Let's Live Forever!» Healing

Keeping Body And Soul Together

Robin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:56:19 +0000

Deepak Chopra brought out a new book last week, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul: How to Create a New You.

The webpage for the book, here, says:

Using Deepak Chopra’s ten steps to wholeness, you can harness those basic elements [awareness and energy] to change the distorted energy patterns that are the root cause of aging, infirmity, and disease.

So, he is saying “distorted energy patterns” are the cause of aging, and these patterns can be healed. He is saying aging does not have to happen. This is what physical immortality writers have been saying for um, oh… centuries.

Great to see this idea hitting the mainstream—I wonder… what will people make of it?

I’ve stood in bookshops many times over the years flipping though Chopra’s bestseller Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, and always decided against buying it because he didn’t go “all the way”. This time he has.

I’ve ordered my copy.

Posts on other blogs

…about keeping body and soul firmly together:
How To Ascend from Akemi Gaines, on Yes to Me
Care of the Soul by Suzen, on Physically Immortal
Immortal One by Dr. Andrew Greszczyszyn on Avatar Babaji Yoga
More posts, a random selection:

Relaaaaaaaaaaax

Robin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:57:05 +0000

Photo by Tiago Rïbeiro

The other day for some reason I decided to really stay in present time as much as I could, while not actually doing anything. I was feeling quite at peace with my world and had no particular reason to stress about anything.

I relaxed into feeling very happy and content, lazing in a comfy chair under a bright window—tuning in to the moment. Then I became aware of subliminal, almost pre-verbal concerns… “is there something I should watch out for? Shouldn’t I be keeping a better lookout? Am I being careful enough? If I stay right in the present I might miss something I need to know about, or be thinking through”.

These barely-perceptible worries seemed to be basic cave-woman fears… “I’d better keep a watch-out or I might be in trouble”.

I’m guessing that most people have these fears running to some extent, either subliminally or not-so-subliminally. Assuming that most of us don’t have a bull-dozer about to crash in through the window, are these fears helpful?

My vote is “no”, because they stop us from being in present time, and our attention needs to be in the present for us to have clear access to the intuitive guidance that will actually keep us safe and sound. And happy and fulfilled.

For example, if there really is a bull-dozer about to crash in though the window, we might miss the intuitive impulse to jump aside if we are too busy thinking through what we are going to do in this or that imaginary future situation.

It’s all about trust

If we can trust we are in a safe universe, and nothing will “get” us, we become more able to tune into our inner guidance, and we actually experience the universe becoming safer and safer.

Recently I found the following words:

“The incarnational process is a process of relaxation.”
~ from Return of the Bird Tribes (Ken Carey)

This comes from a section of the book that describes how we can move into full expression by trusting ourselves and letting go of our fears. By letting go of struggling, straining and holding on.

From this concept and elsewhere, I’ve put together a few tips for letting go of fears (the kind we know deep down aren’t serving us):

• observe ourselves feeling them
• allow our breathing to keep flowing rather than stopping and starting
• choose to focus on how we actually are right at the moment
• choose to see that the situation that seems to cause the fears is not really a source of danger
• choose to put less energy into activities we suspect are motivated by anxiety
• choose to put more energy into activities motivated by love, fun and excitement
• try the philosophy of physical immortality on for size… when we know inside that the guy with the big flyswatter doesn’t have to get us, a thousand and one subliminal fears drop away.

I’d like to expand this last point just a little… I’m not referring to fear of death itself here. I think that for many of us, though we may believe we go to a safe, loving place after physical death, we hold in our bodies many fears of the events that lead to it (aging, illness, loneliness, accidents, violence), mostly unconsciously, and it is these fears I am referring to.

Also, I don’t think we need to die physically in order to get to the safe, loving place of our dreams, but rather it is our purpose in these times to create that place with our physical bodies along for the ride.

If you would like more insights about dealing with fears, you might like to check out Chris Edgar’s post on Purpose Power Coaching: A Simple But Life-Changing Question: Are You In Danger? He suggests we could ask ourselves in certain situations “Am I in danger?” Usually the answer is no, not really. It’s a great post! (And I started developing my post before reading Chris’s – honest!)

Also, Betsy Wuebker from Passing Thru has a lovely post about surrender: Surrender, Consecration And Freedom, which fits very nicely with the theme of relaxing.

* * *

Immortality news

Firstly, Kathy Dobson got her physical immortality blog up and running during the past week, here: Physically Immortal. Her first post, An Open Mind, is a beauty!

Secondly, Sondra Ray has just started a blog, too! Here it is: Liberation Breathing™ with SONDRA RAY.

Thirdly, some of you may remember my interview: Janni Lloyd, An Aussie Immortalist. Well, Akemi Gaines of Yes to Me has interviewed her too, here: Interview With Dr Janni Lloyd On Physical Immortality.

Also, I quietly introduced a Links page on this blog a couple of weeks ago. It has a collection of physical immortality links that I think are worthwhile.

* * *

Your thoughts on all this are very welcome – relaxedly yours, RobinMore posts, a random selection:

When Someone Close To Us Is Struggling

Robin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:18:47 +0000

Image by visulogik

What to do when someone close to us is struggling in life?

We have tried to help them as best as we can, with ideas, support and practical help, but they don’t “get it”. Or maybe we are not even in contact with them to do that much.

It can be painful watching them suffer, especially if we feel there are things “out there” that they could find helpful, but they aren’t interested.

A proverb featuring a horse and water might spring to mind.

For a long time I’ve thought that the best thing we can do for people close to us (or anyone, really) is to be the very best that we can. To be as bright and shiny and successful at living as we can be… so we provide an example.

Or more accurately, people connected with us will sense the fact we are expanding and growing, and as long as they are even a little bit open to growth, will align themselves with this energy and change in the ways they personally need to for them to grow. This applies even if we are not in contact with them.

The ways they develop may well be quite different to the ways we ourselves are developing… they might be subtly inspired by the success of our writing projects, and take up exercising, for example. Or they may do some strange thing we would never have thought of. They will have caught our energy, though.

I’ve been very comforted over the years by seeing things this way when I have been distressed by the suffering of people close to me. This gives me something I can do! And a sense of peace. I can get on with my life, making it as great as I possibly can, knowing that this is the very best thing I can do for the people I love.

Comments are very welcome! Connectedly yours – RobinMore posts, a random selection:

Wanting To Look Young

Robin — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:59:42 +0000

photo by antkriz

It doesn’t take an Einstein to see that all around us, people are obsessing over looking young. And those of us who wouldn’t say we were “obsessing” might still look longingly in the mirror now and again.

I thought I’d like to write my thoughts on this—and thank you to Evelyn Lim, who writes about how to attract abundance, for inspiring this post with a comment she left on one of my earlier posts.

I see the desire to look young in two ways, I guess.

One is that it can come from people being afraid of showing who they really are—a person comfortable with themselves doesn’t have to rush around getting botox and plastic surgery and so on. In this case, because trying to look young comes from fear, the striving, and often the results, are distasteful to many of us. There are some interesting articles about aging and plastic surgery on Vered’s mommy blog and Urban Panther’s life muser blog.

The other is that maybe when we try to look as youthful as possible, it’s because part of us knows that being youthful is the way we are meant to be. Physical aging somehow doesn’t truly make sense.

I think physical aging is a result of us not letting the life force flow through us as well as we might. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be a good idea to use aging as feedback and investigate how we have been blocking our energy and work on unblocking it? If we look younger as a result, it is because we have made inner changes (including loving ourselves more)—I don’t think this pursuit or its results would be distasteful to any of us.

Also, applying a lotion or potion can be an act of self-love, or looking after ourselves, and feel quite different to desperate obsessing. This can lead to other people reflecting our self-love back to us with, well, love.

These are some ways I see the desire to look young… how do you see it?More posts, a random selection:

The Journey, With Brandon Bays

Robin — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:27:53 +0000

Last weekend, Frank and I attended The Journey Intensive, a two-day healing workshop, here in Melbourne. It was presented by its creator, Brandon Bays.

It was great, and we got what we wanted, which was to move up a level (or a few) in our quest to be all we can be. We had both been feeling a little stuck, recently.

The Journey

‘The Journey’ is a healing process you can do by yourself or with another person who guides you through it. It takes between maybe 30 minutes and 2 hours, and involves very nifty techniques that get you in touch with old baggage that has been causing illness and emotional pain, and clears it out leaving you feeling fresh, light and clean—bubbling with joy, actually. People have healed themselves of very serious illnesses using this.

Brandon Bays

In 1992, Brandon found herself diagnosed with a tumour the size of a basketball! She had been working in the field of personal development and healing for many years, including leading seminars for Tony Robbins, and gave herself a few weeks to try healing it herself before resorting to surgery.

Six and a half weeks later, she was completely clear of it, and from this experience was born The Journey process and seminars that take her techniques to people all around the world. To go to the website about the programs, click here.

I’ll quote a little from a brochure:

Using The Journey, ordinary people achieve extraordinary results, no matter their age, background, culture or upbringing. The Journey is now recognised internationally as one of the most powerful healing processes available and is used in schools, churches, hospitals, prisons, in addiction centres, in healing centres, by health professionals and laymen alike. It is hailed as a universal teaching that is practical, user-friendly and down-to-earth and it gets results.

Journey work

I would highly recommend Journey work to anyone who wants to heal themselves of any physical illness or emotional pain. By “Journey work” I mean either doing The Journey process with a Journey practitioner, or attending a seminar like we did.

To learn more about it, I think the best thing would be to read Brandon’s book, The Journey. It is really easy to read and tells a gripping story—Brandon is a great story-teller! If you look at the book on Amazon, you can read the first chapter, here: The Journey: A Practical Guide to Healing Your Life and Setting Yourself Free

You can also download the first chapter from the products page of The Journey website.

But sometimes you can’t beat video! First, here’s a video of Brandon speaking:

The Journey – Brandon Bays With Lynne McTaggart:

Second, here’s a two-part video—this was what sold me on it, really. It’s called ‘The Journey – Making a Real Difference’

Part 1:

Part 2:

The Journey Team take the techniques to a wide variety of people. At the workshop we learned a fair bit about how the techniques work with children, who apparently love it (I think Brandon was trying to give us the message that if kids could do it, so could we, and also that if we approached it in a straightforward, perhaps child-like way, things would work better).

Another interesting thing is that the Journey Outreach Team are taking The Journey to people affected by the recent bushfires here in Victoria, over the next few weeks. Brandon knows all about losing your home in wildfire because she lost hers in the fires at Malibu in 1993.

It was because I wrote about the fires here that I found out about The Journey, because Suzie Cheel did a post where she relayed that people affected by the fires could attend The Journey Intensive as guests, and also linked to my post about the fires, here: Abundance Cafe February 15 2009 – and I checked out that post.

It’s strange the way things happen.

* * *

Frank and I only did this workshop a few days ago, so it is too soon to tell if we have healed ourselves of the various relatively minor ailments and issues that we felt were holding us back. But we both know with certainty that something has shifted around, and there is something new here—the grins on our faces say it all.

* * *

Comments are very welcome!More posts, a random selection:

Why We Sabotage Ourselves

Robin — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:36:24 +0000

The baby above is a few minutes old and had a gentle birth.

Most of us born in the 60s, 50s, and earlier had a birth more like this:

These photos are from Frederick Leboyer’s book Birth Without Violence. This book isn’t exactly new—it was first published in 1977.

In the book Leboyer describes how the usual birthing practices of the day were torture to newborns, and shows how they could be vastly improved. In this post I’d like to explore how our birth experience can affect our experience of life.

Self-sabotage

I think it would be fair to say that most of us have experienced self-sabotage to some degree—I know I have. Some examples might be:
1. When things are really looking up, getting stuck into alcohol, smokes, coffee, overeating or the like.
2. Just as we are having exciting developments, having an accident.
3. As we heal one physical ailment, another manifests itself. Then this happens again and again.
4. Not making the most of opportunities, for no apparent reason.

It’s as though we just can’t break through to a higher level. Why is that?!

Or we may know someone who seems so alive and talented, yet they keep knocking themselves out with substances or behaviours. Why do they do that?!

We’ll do anything, it seems, to stop that damn aliveness. Why?

Perhaps we can find some clues about this in Leboyer’s beautiful and moving book.

Troubled birth

I re-read Leboyer’s book yesterday, before writing this post. I was moved to tears for much of it. I’d imagine anyone who lets themselves be immersed in what it is saying would feel disturbed, and this would be largely because the book would be stimulating subconscious memories of their birth. I think this is a good thing, as it would be getting some stuck emotion moving—but not everyone might!

For many of us, our first experience of life was pain and terror. Harsh lights hurt our eyes, chatter and loud noises surrounded us, and we were handled roughly… our delicate skin was abused, we might have been slapped, as well as held upside down, or put on our backs, so our newborn spines were suddenly stretched out painfully. As well, our first breaths were taken in panic and pain.

Breathing

Leboyer describes how breathing begins during a natural birth… a newborn takes his first breath when his chest first expands, on leaving the birth canal. This results in a cry, which may be followed by one or two more cries. The baby rests a little here, and is supplied with oxygen from the still-pulsating umbilical chord. The baby gradually clears his lungs and after a few minutes is breathing fully and freely. After an average of 4 or 5 minutes, the umbilical chord stops pulsating, and can be cut.

However, what usually happened, at least in the times Leboyer wrote his book, was that the umbilical chord was cut as quickly as possible, with the result the baby had no oxygen supply. A physical panic set in, leading to the baby gasping air into his still fluid-filled lungs, which is extremely painful and traumatic. The medical staff would also do whatever they could to “stimulate” the baby to cry a lot, because this meant to them that the baby was breathing well. This was the likely result:

The above is often considered normal and desirable—the baby is howling so therefore is breathing. Leboyer suggests this baby is in pain and fear.

He also suggested it didn’t have to be like this—below is a newborn who had a gentle birth:

Our aliveness

Our births and first breaths were our first taste of being fully alive—or more alive than we felt where we had just been, at any rate. If these experiences were horrifying, or even less-than-great, how will we react every time we start to feel more alive, now? Will we put on the brakes, somehow?

I’m suggesting that we just might.

Breaking through

Leboyer begins his book with a quote from Gautama (the Buddha): “To be born is to suffer”. Do we have to be consigned to endless suffering, just because we had a lousy birth?

Early developers of the therapy known as breathwork (or rebirthing) coined the term “birth trauma” for the trauma we went through during birth, and have kept with us throughout our life. Breathwork can help us heal ourselves of our birth trauma… somehow, through the breathing method used, we let go of old stuck body memories. And incidentally, I have had two kinesiology sessions recently, and they shifted deep stuff, too.

I think that most people would heal themselves fastest if they combine a physical therapy like breathwork with consciously working with their thoughts and intuition to facilitate leading the life they want to lead. Who knows how much aliveness we will be willing to tolerate. We might even end up living forever!

I’ll finish with two more images from the book (the newborn had a gentle birth):

I’d love to hear what you think about this.More posts, a random selection:

Emotional Balance

Robin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:22:23 +0000

photo by Victor Bezrukov

I thought I’d like to write about what emotional balance means to me. As I mentioned in an earlier post Feelings Are There To Be Felt, I haven’t quite got emotions “worked out”. But I’ve needed to focus on mine lots so I reckon I should really be an expert by now. Ha.

In my younger days I was very withheld emotionally. No-one knew what I thought, or how I felt. I didn’t know how I felt. At school I was very quiet and awkward, and didn’t connect much. One time a group of kids made a list of everyone in the class, with a brief description, to submit to the school magazine. For me they put “Silent Brain”. I misread this and thought it said “Silent Drain”—I was extremely upset! (inside) (It didn’t make the magazine.)

The only time I felt love was for the cat.

I remember when I had my first boyfriend for 9 months when I was 18, I didn’t feel anything about him. I knew I liked him, I suppose, but I was totally out of touch with any feelings of love or affection. He quite freely expressed love for me, but I was just an emotionless blob. The poor guy! I did feel upset after he broke up with me (after first finishing my exams), so I must have felt something.

I usually had one or two “best friends” at any time, but no more boyfriends, and generally the trend of not being able to connect, and feeling isolated, strange and different continued until I found the alternative healing world just before my 33rd birthday (in 1986). Desperation drove me to it—something was not right and I knew that at the rate I was going I would NEVER be happy.

Emotions and connection

I started having rebirthing sessions, where you use breathing to allow feelings you didn’t know you had flow through you. These days the process is often called breathwork or conscious connected breathing, to avoid connotations of people trying to re-live their birth (which I didn’t ever—not in an obvious way, anyway). I also started doing workshops that removed blocks to feeling connected to others, and between the two things, I began to connect with other people really well.

I started noticing and valuing my emotions… Ah Hah! Here comes an EMOTION! I’m gonna let myself feel ANGRY! Or SAD! And I’m also going to ASSERT MYSELF, because I CAN!

This lead to a phase I think many people might go through (I read in a book somewhere that they do, anyway). That is… after learning to let some (or lots of) emotions express, we may go overboard with them for a while, before coming into balance.

So at times I would stomp around being angry, or be very quick to yell at the driver who had done me wrong on the roads. From rebirthing I knew how to breathe through emotional episodes, so the emotion passes through pretty quickly and it doesn’t become a wallowing session, and you are left feeling light and cleansed. I’m so grateful I have that skill up my sleeve, and I have used it lots. But I didn’t always do it… sometimes I preferred to be emotional.

Astrology

Years later, well into my 40s, I found myself turning to astrology for understanding. I was living in a flat by myself, was not working much, had little money, and had become isolated again (except when I did see someone occasionally, I connected with them really well, heh heh). I should say here that I did some really good, creative, performance-type work in this period… it was more that I was socially isolated. And I was also very happy much of the time—but I knew there was more, and I had got to the point where I was feeling that being over-emotional wasn’t serving me.

I came across Jan Spiller’s books ‘Astrology For The Soul’ and ‘Spiritual Astrology’. What amazing books! I discovered that being over-emotional would indeed be my issue, and they clearly described how to deal with all this in a way that made sense to me.

This totally changed things around for me—I had the books out from the library and I kept renewing them and reading them again and again. Probably I had been so cut off from my emotions when I was young because my emotions were so strong that I was scared to feel them.

In these books, Jan discusses our past lives, and the path we are embarking on in this life to bring things into balance. For example, according to this, I had lots of past lives being at home and sheltered from the big, wide world in some way. My joy in this life would be to get out into the world, and I would be successful when I did, but my inclination might be to go with my past life pattern of staying at home. Also, people with this pattern tend to be over-emotional… “These folks can be so overrun by their emotions that they can’t think, they can’t function, and they don’t know why.”

She also describes how things can look when we have got to the point of really integrating the energies and are functioning well. Something we can look forward to when we have got things together. For my pattern it reads, in part:

You sense that your emotional fiber is actually not personal at all but rather your link with the universe. As you listen to your emotional body, and allow it to be expressed honestly and naturally, without censorship, in whatever environment you find yourself, you restore a healthy emotional balance for those around you. Thus, giving your own feelings a voice, expressing the subtle emotional undercurrents you sense going on around you, clears the emotional atmosphere for everyone involved.

Sounds good!

Today I think I’ve got the flow of emotions thing working pretty well. I can let myself feel them without being run by them. I’m still avoiding some of them though, which I know because I have been overeating over the long, cold winter we have just had here in Melbourne, with disastrous results for my waistline. But these days I know I feel love for people and myself and everything, and Frank and I freely say we love each other.

* * *

This post is my contribution to the Life Balance Group Writing Project Stacey is running on her blog Create A Balance. Thanks for running it Stacey!

PS – for any astrology buffs out there, I have Mars in Cancer, the moon’s North Node in the 10th house and my pre-natal lunar eclipse in Leo in the 4th.

Comments are very welcome!More posts, a random selection:

Feelings Are There To Be Felt

Robin — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 05:24:20 +0000

photo by Capture Queen

I loved a comment on my previous post from Maya over at Completely Coastal. She said, in part, “I think that positive thinking alone doesn’t create the desired outcome/reality if the negative energy (feeling) is not felt and released, “Feeling is Healing” comes to mind.”

I think she’s quite right!

After my little Iceberg Series (which may yet have another installment), I wanted to write a post about how feelings work together with thoughts—working with thoughts alone can be, so, icy. But I was feeling a tad underqualified… I’m far from having sorted my own feelings. Then I thought… well, no-one else really has either, so I’ll give it a go.

Feelings are a gift

I do think we need to feel all our feelings if we want to expand and grow. One sure way to stunt our growth is to stop ourselves from feeling certain feelings, yet this is something most of us do.

Mostly it’s just because we are scared to feel them. For some of us, getting angry or being a shivering wreck may be counter to the nice pictures we have of ourselves (this may be especially so for people who see themselves as being on a spiritual path, if they feel it is important to be peaceful, calm and loving all the time).

Many people even have trouble identifying their feelings. If you ask them how they are feeling, they will reply with a thought. For example:

Q. How do you feel about the ghastly noise the neighbours are making?
A. They should not be so selfish
Q. But how do you feel about it?
A. The authorities should do something.
Q. But how do you feel?
A. I suppose I’ll have to put up with it.
Q. Do you have any feelings at all?
A. I don’t understand the question.

Unfortunately, in a case like this, the person is probably incapable of saying, or even knowing, that they are ANGRY! If they do admit to it, it would probably be in a sort of intellectual way, and only after some prompting.

Let’s say someone who is more in touch with their feelings IS able to say they are angry, in response to the above questions. They feel angry and they know it. Hopefully they handle the situation intuitively and their anger gets resolved… in this case, I’d suggest it was the anger (or frustration or annoyance) the person allowed themselves to feel that lead to some movement that needed to happen.

If the anger goes on and on and on, it might be because…

1. they feel hurt that the neighbours are not being considerate of them
2. they like wallowing in their feelings because they get a sense of self-nurturing from it
3. they are angry at themselves… because they think they caused the problem, or they are not bothering to do something about the problem, or they feel powerless to do anything about it.

These could be dealt with by…

Issue 1. acknowledging the feelings of hurt that are behind the anger, and allowing themselves to feel them. Many people have a sense of distaste around deliberately feeling feelings, because they think that it might go on forever or be really tacky or something. If the feeling concerned is what is causing the problem deep down (in this case, hurt rather then anger), I think it works out just fine.

The hurt probably comes from childhood, and a therapy that helps the person get in touch with where the feelings came from can help—but this search can be never-ending… at some point the feelings need to be released (and some therapies help do that, too).

Issue 2. noticing that they kind of enjoy feeling upset. It gives them a feeling that they are nurturing themselves. If this is one of the few ways they can nurture themselves, they may even put off doing something to resolve the situaton so they can go on feeling it (which leads to also being angry at themselves for not doing anything about the problem).

Simply noticing they are doing this really helps, combined with finding more sustaining ways of nuturing themselves (e.g. doing things they love, having supportive relationships, looking after themselves).

Issue 3. noticing they are actually angry at themselves. Then find a course that is guided by what their intuition is telling them. Along the way they might need to learn about intuition, personal power and how to stop blaming themselves.

I’d suggest that these metaphorical noisy neighbours, and the anger they have inspired, are a gift to this person. All this can’t happen unless there is some healing to be had… an emotion that needs to be released, or a change that needs to be made, perhaps. The person might eventually choose to grow, or they might choose to stay angry and eventually shut down.

All our feelings

Feelings are unpredictable. They don’t behave. We can get into trouble if we control them and we can get into trouble if we don’t. We can learn to express them and grow, like in the anger example above, and we can be afraid of them and suppress them. I suspect that learning to express all our feelings in a healthy way can take quite a while, but if we don’t do it, we will be killing ourselves off bit by bit.

Because suppressed feelings cause illness, aging and accidents.

We use lots of things to suppress our feelings… alcohol, smoking, drugs (including coffee), reading, TV, over-eating, over-working, over-anything… And the funny thing is that we don’t only suppress the so-called negative emotions like fear, anger and sadness—we also suppress feelings of aliveness, excitement and joy (too much of a good thing can be dangerous, you know!)

The trouble with “thinking positively” and “controlling thoughts” is that in doing this we might lose the gift of the feelings that are stirred up in us. For me, using the power of thought to create what I want in my life means to focus on what I want (say, more money), and notice and try to change any contradicting thoughts that show up (say, “I don’t deserve to be wealthy”) and allow myself to feel the utter devastation of feeling I’m a worthless slug who doesn’t deserve anything good… until the feeling is a non-event (knowing it’s not really true and it’s just a feeling and I’m not wallowing, am I)

I tend to think of feelings as the glue that holds thoughts in place… we don’t have much hope of turning our thoughts around if we don’t deal with our feelings.

Releasing feelings

I’d like to tell a story about an incident where I dealt with fear many years ago…

I was home alone at night, and a heard a strange noise outside. I felt a wave of fear go through me, and I thought ah-hah! I can do something with this. I lay on my bed and focussed on feeling the fear, which was not difficult… I was scared. I knew the doors and windows were secure, so I felt safe enough to experiment with the feelings.

I started noticing which parts of my body the fear was in (probably my back—I don’t remember) and concentrated on magnifying the fear. I used my breathing to enhance the feeling as much as possible. After a while a really cold shiver went right through my body, which I suspected was the fear leaving my body (but who knows?) Then I relaxed for a while… and decided whatever it was had finished.

I can honestly say I have felt very little fear from things like noises in the dark since then—it was striking at the time. I’m not saying I’m free of all fear—I have some issues going on at the moment that I know are due to fears… it’s probably no accident that I’m writing about feelings. It’s just that they are not fear-of-noises-in-the-dark-type fears.

Going there

I love the way Geneen Roth describes walking into our centre, in her book Feeding the Hungry Heart – The Experience of Compulsive Eating.

We all run. We are all afraid of our own hungers. Except the ones who aren’t. The madmen, the artists, the saints. They walk right into the starkness. They absorb their grief. They become, they actually become, the space between one breath and another. The madmen stay mad because they are caught in the eye of the center, whirling. They become so emeshed in the heart of the darkness that they think that’s all there is. They leap into, but do not know how to leap out of.

The artists, the saints, get to the other side. No longer afraid of their own hungers, they seem to live at the center of a sparkle that brightens and dims according to a natural rhythm. But even the madmen are ahead of us: at least they leap. We would rather remain hungry and afraid. We would rather turn to food or drugs or drink that dulls the call, never reaching the loamy hungers inside.

It’s OK to feel it. Are we willing to be artists, or saints?

* * *

What do you think? If any of you would like to report on techniques you’ve used to release feelings from the body, that would be great! (Personally, I’ve used rebirthing for this.)More posts, a random selection:

On Overcoming Obstacles

Robin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:39:46 +0000

I think it’s odd how the overcoming of obstacles is SO admired. We create our own obstacles with our mind, don’t we? So why is overcoming something we have created ourselves so admired?

My understanding is that the mind is analogous to an iceberg… 90% of it is submerged. So while we may want, say, prosperity… thoughts in our unconscious mind may well be creating the opposite. Or say we want an easy life… thoughts in our unconscious mind may start putting all sorts of obstacles in our path.

If we really want something and we go for it and don’t give up despite the obstacles, well great… let’s salute ourselves. But at some point I think it needs to be acknowledged that we did create those obstacles ourselves—there wasn’t anything “out there” doing it to us. In fact, acknowledging this actually puts us in a position of power, I think. “I created those obstacles, so now I’ll un-create them!”

When I’m feeling overwhelmed by problems of some sort, I always think: “how can I make things easy?” Solutions show themselves, and I can honestly say I have a life that flows fairly easily, with few difficulties. Over the years, friends have said now and then – “Oh Birchy, your life is so easy and uncomplicated” …boy does this annoy me! It is uncomplicated (or whatever) because I MADE it that way! It’s not because I don’t have kids! Plenty of people who don’t have kids run around like chooks with their head off being busy busy busy.

If I talk about the difficulties in my life, I always know I am talking about difficulties I have drawn to myself in some way.

I see other people in the same light. If I hear about how someone has overcome great difficulties, by going though a lot of struggling, it’s unlikely I will find it very inspiring. I am much more inspired by hearing about friends’ lives that flow easily—they are creating it that way, I think.

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I’ve probably offended everyone now, but comments are most welcome.More posts, a random selection:

A Magic Trick For Relationships

Robin — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:31:00 +0000

I have a magic trick that always works for me in relationship problems.

This is a trick I mainly use in my relationship with my partner Frank. It applies to any kind of relationship, and I use it on other ones too, but for me this trick has come into focus from using it in our life-partner-type relationship. It’s something I’ve used when I have been feeling exasperated, sad or plain desperate about either a specific event or some ongoing thing I’m not happy about.

My experience from using this trick has been to see transformation of the problem… into a non-event or even into a miraculous opposite—some of the developments have amazed me.

One thing though… I have always felt a strong sense of purpose in being with Frank, and we are compatible in many ways (he’s a fantastic person and we love each other to bits). In an intimate relationship, the trick would only work to bring closeness if the basic set-up of the relationship was good anyway. It would at least bring clarity if it wasn’t.

My trick is…

When the person does something, or is something, that I don’t like, I ask myself “why have I attracted that? Why have I got a partner who does X and Y, or doesn’t do Z? What is it about me, that I have drawn this situation to myself? What is it in me that this is reflecting? Can I change, so that the situation changes?”

I don’t really need to know the answers, though these may come at some point and be helpful. I think it’s actually the action of admitting to myself that I have drawn this situation to myself that changes things around.

Doing this trick takes being brutally honest with oneself, which takes quite a bit of courage. It’s so much easier to say the person is being SELFISH, because they DON’T DO THE DISHES. Or that MEN/WOMEN are ALWAYS like this!

So how does it work out?

Let’s say my partner keeps leaving muddy footprints in the house and doesn’t clean them up (I’m choosing something here that Frank would NEVER do!) I might feel unsupported, because I am left to clean them up.

I could “rise above it” and clean them up and say nothing or not much, which would probably lead to some suppressed hostility that might come out later in an argument.

Or I could ask myself “why do I have a partner who doesn’t support me? Am I not supporting myself somehow, and is his behaviour reflecting this? If that’s the case, is there some way I could start supporting myself better? How can I change so I no longer attract this?”

As I already mentioned, I may not get a terribly clear answer… I’ve been supporting myself for years, haven’t I? But something shifts around.

If I do take action, it might be to do something (support myself by asking him directly to clean up the footprints) or to think something (support myself by thinking I deserve to be supported). This leaves me more expanded and healthier… as a by-product of keeping the relationship alive.

All of the above seems to lead to a resolution of the problem, in some way. I’ve found particular issues in our relationship have been totally transformed from doing this—it could be anything from the footprints-caster suddenly washing the floors every day, to me simply not noticing the muddy footprints any more.

Love is a healer

I suspect that it’s being in a very meaningful relationship that can spur us on to really embrace this technique, because we sense that it’s in our best interest to keep the relationship going, and will try ANYTHING to fix things if there’s something wrong. While trying to keep our relationship alive, we end up healing ourselves, which is an example of how love brings about healing, I think.

(And Frank… I just want to say I really appreciate your love, your spirit and your cleanliness around the house!)

This is a photo of Frank and me at pizza night a couple of weeks ago.

If any singles reading this post find it annoyingly couple-centric, I’d know where you are coming from—Frank and I only got together when I was 49-and-a-bit, and I was always single before that. This technique can be used with relatives, friends and shop-keepers, too.

What do you think? Has anyone else been doing this? What other relationship magic tricks do you use?More posts, a random selection: