In the first piece of writing regarding welcoming feelings, I spoke about embracing feelings just as they are in order to process them. Here I will talk more on a collective scale.
As a species, we are so caught on the question how do we fix it? But its the wrong question. Perhaps its time to ask, how do we embrace this messy thing called life.
It seems the whole world is running on a program of deficiency and escape, with fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, feelings of deficiency and lack, low self esteem, depression, anxiety, feeling unsafe, feeling unworthy, not good enough, not belonging, feeling invisible, unlovable etc. If we look really closely, we see that this core sense of deficiency, of "somethings wrong" really runs the world.
We collectively suffer from deep pain and trauma, its in everyone. And what motivates us in our lives is an attempt to escape this. We build business's and careers, take drugs, have a family, buy a home, drink alcohol, go to parties, go to therapy, take anti depressants, study reiki, meditate, eat healthier, "become" more spiritual, ask the tarot cards, do hypnotherapy, go to church, switch spiritual teachers, go to yoga, do yoga teacher training, go to the gym, take a holiday to Bali, see a nutritionist, go to the gym some more, do more therapy, go through the 12 steps one more time, try a different counsellor, get a new girlfriend, change jobs, change relationships, find the right partner, stay single, change to a psychologist, see a doctor to up our doses of anti depressants, and throughout all this we stay stuck in endless thinking and story telling. All as a way to bypass and escape how we truly feel and hoping we will be fulfilled by our achievements, and that one day our needs will eventually be met.
We collectively suffer from deep pain and trauma, its in everyone. And what motivates us in our lives is an attempt to escape this. We build business's and careers, take drugs, have a family, buy a home, drink alcohol, go to parties, go to therapy, take anti depressants, study reiki, meditate, eat healthier, "become" more spiritual, ask the tarot cards, do hypnotherapy, go to church, switch spiritual teachers, go to yoga, do yoga teacher training, go to the gym, take a holiday to Bali, see a nutritionist, go to the gym some more, do more therapy, go through the 12 steps one more time, try a different counsellor, get a new girlfriend, change jobs, change relationships, find the right partner, stay single, change to a psychologist, see a doctor to up our doses of anti depressants, and throughout all this we stay stuck in endless thinking and story telling. All as a way to bypass and escape how we truly feel and hoping we will be fulfilled by our achievements, and that one day our needs will eventually be met.
The solution to all this, is in the pain. The last place we want to go. As Rumi says "The cure for the pain is in the pain".
What if, we learned to unconditionally welcome in all the parts of ourselves we so innocently abandoned and ran from? If we became curious about them, what if this part of us is just a hurt child, begging to be given love and attention.
What if we could see all these stories we tell ourselves as just thoughts, meaningless words strung together creating the appearance that they are real? What if we could feel the pain without our story about it? Can we even call it "pain" if we aren't labelling it?
Its time to embrace all the parts of yourself you have pushed away. To allow these parts to surface and to be with them with loving curiosity. And you may discover along the way that you where never who you thought you where, that who you are was never limited by your thoughts and feelings. Underneath all the dross and debris is a spark waiting to be ignited, a flame that will burn away all the illusions you believed in. And what will be left, will be your naked True Self, who you are in your essence.
This is how true healing takes place.
Matt Nettleton
