Visions are evolving things. As we journey through life we are drawn to things that interest us. I have often wondered about my vision in life because my view of anything in the future, other than children, has always been Continue reading “Bringing a Vision to Life — PARADISE!”
Healing is all about digging deeper and deeper and looking into the shadowy corners to shed light on everything and create healing. Today I did some more digging. What I found may resonate with someone out there.
I woke feeling stressed again. “Why do I feel stressed?” I wondered. “Time to focus,” I sighed.
“How am I feeling?” I asked myself.
“Afraid,” I said.
“Why,” I asked.
“I’m afraid I will fail,” I answered — but there wasn’t much power in it. I knew that fear was pretty much healed.
I set that fear aside and asked, “OK, good to know. Aside from that, how am I feeling?”
“Afraid.”
This fear was a little stronger. “Why am I afraid?” I asked.
“I’m afraid I will succeed.”
I’ve heard this before too, I thought, but I continued, “Why am I afraid to succeed?” I asked.
“Because if I succeed, people will expect me to keep doing what I succeed at and I will be stuck. I will be expected to keep doing it and I won’t be able to focus my life on anything new. I’ll be trapped.” This has been an issue before in my focusing.
As I pondered this answer I realized my fears are based on the belief that I must do what other people say I must do, like continuing to perform certain actions if I am successful in them. Bringing this into the light allows me to see that although that may be an ingrained notion, it is not really true and I can begin to let go of that belief.
I asked, “How can I heal this?” but nothing came so I asked, “What more can I learn about this?” I received this answer — which came in bits and pieces: “In the past I have had my ruts, my time constraints, my health issues, my feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, my feelings of depression, my feelings of being stuck. These feelings and ruts have given me excuses to fail, or at least, excuses to not excel. These feelings would rescue me when someone would badger me to do things, or blame me for not doing things, or yell at me for not doing something I didn’t have the time or energy for, or for something I didn’t even think of, or didn’t have the desire to do, or the intention to do. They were my hiding place from someone elses’s abusive demanding controlling behavior.
In learning more about this fear of success I realized that in succeeding I would appear to others to be competent, capable, able, strong, and my excuses and ruts that I hid in before might not protect me anymore.
I also realized that without these familiar ruts, that I have lived in for years, I would struggle to know who I am, where I stand, what my perspective is. I would feel lost without them. I would be floating free without a harbor. I understand clearly now how people identify with their wounds, their illnesses, their pain, because I clearly see how I do.
One of my teachers, Malcolm Ringwalt of Earth_Heart, explained the personality as post it notes inside of a light bulb. When we are born we are like a light (the filament) with in a clean bulb, seeing the world as it is, our pure light shining out through the clear bulb accurately reflecting back the truth. As we begin to interact with the world around us we gain experience based on our limited perspectives and begin forming opinions and shaping our “personalities”. We make little notes and post them on the inside of the bulb that is our interface with the world, and our filters begin to be created. (Scared of the loud dog. Like the pretty flowers. Don’t like Needles! Kitty soft but scratches. Man with beard mean. Lady with brown hair gives cookie.) Each experience creates a post it note and each post it note taints the new experiences. We become so used to our space within that bulb and our perspectives, we have a difficult time seeing anyone else’s perspective unless we have an experience like theirs. Then we can write another post it note like theirs.
People on a spiritual path are attempting to poke holes in those post it notes, over and over, until eventually they begin to see glimpses of the world as it really is. Sometimes in meditation one can poke a hole and get a glimpse.
Focusing is a type of meditation that allows us to look closely at our post it notes and begin to understand why we put them there in the first place, and help us peel them away little by little, or poke holes in them.
The first time Tom Brown Jr. had our class do the focusing meditation he had us out there in nature peeling back the layers of feeling for 45 minutes. Focusing over and over for 45 minutes was excruciating. It was work. After I peeled back each emotion I couldn’t imagine there would be anything more to find, but there was. I would get distracted and forget I was even doing an exercise, but when I remembered I would force myself to continue, after all, I wanted to get my money’s worth. Looking for each new emotion was not an easy task, especially the deeper I got. But I kept it up and I got to a place that completely surprised me. I saw myself for who I really was, underneath all the emotions, the drama, the feelings. I saw myself as pure energy, fearless, a warrior, and as a glittery core of energy going up and down within my body. I wept uncontrollably at the beauty of myself because I had no idea I was anything like that! I also saw my accomplishments hanging off me like dead whitened logs. I realized when I saw them that they were not a part of me at all, but just a residue hanging there; that the only thing that was me was this energy that was alive and was me.
I will be eternally grateful for that glimpse.
Even when Tom called us back to class I couldn’t stop crying. I would have never guessed I was anything like that. So today when I realized that I was afraid to let go of those ruts I was hiding in, of helplessness and incapability, and afraid to let them go because I wouldn’t know who I was, I remembered that meditation.
Why not hold onto the me I saw in that meditation? That is the real me after all. That is who I really am. I can let go of my old crutches.
I believe we each have that incredible strong and powerful self under all the pain and suffering. Curiously the painful experiences are for our growth if we can figure out how to use them for that. I encourage us all to peel back the layers and learn from them. Find and work to become the amazingly powerful people we really are.
I have to be gentle with myself because years of living in the rut is not an easy habit to break. I have known for years who I really am but I still find myself in fear and that’s OK. I simply have more to learn from those lessons. I am still learning as I explore the layers between who I really am and the surface where I am confused and conflicted. So please be gentle with yourself and with others you encounter on this journey toward self discovery. We are all in this together and are all in different places along the path of total recovery.
I have used the tool of focusing that I explained in my blog called “Do ya ever just not wanna get outta bed? “Focusing” will tell you why.” many times since learning the meditation in Trackerschool almost 10 years ago. The meditation is getting easier for me and I am more quickly able to pinpoint the problems and the good things I am looking for to assist me in my life.
I woke from a wonderful dream this morning which held all sorts of hope and confidence symbols, to a day clear of scheduled duties and full of possibilities, but a feeling of being overwhelmed and not up to the opportunities.
After feeding my horses and letting them out, taking the dog out, and setting up my computer, without any change in my feelings, I decided to peel back the layers and get to the bubbling over excitement and unrepentant confidence I knew was in there because I had felt it so recently! So I lay back on my couch as my computer was warming up . . . my meditation went something like this:
“How am I feeling?” I surrendered to the answer with no judgement, only love and acceptance, and waited for the first feeling to arise like dew forms on grass. It took awhile for me to identify the feeling, it just looked like a carpet of darkness all over me and the landscape around me. After several moments of being in that darkness I understood what the feeling was.
“I’m feeling inadequate, ‘less than’, incapable.”
“Why, why am I feeling that way?” I asked myself, again with only love and understanding, no judgement.
Again I waited in the feeling for awhile. The understanding was not quick or easy in coming, and even when the answer came I was a bit surprised. “I’m feeling this way because I have been taught since childhood not to trust myself, my feelings. I was taught to look to others for approval, for what my path should be, for how I should be feeling.”
After sitting with that understanding for a minute I said to myself, without judgement, only acceptance and love, “OK, that’s good to know.” I proceeded to attempt to set the darkness aside so I could go to the next layer but it really didn’t want to go.
I wondered why the darkness of inadequacy didn’t want to go. I felt reluctant to force it to go. I felt like maybe something bad would happen if I made it leave. I wondered if I would be hurt somehow, ripped apart somehow, incomplete somehow, if it was gone. Then I remembered I was just setting it aside. But I also remembered that setting it aside often healed it and sometimes it didn’t come back. I wondered if setting it aside was like giving it to God. I wondered if giving the darkness to God is what the scripture means when it says to cast your burden on the Lord. I tried it by saying, “Here God,” and imagined the darkness going to the light. It went, but very slowly, almost reluctantly or doubtfully, and I wondered if that was my doubt, or even my fear of being incomplete without it. I wondered if I had been too hasty in setting it aside, maybe I had more to learn from it. . . maybe . . . anyway . . .
Next I asked, “Aside from that, How am I feeling?”
I was a little bit surprised when I found I was feeling afraid.
I asked why and surrendered.
“I am afraid I will fail, than I will know I was inadequate, not good enough.”
“OK, that’s good to know,” I said, meaning it and so grateful for that understanding! I thought about giving that to God too, but wondered if setting it aside myself is the same thing, in a way. I set it aside and it was easier that the first darkness of inadequacy.
Next I asked, “Aside from those, how am I feeling?”
This was the layer I had been looking for; buried under the layers of self doubt and fear. I could see all the pictures in my mind, the colors I have been playing with for a project I am working on, the sketches I have been making, the shapes, the compositions, the textures! This layer of feeling held the excitement of creation and joy! “I feel energy, creative, full of life and ideas! I don’t care if I make mistakes, it will be fun!”
“Why?”
“Because this is living, wondering, experiencing, tasting, smelling, making, seeing, doing, touching, trying, showing, talking, smiling, laughing, hugging, sharing, energy, everything.”
This layer isn’t hampered by fear, negativity, or self doubt. This layer is pure. This layer is more who we really are. This is the light that we are. This is the layer I want to live my life from and I just had to get past the film of negativity to find it again. I believe this layer is always in there, for everyone. We simply (or sometimes not so simply) have to make the effort to find it under the other layers. Focusing is a great tool to help with that!
I will forever be grateful to my teacher Tom Brown Jr. for his teachings and his healing methods we students benefitted from.
My daughter Juliana’s friends came to help build the barn! These are friends from her homeschool group. They donated their time as a service project. I am so grateful for their help. They each came for several days and helped for many hours! What a great learning project for them and a great help to me!! Thanks Ephraim, Isaiah, and Stephen!
“The nervous system of the gut contains about one hundred million nerve cells — we have as many in the small intestine alone as there are in our entire spine! These nerves do more than coordinate the digestion and absorption of food and the elimination of waste — they also form part of our sensory apparatus. The gut responds to emotional stimuli by muscle contractions, blood flow changes and the secretion of a multitude of biologically active substances. Such brain-gut integration is essential for survival. Large volumes of blood, for example, may need to be diverted from the intestines to the heart and to the muscles of the limbs at a moment’s notice.”
“In turn, the gut is abundantly supplied with sensory nerves that carry information to the brain. Quite to the contrary of what we believed until recently, nerve fibres ascending from the intestines to the brain greatly outnumber ones descending from brain to gut.”
“The brain relays to the gut data from sensory organs such as the eyes, the skin or the ears — or more correctly, relayed to the gut is the interpretation of such data by the brain’s emotional centres. The resulting physiological events in the gut then reinforce that emotional interpretation. The signals sent back to the brain give rise to gut feelings that we can apprehend consciously. If we lose touch with the gut feelings, the world becomes less safe.”—-“When The Body Says No; Understanding The Stress Disease Connection” by Gabor Mate, M.D. — Page 146 paragraphs 3-5
So the head brain and the belly brain are in cahoots! Saying that out loud makes me also say to myself, “Of course they are, what else could they be!” It sounds to me like Dr. Mate is saying the head brain is an extension of the belly brain . . . a sensor and interpreter of information for the belly brain . . . information the belly brain uses to make judgments . . . gut feelings . . . intuitions.
Is this what Dr. Mate is saying? I think so. What do you think?
“The nervous system of the gut contains about one hundred million nerve cells — we have as many in the small intestine alone as there are in our entire spine! These nerves do more than coordinate the digestion and absorption of food and the elimination of waste — they also form part of our sensory apparatus. The gut responds to emotional stimuli by muscle contractions, blood flow changes and the secretion of a multitude of biologically active substances. Such brain-gut integration is essential for survival. Large volumes of blood, for example, may need to be diverted from the intestines to the heart and to the muscles of the limbs at a moment’s notice.”
“In turn, the gut is abundantly supplied with sensory nerves that carry information to the brain. Quite to the contrary of what we believed until recently, nerve fibres ascending from the intestines to the brain greatly outnumber ones descending from brain to gut.”
“The brain relays to the gut data from sensory organs such as the eyes, the skin or the ears — or more correctly, relayed to the gut is the interpretation of such data by the brain’s emotional centres. The resulting physiological events in the gut then reinforce that emotional interpretation. The signals sent back to the brain give rise to gut feelings that we can apprehend consciously. If we lose touch with the gut feelings, the world becomes less safe.”—-“When The Body Says No; Understanding The Stress Disease Connection” by Gabor Mate, M.D. — Page 146 paragraphs 3-5
So the head brain and the belly brain are in cahoots! Saying that out loud makes me also say to myself, “Of course they are, what else could they be!” It sounds to me like Dr. Mate is saying the head brain is an extension of the belly brain . . . a sensor and interpreter of information for the belly brain . . . information the belly brain uses to make judgments . . . gut feelings . . . intuitions.
Is this what Dr. Mate is saying? I think so. What do you think?
I am reading, for the second time, “When the Body Says No; Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection”.
The connection between the emotions and the physical body play a more important role than many people realize. Dr. Mate recognizes and writes about this in very definite ways.
The first time I read this book I was looking to find my own symptoms and understand what is going on with me, and skimmed through most of the text. Now I am reading for greater understanding of how emotions affect all our body systems.
According to Dr. Mate, many diseases these days are diagnosed through a process of elimination, when the physical cause cannot be determined. Auto immune diseases, cancer, nerve pain, IBS, and fibromyalgia, to name a few. The medical professionals are not sure what causes these diseases, but there is a connection to emotions according to Dr. Mate. Why do some smokers get lung cancer and others don’t. Emotions and stress play a role.
To seperate the treatment of a physical condition without taking into account the whole picture, including the emotions and levels of stress, is like looking at only a part of the picture. What is not seen is often an integral piece of the puzzle in understanding the disease, and in prescribing treatment.
Like with me, to take medicine is not enough. When I continued to live my life with the same stresses I had previously been experiencing, I was only getting worse each year. To get better, I believe, I have to stop worrying. In fact, I am not “allowed” to worry or stress any more; my brain scrambles when I do and I can’t think straight. In order to think clearly, I must focus my attention on relaxing, appreciating each moment, and loving myself. To do this, I relax into my center and stop living in my head. I find I am not so concerned with doing, I am more aware of “being”. In this state of “being” I still have desires, and act on them, but in a more centered and relaxed way . . . I guess I would say in a more Zen like way. Many of my old ideas, what I thought I should be doing, or needed to be doing, have fallen away.
I wonder what would happen if everyone in the world could only function in this way. Would everything crumble or would we all begin to live better? I wonder.
I am reading, for the second time, “When the Body Says No; Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection”.
The connection between the emotions and the physical body play a more important role than many people realize. Dr. Mate recognizes and writes about this in very definite ways.
The first time I read this book I was looking to find my own symptoms and understand what is going on with me, and skimmed through most of the text. Now I am reading for greater understanding of how emotions affect all our body systems.
According to Dr. Mate, many diseases these days are diagnosed through a process of elimination, when the physical cause cannot be determined. Auto immune diseases, cancer, nerve pain, IBS, and fibromyalgia, to name a few. The medical professionals are not sure what causes these diseases, but there is a connection to emotions according to Dr. Mate. Why do some smokers get lung cancer and others don’t. Emotions and stress play a role.
To seperate the treatment of a physical condition without taking into account the whole picture, including the emotions and levels of stress, is like looking at only a part of the picture. What is not seen is often an integral piece of the puzzle in understanding the disease, and in prescribing treatment.
Like with me, to take medicine is not enough. When I continued to live my life with the same stresses I had previously been experiencing, I was only getting worse each year. To get better, I believe, I have to stop worrying. In fact, I am not “allowed” to worry or stress any more; my brain scrambles when I do and I can’t think straight. In order to think clearly, I must focus my attention on relaxing, appreciating each moment, and loving myself. To do this, I relax into my center and stop living in my head. I find I am not so concerned with doing, I am more aware of “being”. In this state of “being” I still have desires, and act on them, but in a more centered and relaxed way . . . I guess I would say in a more Zen like way. Many of my old ideas, what I thought I should be doing, or needed to be doing, have fallen away.
I wonder what would happen if everyone in the world could only function in this way. Would everything crumble or would we all begin to live better? I wonder.
Little Girl followed a ways behind Coyote, following his trail of trodden grass and scattered seeds. The trail led her on a wander, turning this way and that, criss crossing other trails and roads, without time or destination, until the trail ended at a border of tall pine trees. Little Girl cautiously approached, not sure which way Grandfather Coyote had gone. She entered the woods.
Tall pitch pines were scattered naturally. Little scrub oaks and blackjack oaks between, trying to reach up and touch the knees of the pines. Here and there were pretty leaves of red maples fluttering in the breeze, with blueberry bushes and tiny wintergreen plants covering the ground. ‘This is beautiful!’ she thought.
As she continued along a vague trail, she heard voices. The further she went the louder the voices sounded until she saw three young boys chattering away. The boys looked at her, smiling, and asked, “Are you following the coyote?”
“Yes,” she answered, looking from one boy to the other, “How did you know?”
They laughed. “You’re on the path of the coyote!” they answered, ” We’re following him too!” The boys were flooded with excitement. Little Girl felt safe and happy and her excitement flowed with theirs. She liked them immediately. One of the boys, Little Seal, was used to adventure and knew about being in the woods. Another boy, Little Trader, had traveled the world. The third, Good With Numbers, was following Grandfather Coyote because he, like Little Girl, was looking for something, but didn’t know what.
Little Girl walked with them, swapping rumors about Grandfather Coyote, feeling grateful for companionship.
Eventually they came to a large opening in the pines where they saw a whole pack of coyotes. There were other children there too, cautiously entering the place and looking for Grandfather Coyote, but none of the children saw him. The day was growing old, and before dark the children each wandered into the nearby woods to set up tents.
Little girl walked down various trails looking for an empty space. She found a vacant patch of ground quite a ways from the coyote clearing, set up the tent she brought, and returned to the main camp where the evening fire had been lit. Greetings and introductions lasted into the night as all the children met the young coyotes. By full dark a storm had set in and fat raindrops began to fall. The wind picked up and Little Girl left the warm fire to go to bed.
The trail to her tent was dark. The little light she carried cast jumping shadows through the wet blueberry bushes that pressed against her and snatched at her arms and legs, catching her coat and pants as she pushed through. The wind began to howl and in the growing darkness she could make out the tall pines swaying and menacing, as if in warning. Little Girl felt small and alone as she hurried along, trying to be brave. As she searched the trail, Little Girl worried she would not find her tent in the darkness. She searched each little side trail. Shadows continued to jump in jerky, spooky movements as her light played off the branches along the trail. The twigs of the bushes continued to grab at her. Panic rose in her heart.
Finally, she released a long breath. There was her tent. Little Girl climbed in, crawled into her sleeping bag, and pulled the covers over her head, but that didn’t stop her from hearing the rain pound on her leaking roof. That sleepless night was one of tossing, and listening. ‘Are there coyotes running around my tent, playing tricks on me?’ she wondered, ‘Or does the rain sound like running feet?’ Little Girl peeked out into the darkness, over and over, to make sure she was alone. Even so, the sounds she heard fooled her still and she could have sworn coyotes were running around and around her tent all night long.
To be continued . . .
