When a challenging feeling arises in me, when I get triggered by an infuriating person or situation, the powerful explosion of feelings is an opportunity to discharge some pain I’ve been carrying around, probably for years, but only if I can resist taking the escape route of blaming the person or thing that triggered me.
Each of our body/mind/emotion systems is genius. It somehow finds a way to set up the perfect stimuli to trigger the volcanic discharge of whatever pain or old wound that it needs to vent that day. I believe all these challenging instances are set up to give us opportunities to wake up and feel more of ourselves, often raw and sensitive like blood returning to a sleeping limb. These endless challenges are not to ‘get in our way’ but to speed us along by efficiently triggering and discharging old pain that’s been dragging us back, and thereby reclaiming as much space and aliveness as can be accessed in this human life.
We are in a constant state of efficient healing. The body is designed that way. It doesn’t know what else to do.
But in order for my system to carry out its innately genius catharsis, I need to participate by choosing to fully feel the feelings that arise rather than run away from the often uncomfortable surging sensations. Only if I can keep my attention on these feelings as they are fully felt, every nuance and shade and wave of them, become a connoisseur of that whole realm of sensations without moving to hide them or skip them or resist them, then the body can release a chunk of old pain and leave space for creativity and life to rush in.
It’s far easier to blame and complain at these times and frame the whole episode as ‘unjust’. It takes courage and repeated leaps of faith to dare to let the tough sensations do their liberating work without escape strategies.
If we made it common practice to fully feel our feelings in the moment that they arose, then there would be little or no need for physical disease on this planet.
‘I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals, or
have become shrivelled and closed from fear of future pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.’
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
What pain? ….. only joking. Yes I can sit with the uncomfortableness that comes and goes, but I often find that it can be a bit too much of a challenge for others. It’s a challenge for me and yes, I get what your saying – run for the hills. However, I would encourage anyone to dive right in…. because what come from this is an understanding that you are not that which reacts… err, what I mean is. I have found that when I dive right in, the role I am in, dissolves and I see it for what it is. An energy that is not permanent. Then next time when it comes strolling through the door, clutching at its crutch (emotional charge) it does not suffocate the moment. Can be quite funny, even.
Thanks for sharing Jamie C
JOYce x
Fantastic!
I had to look up what Oriah Mountain Dreamer means, not being familiar with that term – how fitting! Oriah = Light of God. Mountain Dreamer = “one who likes to find and push the edge.” Sounds like the Jamie Catto I am beginning to get to know via the internet and “1 Giant Leap”! Love your blog, your tweets, and all the insights.
Thank you for sharing and for not just thinking outside the box but looking inside, outside and around the box and sometimes increasing the size of the present box into an enormous gift for humanity!
Ahhhhhh
Hi, you might enjoy looking up Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s page on Facebook and her blog, The Green Bough. The full poem, from which the quote comes, is truly amazing. Enjoy her – she is a marvellous person who really “gets it” an has such a unique perspective on what it is to be human. S
I can see right up your nose.
so true. being present with it. today i was walking on the beach, the first alone time i’d had in awhile, and I kept having to say in my head “Listen” because I was bloody talking in my head so much….listen listen listen we might actually hear something…or heal something. thank you for spreading your gift of knowing and light. peace.
I am sitting surrounded by beauty and music it currently feeling deep physical and emotional pain and am sitting through it because there’s fuck all else to do.