This coming Wednesday will be three years since Jill left her body. Interestingly, that year (2011) it was the day before Easter which this year is today. I didn’t choose this day to write but felt it come on and grabbed my laptop. I have been feeling my way through life for the last two and a half years since Jillie left. I say two and a half because for the first six months after she left I did everything in my power to not feel anything; drugs, alcohol, distractions, suicide thoughts (butcher knife at my chest trying not to dive on the ground and 100MPH driving with blurred sobbing eyes)…. but nothing took away my suffering. Nothing.

Suffering doesn’t begin to describe where I was at and is a one eighty from where I am now.I once heard that religion is for people who believe in heaven and hell and spirituality is for people who have been to hell. I am definitely spiritual but it wasn’t my choice and is also my greatest blessing. You see, I spent decades on the treadmill of life unfulfilled, scared, and feeling a hole in my heart. I wasn’t happy or whole and kept trying to be by any means possible but didn’t get anywhere except nowhere. Even with the amazing love that Jill and I had (and still have) I still carried all my emotional scars. I was trying to think my way through a process that required feeling. I needed to feel to heal and my fear of feeling all my sadness and pains was so great that I stayed stuck which perpetuated all my sadness and pains. I was stuck in self destructive patterns of everything and anything you can think of and probably the same ones as many of you. Numbing and running from my sadness, insecurities, and pain, getting into and out of “relationships” that not only didn’t serve my heart and spirit but proved that I wasn’t worth loving even though that’s all I wanted. To be loved, seen, and accepted for me; kind, vulnerable, loving, caring, tender, smart, beautiful…. Sound familiar? I wasn’t living wholeheartedly, I was merely existing holeheartedly.

Jill’s exiting her body broke me to my core into shards of horrific horror and isolation. Notice that I say leave her body because we don’t die. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spirits having a human experience. By allowing myself to stay with my pains and using tools of introspection and non-attachment to my thoughts and feelings I made my way through a self healing process that transformed me to who I am now; peaceful and content. I only wish one thing for me and everyone; peace, love, friendship, and joy. I no longer have fears or worries and rarely get a noisy mind. I heard a yoga teacher refer to it as monkey mind; thoughts bouncing around like apes in the treetops; never resting and never at ease.

My friend Charlie said to me, upon walking away from Jill’s body when I said to stop trying to revive her, that Jill is now in a place of peace and love and joy and why don’t I try to match her at that frequency while I still have a body. Those words embedded in my being for later use because at that point I did not want or know how to keep living. It took a great effort of not doing anything for those words to take full affect. I say not doing because that is exactly what I needed to do, I mean not do, well you know what I mean. I decided that instead of running from my sadness and pain that I would see where it leads. I decided that all my decades of running from my feelings hadn’t gotten me anywhere so I would allow them full expression and see what happens. That meant staying with my discomfort which is a very light, cozy word that we often hear in yoga practices. “Stay with your discomfort and breathe into it and notice your thoughts and how you want to get out of the discomfort.” I wrote about this last summer and how to learn to stay with the bad sad feelings. Here is the link 

I have been guiding some people through their own spiritual/emotional transition/crisis/curiosity and tell them what I learned from my intuitive self in processing my hell. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Keep coming back to breath with whatever the feelings are and let them have their full say. Keep breathing and feeling and with the breathing and feeling there is space for healing. With allowing feeling and staying open to whatever might come next I was able to begin to see how my patterns of fear and pain and sadness and lack of self worth….. were all rooted in childhood patterns that were ingrained in me by my parents. They weren’t intentionally ingrained but instead came from my parents who had the same programmed into them by their parents and so on…. all of whom never looked at or resolved their own pains and thus passed them on. Like an emotional herpes that flares up at the slightest signs of stress. An ugly metaphor but spot on. All reactivity as an adult is the same trigger(s) as when you were a child. So in order to not feel the way you do now you need to allow yourself to feel the causes of the feelings. To feel the roots of the pains. The next time you feel the wave of sadness, pain, anxiety, trigger come up see if you can pause and take a breath and feel into what it reminds you of. What does it feel like? Does it remind you of when you were five and mom and dad fought about something, or when you were three and mom was crying and begging dad to not leave or to stop cheating, or when your were seven and you learned to toughen up and stop crying, or when you’re loved one left his/her body and abandoned you.

You can learn to see and not judge what you feel, just notice. By seeing and feeling you’ll begin to have awareness and understand that 1- that is not now, 2- just because it was that way does not mean it has to continue to be that way, 3- who you are is a beautiful heart and spirit who is doing the best you can with the tools you learned as a child, 4- if you can recognize that your button (trigger) is being pushed and take a breath (three is ideal to gain the space to pause) that you don’t have to react anymore to it, and 5- you always have a choice and if your heart is guiding you to do something that your mind is in contradiction to then follow your heart because that is in alignment with what love (spirit, source, god, universe…) knows you need to do. Your holehearted existence can be a wholehearted life if you are willing to do some emotional processing. And repeat this to yourself: Life is not what I experience but how I relate to what I experience.

Wishing you peace, love, friendship, and joy. namaste

 

Well, not exactly your mind but your thoughts that are created by your mind’s ego. Are you stuck, unable to change the job, leave the “relationship”, trying to make someone or something okay, repeating the same thing over and over and over?All this drama, sadness, pain, fear, and frustration are created by your ego.

It wants you to be chaotic. The windier you mind is getting blown about the more it keeps you stuck. Your ego wants you to ignore your heart’s guidance (intuition, gut instinct). The longer you stay in pain and suffering the better it is for your ego and the worse it is for your heart, spirit, body, and soul. You are always tired, fearful, and literally or energetically looking over your shoulder waiting for the other shoe to drop or be thrown at you. Your guilt keeps you from leaving because you believe (mind) that it is your responsibility to make it right or that you owe that person or situation even though you feel that you should get out, run, move on, or move out (heart).

This constraint was created in you long ago before you knew you were being programmed to exist fearfully instead of living heartfully. It took me 44 years to figure this one out and only because I was in so much pain and sadness that I knew that if I didn’t heal these wounds I would continue to exist in the world and likely die broken. I was terrified to change. Scared to let go of all that I knew to which I clung like a life raft with a slow leak in it knowing full well that it would not keep me safe or alive and eventually cause my own demise.

My fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of not having it figured out was the boulder on my soul which crushed my spirit, weakened my fragile self worth, and made me sick with allergies, illness, injury, and drama. Lots of drama. All of it self imposed because I didn’t dare look behind the curtain because I didn’t know what was there and not knowing what was there was scarier to me than the scary I was already existing with.

Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom before we make a shift and sometimes even then we don’t do so. I was heartbroken into a million pieces and had two choices. Heal myself or exist like this until I physically died, for I was already emotionally and spiritually dead at that point.

Somewhere inside of me there was an ember of light that wanted to burn brighter and I needed to learn how to fan that flame of love and hope. I had already tried throughout my lifetime to figure my way out of drama and pain so I had to learn a new way of doing so and that way was by stop trying to figure it all out and just let go of the “life raft”.

Let go of ill-preconceived notions of what should or shouldn’t be, who I am or thought I was, what my life needs to be happy, why I can’t be alone, and why I’m not good enough. A Buddhist quote is ‘let go or be dragged’ and this is the only truth.

I learned that no feeling is good or bad or right or wrong and that if there patterns that no longer served me then I would look at them with compassion and without judgment and see what they’re about. I learned that I can’t think my way out of emotional pain and the only way to heal it was to feel it all the way. This meant that whatever feeling arose I would allow it full expression like a wave rolling into the shore and see what was left afterward. I learned that the more I let go and stopped trying to stop feeling “bad” or “sad” feelings the stronger my spirit became and more willing to bend with these waves of emotions understanding that they were waves that come in and out, the same as nature.

I learned that these energies in motion have their purpose and to try to suppress them meant that they would arise somewhere else in a self defeating way. I learned that breath of life is literally breath of life and the more I learned to breathe when these rogue waves battered my emotional and spiritual shores the more I was able to bob up again and again and eventually learn to surf them instead of being swept under by them.

In summary I can say this: if you find that you are at a crossroads in your existence and are tired of being tired and want to know real peace and joy instead of bouts of harmony and temporary fleeting satisfaction then I suggest you try a new approach to how you are. Fighting your feelings is like yelling at the rain; don’t bother for it all has it’s purpose and even though you may not like or understand it, in time you will find that a new growth will occur and blossom into something you never knew before. Slow inhale, pause, slow exhale; three times. Wishing you peace, love, friendship, and joy. namaste

You create your own suffering AND you can learn to recognize what and why you do so and shift it. Here is some of what you do. You stay in a situation or “relationship” that not only doesn’t serve your heart and spirit but also diminishes your peace, sense of security, and physical health. You try to make something okay that won’t be no matter what you say, try, or do and even more importantly is you forsake your inner child’s safety to make someone else temporarily okay at best. You all have a loving, sensitive little boy or girl inside of you who only wants to be nurtured and to feel safe yet you have been taught to put yourself last. You fearsake ourselves for the sake of others. I did all of this for more than four decades and finally learned why and stopped doing so.

The truth is that we create our own suffering because we all have deeply ingrained patterns (emotional scars or grooves in our spiritual bodies and psyches known in Sanskrit as samsaras) that were embedded in us as children by our parents who were doing the best they could with their unresolved samsaras. Our patterns are all very similar; wanting to be loved for who we are, fear of abandonment, fear of loss and dying, fear of not being good enough and rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of being sad, fear of being afraid, fear of not having direction, fear of not being successful, fear of slowing down (because if we do then we have to spend time with ourselves and feel our feelings)…. All these patterns are created because our minds want us to operate from fear and keep us in drama whereas our hearts want us to live with love and be guided with trust and peace. You see basically you are operating as physical adults with emotional reactivity of wounded children. You know the stove is hot yet continue to touch it.

I have been helping some friends lately through some very difficult and painful circumstances and transitions regarding their “relationships.” I use quotation marks because the word is of no substance if it is rooted in fear motivated reactivity and patterns. The painful circumstances of today are manifestations of patterns that repeatedly come up in an attempt by your higher selves (heart guidance) to recognize that you are touching the hot stove over and over again and to understand the roots of this addicted, self destructive behavior. An example of this is the way that you will do and say anything you can to make your “partner” feel safe or loved or not pissed off with you. You cannot make someone else healthy or happy. It is not your job. The only responsibility you have is to heal your own wounds and by doing so open to a lighter, more aware (enlightened) perspective of life, us, and others.

Seeing situations, ourselves and others for how and who they are instead of how we think it/they/we should be is a step in freeing from suffering. When you expect someone/something to be a certain way and it doesn’t turn out so then you are disappointed thus creating your own sadness. When you believe that you can control the outcome of something and it doesn’t turn out the way you have been trying to make it happen then you are disillusioned thus creating regret. When you don’t trust that life has a rhythm and flow to it and instead try to make sure it fits neatly into a box then you are unhappy and thus looking for another way to fix your problems. I have learned that my mind had been controlling my existence through fear based manipulation even though my heart had always longed for peace and love and safety. I have learned that my heart’s guidance is always best for me no matter what my mind is telling me. A good example of how you know this to be true is when you meet someone and immediately your gut intuition (heart instinct) tells you run the other way but you don’t because your mind is saying give him or her a chance, it’ll work out, I need the money…. and afterwards you are looking back and saying “see, I knew I was right!” This is heart vs. mind. Heart keeps you on path through trusted guidance and mind keeps you off track through fearful manipulation.

Life process is fluid and whenever you try to control, convince yourself, or make it so then you are trying to force a change in a river current. A first step in learning to let go and trust life process is recognizing (without judgment and with self compassion (don’t beat yourself up)) that you do or say or stay in things because you are afraid of change and/or don’t honor the value in yourself. Again, don’t beat yourself up, you have learned to be who you are from the time you were born and just acknowledging that there are patterns that don’t serve you is a courageous act of love and acceptance of yourself. With this new awareness you can begin to see your patterns in action and again not judge yourself for doing it again.

A second step in this healing is remembering to breathe. Slow inhale, pause, slow exhale (three times) is usually sufficient to get you out of your head and into your heart. Try it right now……………………………… …………………………… …………………………… Do you notice how your energy shifts down into your torso and towards your legs and feet? This is the grounding energy of breath. It helps to restore a balance to your energy field and spirit (if only temporarily) and allows for space to choose another way of being in lieu of your pattern. Another step is to begin to feel where these patterns come from. What does the pattern remind you of? For example, in an unhealthy “relationship” you feel that you want to leave for you know it is better for you but you don’t budge; perhaps the root is because someone you love died when you were younger and the fear of abandonment and failure has carried over into all your “relationships”, or your parents fought all the time and stuck it out so that’s what you’re supposed to do, or mom always tried to make everyone happy in the house even though she wasn’t…… get my drift? The triggers, fears, and blames you have now were created in your past and still hold sway over your present circumstances.

I was listening to the song Hold On today as I drove home from the market. Click on the link to hear the song when you’ve finished reading. Hold on doesn’t mean you should stay in or do something that isn’t good for you because in time it will get better because it never does until you begin healing yourself and not deceiving yourself into believing you can fix it or them. Hold on means to trust in life (god, spirit, love, universe) that

everything will work out as it should for your best interest even if you don’t understand it or like it all the time. The tighter you grip on with fear the more the fear restricts your life but the more you let go with a loving heart and conscious breath the easier and more peaceful your life becomes. If you are tired of feeling the way you do and would like to shift your being then start where you are. Wishing you peace, love, friendship, and joy. namaste