How to Transform Your Emotions and Pain, and Choose Love over Fear
I awoke this morning with a humungous knot in my chest, right at my heart chakra. I’ve been noticing this knot on and off for several days and believed it was related to bad posture – slumping, particularly while at the computer. My chiropractor just worked on that area, at the mid-back. Though the gentle chiropractic cracking loosened it, the tightness kept returning, affecting my shoulders and neck as well.
Sure, you can call it a muscle spasm, but the body doesn’t lie. What, I wondered, is this body trying so hard to communicate? What’s putting my poor heart into a tizzy? Things have been actually going quite miraculously in my life lately, yet here is this intrusion of pain knocking at the door of awareness.
Feeling so frustrated with this persistent pattern, I had a good talk with my Divine during morning meditation.
“What is this thing, so stubbornly stuck in me?” I asked. The response from my Divine was surprising, yet not surprising. “This knot is fear, and it’s fear held by the collective consciousness.”
If you read this blog, you know I’m pretty passionate about doing inner, spiritual work. I’ve been looking, lately, at the many guises of fear that are generated by ego, and how it tends to play out in relationships and life. Working on this mind-based fear is a powerful daily practice. If you look, you’ll see we all share the universal desire to control others and control life. Since life has always been uncontrollable, the need for self-observation in this area is essential and ongoing. Fear is an emotion that can be useful (e.g., watch out, a bear is coming!), but these days, as a collective, we’re way too stressed and dangerously stuck in “flight or fight” mode. It’s not healthy, and we all know it.
This message from my Divine pointed my focus to “collective fear.”
It dawned on me that the collective is currently having yet another big freak-out, relating this weekend to the budget-based government shut-down; which comes after a week of vicious stock market decline and ongoing international turmoil…all of which comes at holiday time, when many folks are already very emotional and re-experiencing childhood wounds relating to their families. Then there is also the frenzy of holiday shopping. Sigh.
Of course, I get it now. Fear is in the air. We’re sucking it up like crazy. Forget about the so-called glow of the holiday season. If I pick up my phone to check the news feed, as I did this morning, I’m doomed; I’m breathing in the collective energy of fear. Collective fear is sky-high now and without an awareness of that, many of us empaths are apt to take it on unconsciously, as I did. We empaths connect easily to others and to the collective. Spiritually speaking, this is a good thing, except when it’s not.
Do you know what is “yours” (relating to your own, personal list of troubles and worries), and what belongs to the collective consciousness?
Because we are energetically and fundamentally One, we have one collective consciousness. This idea that we’re separate is really a conditioned concept, reinforced by the egoic mind. Ponder it: Energetically, where do you end and “I” begin? There is no real separation, though the mind is always looking out to protect its separateness.
But as I said, the body doesn’t lie, and it will tell you what’s going on within, if you listen.
Much of the time, the root of the body’s problems lies in fear. Ask yourself if the fear you’re perhaps feeling, or that pain manifesting somewhere in your body, is related to anything in particular going on in your life. If so, face that fear or pain. Breathe into it and allow yourself to feel and process it. There may be sadness arising too. As we face our fears, sadness, and pain, we see they’re so often linked to possible future, doom and gloom, or still stuck in the suffering of the past.
Meditation practice teaches us that, in this moment right here, as you sit with your fear, or any emotion, you’ll become aware that it is a wave of energy that can pass through you as you stay with it.
Emotions are a natural response to experiencing life, and are meant to pass through the physical body.
And if your fear does not seem to relate to the issues in your own life, ponder the possibility that the fear is coming from the collective and you’re unconsciously experiencing it because we are One.
If this is true for you, try to actively process the collective fear arising by becoming aware of it.
Here’s one method you can try, both for collective fear or any emotion arising within:
First sit, eyes closed and slow down your breathing, taking nice slow, deep inhales, and longer slow, deep exhales. Watch your breathing for several minutes, focusing on its in and out flow.
Become aware of the emotion of anxiety, fear, sadness, or pain that is energetically residing in the body. See where it’s located and what it “looks” like to you. It may have a color and a shape. Or it may be a strong sensation.
Then call in whatever is sacred to you. For you, it may be called Spirit, the Universe, God, Divine, Higher Self, and so forth. This is your personal Inner Divine. Ask it to be with you and help you move through the fear or pain. You can visualize your Divine as a bright Light, if that resonates with you, right in the center of your chest. Let the Light be with you as you fully experience the emotion.
Imagine this bright Light spreading out into all parts of your physical body.Keep breathing. Breathe into whatever arises. You may experience the Light dissolving the emotions or sensations, or perhaps they’re just suddenly gone..
Continue to visualize this Light going beyond the boundaries of your body, filling the room and then beyond your home, as far as you’d like it to go. Perhaps encircling the globe or out into the Universe.
When you’re ready, open your eyes, coming back to normal awareness.
Repeat as necessary, with whatever strong emotion, pain, or “charge” that is arising for you.
The gift of transforming your emotions and pain through awareness, visualization and breathing is inner peace.
Inner peace heals. It heals our inner state, it gives us clarity, and it contributes peace to the collective consciousness.
I want to remind you of what science has shown: Our reality arises from what we focus on. When we focus on our fears or the collective fears, we manifest fear. But when we focus on the Light, we manifest Light. When we reside in peace, we manifest peace. Your choice.
Hoping you focus at this time on Light, goodness, and your personal inner Divine. This is not to say we must flee from the news. In fact, it’s very important to be aware of what’s going on and respond to it as we’re personally guided to respond. But we must not identify with it to the extent that we forget we are Light and we are love.
We are powerful, infinite beings. We are meant to be gods. Our minds can harm us or can be used in service to the heart’s infinite wisdom, compassion, and peace. Choose peace, over and over. Take it on as a practice.
Please join me at this holiday time in remembering who you truly are.
