or something possesses. According to the English dictionary, integrity is described as a quality of having high moral principles, a quality of being united, and of being honest. Authenticity is used to describe someone or something that is authentic, or in other words, real and genuine.
When I read this, I wondered, whose integrity and authenticity are we measuring against?
I hear many speak of integrity and authenticity, but what does that really mean in a world where changes are constant and accelerated and where it has become increasingly difficult to perceive what is coming? Applying an external measure to characterize someone or something is futile.
In 2020, we started learning that there were many "truths", which changed by the day, the hour, and the minute. We witnessed that being "right" or "wrong" no longer mattered to the external world. You could shout "truth" to the top of your lungs until you were blue in the face with little, if any, impact at all.
I found my favorite description of integrity in an oracle booklet. It described integrity as a trait that arises when thoughts, emotions, and actions are in alignment. This stopped me in my tracks for a while as I reflected on it further. Aligning these three elements (thoughts, emotions, and actions) in one specific moment is not as easy as it may seem. However, it helped me understand that integrity is a process that may take days, months, or even years to occur and to feel the truth that integrity brings to our lives.
Integrity and authenticity then become an inner process of alignment, where the only "truth" worth measuring is the one within yourself. What method do you embark on to come to a place of integrity and authenticity?
Integrity as a process of inner alignment
Getting to that place of inner integrity is hard to come by when we are taught to rely externally on validation or on what we see with our physical eyes instead of what we feel. My personal experience has been that the emotion would usually arrive first. I will feel something and the emotional response to that feeling is an indicator of a "truth" not yet fully understood by the mind (thought), and therefore no action is taken.
Similarly, when an emotion arises, and my thoughts tell me that my emotion does not make sense, I do not take the action necessary at that time. I will carry on with my day as usual and, perhaps, slightly confused as to why the emotion arose. Maybe a few months later, something happens where I fully understand the initial emotion that took place months earlier.
This process pretty much describes my life but why is there a “lag” in time for the alignment to occur? To use an example of what I am referring to, I’ll share a scenario that helped me understand this process of alignment. I was supposed to go on a retreat overseas in May 2020. Just a few months earlier, in October 2019, I remember getting emotional for a brief moment as I felt that I was not going on the trip and that I would not be part of the group traveling there. The feeling of "not going" triggered a wound of rejection which was an emotion that seemed completely irrational to my conscious mind.
The emotion did not make sense at the time because I had carefully thought through the decision to go on the retreat. There had been many signs and portents leading up to the decision that pointed me in the right direction. However, shortly after deciding to go, my emotions were indicating I would not go, yet my thoughts could not make sense of it, so I did nothing about it and took no action (to cancel).
In the course of the following six months, there were many signs (warnings) that looking back seemed very clear and obvious, yet I could not see them clearly. I felt them, but I did not listen to them because my outer reality did not match what I was feeling, so I continued to turn a blind eye to the signs (and the emotions). The incoming lockdown would be a logical justification for not going on the trip. Still, it turned out to be a blessing that exposed the emotional wounds of the person I was communicating with related to control issues, which triggered me. I got angry at myself for not listening to my first gut instinct (my feelings).
When a wound of another triggers you, it is time to look within to understand why? Where was I trying to control an outcome or give away my power? Or both? We draw experiences that match the vibration of the wound that we also carry. We all share emotional wounds but experience them differently (or express them differently) because we live in a polarized world. An emotional wound related to control issues can be linked to many things, but I believe it was linked to self-worth in this instance. On the other side of this vibratory match is someone who gives away their power. Both share the same emotional wound.
When I hear the expression that others are a mirror reflection of ourselves, I understand this to mean is that they are mirroring the energy or vibratory signature (frequency), not the behavior (or projection) of the wound. The time lag between thoughts, emotions, and actions has taught me that there is still a lesson waiting to be learned to reveal where I am not in alignment.
It is great when things that are not aligned are revealed, but going through the "lesson" can feel brutal, especially if we repeat the pattern which was happening to me. Exactly a year before (same month), another "leader/teacher" revealed their wounds. It was loud and clear that I needed to stop giving away my power or trying to control an outcome and address the core issue.
How many times do we not listen to our gut instinct - that voice - which we then spend time justifying until we kill the voice of truth? I finally took the action to cancel the trip regardless of the financial loss that it would bring. My decision had nothing to do with the unknown travel restrictions since the retreat leader was offering it online. I was finally in alignment with my thoughts, emotions, and actions, so there was zero doubt about canceling. The strength that comes from this alignment feels rock solid and very powerful. I could see with much clarity the multidimensional layers of the wound that went all the way back through my ancestors.
I received a symbol (through channeling) that broke the energetic contract/cord, and when I actioned this in my third-dimensional reality, it caused a brief uproar. I understood with incredible clarity what was happening as I kept my ground (and silence), and I observed the false reality disintegrate before my eyes.
When we are in a place of integrity, a tremendous inner peace cradles us with the utmost compassion. As I healed a deep-seated wound, I then witnessed how the healing rippled out into my own family, relationships, and connections. Everything else in my life where I had been giving away my power started to fall away, including life-long friendships. This process came with many tears, but the outcome has been incredibly rewarding. I am grateful despite the emotional difficulties it caused in the process.
I walk away from these kinds of experiences knowing that we are all good people playing a part in the grand game of life. The key is not to entangle ourselves in the game; however, if we choose to get entangled, it is important to know when to untangle ourselves and get out. We are the puppet and the puppeteer at the same time.
The collective wound of self-worth
There are seven polarity archetypes that we learn about when studying Soul Transformation Therapy. One of them is the Mastery Slavery Complex which is mainly concerned with those experiencing subservience in some aspect (may also relate to a problem relationship stemming from a past life story where they may have been in the role of master or servant in a previous time). It can also indicate heavy repressed energies or communication issues.
I believe that this polarity took center stage in 2020, and many of us found ourselves somewhere on the spectrum of these two extremes. On the one hand, we may have found ourselves in situations where we were giving away our power, and on the other hand, we may have found ourselves trying to control everything. Each extreme of the polarity shares the same vibrational frequency. Both exhibit emotional issues related to self-worth and can manifest as symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Going deeper, we may find that self-worth issues can come from feelings of abandonment and rejection. We may first experience this sensation when we are born because we separated from our mother's womb at the moment of birth. From a spiritual perspective, it is an experience of separating from source (the Divine); and, in the physical sense, our mother - the giver of life and who physically ushered us into this world. Since our mother carries the emotional imprints of her mother and so on, we will also take on (through cellular memory) the experiences of our ancestors. Emotions have their own frequency hence why we find matches in our relationships. Patterns can go very deep and far down our lineages.
Depending on what our mother was feeling and experiencing during pregnancy and the kind of birth we had, we may have felt all the emotions associated with the experience. We would have taken them on as a pattern. We would then carry this wound defined by a certain vibration and continue to call similar experiences of rejection and abandonment to our life until we learn the lesson and re-write the experience for ourselves, our ancestors, and future lineages. In the present moment, we re-write history and change the course of our future (and we also change the past that brought us to the present moment).
When one reflects on all of this and realizes that the root cause of our wounds comes from within it makes everything external seem so illusory and superficial. While humanity continues to repeat patterns and blame people outside of themselves, we find that there is a perpetual misalignment between thoughts, emotions, and actions because we have not (as a collective) learned the lessons of who we truly are and the power we hold within.
We have the power to change our external reality by changing it within ourselves, and this includes our health. It all starts within. We can heal ourselves. When we heal ourselves, we heal the planet. We heal our uni-verse (the one version of yourself) in the myriad of verses that are
Quantum Healing
In March 2020, I had my second Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique (QHHT) session which lifted a massive veil right before lockdown. I could not have known in October 2019 all that would unfold (read a related article, The Pulsing Network of Creative Energy, from May 2020). I had to live through it to grow, learn, and peel off a few more layers that held me back from standing in my own power. Without responding, I sat and observed as some people projected disappointment, anger, and frustration, which were the deeper wounds they had yet to heal themselves (and the deeper wounds I had to travel into).
I stood firm, like an iron rod, and for the first time in a long time, I stood up to one bully after the other in observance and silence. There was no need for me to respond, defend myself, or justify my actions because my actions were in alignment with my emotions and thoughts. Once these three things are in alignment, nothing is left for me to do other than wait until the energy clears and not lend any more attention to it or get entangled in it.
Every relationship that "falls" away does not mean that the other person is bad. The people I call a “bully” are very much loved by their spouses, friends, children, and followers. In fact, it is not about "good" or "bad"; everyone is doing their part to help us grow and evolve. We have to go very deep, to the innermost wounds, until we reach that point where there is no doubt within ourselves and where the space between emotions, thoughts, and actions aligns with our own truth in a shorter space of time. This is where humility and awareness reside side by side.
The Painting
While in deep meditation, on May 17, 2020, I asked internally about clearing the deepest layer of fear from being seen. A wishbone appeared in my mind's eye, and it started to curve out, around, and up to form the “face," with the eyes peering from behind. I noticed as I was painting that these eyes had no eyelids; they were all-seeing yet silent.
This fear of being seen comes from an ancient (collective) wound related to separation. This fear can stop us from speaking our truth and interacting in the world from a place of integrity and authenticity.
The wound of separation can trigger emotions of self-worth that fall in the polarity of The Slavery Mastery Complex. On one extreme, we see it as giving away our power and exerting control. The wound of separation goes back to the start of creation, to the start of this physical universe, to the start of your birth. It is all the same.
The corresponding physical healing component of this image is the throat. The emotional healing component is self-worth. The image arrived at a time when I was healing deep wounds within myself and my ancestral lineage; however, I saw a direct correlation in the collective wounds around our throat where we access our lungs and ability to speak. If this is blocked, we can't breathe, we can't speak, and we can't nourish ourselves.
How curious that there was a virus apparently affecting the lungs (grief/loss), riots were unfolding due to a death related to the throat (suffocation), and extreme censorship happening worldwide. All of this happened while the Earth took her first deep breath and rested for the first time in a long time.
About the art
Integrity by Yassica Ferrer, acrylic and gold leaf on canvas panel, May - June 2020. Integrity was shortlisted in the competition Inspiration from Isolation by the College of Psychic Studies in August 2020 and appeared in a virtual exhibition in the Autumn of 2020.
About the author
Yassica is an intuitive and visionary artist and healer. Her artwork captures the images that she sees in her mind’s eye. They reflect an inner journey of exploration and discovery that uncovers what is hidden, providing clues into the subconscious and revealing deeper aspects of the Self.