Emotional Healing

Emotional healing is a lifetime journey.  I have been actively and consciously working at my own emotional healing for twenty years using all sorts of resources, processes, systems and people. In fact, I have become so good at it that I am able to help people with the deepest darkest pain resolve their emotional wounds – all through what I have learnt along my own journey. Yet even today as I sat down to meditate, seeking answers to some of what I thought were my life’s urgent and important questions, I received the gift of healing for an old wound.

Recently my son has been on the receiving end of some severe bullying. This triggered an enormous rage, anxiety and intense hatred in me that had me lying awake at night planning how I would return the favour to the group of teenagers who would dare gang up on and threaten my son.  Although my head knew that this was insanity, my emotions were running riot creating images and ideas that I didn’t know I was capable of! Interestingly enough I also came down with a head cold in the same few days – which is uncommon for me.

Where had ‘I’ gone?  What had happened to the peaceful, spiritual Tim who I liked to identify with? It was like he had gone out and a raging lunatic had replaced him. Fortunately there is a big gap between our thoughts, feelings and emotions.  When we live an unconscious life, this gap tends to be very small, even non-existent.  Or maybe we are just unaware that we don’t need to act on our thoughts and feelings, as they are just thoughts and feelings.  So I was able to contain the messy thoughts and feelings within my head and heart and was very aware that this was triggering something of my own unresolved past.

Twenty years of consciously working on my emotional healing and here I was struggling with the immature antics of pimply faced teenagers!  You’d think I’d have been ‘fixed’ by now!  But no, the journey of emotional healing had presented me with another mountain to tackle.

Leading up to this morning’s experience, I had taken a couple of steps to address the issues (within myself).  I had spent some time in my journal the day before – writing about how I felt and what was coming up for me.  During this time I felt my anxiety going through the roof as I recalled my own bullying experiences at school and how I had failed to stand up for myself (out of a greater fear of punishment from my parents  and, strangely enough, dishonouring God!)  Here I was, sitting in the peace and safety of my own home, virtually trembling with anxiety over past (and current) experiences.  It doesn’t make any logical sense, but the emotional life is like that!

As I journalled and meditatively reflected on my inner turmoil I was able to apply a simple principle that is fundamental to emotional resolution and healing.  Acknowledge, Honour, Release.  Here is how it works:

Acknowledge – We are accustomed to avoiding, projecting, repressing or acting out on our emotional energy when we experience it.  We do this unconsciously and in a myriad of ways.  The secret to emotional resolve is to capture and name the feeling – find some separation from it.  Being able to say “I’m feeling anxious, afraid, sad, angry” isolates the energy and allows us to see what is driving our thoughts and behaviour.

Honour – Even once we identify the energy, usually we have a reaction.  We have been conditioned to believe that any emotional state other than happiness is unacceptable and intolerable – thus the unwillingness to acknowledge our emotional energy.  This deepens the avoidance/behavioural cycle or just generates anger on top of the existing emotion, leading to a secondary cycle of unacknowledged and unresolved emotion.  To honour our emotional energy means to accept and acknowledge that it is present.  Recognise it as an important part of yourself that is bringing you a message.  Let yourself feel the feeling that is present. Emotions are like smoke – they point to a fire within our psyche.  Ignore the smoke and the fire burns brighter.  Most of us live with smouldering fires within our lives for years. This one had been there for almost twenty-five years of my life.  Once I’d discovered the fire and put it out, I could see how much damage it had really caused in my life, unbeknown to me!

Release – Emotions are energy.  Energy needs to go somewhere.  If not, it will build up and explode, implode or run your head and behaviour like an irrational steam engine gone way off its tracks.  Once we have acknowledged and honoured our feelings – we need a safe, constructive outlet.  Maybe that means taking positive action, having a conversation, crying, painting, drawing, talking, walking or a myriad of other options.  The key here is constructive not destructive expression.  Often, in the process of acknowledge and honour, the emotional energy dissipates and resolves itself.  In this case the release has automatically happened.

While this is a powerful approach to emotional resolve and healing, it contains only a fraction of useful information about resolving our emotions.  I have spent years developing a system of emotional healing through both my own journey and having the privilege of applying and observing this process at work with real people and achieving astounding results.  Unresolved emotion runs in the background of our lives affecting every aspect of our life choices and expression.  Emotional wounds from our past can undermine our entire life – sabotaging success in our relationships, our careers our financial success and general peace of life and mind.  The unenlightened mind generally carries with it enormous amounts of emotional baggage and bad emotional habits that we are completely unaware of and prevent us from personal growth and expression.  Don't be afraid to begin the daring journey of emotional healing and awareness.  I will be publishing further articles that will be helpful in getting you started or contributing to your journey in this process.

A Spirit-Filled Mind

It has been said "you can not afford a negative thought."  Sadly our minds are frequently filled with negative thoughts, sourced from negative beliefs, painful or shameful memories and the negative messages we have received about ourselves throughout our lives.  No one knows the extent to which these thinking patterns affect our lives, but in the least we know they create happiness and limit our self-expression, at worst it is believed they contribute to death and disease.

Negative thinking becomes like an infectious plague that we pass around from one to the other.  Sometimes we exchange negativity back and forth in an "energetic slinging match".  With each exchange its power increases and our emotional wounds, self-doubt, negative belief and overall negativity deepens and intensifies.  How do we step out of this negativity that we have accumulated over a lifetime?  How do we prevent ourselves from falling foul of the next putdown or slap in the face that comes our way?

The power of positive thinking appears to have had a re-birth over recent times.  Perhaps due to the popularity of such publications as "The Secret".  However I am personally not convinced that this is the answer.  Our negative thinking is based on illusion and lies.  Lies fed to us about ourselves.  Lies ingrained in the depths of our collective conciousness.  Lies that have been perpetuated over generations becoming fundamental beliefs in our culture.

Positive thinking is based on the same source.  It is the other side of the same coin.  It is based in the same illusion as our negative thinking and little more than a reaction to it.  This only empowers the negativity making it appear more real.  Let me explain.

Ancient spiritual teachings and Quantam Physics tell us that the physical world is essentially an illusion.  It is a good illusion, a powerful illusion and an illusion created to serve a very high purpose, but an illusion never-the-less.  To awaken means to shift ones consciouness from the illusion to the reality behind the illusion, or it's source.  Our negative thinking is based in the illusion.  Yes, our memories, experiences, pain and victories are not actually real.  As real they may seem to be, there is a higher reality and a higher truth about you and about me.  So it follows, if we begin to think positively about the illusion - our thinking is still not based in reality.  Too often we look to the illusion around us, our ego needs and wants as the source of positive thinking.  In this way we remain slaves to the illusion.

So how can we change?  What can we do to awaken and break the cycle of illusive thinking?  Rather than changing our thoughts, it is a matter of clearing the mind of thought - negative and positive.  Our minds have become like busy, bustling cities.  Tall buildings, market places, people racing around performing their business.  In order to build these cities we have ripped up trees, flattened hills, dug deep holes and continue to poison the natural environment.  However if our cities were abandoned - grew still and silent - over time they would begin to revert to their natural state.  Weather would wear down buildings, first weeds would sprout in the pavement, then plants and trees.  Animals would start to inhabit the streets and buildings and very gradually the peace, beauty and serenity of nature would return to the once bustling and toxic city.

The same is true with our minds.  Our our human spirit is of the same substance as nature.  If we clear the mind of all negativity and allow it to return to its natural state, we can let spirit rather than memory flow through and manifest conciousness.  Left to its own devices, nature (spirit) is capable of amazing things.  Positive thinking is only a reaction to negative thinking and is based on the same illusion.  It just builds a different type of city.  We do not want to cultivate positive thinking but rather a spirit-filled mind.

This requires us to shift our consciousness or awareness from our mind to our spirit - our true nature or inner-self.  This is place within us of unconditional love, peace and stillness.  A place we often forget as we focus our awareness on the outer world of our will, thoughts and feelings.  In truth our body and ego is a vehicle for the devine creative nature within us.  For years, like a rebellious child I ignored the wisdom of this inner-parent or guide, genuinely believing and determined to demonstrate that my way worked, or I knew best.  I was blessed to be guided to my inner-self or spirit and learn to let go of the illusion of the outer world and ego.  My mental city is slowly crumbling.  Cars and pedestrians still frequent the streets but there is a gentle breeze wafting through and a crispness about the air.  People aren't in a hurry anymore and nature is emerging everywhere.  This is because I learnt to let go of all of my thoughts and allow my thinking to become infused and led by spirit.

If you'd like to know more about connecting with your spirit feel free to leave a comment or tune in to future blogs.

Discovering your Soul Purpose

Souls incarnate on the earth for many reasons. I like to believe that my Soul or Higher Self chose to come to earth and have this physical experience, as did your higher self.  Of course, we tend not to identify with our God-Self, but with our ego - the "mental/emotional vehicle" of our soul in earthly life.  Thus it's difficult to say "I chose to come here for such and such a purpose", because we tend to think of "I" as our ego rather than our greater spiritual being.

The nature of earthly living means that we become caught in the lower densities of existence and become disconnected from our higher self and our soul purpose. I love the story told by Dan Millman in his book "Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior" (my interpretation here rather than direct quote)about souls that looked down at the earth and chose to explore and experience the material realm.  However, once they incarnated they became trapped in the lower density or lower vibration of matter
and thus forgot their true identity.  Waves of souls followed on rescue missions but all became trapped upon the earth and entered the wheel of reincarnation in order to evolve and remember their true selves.  Several waves of souls, deeply aware of the risks, consciously chose to sacrifice and attempted to incaranate with higher consciousness.  Though also caught in the lower densities these souls retained a higher consciosness and memory of their spiritual nature, and attempted to help others remember their higher selves.

As I read various forms of spiritual literature I find many variations of this story. As I further explore my soul purpose I am discovering that I came to earth to be light and love by maintaining a connection with my true soul identity. Yet being so "spiritually minded" the challenge now is to integrate fully into an "earthly" existence and appreciate the experience rather than abandon the world in pursuit of spiritual experience. The conscious waves of souls in Dan Millman's story have come to be known in New Age circles as "Lightworkers".  While I am not completely comfortable with this term I acknowledge it's popular acceptance and so use it accordingly.

So my Soul Purpose is dual - to remain conscious of my spiritual identity thereby being a channel of light and love into the world while embracing and exploring the nature of the material world.  The latter  half may sound strange to some, but I know many will identify with the former.  Believe me, my greatest struggle in this life time has been the acceptance of my presence on the earth and the ability to engage with the societies we have created upon it.

But enough about me!  How do you discover your Soul Purpose? If you identify with the idea of being a Lightworker, then stay tuned for more blogs, or refer to "The Lightworker Series" by Pamela Kribbe at www.jeshua.net.  This is a great resource.  However if that is too airy-fairy for you, then read on!

In order to discover our Soul Purpose we need to remember two key principles:

1.  The material world is created through the spiritual, therefore is a work-in-progress, fluid and shifting despite its rigid and concrete appearance.

2.  We are the creators, the artists behind this fluid work-in-progress that we often mistake for unchangeable reality.

Now these are pretty big concepts and I will address them more completely in further blogs.  However for the time being practising the following steps may help to guide your awareness closer towards your Soul Purpose.

Let Go
We become trapped in lower vibrations of the physical world because our ego consciousness fuses with the world we see around us and the society we are born into.  This means, we believe the physical world is the authorative reality.  As a result we are convinced of its laws, dictates and way of life, which in turn generates needs, wants and limitations in our thinking.  If you've ever had that nagging empty feeling that there must be something more then you've identified your higher self trying get through and wake you up to the illusion.  If you've ever had experiences when what seems to be impossible occurs, or even incredible coincidence, synchronicity or extremely good luck, then you've had moments of piercing the veil of illusion and getting a glimpse of your soul's creative spiritual artistry in progress.  To tune in to our Soul Purpose we first need to disentangle from our fusion with the material and social world around us and start to acknowledge a Higher Purpose at work in our lives.

Take Responsibility
Things don't happen to you that are not in some way intiated, created or authored by you.  We are the creators of our life experience and corporately the creators of this planetary experience.  Begin to turn your eyes inward (yes, do some navel gazing) and ask yourself "how have I contributed to this experience in my life" rather than externalising the source of your suffering or good luck and blaming or acknowledging other people or things.  If negative things keep happening to you, if you are in conflict, suffering or experiencing failure - start by looking at your fear.  Be honest with yourself.  All suffering in our lives will almost always have some form of fear at it's source.  Our fear.  Yes, I really believe that!  Good things are drawn into our lives through love and acceptance of ourselves first, and the experiences themselves secondly.  If you are experiencing success, observe the self love and acceptance that is behind your success and also reinforced by it, and try to transfer that love and acceptance to other areas of your life that you would like to change.

Look for the Opportunity To Heal
Our beliefs, thoughts, emotions, memories and history are like a filter through which the creative light of spirit emerges casting flickering images on the walls of our lives.  You make like to think of your soul as the light of a movie projector and our memories, beliefs, thoughts and wounds as the strip of film that gives form to the light.  In the ego stage, this is how we create our life.  Unconsciously generating illusions all around us that are purely a reflection of our inner pain, fear and unresolved wounds.  Spirit is of a higher vibration than the material world.  It is the nature of our true self that still abides deep within your physical being.  However as that  powerfully creative true nature emerges outwardly, it passes through thoughts and feelings and is shaped to reflect those thoughts and feelings as it lowers in densitiy to materialise as the physical realities that we experience every day.  You, my friend, are a creative genius!  Your entire life is sourced from within your creative self and is simply a reflection of the filter that you have unconsciously established around your Life Source, Soul, or Spirit.  So it is not a question of if you are creating, but what you are creating.  Turn your eyes inward and look for the opportunity to  heal.  The clearer the filter, the more aligned your life will become with your Soul Purpose.

If you are committed to or even just curious about the discovery of your Soul Purpose, then these steps are a good place to start.  In my experience these are principles that I have to apply and re-apply regularly and forget too easily. To add to this, our Soul Purpose is constantly shifting and changing.  As soon as you become conscious of a new aspect of yourself - everything changes.  Kind of like going back in time and changing an event in history.  With our new awareness and new consciousness we see life differently, and we begin to create an entirely different experience almost immediately, which in turn has a direct impact on our Soul Purpose.  While our Soul Purpose can be summed up theoretically in various ways such as "to experience the universe and discover who we truly are", there is no substitute to consciously living the journey.

It is likely this article has raised more questions than answers.  If that's the case I'd love to hear from you.  I'm  looking forward to posting further articles so check in from time to time if this has been helpful.

The Dilemma of Money

In a recent newsletter Dr. Joe Vitale challenged me in an attractive advertisement with the following comment: "You are either a) attracting wealth, or b) attracting poverty.  There is no C option." So I clicked on his link to determine whether I was in the A or B category and hopefully prove that there is a C.  Having been raised in a fundamental Christian environment and having spent my life since pursuing all soughts of spiritual values, I was not surprised to discover that I fitted the "A" category.  What I was surprised to discover was how angry I am about money.  As I worked through the survey I felt the anger welling up inside me at the challenges about my attitudes towards "wealth", "success" and "abundance".


My journey has brought me to the belief that the material world is largely an illusion that, as spiritual beings, we dabble in to have the kinds of experiences that we cannot have outside of this world of opposites and contrasts.  So I had to ask myself - if money is only an illusion, why am I so angry about it?  I have spent my life consciously ignoring the idea of money as being a significant issue.  Working in not-for-profit organisations, often for a salary that was far less than the effort, time and experience that I brought to the job. But I was determined to follow my passion and ignore the issue of my wallet.  After completing the survey it became evident that to me, money was not an illusion.  If it were I would not feel so angry.

I have done this in my life before, thinking that if I ignore an issue that I consider unspiritual or detrimental to my spiritual journey that I am "transcending" it.  But the old adage returns to haunt me - "what we resist persists".  My very resistance to the idea of money indicated that money is a problem in my life, not through my over-attachment to it, but through my rejection and adversion to it.  Different sides of the same coin.

As I reflected on my aversion to the mighty dollar, I realised the true source of my pain-generating anger.  Measurement of my personal worth.  Why is my success in the world measured by it's dollar equivalent?  The same may be said for the ideas of abundance and wealth.  I realise now that I have felt "measured" by my ability to produce a dollar for most of my life. The jobs generally aspired to in my circle of society have big incomes attached. Being succesful is reflected by assets, annual salary and overseas holidays.  I have none of these.  Does this mean I'm unsuccesful? Does it mean I am living (and thinking) in scarcity? I am angry with money because it is the measure by which my personal value and worth as a human being appears to be judged.

Here is the illusion!  The real or perceived judgement of others.  The measurement of my value and worth against any scale that exists in my head or anyone elses.  As I step outside this mortal world and raise my consciousness to higher spiritual values, I am convinced that each one of us are born with intrinsic value and worth - not just a human beings but also as devine spiritual beings who exist beyond judgement and fault.  As we incarnate into these human bodies we often forget our true beauty, our true divinity, our true nature and get lost in a world of competition, fear, and the struggle of life and death.  If we can just momentarily shift our consciousness out of the illusion into our spirit-selves we can be reminded that we are devine, that our value and worth is greater than we can imagine and that the universe is a playground of abudance in which there is no lack, no void nor emptiness.  The experience of poverty is as rich and valuable as the experience of financial wealth.  That without judgement I can experience and accept both ends of the spectrum just for what they are - an experience of poverty or an experience of wealth recognising that neither are a reflection of anything more than the experience.

Phew! I think I found my "C" option.