Feeling Our Way

Feeling Our Way

In this section, we're gonna find where it hurts, and start listening to where the answers lie.  Our pain, physical, mental or emotional shows up begging us to take notice when we've  discredited our intuition. Discomfort begs us to listen and trust ourselves in a world that has  taught us to silence the symptoms and push forward with someone else's vision. 

Our discomfort signals the presence of dishonesty, within ourselves or another person. Our illness signals abandonment and depletion of the self. 

When the tears start rolling, the height of emotion within us has reached a peak beyond verbal expression and releases like a levee breaking. 

These aren't reactions to be ashamed of at all! Our vehicles come with gas lights and low tire  pressure alerts to keep us safe and avoid getting stranded by the side of the road. It's time we  see our sensitivities just the same. They're a gift. We come with extra lights and sensors to keep us functioning at optimal levels without having to guess what that noise is clanking from under  the hood. 

This is why we’re often seen as the canaries in the coal mine. It’s not that everyones not feeling it, but we may receive alerts long before others take notice.

If we've not been practicing proper maintenance and self-care throughout our lives, the body  mind and spirit will signal louder and louder with each mile marker we pass. Not as a punishment or karmic debt of any kind but simply in attempts to stop us before we have a breakdown, and breakdowns are often what get most of us to pay attention. I know I can speak  for myself on that one...

We get used to our pains and discomforts just like the old Jeep Grand  Wagoneer that was my first car. I had to keep gallons of water in the back in case it over  heated, I knew the radio and headlights would cut off if I took a sharp right, and I could remove the keys from the ignition while cruising down the road, but I knew all of its little quirks and formed a bond. I still miss that Jeep! And y’all, we do the same things with ourselves.  

We can fall in love with overcoming adversity to such an extent that we don't wanna live without it, and we continuously seek it out. As human beings we crave patterns, puzzles, and problem solving! We can find it through low hanging fruit like dramatic relationships, fear focused news, and martyrdom. Or we can find it in healthy ways, by creative expression, self-awareness, and building new ways of life!

I think for many of us, at one point in our lives we learned to thrive in the state of struggle. We learned to  maneuver through life on a half tank, then a quarter tank, then some days on only fumes. 

For over a decade I did the grounding, the shielding, the clearing, never to get any real lasting  results and all the while shaming myself a little bit more for not being able to master something  that seemed to work perfectly for everyone giving me advice. 

It must be my fault for taking on these emotions. "Observe don't absorb." I'd hear this over and  over. But it is my absolute passion to feel and absorb. To soak in the colors and rhythms of life and learn from them.

It’s hard for me to justify shielding myself from feeling pain deeply, when it also means shielding myself from feeling profound joy and awe deeply. 

It’s kind of a catch 22.

Very often the most painful experiences become the richest soil to plant the seeds of our dreams. Wallowing in pain or practicing toxic positivity is a whole other discussion, but when it comes to life in general, it’s just a mixed bag. That’s kinda the name of the game, and what we resist, does indeed tend to persist.

I believe at times in certain circumstances, absolutely, medicinal grade clearing and shielding is necessary. Defense tactics are necessary. Observing without absorbing is necessary. But this is when we are specifically under attack. And I don’t know about you, but I can get paranoid enough. I love true crime. I love spooky stories. And just like you, I have unfortunately yes, had people that have been so angry with me they could spit nails and have probably made 5,000 voodoo dolls. Yes. Sometimes it happens. And sometimes we realize, “Oof…. this. person is REALLY upset with me and I need to batten down the hatches” When that happens, yes. We can act accordingly.

But- I don’t want to give people like that the power to control how I create the rest of my life. To control how I wake up every morning. I don’t wanna build the foundation of my world view and how excited I get to be or how bright I get to shine, because of a few barking dogs at the end of their chain because they’ve been unhappy with me about something. I think at the end of the day, obsessively practicing shielding or protection stuff can actually go the other way it can actually disempower us because honestly, we’re giving people like that too much credit.

To live life in a defensive state is to live in a constant state of survival.

When the physical body stays in this state for prolonged periods, multiple areas are negatively effected including the heart, adrenals, bowels, and hormones just to name a few. So it’s important to remember the effects on our mental, emotional and spiritual bodies as well when we’re living in a constant state of hyperawareness.

The psychological symptoms of this state are that we build a permanent fear of the world. Our internal fire begins to dwindle because we feel less safe being seen.

Our world becomes drastically smaller when we’re preoccupied spotting threats rather than opportunities and surprises.  

Focusing intently on avoiding what could harm us rather than what is abundantly breathing life into us leaves little room for spiritual nourishment. 

This is when we see healers psychics gurus that slowly become unable to function in the world. They live in a bubble of their own creation and begin living under a permanent cloud of impending doom.

To devote too much time and energy toward clearing and shielding practices makes me feel limited, weak and fragile, which I know I am not. Our sensitivities have nothing to do with being weak and everything to do with teaching us to be unafraid. 

So what is it we need here exactly?

I think creating movement where we once froze in fear is where our strength truly lies.

When we allow life to move through us rather than push against it, we begin re-acclimating to the truth of our infinite nature, our ability to heal and expand beyond what we've believed.  We begin integrating our own divinity and connecting with everyone around us at a higher level. 

I believe this is why we are meant to step into our sensitivities, to understand them and hold  them in the highest regard because it's not that we are the only ones that experience these  emotions, it's simply that we can perceive them with a little more clarity and depth than the average person who is holding onto the same weight but isn’t recognizing what they’re carrying, so they do as they’re told and learn to feel helpless and powerless.

Our sensitivity leaves little room for avoiding self-responsibility and that can be uncomfortable as shit. But alongside the discomfort, it proves that healing is always within  our grasp. Change is always within our grasp.

There’s a quote by Philip Roth that I love that says, “Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.”

That’s our alchemy. That’s our power. Everything is material.

Now, for this next section-

Our intuitions love to speak in metaphors so that we can receive the most personalized, multi-layered, and in-depth information with the quickest signal.  

I'll be sharing my own experiences and translations but underline or write out what you experience or interpret for yourself because there's no wrong answer. For this module and I hope for your entire life after, you begin perceiving your body, your life, and the world you live in as a work of art just for you!

What do you hear when you look at it? What do you feel? What is it saying to you? What is it expressing? What is the underlying message? There are no wrong answers!! 

This is about you learning your own language, your own perception, so you can learn to  understand and create your world from your own true self. This is where you tap into your  answers and find that place from which you can create real change that benefits your highest  self intsead of the roles you've played and tactics you've picked up to survive thus far.  

You are that in-tune. Trust me!

We all have our own experiences with these so remember these are just meant to spark your own genius and insight!