Are you feeling stuck, out of sorts, disconnected? Are you gripped by compulsions or fear? If so, it’s a guarantee that you’re resisting a part of your experience.
Closing down to yourself is so painful. You might avoid feelings as a way to feel better, but it hurts to push them aside. And unexplored feelings is what fuels addictions and other frustrating behavior patterns.
Rather than opening fully to what we’re experiencing, we turn away from the tender parts of ourselves by drinking, staying busy, gossiping, incessant texting, endless thinking.
Anything but the simple act of taking a breath…stopping…and allowing ourselves to befriend what’s here.
When we run from ourselves, we set up an inner war, denying feelings and pretending they don’t exist or judging ourselves for having them. Meanwhile, what is our experience? We’re preoccupied in our minds, feeling tension in our bodies, and keeping ourselves distracted by the drama of life.
It’s a kind of violence. We’re fighting reality, evading the truth of the moment, and cutting off a tender and valid experience that’s part of the totality.
- Do you limit your expression in the world? Fear is driving you.
- Do you drink or eat too much? Some feeling is eating away at you or drowning you.
- Do you complain a lot? You’re likely to be irritated or disappointed.
- Are you emotionally triggered by certain people? Do you continually make self-defeating choices? You haven’t yet discovered the feelings hidden outside of conscious awareness.
Dodging our emotions is saying “no” to life. We’re given the full, glorious, inexpressible reality of the moment, but we choose what we think is acceptable and unacceptable. Then we live in fear that the parts we rejected will push through and overwhelm us.
We resist opening the doors to our inner world for a variety of reasons:
- Intense and painful feelings can be frightening or overwhelming;
- We’re scared because we don’t know what to do with these feelings;
- We get temporary relief from certain behaviors or life circumstances;
- We have no role models to guide us;
- Our schools and families don’t teach us how to be with feelings;
- Everything about our post modern, feel-good, device-driven culture encourages us to deny the existence of our feelings.
If the fire for happiness burns in you, there will be a moment of courage when you stop. Rather than playing out the avoidance habit once again—with the same unhappy result—you stop and let yourself be still.
You step away from the force of conditioning that carries you, feeling the urge that appears, but not acting on it.
You slow things down enough so you can see and feel the truth of your experience…with great kindness and compassion.
Before now, you’ve been a victim of unseen forces within you. Once you realize what’s been driving you, the possibility for freedom dawns.
You discover you can stay still and care for the feeling rather than being carried away by habits. It’s the end of the inner war when we recognize what arises in us and embrace it just as it is.
It’s the beginning of the sacred return to yourself…to presence…to the fullness of being…
Much love,
Gail
