Healing
When I used to think about healing I always thought it was about finding something outside of myself to heal me. Whether it was a new diet, supplement, exercise routine, making more money, finding my soul mate, meditation, spirituality or anything else. You name it, I’ve tried it. It never occurred to me that I could heal myself.
Healing is integrating all aspects of our being. Yes, this means our shadow self that we so often try not to see and if we do see it we run from it or try to suppress it in some way. We think that if we were to let it up that we would be completely emotionally overwhelmed. Once we become even a little aware that we are escaping, suppressing or repressing emotions and energy within us there is no going backwards. Once awareness has illuminated certain aspects of ourselves there is no unseeing them. This sounds scary but in reality it is a blessing. The darker or what you would consider uglier bits of yourself aren’t ‘bad’ or ‘unworthy’ or ‘gross’ they are just parts of yourself that you haven’t yet accepted and therefore haven’t been integrated. Until these parts are accepted, loved and healed they will remain within you in a fragmented way and will project out on to your experience of life. Your experience of the external reality is always a reflection of your internal reality. This is a gift because life is always giving you what you need so that you are able to uncover what needs healing within. If you have a very fearful experience of the world that is filled with anxiety and worry that is a reflection that you have a strong vibration of fear within. The same goes for every emotion.
Once the light of awareness illuminates everything within that is unresolved and hurting it can be like walking in to an attic that hasn’t been cleaned in years and shinning a light on it all. It can feel overwhelming at first but that is just the minds projection.
The truth is that these are just aspects of you that want to be heard and felt. That’s really it. All you have to do is accept rather than resist what it is that you are feeling inside.
These are the steps I take to heal the wounds within.
1) Become aware of our inner state and what is hurting. It is as simple as saying to yourself that you have anxiety or an anger issue or that you are depressed. You now are aware of something within that is wanting to be healed.
2) Feel those emotions fully. Allow the anxiety, fear, anger, depression, sadness or any other negative emotion to fully arise within you. Meet it with courage and openness. Give it the space to fill your being. Don’t look to the external world for a quick fix. Try not to avoid, suppress or run from these uncomfortable feelings. They only want to be felt and accepted and then they will release and you will begin to feel lighter.
3) Follow your truth (heart)
Point three is the hardest part in my experience. Every step we take in the direction of our truth is a step in to the unknown. Every step in to the unknown reveals another aspect of our shadow. This energy will try to pull us back and convince us that we are making a huge mistake and that it isn’t safe to go any further and that we had better just turn back to what we know. These fearful projections are just the movies of the mind and they aren’t ACTUALLY happening.
And even if the worst case scenario played itself out in actuality the consequences of this fearful scenario would never be 1% as severe as the feelings you feel inside of you when you are living a lie.
Our conditioning will use the mind to project negative images to scare us and it will harness emotions such as guilt, fear, shame and apathy to keep us imprisoned in a life of mundane comfort. I’ve learned it is best not to go to war with this energy but to just laugh at it and let it continue to spew its nonsense uninhibited until it exhausts itself and dissolves. Afterwards, the feeling of spaciousness and lightness is staggering. The storm has passed and you are now free to take another step towards your truth.
The fear and second guessing of yourself is actually a great sign that you are on the right path! When we make excuses for not following our truth or excitement that is really just fear talking. It is a sign that we are afraid of facing our emotions. It is just one step at a time. Every day do one thing that excites you and that will lead to discovering more things that excite you and then one day you will only be doing the things that excite you.
“You may be at the wheel, but you are not driving the car. There are many people sitting in the back seat: your parents, your parents’ parents, your priest, your politician, the leader, the mahatma, the saint; they are all sitting in the back seat. And they all are trying to advise you: ‘Do this! Don’t do that! Go this way! Don’t go that way!’ They are driving you mad, and you have been taught to follow them. If you don’t follow them that too creates such fear in you that something is wrong: how can you be right when so many people are advising? And they are always advising for your own good. How can you alone be right when the whole world is saying: ‘Do this!’ Of course, they are in the majority and they must be right.
“But remember, it is not a question of being right or wrong, the question basically is of being spontaneous or not. Spontaneity is right. Otherwise you will become an imitator, and imitators are never fulfilled beings.”
