I want to name that I’m aware that I have a tendency to want to teach/preach and this could be one of those moments. But it feels too huge and too significant not to speak on. Consider this fair warning.
Last week I was in a group with mostly men. The day before I’d had an experience with a man that created the surfacing of a deep trauma wound from childhood. Now in this group with these men I’ve known for months I had the sense that they were detached and uncaring and I wanted out. I told them there was a good chance I’d never come back.
Lucky for me at the very end a man something said some thing that struck a bell. He said something along the lines that possibly I wasn’t recognizing the level of care. I sat with that for a long time and recognize that he at least in my estimation was offering me an impersonal and unemotional care. That was the catalyst for a shift into a whole new paradigm.
As I’ve written I have watched several women recently lament that they don’t feel emotionally held even to the point of breaking off relationships. Something had me tracking this closely. I have felt the same often. Yet my meditation teacher in luminous awareness had said that women tend to get caught in simultaneous awareness the unified field everyone everywhere compassion and empathy. And men tend to get stuck more in awake awareness emptiness no one no thing. Here’s what i have been able to witness.
Being an empathetic sensitive Enneagram four I have blown my nervous system out with my huge waves of emotion. I’ve also blown out other peoples nervous system. But I considered it a small price to take full ownership of my emotions and not let them be suppressed. But again I passed the due date and the shelflife on that approach to my emotions. I decided last week to put them in the backseat and I know ultimately I will no longer experience them as such. That felt like a loss initially that I was not yet ready for.
Learning to make peace with these volatile emotions has been a huge part of my process. They’ve been impeccable guides in many ways. And now it’s time to shift that relationship.
This week I went back to that group where I had experienced many of the men as detached or in their heads. Guidance told me to go back. And am I glad I did. I just came from the most touching illuminating inspiring Connecting heartfull experience. I got to witness one of the men expose himself in tremendous vulnerability and name how his nervous system is currently operating in the way that mine used to all the time; feeling overwhelmed. Then pulling away from Connection because it was too much. And then feeling such incredible isolation and loneliness., A primal aloneness that did not feel good.
I was with three other men the only woman. The entire experience was a benediction a sacrament of revelation. I saw beneath an exterior appearance of detached of judgmental of critical. I saw a golden heart. I saw a unified field.
But the key point was I had to stay in awake awareness, in spacious presence without getting swept away into the intensity of feeling coming up. Previously I didn’t feel capable of it but thank God I was here. It was so beautiful so rich.
Previously I couldn’t understand why so many felt alienated from my emotions. My friend clued me in that I simply overwhelm people or I did. How amazing to be able to stay fully with what was coming up but hold it in spacious presence and thus not overwhelm myself or another. What a freaking miracle. Grateful grateful grateful. 
