Spiritual Journey

COVID-19 Reflections on FEAR

Eyes, Spiritual Journey

I used to let fear run my life.  I walked around terrified all of the time and the times I wasn’t terrified, I was pretending or so deep in addiction I did not realize the fear I was in.  I didn’t even realize most of the time, that it was actually fear that I was feeling. It was such a familiar sensation, it was my ‘normal’.  I was too scared in fact to even start on my healing journey as I’ve written about in other posts, but with the help of my loved ones I started to learn that I didn’t have to live in that state. I was not aware it was fear, I thought it was just depression, but the truth was I had suppressed so many of my feelings that I was depressed, but the fear is what lead me to suppress them and kept me working tirelessly to avoid feeling. As I walked down the healing path I began to release emotions and open to how I was really feeling, I began to see what a massive role fear played in my life.  It guided every one of my decisions and I didn’t want to honor fear as my god anymore so I began to learn how to confront that fear.

What a journey!  Confronting fear is scary, go figure, fear feels scary, that is the emotion, but it is just an emotion and we were designed to feel it like any other emotion. I started by taking baby steps, for each of us what we fear will be different and how we confront it will be our own.  For me, I started to confront my terror of being seen.  In order to do this, I had to be seen which meant I had to speak up.  So, I started speaking up in different situations, feeling my face flush, my heart pound, my mouth go dry, just feeling and accepting the way my body was processing that emotion and continuing to speak.  I tried not to judge it or myself.  I learned that I could speak up, even if what I was saying was not accepted.  I learned I could confront that fear and the next time it would be easier. Now, as I write about this, I realize how completely that fear is gone in the situations that I had confronted my fear.  I am able to speak the truth with love and not with fear, but there are still situations where I had not confronted that fear that I am working on.

Most of the fears I am dealing with lately are related to my fear of feeling those old stuck emotions and some of those old emotions are old stuck fears, so there seems to be layers of fears.  The largest one I keep plugging away with is my fear of being overwhelmed by the emotion, my fears that I can’t handle them, that I will be destroyed by ‘going there’ which usually results in my refusal to open up to them and my choice to honor the fear.  I am slowly working through that.  I find that it is not a linear process where I just work on one thing and follow that line through to the core to release, it seems more like a tangle of strings that lead me from one set of emotions to others, one set of false beliefs to others. When I think of my fear of being seen, one aspect of that was my fear of speaking the truth, or speaking up at all, and within that aspect there were many different flavors: speaking up to women, speaking up at work, speaking up to men and so on.  I know that I am progressing in the untangling as my life is changing, my reactions, my emotions, my desires, and my motivations are changing, and I still have not untangled it all.  I have untangled my fears of speaking up at work, I have untangled much of my fears of speaking up with women, but some still remain and I am working on untangling my fears of speaking up with men.

Many of my fears are wrapped around the false beliefs that I am unlovable and unworthy. If we look at FEAR as False Expectations Appearing Real, then I had the false expectation that no one could love me and I lived in the reality of that belief, it appeared real to me.  I have worked through many layers of these, related to women and how they perceive me, related to work and being able to share what I have to offer, but I had not yet worked on those related to men and how they perceive me.  So, as we entered into our COVID isolation I happened to have a male friend staying at my place.  Usually I am a hermit, living alone in the middle of nowhere, but as the laws of attraction would have it, during the longest isolation, I have a man in my space, what a perfect time to face some of those old fears.

I have been quite dedicated to healing my emotional injuries and errors for quite some time now.  I have been practicing many of the actions I suggested in the last post on “dealing with fear” for all of my emotions, not just fear and I have been feeling the freedom of release.  This process is amazing and almost self sustaining as it creates such joy and peace and builds so much faith in our own abilities to heal.  So when offered the opportunity to face and work through old emotions that arose I took it.  It has been hard, a lot of work and ridiculously rewarding.

I know that when my anger starts to rise that I have to really stop and be honest with myself.  I know that there are emotions within me that I am not wanting to see or feel and so I act out defensively.  This happened A LOT at the beginning of our isolation.  It took me a long while to build enough desire to see the truth behind the anger.  I don’t deal with anger well, it is not something that I learned how to express either positively or negatively, it is something that I learned how to suppress, stew and allow to come out in passive aggressive ways, so it took some time to even recognize that I had this anger and then it took time to realize that it was really covering up old hurts and false beliefs.  Whenever I felt rejected anger would rise, I would start beating myself up internally, calling myself names, judging myself, and generally stewing in self loathing. This would also bubble up and out as passive aggression where I would notice everything that he wasn’t doing ‘right’ and stew on that, not say anything or addressing it, but stewing on it.  I felt confused and trapped as I knew projecting anger at others was not loving and even though some of the things I was stewing about were valid, I knew I could not address them without anger so I had to deal with that first and I didn’t know how.

In the beginning I was terrified of speaking up to a man, of sharing what was going on honestly and vulnerably without the shield of anger to protect me, without the comfortable tactics of hiding away keeping me safe, but I did it.  I’d fumble through the truth of what I was feeling (sort of, still so scared to speak the truth I couldn’t even think it through the fear at times), I’d share my process, my thoughts and what I was learning. I’d feel the fear coursing though me, my mouth going dry, my thoughts drifting away, my heart pounding, I’d acknowledge the fear and continue as much as I could.  Speaking up was only one step in the process, once I did, I often had to retreat to my room and let go of all the emotion that was trapped by that fear as well as the fear itself and I’d cry it out. It felt like a relief and often there was great joy and pride that I did it. It was usually then that I’d get some insight into why I was angry or I’d be able to access the hurt that the anger was covering up and I’d sit with the emotion until it ceased to flow.

I spent a lot of time each day out on the land talking out what I was feeling, being angry with the process or the situation or with God for making it that way. I’d talk to nature and rant and release, access my emotions and let them flow.  I’d journal each morning with the intention of opening to the truth and connecting with those stuck emotions, and I’d cry a lot as I released the layers.  The cycle repeated itself again and again.  Feeling rejected, anger, lashing out and/or in, retreat, feel, journal feel, walk, express, feel, share, confront fear, feel, retreat, feel, retreat, feel, retreat, feel. I didn’t want to feel those old feelings of rejection, the pain of not being wanted, the beliefs that took root of not being good enough, but my desire to do so kept growing and so every time the opportunity arose, I took it (eventually) and shaved off another layer.  It took a lot of courage and dedication and still does.  I am not through it, but it is not as scary any more and I have worked through a lot of the fear surrounding feeling these particular emotions.

One of my emotional addictions that I’ve clung to my entire life is self punishment.  When things were going wrong, say I was feeling rejected, instead of just feeling rejected I would resort to punishing myself, pointing out every physical thing that was bad about me, reaffirming my false beliefs that no one could love me anyways, and so on in the same vein. I would do this so I didn’t have to feel the feelings of being rejected, I preferred to feel angry at myself and so, I could not heal. As I increased my desire to just soften to the feeling of rejection (which was an old feeling that was triggered) I would be mean to myself less and less.  It sucked to feel those old hurts, it sucks to feel rejected to feel worthless and unwanted, but those emotions were in me and it sucked more to hold onto them, act out of them and let them guide my life.  I have a growing faith that surrendering to the feeling of those old hurts releases them once and for all and at the end, peace exists, real peace, not a contrived peace, but real peace and that is so amazing.

I am thankful daily for this forced isolation time. I have the time to dedicate to thinking, journaling, feeling, practicing, pushing, feeling. I have the continued opportunity to become aware of my triggers, to react, to observe, to heal and to repeat as needed.  I have the fortune to have someone here who is accepting of me going through this cycle who continues to be himself, triggering me and not just trying to placate me or to make us both more ‘comfortable’. I am grateful for all the gifts that have been given during these crazy times even though some of them are really hard to accept.

This feels like boot camp in a way. In my normal life I might have an interaction once a month that triggers me and I go through the process over the month to work it out.  Now, it is almost daily.  It is hard, but it is worth it! I feel changes within these past 6 weeks that may have taken months or years for me to confront.  I’ve noticed changes in my thought patterns, in my self punishment (which is next to nothing now), in my acceptance of myself, and in my willingness to speak the truth as I see it whether or not it is easy. I had to confront my fear to get here.  Fear is a capping emotion that has to be felt to be released, that can be felt and released.  It opens up the flow of other emotions that once felt can be released for good and allow for real change to settle in.

There is no quick fix, it is messy and not always easy, but it is worth it and there are so many wonderful people out there who can help you on your way. At first we often need help to build our commitment to ourselves and our dedication to feeling those things we have been avoiding all of our lives.  I know I spent decades working with a variety of different healers and therapists to help me on my journey.  I am fortunate enough to come from a family of healers who offer a variety of supports. Feel free to check them out at tozeland.com.

Take care of yourself and each other, be kind and gentle with yourselves and each other, be honest and loving with yourselves and each other.  Thanks so much for engaging.
Sage

COVID-19 Dealing with FEAR

Spiritual Journey

It has been over 6 weeks of social isolation, change in work life, change in everything normal and learning how to live in this changing world.  I am continually feeling blessed by the whole experience.  I feel as if we are being given a giant opportunity to retreat to ‘the cave’, to self reflect, to look in the mirror and to grow personally, emotionally and spiritually.  I know that I have been seizing the opportunity and it has felt extremely hard but rewarding.  I am not sure that there has been another time in history where the world has slowed down as much, our common distractions have been removed or at least lessened and we’ve been united in such a profound way.  This also leads to many different ways of dealing with ourselves and what is arising in these uncertain times.  The overarching emotion at the beginning of this pandemic was fear, I believe that this is a global lesson in fear and I hope that we learn it is an emotion like any other that we can feel and release.

Truth: Fear is just an emotion like any other, we are designed to feel and release it.

I saw this diagram on my dad’s Facebook page and I think it speaks so clearly to the choices we have right now.

covid 19 fear

 

I think this diagram so beautifully shows our options, what it doesn’t address is the way to move from fear to growth.  I believe most of us want to be in the growth sphere but our hearts are in the fear sphere and we only know how to use our will power to pretend to be living in the growth sphere.  I am sure we can recognize how nice it would be to feel hopeful, to help others, to feel joy and spread happiness, but in our hearts we still hold fear.  Most of us walk around in vast amounts of fear on a regular day, fear of being judged, of doing the ‘wrong’ thing, of being hurt, of being exposed, of hurting others, of feeling the pain inside of ourselves, and so much more. And now, we have this added layer of fear, fear for our lives, our livelihoods, of our safety and the safety of those we love, of other’s actions during this time, of conspiracy, of passing on the virus, of getting the virus, of breaking the new laws, and so on. Denying these fears will not help us grow through them and stops our ability to grow in most ways.  We need to learn how to open to our fears, to feel them and to release them.

Truth: Love cannot exist in the same space inside of us that fear does.  We must remove the fear to open space for Love to enter.

It is easy to say ‘feel your fear’ it is much more difficult to do it.  We are taught to live in our fears, to feel that we are scared and then make almost any choice possible to avoid that feeling, from stuffing our face, indulging in drugs or alcohol, seeking feelings of protection and safety from others, controlling our worlds, over working, distracting ourselves with the myriad of things available to us today, going as far as murder, just so that we can avoid feeling the fear and the underlying emotions.  We are allowed to do this, we have free will and we can exercise it in this way, however, it leads to more pain and suffering in our lives.  We have a choice, and right now, it seems that the whole world has conspired to create space in our lives to make a different choice.

Opening up to feeling fear is a process, one that takes an extreme exercise of our Will.  We currently operate without thinking most of the time, from our current Will, we sometimes have new desires that we nourish and grow which eventually lead to a change in our Will, but we don’t often recognize the process nor believe that we can initiate, maintain and complete it, but WE CAN!

We can start by:

  • Increasing our desire to feel the fear – this may not be easy so there may be several steps we have to take before we can sincerely do this
    • Discover what our resistance is to opening up to feeling the fear – these are usually many sets of fears within us, fears and false beliefs that we have been taught and have accepted as true.  These fears and false beliefs will be unique to each of us and many will have similar flavors such as: false beliefs about our worth, about what love is, both giving and receiving love, about our strength or vulnerability, about the world and how it operates, and so on.
      • Once we discover our resistance intellectually we have to open to it emotionally for change to happen, this again requires an exercise of our Will, we need to learn how to open to emotion when most of us have been taught how to suppress it, not feel it.
        • It is a learning curve and it takes time to learn how to feel again, how to feel the true emotions that are inside and that are coming up, not the preferred ones, the ones that we have been taught are ok to feel or result in people doing or giving us what we want, but the true emotions tied to the resistance we have to opening to the fear.
          • This takes HUMILITY (the ability to feel whatever emotions is present whether it is pleasurable or painful)
          • It take HONESTY (the ability to allow the emotion without trying to fit it into the narrative we’ve written for our lives and being open to discovering something different)
          • It takes LOVE (the compassion and acceptance for ourselves and others)
          • It takes FAITH (the growing belief that it is possible to connect with and feel our emotions and the result will be positive)
          • It takes ACTION and REPEATED ACTION (we have to do it again and again, softening, discovering and exploring each time as we allow ourselves to learn)
            • Some actions we can take to help us are:
              • Create time and space in your life to allow for the feeling of current emotions, the intellectual processing of our past and the opening to discovery
              • Journaling our feelings – being honest about our frustrations, our anger, our blocks, our fears, our feelings and thoughts about them
              • Speaking our thoughts and feelings out loud to nature or some space where other people won’t hear
              • Asking ourselves what am I feeling? What am I really feeling? on a continual basis
              • Sitting in stillness and being aware of what we are thinking and feeling – what impulses come up? what discomfort comes up? why is it so hard or easy to sit here?
              • Asking for help from whatever you call our Creator, sending out sincere feelings (not contrived ones that we wish we felt, but the real ones no matter how angry, sad, aggressive, pathetic, etc. we deem them)
              • Challenge yourself in the world, for example, speak up in situations where you would not usually, practice saying and doing things that push you a little and feel your response to doing that
    • Read the following post (COVID 19 Reflections on Fear) if you want to read my reflections while going through this process
  • Feel the fear as it arises – often it is a physical sensation that accompanies the emotional ones, we all know that feeling in our gut, the feeling of something wrong, the feeling of terror that we are in danger.  We were designed to feel this, to release it and to grow from the process.  Emotions are supposed to be Energy in Motion, we just need to learn how to allow that again.

I am positive you will discover, as I have, that once we go through this process it starts to get easier and easier to do it.  It also gets easier and easier to do everything else in life because our fear is lessening inside of us, our resistance to feeling is lessening, our suppression of emotions is lessening and all that energy that went into maintaining that is now freed up.  I also know that it will begin to shake up your world, as it did mine.  I had quite a safe little castle built around me, it felt sad and pathetic, but it felt safe.  I liked that more than anything and I was able to pretend that it was perfect for me.  Once I started to break it down it was very uncomfortable for a time, the safety was removed, the fear increased, the anger increased, my doubts increased, but surprisingly my joy increased, my sincere joy and I felt the increase in connection to my world as well.  It was hard and uncomfortable and messy but SO WORTHWHILE.  I cannot stress that enough.  As with most things the more you work for it the better it feels.

So, it is a choice right now to be conscious of what is happening, to take advantage of the home time, to take advantage of all the triggers in our lives triggering our emotions, to make the choice to open to the emotions and to feel them to heal ourselves.

The Root of EYES

Spiritual Journey

The Coles Notes version of my healing journey is on the Page “My Spiritual Journey” on the menu bar, if you’d like a little summary of my journey to discovering The Divine Truth.  Since then I have been experimenting with what I am learning, learning how to open up to emotions, being honest with myself about my emotions, slowing my habits and patterns down enough to see the driving forces, listening to my experiences and opening up to learning from them.

I feel such a profound change in who I am and who I am ‘allowed’ to be.  I feel so much more freedom and certainty in who I am becoming.  I have worked through many of the layers that held me back, that prevented joy from really entering my life, and that coloured my experiences with false beliefs.  I now feel like I am getting to some of the core issues and I can feel myself in strong resistance.  This surprises me as I know the joy that comes from working through the resistance. I have felt and seen the benefits that result in facing those hard emotions, yet still my fear is greater than my desire.  I am working on building my desire so I can heal this too.

I discovered The Divine Love Path one Sunday in September in 2014 and have not stopped listening, learning, experimenting and growing on the path since.  The Divine Love Path is not religious in any respect, but it does refer to people, ideas and concepts that have been used and often distorted by religion.  I believe fully in a Loving and Intelligent Creator who intentionally created this world we live in and all of the laws that govern it.  People call this entity by different names.  I choose to call this creator God.  I had to work through my emotional errors and emotional injuries that I had associated with the word God, as well as other concepts, ideas and names that I encountered as I explored this path further.  I have worked though many layers, although I am not yet through them all.

A part of my path was to work though my false beliefs and false definitions so I could start to open up to the truth.  I felt very confronted at times and learned how to work through those emotions, through the false beliefs and to the truth.  I had to work through many different layers starting with my beliefs and my ideas about things, my beliefs and ideas about myself, and my beliefs and my ideas about how the universe operates.  I spent a lot of time, 3 years in fact, struggling and feeling like I was not getting very far, feeling upset, discouraged, angry, depressed, sad, and many other emotions as I worked through my false sense of self, or my façade.  Then I began to build trust and faith in the process, I began feeling a real change within me.  I was no longer as triggered as I used to be, I was no longer as depressed on a regular basis, I no longer perseverated on unloving things, I had some truths inside of me instead of false beliefs that kept me small and scared.  I started to take action to discover more and more, to work through more and more layers and here I am now.

I am currently working through many layers related to self love, to my own worth and deserving. I still resist and feel the consequences of that resistance.  I still struggle with accepting personal truth and increasing my desire to feel pain, to feel fear and be humble to all emotions, but it is a worthwhile and rewarding struggle.  The more I learn and experiment with the more I want to share it so more people can start to learn to be gentle with them selves in reality, to learn how to soften and be compassionate to ourselves, to be honest and still loving with ourselves, to discover who we really are and allow our true selves to blossom.  I believe that is the way that we are going to fix this world we live in, each one of us healing ourselves and allowing our gifts to shine.

I’ve always known that I was meant to be a healer in this world.  It has always been a part of who I am.  I had tried to do it through Hypnotherapy, then through Reiki, but I was not ready because I was not healed.  I believe that we can only truly help people once we have healed that within ourselves. So, I set out to start healing myself.  I feel that I am at a place now where I can start to share what I have learned and can work with others to heal themselves.  I know that taking action in this respect will also open up new pathways and experiences for me to heal even more and continue to be more of service in this world.

Exploring Your Emotional Self

Spiritual Journey

In light of the COVID 19 preventative measures happening in our world and the fact I am a teacher and will be extremely busy this week preparing for the following weeks of homework I will be cancelling the seminar on March 23, 2020.  Once we see how this all plays out I will send out an update for the April 9th date. I hope to continue on as planned.

I have designed this course, Exploring Your Emotional Self, or EYES for short to give some practical truths about how we work, how our emotions work and how we can work to create healing.  It is also designed to challenge our current false beliefs and encourage us to experiment with new truths.  It is built on the premise of love, truth and humility and will explore what each of those mean in depth.

I believe each of us was created with a specific and loving gift to offer the world, a gift that if we discover and accept will lead us to continued growth, continued happiness, and continued love.  We were designed to be loving, creative, active beings, to be supported in our pursuits, to learn from our experiences, to learn the TRUTH from our experiences, not the false beliefs we often hold as true.  It is within our abilities to choose to use our free will to discover ourselves, to open to the layers we have built upon ourselves, to work through the anger, the fear, the pain, the grief and whatever comes up and to be freed from those old emotional injuries.  It is within our abilities to choose to use our free will to discover the truth and uncover the false beliefs we’ve been holding on to, to feel the emotions around those beliefs and to heal them.

This series is designed to help us open up to the false beliefs and emotional injuries that govern our lives. It is not a quick fix, but it has the potential to be a permanent one.

What I am sharing is my understanding of the Divine Love Path and what I have learned experimenting on it.  I am at the very beginning stages of this development and am not an expert.  If you are interested learning more from an expert check out Divinetruth.com, or the following link. https://divinetruth.com/sites/main/en/index.htm#intro-teach.htm

Introduction handout. Feel free to explore the content of my introduction session we will be focusing on the concepts of Love and Truth.

Rock Haven Renewal 2019 Reflections

Spiritual Journey

We just finished our first Rock Haven Renewal, woman’s healing retreat and it was fabulous!  I am so reaffirmed and grateful to see the changes I’ve made personally take place and be put into action. I didn’t have a lot of expectations personally for the weekend, but I knew I was going to show up and lean in, and I did.  I allowed what came up to percolate through me and will continue to release some things I didn’t have time to just sit with and release. I’ve always had a hard time ‘being me’ or showing myself around others, this has been a huge part of my journey; learning how to do so, feeling comfortable and pushing past those fears.  This weekend reaffirmed the work I have already done in that area and pushed me to reveal even more of myself.

The dynamics of the group created an amazing safe and brave space, the women all pushed themselves out of their comfort zones and opened to the possibility of growth.  I felt so comfortable leading by example with no judgments of myself, and I felt no judgments coming from others, until I got home.  I started to feel pings of guilt, like I had done something wrong, pangs of fear, like I was going to be hurt for being so vulnerable.  I sat with these for a moment as I was journaling and quickly realized that they were not mine anymore.  They used to be such a huge part of my existence, every time I would show myself I’d feel vast amounts of fear and guilt.  I’d think of the ways that I had possibly hurt or offended others and it would send me in a tail spin of trying to fix these perceived errors.

I realized as I was journaling how amazing it was that I didn’t feel those oppressive emotions anymore, that the feelings being projected at me were likely from spirits that used to be attracted to those feelings in me and were trying to create them in me again.  This was the first time I really could tell that these were not mine and they were not hooking into my emotions, they were familiar feelings which is what lead to the initial confusion, but they were not my feelings anymore.  Once I fully realized that and did not go down the familiar path of self punishment, revisiting every interaction and word I spoke to see who I could have offended and when, and trying then to fix it, they went away.  I know my heart and intentions which are coming more and more from a place of Love, and I know that other’s responses are theirs.  It is actually unloving of me to try to fix other’s problems and mitigate their true responses, it takes away their power to feel and heal. I feel I have fully learned that lesson in love, both the love of self and the love of others, and it is so wonderful!

I feel I had another break through on the weekend, I was able to speak the truth of my true purpose in life; to seek the spiritual and help others do the same.  It was such a profound act of will for me to speak my truth through my tears of terror and tears of relief. There is still a lot of sadness within me that I need to release at not being able to do that in the past, all the feelings of shame, separation, being wrong and so on that accompanied my self expression, but breaking through that in the present and opening those flood gates was amazing.  Now I just have to let those old feelings flow through me and release.

I have had a few times in my healing progress these last years where I am laughing and crying.  I feel the joy of the release and the gift of the process.  This happened when I was able to claim the truth that I am here to talk about and learn about God, to build my relationship with God and help others do the same.  I shared this in the circle, acknowledging the challenging fact that so many people have injuries and errors around the word God, the being God, that talking about it triggers strong responses.  It felt so amazing afterwards.  The massiveness of that act with the reaffirmation of the physical laughing/cry solidified the profound shift within.  I was just beaming from that for 2 days.  It felt like coming home, or cleaning off the porch at least.  making ‘home’ an accessible place even if there are still emotions locked within, this layer is cleared.

This weekend really solidified my desire to work with people who want to heal and explore their inner landscape, to help sort out the false beliefs from the truth, the pain from the possibility, and the layers of emotions from the true self.  I have such a strong belief that the only way we are going to heal this world is if we heal ourselves, and each layer we release and each new truth we learn increases the possibility of helping the whole of our Earth and all the beings who reside on it.

The Law of Attraction

Spiritual Journey

This week I had a very clear view of the law of attraction at play.  I had been experiencing an increase in my sensitivity towards people ignoring and disregarding me.  I have worked on this issue before and had released a few layers so there was a period of time where I did not feel as hurt when people ignored me, but I had been noticing it amping up again.  I had several encounters with people who pretended they did not see me, or just did not respond to me when I spoke to them.  I know that the Law of Attraction brings events into my life (or more accurately, I attract the events) due to the emotional injuries and false beliefs inside of me, as a way to help me feel through those injuries and to learn the truth.  I have started becoming sincere in my desire to feel these emotions and as a result I have been having more opportunities to do so.

This month has been particularly hard in many ways, I have been in quite a bit of resistance to feeling some things, the long cold winter was only now slowly shifting to spring, my motivation and desire to follow God’s way and soften to my resistance has been very low, and my emotional ‘buttons’ have been quite easy to push.  This had created a ‘perfect storm’ for me to get in touch with some of the feelings I had been refusing to open to.  3 events seemed to be the largest triggers.

1.  I went for dinner and 2 of my students who were working in the restaurant did not acknowledge me, this triggered feelings of inadequacy, the fears of not being liked, the pain of not being liked and similar feelings.  One of them went up to the person I was with and greeted them with joy and totally ignored me, bringing up old injuries of not being wanted.

2.  In class the next day one of my students would not make eye contact, responded in a dismissive and angry manner, and rolled her eyes at her friend, these action triggered more feelings of inadequacy in me, feelings of being dismissed, unimportant, not worthy of respect or being treated like a human being.  I didn’t want to let it end that way so I asked to talk to her after class to see if we could have a human to human interaction and take responsibility for our actions, but the wall around her was so great she refused to be herself with me.  This triggered more emotions, expectations that people be sincere and share themselves, more sadness about being dismissed and rejected when trying to connect.  When she left I cried for awhile, but did not feel like it was complete, being at work it was difficult to surrender to the hurt that wanted to surface, so I pushed it down and continued to work which opened the door for the third attraction.

3. Another student who continually treats me with disrespect and annoyance when ever I try to speak to her walked out of class earlier when I tried to speak to her.  She is someone who constantly triggers anger in me, exposing my demands and expectations that people treat me well, especially since I go out of my way to be kind and respectful towards them – some false beliefs I have yet to fully clear (although it is kind and loving to treat people respectfully expecting it or demanding it is not kind nor loving). Shortly after I had ‘pulled myself together’ I was walking the halls and heard the doorbell ring, the person who was supposed to be opening the door was not at her station, I saw this student outside.  I waited until she had rung the bell twice and was still not let in.  I did not want to interact with her as her anger is hard to deal with and extremely irrational, but I saw her and she needed in the building so I walked to the doors and let her in.  She did not thank me or show any appreciation (another demand I had), and this triggered my anger which was compounded by how hurt I was already feeling by being ignored, disregarded and treated with disrespect.  I tried to demand that we talked and work it out, but she refused, increasing my emotion which was now shifting from anger to hurt.  I went to my room and cried some more.  I could not hold the tears back, this time I allowed the emotions to flow, recognizing the law of attraction at work.

The law of attraction brought me the first series of events to trigger these feelings in me and help me release them, but I refused to see it through, so it immediately brought me another event which I could not ignore and then I allowed myself the time and space I needed to feel my sorrow and hurt.  It became obvious as I cried and released the hurt that I had a lot of hurt from my childhood because people around me did not want to know me and were seemingly happier when I was not engaged with them as myself.  When I did engage with them I had learned that I did things wrong if I did them naturally the way I would do them, so I had to learn to not do things, act, react the way I would naturally.  There was a lot of hurt in me associated with not being accepted or desired for who I was.  This was triggered by these events.  As soon as I let myself just cry and feel the hurt of the rejection my mood shifted, I did not feel as angry, I felt far more tolerant of everyone’s unloving behaviour (in that it did not anger or hurt me as much), and I started feeling happy and hopeful again.

I was very aware of the law of attraction at work, how I needed to feel this pain sincerely and the clear and immediate positive effects of doing so. Although this is not completely healed, another layer has been released, my happiness and motivation has increased, I can act and react to people more in line with the way I want to – with respect and love, even if they are not acting that way towards me, and my faith in this process has increased.  It is amazing to finally be at this point, where I have worked through much of my facade and many of the layers I’ve created to cover my pain and ‘protect’ myself, and can now start making some real changes.  I am so thankful to God for creating this process, for myself having the inner drive to stick with it and for all the supports, influence and encouragements of my guide and spirit friends.

“Braving the Wilderness: The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone” – Brene Brown

Spiritual Journey

Life has been challenging these past couple of months.  I am on a journey to open to my old pain, hurt, shame, and false beliefs and to feel them through to release.  I keep hoping it will take me far less time than it actually is, but I feel rewarded with each step of the process.  Since I have been praying to connect to these dark emotions I have been getting opportunities, or triggers, or shitty experiences, or probably exactly what I need to help me to connect.  At times I am angry and frustrated that it feels so hard and long and lonely, and I just try to open up to those feelings too.  I am learning to be present with whatever feelings arise in me, to soften to them and allow the discomfort.  It is challenging as I have so many self preservation patterns and habits that help me get out of my feelings, but I am working through those too.

This Christmas season has been especially hard, I don’t like Christmas to begin with, but I do love my family so that makes it much more bearable.  I am blessed to be in a family who all in their own ways are working towards being more loving, truthful and open in the world.  They all work on their own emotions, try not to project on to others and work on accepting each other.  I feel strange sometimes working on my dark emotions, acknowledging my hurts and false beliefs because compared to most families in our world I have an amazing one, but I remind myself that regardless of how progressive, open and loving my family is, we all have our injuries and errors we operate out of and we pass those along.

Right before Christmas break the man I am in love with pulled away again and left me with an opportunity to work through the emotions that decision triggered in me.  It was an especially difficult time to try to stay with my emotions when there were so many social engagements with family and friends and so little time to feel the well of grief that was rising in me.  As with all experiences, the grief I was feeling did not originate with this rejection, it was simply compounded by it, triggered by it, therefore creating the opportunity to feel it out of me.  I tried as much as I could within the confines of the season and my own injuries, false beliefs (errors) and fears (errors) to open to this pain and face the uncomfortable emotions I’ve tried to run from my entire life.

This process left me with a feeling of separation from everyone else, partly because I did not share my grief, partly because I was not seeking the pleasure and comfort that the Christmas season is designed to fulfill, and partly because I know that my approach to life is vastly different than most.  I have felt loneliness all of my life, at first not even accepting myself or wanting to be with myself, then to an beginning awareness of ‘ME’ and who I am, to a growing understanding of myself, my desires, my passions, and my beliefs.  At every stage I have felt alone, first because I pushed everyone else away and only offered what I knew they wanted from me, then as I was beginning to discover myself I offered up facade after facade to try to create this person I wanted to be and finally, to this messy, confused, seeking person I am now, trying to be honest, humble to my emotions, and loving to myself and everyone else.  I realized that this path I am on is not one that is well trodden, that there are not many who choose to approach life in this way and I am not willing to compromise the truth I am discovering so I can ‘fit in’, feel accepted and feel less lonely.

I had been questioning my choices, the validity of my beliefs, the pain of being so far out of the ‘norm’ and what I could do about it.  Every time I think about it, I get to the same place – it is me, I need to continue to be me, I need to continue to feel these uncomfortable, hard and painful feelings that arise until they are gone from me, I cannot deny who I am, pretend, or compromise for anyone’s comfort.  So, Christmas finally ended and I was able to retreat to my home in the country and settle into myself fully.  I was gifted a book by my awesome sister – the title of this blog – and have been profoundly affected by it so far.  It reassured me that my journey was not selfish, crazy or insane, that ‘braving the wilderness’ of my internal self was a noble pursuit.  I’ve always felt somewhere deep inside that it was valid, but there is not a lot of support for that kind of action in our world and there has not always been a lot of confidence in me to embrace it.  Brown writes “what all wilderness metaphors have in common are the notions of solitude, vulnerability, and an emotional, spiritual, or physical quest”, I would argue that it be an emotional, spiritual AND physical quest.

The rest of her title “the quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone” resonate so deeply in me.  She explains true belonging as belonging to oneself, to standing proudly and strongly in one’s true self and enjoying the power that comes from that.  She takes the reader on a eloquent journey to that conclusion, it is well worth the read.  At this place in my life, where I am craving companionship, honest sharing, feedback and reflection, it is nice to be reminded of the ‘true belonging’ that does not require others to do or be something for me, that only requires me to do and be ME, which in itself is a challenging but worthwhile pursuit.  It was very nice to have the reassurance, and support to continue to forge through this wilderness, reap the benefits and hopefully help humanity.

I am following this path for me and my growth, but I am also doing so in order to help others follow their paths to themselves.  It is only when we can discover our true selves that we will be able to truly be happy and help others to discover their true selves.  I believe God’s universes are set up this way, to lovingly guide us towards Truth and Love, it is our choice whether to work with the Laws of the Universe or not, to accept the help or not, to face the dark emotions and discomfort or not, ultimately to accept Truth and Love or not.  I believe, we all eventually will, it is just a matter of when we have the desire to start.

My teachers on this path are Jesus and Mary who present their teachings at divinetruth.com

Disclaimer – although the words God, Jesus, and Mary have been appropriated by religion, this is not how I use these words, or refer to these souls.