The Way out of Numbness into Feeling Alive!
I've been thinking a lot about how to bring more peace, joy and contentment into my life. Learning how to experience more fulfillment and connection to others too.
These are helpful thoughts to have right?
And I keep finding that connecting to myself FIRST is key. Also, finding ways to express myself, because this confidence in self expression IS what makes me feel alive.
This is not just creative expression, though that is super important for me! It is expressing my thoughts, feelings, desires...the good, the bad, the ugly.
For trying to hold onto the good without walking through the pain leads us into Spiritual bypass land, another detour into numbness that can often feel ungrounded, flighty, and fleeting .
For many, many years of my life I felt numb, disconnected and empty inside. Of course you wouldn't know it on the outside. I appeared to be high functioning, always with a smile on and successful.
Yet something felt terribly wrong. Not just something, many things actually. And I was literally dying inside. Like a flower wilted from lack of water and sunlight.
My joy was extinguished and what would appear like happiness would actually be excitement. This would send me on a roller coaster, crashing into disappointment, hopelessness, fear and shame when I would come down from that adrenaline.
Maybe you can relate to some or even all of this?
I didn't know what was "wrong" with me. I kept trying to figure it out. I kept trying to fix it on the outside.
Little did I know I was being led to discovering what was ailing me, but it felt like it took forever!
I begun to find out there was actually nothing wrong with me. Everything happening inside of me and the lack of feeling was just because I had never expressed my feelings before. I had kept them stuffed down for years.
And because of this my light had been snuffed out.
Or atleast it appeared to be.
I believe and have experienced that our light is never truly gone. It is just covered by layers (or parts) that served to protect us through unhealed loss and intense emotions.
What was I experiencing? It couldn't have come out of nowhere. And it didn't. But that's a story (many stories) for another time.
However, what I now know is twhat I was experiencing and what I still experience is Complicated PTSD.
I will continue to share more about this as time goes on. Because I am finding that I must honor my Self, my story and my healing journey in all areas of my life.
In addition, my main takeaway for today is that NO MATTER where you are at, what you are FEELING, and what you have been through, YOUR LIGHT is inside you right now.
And with willingness, patience, and a small sliver of an opening to ask for help, you will find that light will keep shining brighter.
It's not going to be easy despite the fact that the steps are simple.
Yet is is fully possible, 100% possible...to come alive.
To reignite yourself.
To unleash the fire and passion that makes you UNIQUE and who you are.
If I can experience it, there is no doubt in my mind, that it is possible for you too.
Do you want to fine tune your Inner Radar with crystal clear clarity for Love, Wealth + Freedom? My Free Start Up Guide Includes my 5 Star Process To Become the Intuitive Rockstar of your #5StarLife! This process transformed my life and is the foundation of everything I do in my life & biz! ⭐️🙌🏼👯♀️
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Let Go of Worries Using a Homemade Prayer Jar
I wanted to share with you one of the ways that I have been changing my habitual tendency to choose fear and instead reprogram my thoughts towards love.
Recently, I started keeping a prayer jar on my altar.
Every time that I have feelings of peace and love for another I write their name on a small slip of paper and place it in the jar.
Any time I feel worried about another person, I write their name on a piece of paper and I place it in the jar,
If I have anger or irritation, or an expectation of someone, judgments…if I feel a wanting or neediness from someone, I place the name of that person on a slip of paper and I place it in the jar.
Each time I write down the name, I bless this person. I thank this person. I send them love. I send them light.
Or I may imagine them being surrounded by light.
Sometimes I put the same person’s name in there multiple times in a day. Sometimes I will put my own name in the jar.
Then in my meditation, I bless the entire jar, seeing it with light. I say a prayer for everyone I have placed in there. I hold the jar in my hands sometimes and really infuse it with love and light.
And can I tell you, it feels really good!
This is one practice that really helps me experientially feel the inner truth of giving and receiving being one and the same.
It feels wonderful to shift any feelings of fear that I have and turn them into love in this way. Quite honestly, completely natural, and it’s so simple.
Most of the time…
Sometimes I feel such a strong pull of fear and am being hijacked by feelings of separation. In those moments it feels more natural to choose fear. I feel myself resisting sending out light and love.
Why would we resist doing something like this?
Old tapes. Learned ideas about the world that feel like they are serving a purpose but they are actually just limiting now. They feel real. And can sometimes feel like an insurmountable hurdle to get over. We have so many fears that we have accepted as true, that we don’t even realize how deeply we’ve bought in at times. And when we actually realize we are on this groove of fear and we attempt to switch up our thinking, the fear will lash out stronger at first which can make it feel even more difficult to switch off of it because its message gets so loud.
In behavioral psychology this is called a behavioral burst. When we try to switch up a behavior that is ingrained, i.e. in this case a thought pattern, the behavior and all of it’s emotions will peak, sending out a signal more intensely because it assumes that a louder signal will get the results that it “wants”.
Think of a dog who normally comes to the table for food and you give it some periodically, and then one day you stop. What will it do initially? Bark louder, try harder!
What we have to do is realize what it is that we TRULY WANT. In the moment it may feel that we WANT what pain and misery are telling us, but if we really look into the feeling we see that pain and misery are actually reminders that we are in need of what we REALLY WANT.
It’s kind of mind blowing when you really look at anxiety, anger, fear.
For instance, when it comes to this exercise and I am feeling fearful, anxious, or angry about someone or for someone, and I look closely at this emotion, I realize I am actually experiencing LACK of love.
I am actually focusing on the lack of love that I have for someone in this moment, am believing at some level that they need to give me the love that I want, and I am BLAMING them for not giving it to me.
How can this be helpful to anyone?
My ego would like to convince me that expressing these forms of LACK will benefit someone. I have trained myself continuously for a very long time to “care” this way. To “protect” this way.
Yet this “way” causes me pain. It keeps me miserable. It leads to behaviors that can cause pain to others. And I feel separate from others.
When I am anxious about someone..I am worried about their well being.
When I am anxious about myself..I am worried about my own well being, my peace, and my love being taken away. Or maybe I am worried that I won’t get any peace and love in the first place.
When I am angry, I am feeling like someone or something has done something to take away my peace and love. I judge myself as missing something and I judge and attack the other person for “doing” this to me. How does remaining in anger do anything to help this situation? How does attacking another person and myself further give me what I want?
Even if someone does something that really justifies this anger, how does my sending anger their way help them or me?
So I’m doing something different. When I am feeling LACK of love..instead I SEND love. I recognize that I cannot GET love from the outside. That there is NOTHING anyone can do on the outside to GIVE me that love anyways.
I recognize that anyone else who is pain, anyone else who is experiencing anger, fear, anxiety, is operating from a LACK of love in that moment too.
I recognize that when we are all experiencing LACK of love it just means that we need MORE LOVE.
I recognize that the LACK I am feeling is actually SPACE for LOVE to seep in from
I then ALLOW it to come in.
I visualize the LOVE filling my body, like a beautiful light filled rain shower.
I feel it filling up my body, every cell and expanding outward.
I experience my heart expanding and my body softening.
There.
I am now filled with LOVE and the beautiful thing is once I AM filled there is PLENTY to SHARE.
I am FREE NOW to GIVE this LOVE.
And the other funny thing that happens next is, I start to RECEIVE MORE LOVE to myself just by GIVING.
Try it out and let me know how it goes for you;
Here are some of the new "rules" I live by:
The freedom to get things dirty.
The willingness to listen to what my body is telling me.
The acknowledgement that my true self knows best.
The radical idea that the answers I need are within me.
The magical perspective that everything happens in the right timing.
The surrendering practice of expressing, trusting and feeling as the gateway to connection and meaning.
The life-changing phenomenon that whatever is in me can be expressed creatively in front of me.
And so many more . . .
Discover Your Intention for the Year with This Art Journaling PDF!
Happy New Year My Friends!
This year I've decided that TRUST is the word and experience I am choosing to embody for 2018.
I am choosing to deepen my trust in the process and allow things to unfold exactly as they are meant to. This means trusting my Higher Self and the inner wisdom within that feels peaceful, calm and centered.
I am also choosing to deepen my trust in others. This isn't the haphazard throw-caution-to-the-wind type of trust that I use to experience years ago.
It's not the impulsive, spontaneous, fear-based decision that reinforced my doubt in myself and avoided the confusion about who and what to trust.
This is the type of TRUST that is based on a gentle curiosity over time about those people in my life who keep showing up for me and I for them.
Those people who share many of the same similar values that I do.
Those people that I can be my authentic Self with and vice versa.
- PRACTICE
If you are interested in finding out what your Intentional Word of the Year is, I've created a little PDF for you where you can do some free writing, doodling and/or art journaling.
Click the image below to download your free copy!
P.S. Do you want to fine tune your Inner Radar with crystal clear clarity for Love, Wealth + Freedom? My Free Start Up Guide Includes my 5 Star Process To Become the Intuitive Rockstar of your #5StarLife! This process transformed my life and is the foundation of everything I do in my life & biz! ⭐️🙌🏼👯♀️
Grab By Clicking on the Image Below!!
No need for perfectionism
'Be content with learning, and not impatient. We will not be, and cannot be "abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality" (ACIM T-16.VI.8:1). It would terrify us, like a child in kindergarten abruptly being made President, or a first-year piano student being forced to do a solo recital in Carnegie Hall.
Each of us is exactly where we belong, learning just what we need to learn. Let us, then, enter wholeheartedly and joyously into the process, practicing our holy instants, receiving our little glimpses of the real world, each one assuring us of the reality of our goal, and the certainty of its attainment.' ~Allen Watson
I love this. So often in sessions, clients dismiss those special moments of shifts and love, waiting to only give themselves credit when the goal of everlasting happiness is DONE. I do this too. With my own personal work. With my art. Jonesing for an outcome when the fulfillment comes in the now, regardless if it's a beginning, middle or end.
Knowing that we are exactly where we are meant to be and that these glimpses of joy are strengthening our capacity to accept this love is a beautiful way of looking at the process of being patient with where we are at.
Do you want to fine tune your Inner Radar with crystal clear clarity for Love, Wealth + Freedom? My Free Start Up Guide Includes my 5 Star Process To Become the Intuitive Rockstar of your #5StarLife! This process transformed my life and is the foundation of everything I do in my life & biz! ⭐️🙌🏼👯♀️
Grab By Clicking on the Image Below!!