When I am triggered and my emotional world is on fire . . . When I am in victim mode, spiraling into shame, blame, and rage . . . When I notice I am self-judging, self -hating, descending into addictive behavior, complaining, resenting . . . I am reminded . . . these are the signals, the indicators, I have to slow down, listen, pay attention. The messengers have arrived.
I am honestly inclined to dissociate and split from these feelings and sensations, to try to meditate them away, or transform them into a higher vibration. But I am learning to heed the call; there is an invitation toward intimacy, toward curiosity . . . an urging to open to the possibility of awareness, of vision that might be struggling forth, trying to break into consciousness. The tension, pressure and anxiety in my body that I generally refer to as "fear", is also a kind of "aliveness", a potency or power or force asking to be met and expressed.
Something old and deep is attempting to break through, out of the murky darkness and into awareness. Some unmet emotion, some abandoned aspect of myself, some underlying state of vulnerability that was not able to manifest or resolve safely at an earlier time is asking for acknowledgment.
What is it? What is knocking on the door of my heart, longing for inclusion? What lost part of me is shape-shifting out of the unseen and up from of the muddy soil of my body, so that it may share its wisdom? I know I'm going to learn about something I’ve been neglecting, about what is most important, most purposeful in this life . . . about some discrepancy between the life I know is possible and the one I’ve been living. Why wouldn't I turn into this discomfort and welcome whatever is emerging?
In the past, it was intelligent to split off from overwhelming, traumatic experiences that I could not absorb and digest. But these parts and bits are still looking to be metabolized. They show up through this body, often as knots and distortions, darkness and dejection in which, when I focus, I can sense a pull to aliveness, connection, and wholeness. Though it often appears otherwise, these painful sensations and experiences no longer arise to overwhelm or engulf me, but rather to show me the truth of my human condition in this human moment.
If I don't take the time or have the courage to give my attention to the call . . . the energy will continue to assert itself in relationships, in clients, in emotional states, in all my life circumstances. The energy that seeks acknowledgement, acceptance and resolution will appear in conversation, in my perceptions of music, in my experience of food. Wherever I place my attention, the unmet energy will be waiting for me, waiting to reflect back to me something astonishing about who I am. If I listen, a Truth that dissolves the contractions and unwinds the tangled falsehoods will be revealed.
I am learning to appreciate the childhood “forgetting,” when protection and survival instincts allowed this body and nervous system to partition and reorganize awareness so that it could grow and mature. Forgetting, in its own way, was as sacred then as is the “remembering” I strive for now. Experiencing these complimentary dynamics, the numbness of resistance begins to thaw in my neck and shoulders. I open to the understanding that Divine presence uses both of these strategies to awaken me to what I am. Each are guided by the singular intent of the One, who never, ever gives up and will look for expression through me, forever.
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