~FEAR~
Today I needed to be brave. But I didn’t want to be.
I wanted to run away and hide.
Hide from this feeling in my body that I am being crushed from within.
Hide from what I needed to do.
Hide from the pressure within me that feels like it it is consuming me.
Some particular tasks that I have to do often bring up this feeling.
But this is recent knowledge for me.
I have spent most of my life paying attention to my mind, instead of my body.
And what the mind says when I encounter things I am scared by is terrible, terrible things.
God you’re so f**king useless.
Di, you do this all the time, it’s so awful.
You’re awful.
What is wrong with you Di?
And of course it goes on. Often into ever darker places. The mind is a very unpleasant place to hang out sometimes.
But I have learnt a new way of approaching these deep pockets of pain.
I have stopped listening to my mind.
Because actually the mind is not the source of pain. The body is.
Things happen in our lives and a feeling is triggered.
It could be triggered by a thought or by what someone says or by a memory or by reading something.
The feeling is triggered, and then the mind goes to town generating thoughts based on that feeling.
So it is actually the feeling within that is what we want to escape.
The mind just jumps in after, because it wants to make sense of why we are feeling so bad.
The mind feels the emotional pain in the body and starts looking for a reason.
It starts to tell stories, relive inadequacies, playing out old stories, telling us off, or other people. Blaming, shaming. Whatever it is that is your old pattern, your unique stories about who you are, what the world is.
To get rid of these pains you instead must focus on the body.
You must ignore the shouting screaming hysterical mean terrifying mind, because it will be an endless source of stories with no resolution.
And instead dive into the body.
So instead of pushing through with this stupid mind of mine, secreting endless crappy thoughts, and this crushing pressure of pain in my body – I lay on my bed, and I just focused on my body.
It was horrible. To allow my mind free reign into the blame/shame game would have been easier. But I didn’t let it.
I lay and focused on my body. I let the feelings just be there. I noticed them. I felt a pulsating fear in my stomach, like a dark sea creature was spreading its tentacles all over me, grabbing at my flesh, bringing more of me into its grasp.
I felt it. And felt it and felt it.
I wanted to punch and scream and yell and run away.
But I didn’t.
I kept paying attention to my body.
My mind started screaming at me –
You’d feel better if you just watched TV!
Ate a whole cake!
And a loaf of bread!
Or went on Facebook!
You’d feel so much better if you just got up and stopped feeling this shit!
But I didn’t, I stayed with it.
I said to the fear – you can consume me, that’s totally fine. I don’t mind. I will stay with you, fear, for as long as you need me.
I started to wonder how long this was going to take. Would I be consumed by fear all day? Would it keep me in its shackles forever?
And then all of a sudden it was gone.
Like just evaporated, gone.
David Hawkins says you know you have released an emotion when you have this sudden feeling of lightness, even joy.
It’s so strange.
One moment I am feeling crushed from within. And then, pooof! It’s like it never happened.
I got up and felt EXHILARATED.
I started clapping and squealing and whooping – this is my natural joy state, we all have our ways. I am pretty noisy. My emotions are big, on every part of the scale.
And there I was, released.
Released from that utterly painful emotion that has brought me to my knees thousands of times.
The process of letting go of these painful emotions is the antithesis of how we have learnt to deal with our feelings.
It can feel impossible and too much to face what comes up within us.
But if you can face your feelings.
Tend to those dark emotions that writhe within.
Learn not to run away from them.
Learn to ignore your mind and its incessant story telling, just for a little bit.
It will give you the greatest burst of freedom.
It will release you from the shackles of what has been holding you back.
It returns you more and more to the state of purity and love that you were when you arrived here on this planet.
It returns you to your true essence.
It creates freedom.
I love this process because it is so insanely simple. It doesn’t require anything, no complicated methods to remember, no special places or people or equipment.
It requires only your attention and your willingness to train yourself to stay with your emotions.
And to not believe the stories your mind wants to tell you.
You don’t even need to lie down as I did, or be alone. It’s easier that way, but I often have times where I am sitting with people and something comes up with me, so I just go within and focus on that feeling, and many times I have released dark emotions whilst being with people or doing other things like making dinner.
These feelings of my mind that I released today may very well return. In fact it’s highly likely because they appear every time I am faced with one of the biggest struggles in my life – but the more that I face them, the smaller the bucket of feelings becomes.
The more I release, the less there is inside me.
One day I know I will get to the bottom of this bucket, of this particular collection of feelings. One step at a time.
For me it is the most empowering feeling in the world to know that I don’t need to make other people around me change, or to change the world I am in, or even to change myself.
I don’t need to do anything to make myself happier, except to release the emotions that have been building up inside me that have been holding me back.
I need no one or nothing to live an amazing life – except myself.
And right now, if I didn’t now want to tackle the task that brought this fear barreling into my life – and my teen wasn’t in the apartment – I’d be running around naked, singing wonderful songs with my joyful Di squealing on full blast.
With love Di