Wednesday 19 November 2014

Pain and Suffering

Just the title of this post reminds me of my Catholic upbringing, how we were taught that to suffer would bring us closer to God.  I have to be honest this never really sat well with me, I always thought that the God I believed in did not want us to suffer he wanted only our happiness.  As I followed my own personal journey of spirituality, my belief’s evolved and I came to believe that God lives in each one of us and that Universally God is the connection of all of our souls. I make this point why?  A couple of months ago I created the intention to open up my heart, and the Universe did exactly as it always does and gave me some challenges to show me what an open heart was and how to experience it.  These challenges led to a lot of emotional pain and suffering, not surprising as my heart opening required me to deal with and release a lot of deep seated fears. When I was able to release these fears and open my heart I experienced such a deep feeling of love and openness that at times it made me cry with joy.  It was in these moments that I found myself being grateful for the suffering.  One day in my book club I was relaying this story and found myself actually saying “I am so grateful for this pain and suffering”, I could not believe I had uttered those words having admonished many a religious follower for saying them. Upon some further contemplation I could see that it was true, the suffering had brought me closer to God which to me means my soul/true self/spirit/light, (whatever your own word is) by providing me the opportunity to learn and grow.  We had also discussed in book club how actually most of the spiritual and religious teachings all have the same message, we just see things through our own percepticals based on our culture, conditioning, etc. If we could take our percepitcals off for just a few minutes (what I believe is one of the great benefits of meditation) and see with an open heart maybe there would be a lot less suffering in the world.  While I am grateful for the lessons learned through my own pain and suffering I am confident that as I evolve personally and spiritually this pain will lessen.  Can you find a lesson in your pain? Can you learn and grow from it? Then open your heart to receive what your own God has to offer. I say YES YOU CAN!  
(Thanks for sharing this quote Neil, I am borrowing it!)

Thursday 6 November 2014

The Energy of Attraction

All I can say is WOW!  This past week I experienced an example of the energy of attraction both negative and positive that was so profound it left me speechless (well not really because I am never at a loss for words, but you get the picture!)

It began early last week when I was triggered by a situation that arose in my life.  I was aware enough to know that I was reacting, but unable to stop it and very quickly it escalated into a full blown ego episode (fortunately mainly in my own mind and some venting to my Mom).  I then received a second trigger regarding a totally different situation but with the same result   . . .  the energy of negative attraction was in full swing. By the weekend I knew I was in trouble, my mind chatter was non stop; I had resorted to isolating myself and trying to numb my mind with various distractions.  None of this was working.  Sunday morning I awoke with a small amount of clarity and was thankfully able to recognize the fear that was underlying all of my emotion.  This awareness gave me a small amount of peace, but obviously this is a deep seated issue that I have been hanging onto for a LONG time.  Monday was the peak of this emotional fear based cycle (that’s what I am now going to call it for my own reference!).  This was my worst day!  I was unable to work, unable to meditate; walking in nature didn't even help (which just about always does!).  I was suffering!  I have to admit that as someone who has done a lot of personal growth work I was once again humbled by the power of my ego (in this case also known as fear).  It started to crack Monday night when it came to me that much of my suffering was because I was fighting against what I perceived to be the negative emotions of anger, fear, jealously and competitiveness.  I suddenly remembered my teachings on dealing with your shadow and how you need to lean into the pain caused by trying to deny your “dark side”.  Thankfully I was home alone and able to shout:  “okay already, I get it, I am ANGRY, I am SCARED, I am JEALOUS, I am COMPETITIVE”.  Once I acknowledged these emotions, I was able to allow them with compassion, but the next day I was still not out of the woods as I now felt a deep sadness.  Fortunately I was able to share my feelings with someone, he empathized with me having felt many of the same emotions himself, and this helped me to realize we are all suffering together, we are not alone.  By Tuesday night I was feeling a deep sense of peace and knew I had recovered once again.

Part Two - The full realization of what I had just experienced became crystal clear to me the next morning when I randomly opened up the book “The Untethered Soul” to the chapter “Let Go Now or Fall”. Michael Singer described word for word, step by step exactly what had happened to me in the past week and he offered a way out.  I would like to share it with you with the hope that one day it may help you as well.  In this chapter he talks about fear being the underlying cause of all negative emotion (particularly anger, jealousy, etc.). He says “you can do two things with fear: you can recognize that you have it and work to release it, or you can keep it and try to hide from it.” For most of us when we are triggered by something or someone in our life, it activates this fear and we immediately go into protection mode to try and hide it.  We try and control our outer and inner circumstances in order to not feel the pain from this fear.  He goes on to say that in your attempts to protect yourself from your problems you create more problems as negative energy attracts more negative energy.  You begin to feel heavy, like the world is out to get you and you are fighting against life (man could I relate to this, I think I actually said those exact words out loud).  All of this was making so much sense to me, but when he explained that if you do not release this negative energy created from your fears immediately when you are hit (triggered) then it will be VERY difficult to release it later.  I could see so clearly how this had happened to me, I lost my connection with my true self and became lost in the unconsciousness of fear and misery.  Then the magnetic forces of the law of attraction kicked in in full force to continue the cycle.  Fortunately I did not act out any of the scenarios that had played over and over in my mind.  This is how people say things that hurt others and wreck relationships because now they have affected another person’s energy with their own negativity.  Wow!  Wow!  Can you see how this affects the whole world?!  Are we responsible for perpetuating this negative energy? And if so, what can we do to stop this cycle?  
LET IT GO!  Let it go immediately. You know you are triggered when you react, when you blame, when you no longer are taking responsibility for your actions or words, when you find yourself saying too many negative things, when you become obsessed with a person or a situation, when your mind chatter is affecting your life, the list goes on and on. Yes you say, I know exactly what you mean Tracy but what can I do?  The minute you are aware that you have been triggered (usually a physical feeling of tightness in your body around your heart, stomach or throat), acknowledge it, take a deep breath and let it move through you.  Release the negative energy deep inside of you, visualize it moving through your body and dissipating, feel openness in your heart.  This is going to be very difficult if you leave it or have left it for a long time, but you need to persevere.  Here is the flip side to the story. . . The minute I became aware of this fear based energy blockage and released it, I was back in the flow of life.  Phew!  This shift into positive energy not only brought me back to the most glorious peaceful feeling (like when the sun comes out after a rainy day) but also realigned my energy in the universe and attracted all positive things, including peaceful resolution of the two situations that had triggered me.

This brings me to Part Three of my story, this morning as I sat in meditation with Deepak Chopra’s Energy of Attraction series, he was talking about creating an intention for what you desire, it struck me that I had done this a couple of months ago, my intention was:  “To have an open heart”.  Another Wow!  If I had not had this past weeks experience I never would have fully understood what an open heart meant and or felt like.  Once again I am humbled by these teachings and by the power of intention and attraction, but most of all by the divine teacher (my soul) within.  There is nothing that brings me more sadness then seeing my fellow humans suffering with emotional pain brought on by fear.  Watching people struggle against it with defensiveness, deflection, anger, insecurity, self abuse or worse, makes me want to reach out to them.  But I needed to understand it myself in order to be genuine in my empathy, and that makes me eternally grateful for this experience.  What ever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! We are all in this together.

In closing I want to share these words directly from Michael A Singer’s book “The Untethered Soul” because I think they are important for all of us to contemplate.

In speaking about our reactions to our negative energy blocks he says:
“We all know that we’re doing this, but nobody questions it.  We think we’re supposed to figure out how life should be, and then make it that way.  Only someone who looks deeper, and questions why we need the events of life to be a particular way, will question this assumption.  How did we come up with the notion that life is not okay just the way it is, or that it won’t be okay the way it will be?  Who said that the way life naturally unfolds is not all right?  The answer is, fear says so.” 

Figure this out and you will forever be in the natural flow of life and that is a very blissful place to be.  Good luck my fellow travelers on this path, I travel with you in heartfelt gladness and love.  It is not always easy but it is worth it!