The Heart is Where True Healing Happens
We have been exploring, in the past few weeks, the art of unhooking from the addiction to struggle that is the core of the storyteller in our head that talks all day long.
Extricating your awareness from the grip of thought is an essential part of the equation on the path to freedom. But that only takes you so far in the journey of awakening. The other part is understanding that as soon as you try to fix, rise above, stop, or judge a thought, you are stuck to it like glue. What heals, what truly heals, is loving attention.
Imagine what your life would be like if you discovered how to meet whatever your thoughts are doing and whatever you are experiencing with compassion, kindness, understanding, and love. For thoughts, the feelings and sensations they generate are just like you and me. They want to be seen with loving attention. Imagine somebody being with you, as we oftentimes are with our thoughts. They tell you to shut up, ignore you, say you’re broken and need to be fixed, or that this is how you need to be. How does it make you feel? You put up your guard, you resist and maybe judge in return.
But when you share something vulnerable with someone who listens, really hearing you, and there is absolutely no judgment in their listening, something inside of you lets go. The same is true for our thoughts and the feelings and sensations they generate. They heal under the gaze of accepting attention.
As your thoughts begin to calm under the gaze of loving attention, you come back into your body and into the field of wisdom and love that has always been there. And the more you come back into your body, the more you find the courage to recognize that it is safe to show up for life exactly as it is.
What does this look like? I worked with a woman last year whose roommate wasn’t very clear about boundaries. This roommate would cook a meal and not clean up. She used her friend’s cosmetics and sometimes borrowed her clothes, all without asking permission. And when she said something to her roommate, the roommate would just blow it off.
When we talked, she was seething with irritation and revenge, and she wanted to find a way to get rid of her roommate. I said that is one possible avenue to take. But first, let’s ask the question to life, “What are you showing me here?” In other words, how was the situation for her? I invited her to shift her attention from the roommate and be curious about what she was experiencing. Bringing her attention into her body, she discovered a recognizable tightness in her chest and a lump in her throat. As her attention settled there, she began to feel the very familiar feelings of being hurt, disregarded, and not listened to.
When I encouraged her to remember times in her young life when she felt this way, tears began to flow. She felt again the chaos that was her home when she was little, and her heart spontaneously opened to the familiar feeling of powerlessness and disregard that had been so present in her childhood and were now being brought to the surface by her roommate.
Rather than being lost in her irritation, her judgment, and her overwhelming feeling of powerlessness, she now met what she was experiencing with deep compassion, enfolding these feelings with understanding and love. “I see you. It is okay you are here. I finally see what you have felt all along.” And because her feelings were met with understanding and love, they calmed down. That is the power of loving acceptance. It is like the sun radiating its warmth on a block of ice.
And then her eyes lit up with great joy. It now made complete sense to her what I wrote in What’s in the Way is the Way: life is set up, to bring up, what has been bound up, so it can open up, to be freed up, so we can show up for life. Through more tears, she saw that life isn’t a random series of events. It is a living process designed to help us see —and see with a great heart — all the struggles that keep us separate from who we really are. Of all the 8.2 billion people on this planet, this person was her roommate, and this person acted in ways that brought up what was locked deep inside, so it could be set free.
I invite you to place a hand over your heart and realize that you were courageous enough to take on a big chunk of the pain that all of us carry. And then in the same lifetime, you are discovering how to set this pain free. It isn’t about fixing it, changing it, or judging any of it. It is about meeting it with your heart so your pain can finally let go!!
If this topic calls to you and you want to explore this further, I invite you to check out my course, Falling in Love with You. It is currently on sale for $100 off (Only $49), along with my other courses (see below for more details), for the holiday season: Click Here to Check It Out
You are also invited to explore my new podcast episode on Dreamvisions 7 Radio: A Healing Your Deepest Hurts Part 2 to explore this topic further. It will air on Thursday, November 27th and December 4th at 5am and 5pm HERE. After the 4th, it will be available on demand, along with every other radio show I’ve ever done HERE. Please feel free to explore my catalog and listen to topics that call to you.
Offerings:
Healing Holiday Sale: All Self-paced courses only $49
Every time I see the news, my heart aches for the pain inflicted on the world by an old kind of mind that doesn’t recognize the sacredness of every particle, of every being. But I also see more and more people awakening to a way of being with life that cares not only for all people but also for the Earth itself.
You are reading this newsletter because you are a part of this awakening. For the holidays, I am offering all my online, self-paced courses for $49. I recognize the restorative messages within them and wish for them to reach more people so they can contribute to the healing of our world. Please consider sharing them with your loved ones as well.
What’s in Your Way IS the Way will show you how to unhook from your mind’s addiction to struggle so you can know the joy of being fully present for life.
Falling In Love with You is all about how to fall in love with you exactly as you are, so you can rest in the compassion, kindness, and empathy that is who you really are.
Being Healed by Our Compulsions changes your relationship to your compulsions from enemy to ally, allowing them to guide you out of the world of struggle and back into the ease and peace that is your birthright.