I woke up this morning thinking about understanding. Years ago one of the aspects that was most difficult was the feeling almost no one understood what I was going through. My understanding is that at that point 3-5% of the population was having a somewhat similar experience yet I only knew one person personally experiencing great challenge and fear and he had zero interest in a spiritual understanding of what was occurring. I had several people support me despite having no clue what I was going through and one person going through something somewhat similar yet seemingly way less intense. My point being is this journey can feel very isolating, as though no one really understands you or the ones that do are only met through a computer screen. I had to make peace with this and realize it was part of my journey to fall back in love with myself, no matter what. If people understood me great, if not, fine too.
Ironically now that others are feeling this intensity of arising fear it seems many people can begin to understand me yet now it does not matter. I often don’t really even understand myself and that is fine.
Another point I want to mention is the experience of doing these practices like saying I love you to yourself or allowing the physical sensations to arise and be witnessed may feel useless and maybe even false. This is another challenging phase to pass through. Initially our subconscious rejects the new experience and categorizes it as unfamiliar. It takes great commitment to keep with loving yourself even when more reasons to hate yourself keep arising, when it feels phony and annoying. Stay with it. I knew all of these practices had begun to sink in when a little half smile would arrive as I did my self loving practices. The smile grew over time to even an occasional giggle. Now I can say I adore myself and a huge smile often appears. This is my sign it has finally become something my conscious brain now accepts. So this is my way of encouraging you to stick with it even if very uncomfortable feelings arise when you do. That is just your subconscious letting you know it needs more love, not less as Matt would say. Stay with it darlings and know all is well.
I want to also give another example of dropping the story. I had a very bad cold for weeks with intense congestions, cough, even mild fever. People would hear me and ask me how I was, saying, wow, you sound really bad. They would commiserate yet I kept repeating that I was fine, all was well, there was no problem. I felt the discrepancy between my experience and others’ experience of my situation. I realized that because I no longer identified with being sick, the experience did not bother me. I was aware it was happening but it was as though it was happening at a distance from me. Interestingly I am now much better while many others I know have had it linger for weeks or even months. It is nothing I try to do or was even conscious of until I noticed the contrast between my experience and others frequent concern or comments. It is fascinating to me to observe Eckhart (Tolle) was really on to something when he recommended we drop our stories. At the same time don’t TRY to drop your story as this can lead to a feeling of doing something wrong. I know this gets so esoteric and confusing. Merely trust by keeping your attention on what is, this journey somehow takes care of itself. Here’s another example of not having a story. The wind woke me up last night and I had to go outside to move something that was banging. Afterwards it was a long time before I fell back to sleep so when the alarm went off I was very dazed. I have a session scheduled soon that requires extra concentration. In the past I would stew, plan in my mind that I would be tired all day, wonder how I’d muddle through. Now I think nothing about it, did drink a coffee and take a walk to help my body wake up. Beyond that, I left it alone.
We are energetic beings. When the energy is contracted we realize that something in our experience is in conflict with our core values. When we find a way to be at peace with what is, our energy does not contract. Let’s do our best just to ride the waves with no story of where the waves may take us, trusting it is for our highest good.