Ann Yeong

To read the full reflection go to https://bit.ly/ba202311

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New Episode! "How Dissonance Invites You Home to Your True Self"

Episode 106 Have you ever felt that gut-wrenching feeling that something just isn't right in your life, but couldn't quite pinpoint the cause? That sense of dissonance might actually be the key to unlocking a more authentic a...

How Dissonance Invites You Home to Your True Self Episode 106 Have you ever felt that gut-wrenching feeling that something just isn't right in your life, but couldn't quite pinpoint the cause? That sense…

New Episode! "What An Interior Integration Coach Is And Why I Am One"

Episode 105 “What’s an interior integration coach and why are you one?” I often get asked how what I do is different from spiritual direction, counselling/therapy and life coaching. In this last episode from the 30 day challe...

What An Interior Integration Coach Is And Why I Am One Episode 105 “What’s an interior integration coach and why are you one?” I often get asked how what I do is different from spiritual direction, counsellin…

New Episode! "Why You Can't Flourish Without Attunement"

Episode 104 Why is it that even when we KNOW what we need to do and when we even try to do “the right things” so few of us truly thrive and flourish? In this episode I share how getting things done (even when they are good th...

Why You Can't Flourish Without Attunement Episode 104 Why is it that even when we KNOW what we need to do and when we even try to do “the right things” so few of us truly thrive and flourish? In …

The first time I heard someone tell me, "Ann, you need to learn how to LET GOD LOVE YOU," I was stunned.

I mean, of course I knew God loved me. It was a matter of fact I never intellectually questioned, and I have even experienced being loved by God too. But it never occurred to me that I needed to LET God love me.

Because that meant it was possible to NOT LET God love me. It hit me then that I didn't know how to receive God's unconditional love for me. There always seemed to be a giant wall between his love for me and my ability to receive it into my being.

Even when I decided I wanted to learn how to let God love me, I struggled to do so for years without understanding why. I had great desire to let God love me - so why wasn't desire enough? I tried everything I could to deepen my prayer life - why was that also not enough?

Eventually I realised it was because I had only known love in the form of striving to serve, care for, and become worthy of. I had never known love to be freely given and freely received for no reason other than love itself.

This isn't usually the kind of love we receive in our families, societies, not even in our Churches! Is not our experience of love more often that of a quid pro quo? That is simply a fact of the reality we live in. We are LIMITED human beings with limited love and a whole lot of trauma in our lives.

Learning to "let God love me" is the story of my salvation and redemption, and it is still in the process of developing into fruition. Perhaps you may struggle with letting God love you too! If you do, I hope this post may go a little way in helping you be gentler with yourself.

- Ann Yeong

New Episode! "Authenticity In The Struggle With Childlessness"

Episode 103 There is a secret shame and hidden pain for those of us whose community (family/church) value marriage and children when our marriage situation does not match that “ideal”. In this episode I responded to someone w...

Authenticity In The Struggle With Childlessness Episode 103 There is a secret shame and hidden pain for those of us whose community (family/church) value marriage and children when our marriage situati…

It is a great paradox of the interior journey that the more our desire for healing and integration grows, the more we are invited to learn how to be still and wait for divine grace.

It is a spiritual art of sorts to learn how to take intentional action as a response to grace rather than an attempt to wrest control over the whole journey into our own hands.

When we had not yet begun this journey, we refused to even acknowledge our helplessness. We numbed ourselves in our pain and looked away. But when we admitted we are desirous of healing we also had to come to peace with how helpless we are to advance without help, and without great patience with ourselves.

Yet this helplessness is a gift. It teaches us to love ourselves in our powerlessness and finitude. In this waiting for God we somehow find that we learn to love ourselves more unconditionally, and that love becomes our healing.

- Ann Yeong

New Episode! "How Healing Changed Me And My Interior Journey"

Episode 102 "What real life difference does interior healing make in our day to day living?" "What difference does healing make to the way we see, approach and experience the interior journey?" "What does one need to do to be...

How Healing Changed Me And My Interior Journey Episode 102 "What real life difference does interior healing make in our day to day living?" "What difference does healing make to the way we see, approa…

We all have different traps we tend to fall into when it comes to the interior journey. Not all idols are as easily identifiable, especially when your traps come cloaked in social and even religious acceptability!

I share these 3 examples of subtle idolatries with the utmost empathy because these have been MY idols (among many more others). They were such blindspots to me because they seemed outwardly so RIGHT and so GOOD - I always thought these idols were how I would please God!

As it turns out, the reason I had this flawed yet sincere perception of things was due to my attachment wounds and the particular ways that I had learned to earn some sense of safety in a chaotic and unsafe emotional world.

It was only through many years of emotional and spiritual suffering BECAUSE of these subtle idols and praying through that suffering that I learned these were idols and that God (and love) is very different from who I thought he (it) was.

Do any of these idols resonate with you? What other hidden, subtle idols has the Lord revealed to you in YOUR interior journey? Feel free to share in the comments below!

Peace,
Ann

The world continues to be in grave turmoil and news of war, no matter how far away it may be from where we live, cause us great distress. In such times, interior integration is even more necessary for us to be agents of peace.

When we leap into action without being connected to our inner core, we are often acting out of anxiety and survival. Whether we are praying or calling others to prayer, or taking any number of good and noble actions - all of these can bring us further away from peace in the world than closer to it if we do not first seek peace within ourselves.

Just think of how your compulsion to act or call your family to pray for peace can come from a "fight" energy in your nervous system and how that can trigger your already anxious loved ones into an argument with you.

Or how you may heed a call to collective prayer and fasting but do so as a way to bypass your own distressed emotions and nervous system instead of tending to your own inner state and letting Christ bring his peace to you.

We cannot be agents of peace if we are not able to be still, silent and present to God's presence within us and in this suffering world. If we are not present to ourselves, we cannot be present to others.

If we cannot be present to one another, then everything else we do - even prayer and fasting - will perpetuate fear and anxiety instead of sowing peace.

So yes, let us all pray and fast and intercede but be open to HOW the Holy Spirit may be inviting us to do so - by attuning to our bodies, our nervous systems and being very tender and gentle with ourselves.

Because that is what the world needs too. Tenderness. Gentleness. Compassion. Only then can wisdom guide us.

May it be so!

Peace,
Ann

Read the full reflection here: https://bit.ly/ba202310

You can also subscribe to Begin Again and receive these longer written reflections in your email inbox every month: https://www.integroformation.com/begin-again-subscribe

What does the Interior Integration Journey consist of for a disciple of Christ? If you ask me, these are the "BIG FOUR" dimensions of the journey, ALL of which are essential for integration to take place.

1. CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER & LIVING
- This is the spiritual foundation for integration, it is our way of constantly BEING WITH and ABIDING IN the presence and love of God in our lives.
- Contemplation brings us beyond what our rational mind can understand and what our body can feel into the mystical dimension of our relationship with God
- It is this that constantly makes possible (at least in hope) what is humanly impossible.

2. SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT
- On the foundation of contemplation and a personal relationship with God we layer on the habit of listening to how the Holy Spirit is prompting us and taking action to follow God's loving invitation in our daily lives
- With continual ongoing discernment we follow God's "breadcrumbs" taking one step after another for our healing, integration, and becoming more fully who he created us to be.

3. EMOTIONAL HEALING
- This builds the affective foundation of our humanity and enables us to form healthy, intimate relationships with God, our Self, and other people.
- This is the essential dimension for us to practically be able to LOVE authentically from a grounded sense of self and to ultimately pour ourselves out in emotionally and spiritually healthy service

4. KNOWLEDGE & UNDERSTANDING
- In support of the other three dimensions is our ability to learn and understand new things about prayer, God, our faith, our selves, and healing etc.
- What we learn and come to understand feeds and is processed and refined by our prayer, discernment, and praxis as we make our journey.

PONDER:
Which of these dimensions are you most seasoned in living out?
Which dimension are you least familiar in?
Which dimension do you sense God inviting you to learn more about?

- Ann Yeong

Part of integration is learning to listen to our body and to trust that God loves us and leads us through the wisdom in our bodies too.

One of the signs of healing and integration is when we are more flexible and open to unexpected developments, especially when it interferes with what we have planned.

Here’s a reflection from my latest exercise in doing life more gently, in letting go and finding God loving me in unexpected ways!

- Ann Yeong

This message has been in my heart as if it must be spoken.

I hope it reaches you - you for whom this message was placed in my heart.

This message is for me too, for so often God calls me to share something for me to recognise the truth of it for myself.

At the core of this message are echoes of what I've been learning about Bl. John Duns Scotus, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich and other mystics, as well as the voice of James Finley who in recent times has been a beloved spiritual guide.

May we always remember that we were created simply because God wanted us to be. He could have chosen to create someone else in our stead - someone stronger, smarter, more beautiful, holier, more loving - but God created YOU and he created me.

We are the infinity of God's love poured out into "us". We are worthy of honouring, protecting, and respecting just for that alone.

Remember.

- Ann Yeong

If forgiveness is less about "doing the right thing" and more to do with becoming authentically loving, it is imperative that we learn to recognise when we are caught in the cycle of spiritualising forgiveness which prevents us from becoming more whole.

Ponder:

- Are there other signs you have recognised in your own life that may indicate you are going down the path of spiritualising forgiveness rather than moving towards authentic, embodied forgiveness?

- What grace do you need to move into the path of letting forgiveness be a part of your integration journey instead?

How open and sensitive are we to God’s love in our daily preoccupations?

Another mark of growing integration is when we begin to experience and soak in God’s presence outside of compartmentalised worship / prayer times.

It’s a mark of healing when we start being able to feel and not just believe that God delights in our inner child’s little, “insignificant” preferences being taken care of by us.

This seemingly small tête-à-tête I had with my inner child today was actually a profoundly spiritual encounter with God.

What unexpected ways might God be approaching you today?

- Ann Yeong

What is 'love'? I don't ask this as a philosophical or even theological question but a very concrete, practical question.

In our fallen world where sin and dysfunction is rampant, love is distorted from our very earliest relationships. And so our interior journey can really be summed up most succinctly as a journey of rediscovering authentic love.

We all have operating presuppositions of what love is, and they colour everything we say or do. But are we open to being shown how wrong we are about love? Are we willing to let LOVE show us the way home?

Many of us on the healing journey had to learn for the first time in our lives that love includes our ability to truly attune to and love our SELF. And when we began to do that we recognised how much of what had been handed down and done to us which we had been told was love was often use, manipulation, even abuse.

What breaks our hearts is that we were told that others different from us were bad and sinful and we - our family, tribe and church - were the ones who knew what love was, but we were wrong.

We had to wake up to the truth that "we" really didn't know how to love either and that perhaps there are others outside of our family, tribe and church who knew how to love more authentically than we.

What if St. John of the Cross was right, and that at the end of it all, we will be judged on love alone? Not just performative love (where we do all the right things) but authentic love?

I think that it makes our interior journey all the more imperative! We can only learn authentic love from LOVE itself, and by allowing ourselves to be loved back into life.

May Love find you.

May Love heal you.

May Love open your eyes to how eternally precious you are.

May Love lift you up to hold yourself most tenderly.

May Love reveal to you what true justice is and where it has been denied you.

May Love break your heart open to weep for all the wrongs that had been done to you because you are precious in God's sight.

May Love make a warrior and a healer out of you.

May Love make you into Love at last.

Peace, Ann

As someone who has always been curious about how to grow into spiritual maturity both in my own life and in the accompaniment of others, I never knew that many impediments on this journey were not merely spiritual but HUMAN.

I never realised that my early experiences of love shaped how I would be able to relate to God or how ready I would become to follow him in trust and surrender.

When I fell short in love, generosity, or trust in God, I always thought of it only in terms of sin (I would go for confession), as if I HAD the freedom and ability to give something from myself and wilfully CHOSE NOT to.

As God led me into deeper healing, I was astounded by his mercy and compassion. I was amazed at how he saw me - as someone precious whose freedom and ability to love has been deeply compromised because of attachment trauma - someone who kept trying with all my strength but who was unaware of just how handicapped I really was.

I was stunned to realise that God didn't want to heal me just so that I could "be a good disciple" and serve him. He desired to heal me FOR ME. He wanted me to be well, to be whole, to be able to experience his delight for me and overflow with love back to him and his creation because that was what would make me FULLY ALIVE!

If you have been struggling in your spiritual journey to draw closer to God or to fully trust him, perhaps you can also consider how your family of origin and attachment wounds might be holding you back much more than you realise.

God desires to lead you back home to YOURSELF, for he abides in you even before you know how to abide in him!

Peace, Ann

We may know we are called to LOVE. But what if what we know of love is distorted?

The truth is that practically all we know of love has been distorted by woundedness and sin, and unless we let God heal us and teach us from our lived relationship with Him what LOVE IS, how can we ever love as He loves us?

I was 27 years old when I had my first real awareness that I was less free than I had thought I was in my relationships with others, that what I thought was loving others was really my way of trying to get love.

It wasn't until I was in my late 30s that God began to break down and reveal to me how broken my understanding and practice of love was, how much harm I have endured in the name of love, and how much harm I had perpetuated upon others in love's name too.

Here are FIVE behaviours I thought was being loving which I have now learned are NOT love.

- Ann Yeong

So many of us know cognitively that we should be able to let go and trust God, but the lesson that our stories have embedded in our bodies and nervous systems is “I NEED TO HOLD IT ALL TOGETHER”.

As I become more aware of what I feel in my body I have noticed how much tension my gut, shoulders and neck hold as if the cells in my body were clenched with the need to brace, protect and fight.

But as I let my awareness get in touch with the ground of my being (God), I find that those same cells in my body have also now learned that in THIS presence, it is safe to let go, crumble and even fall apart.

Because it’s so exhausting to keep holding it altogether. It’s so exhausting to feel trapped and that there is no way out in times of onslaught. But when I remember that I am held - that I have always been held - by the ground of my very being which is God’s love, I can collapse in relief.

It takes time and healing to grow more secure in our relationship with God. The more secure we are in our relationship with God the more we will find that we can let things fall apart. This is a very key and essential part of our interior integration journey.

We can crumble. We can crumble into God.

- Ann Yeong

Integration is especially hard for complex trauma survivors trying to heal AND still be in relationship with those who are harming us.

Exercising boundaries is always hard for us but it becomes especially challenging when it is with those whom we have been conditioned since our earliest years to give in and submit to. This could be anyone whom your cultural and family conditioning trained you to show deference to (eg someone older than you, an elder, anyone in authority over you etc).


If you are someone who identifies as both a complex trauma survivor on the healing journey and a disciple of Christ who desires to know how to still “love one’s enemies”, this post is for you.

I also cover these points in more detail in the live I did yesterday titled “When The Enemy You Are Trying To Love Is Family”.

- Ann Yeong

We all start off on the interior journey carrying a lot of old presuppositions and assumptions about what it’s about.

We think it’s about becoming perfect.
We think it’s about being disciplined.
We think it’s about virtue.
We think it’s about life after death.
We think it’s about sacrifice.
We think it’s about self-denial.
We think it’s about obeying commandments and teachings.
We think it is about religion.
We think it’s about becoming completely healed.

But while each of those things may be present at different parts of the interior journey none of them are the main reason for it, and none of them define it.

God encompasses, surpasses and transcends all our assumptions and all the various parts that make up our faith and interior journey.

Ultimately, the journey of our soul back home is summed up in LOVE - God’s eternal, infinite and unsurpassed love for each of us and the whole of creation.

- Ann Yeong

Striving for perfection was my trauma response (still is).

I did it because if I could get it all right then I would be safe from criticism - safe from being found “not good enough”.

But as I became more secure in God’s unwavering love for me I began to have courage to embrace my finitude, limit and lack.

There is interior freedom in finding that we no longer have the same need as before to appear perfect in the eyes of others, for we are not diminished by their judgment nor affected by their praise.

This growing freedom is one of the sweet first fruits of interior integration.

- Ann Yeong

The greatest commandment Christ gave us is to LOVE.

St. John of the Cross wrote that “In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.”

The greatest scandals for the Church are about how poorly we love those most vulnerable and in need of love - those who are poor not necessarily materially but poor intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.

The problem begins with our inability to receive God’s love into our hearts because of our own wounds and our inability to love ourselves.

The most practical pastoral problem of our Church may well be to help God’s people learn how to heal and grow in an embodied, holistic ability to BE LOVED by God, to LOVE OURSELVES, and thus to AUTHENTICALLY LOVE OTHERS.

- Ann Yeong

One of the main reasons I share what I share about my journey is that I have learned from personal experience how necessary the WITNESS of other interior pilgrims have been for me.

Those who have witnessed to me include the living and those who have passed, women as well as men of different cultures, race and religions - all who sought TRUTH without compromise to become their True Selves and to become a healing presence of love to others.

Some were spiritual mystics, some were scientists, sone were theologians, some artists and poets - all were LOVERS and seekers of the Divine.

Some who have inspired me were canonised saints, ALL were loved sinners.

The journey of interior integration opens up our horizons to recognise God’s presence everywhere and to seek a deeper embodiment of what it means to be Christ’s disciple and the Body of Christ on earth.

We both need and need to be that great cloud of witnesses to one another!

- Ann Yeong

A narrative and culture of striving often puts the focus on OUR faithfulness to God, almost as if it is a condition for our welcome into God’s presence.

What happens to those of us then who know we have not been faithful (at least in the way we understand faithfulness)? What happens to those of us who are so tired that we have in some sense given up trying to be faithful?

We can so easily feel shame and even despair. When we come up against our limitations within a narrative that focuses so much attention on us “being good”, it is understandable to be discouraged.

Yet it is exactly there when we know we are in the pit, that we have failed, that we are most able to have a true encounter with the UNCONDITIONAL LOVE of God that helps us see things anew.

It is God’s infinite mercy and faithfulness to us that is the firm ground for our interior journey. And it is on this ground that we can be securely attached to God!

Perhaps faithfulness to God is more about knowing how to trust His unfailing love and faithfulness to us even when we fall than it is about doing all the right things and following all the teachings of the Church.

Lord help us to trust in your love so that we can turn to you no matter where we find ourselves!

- Ann Yeong