Dear natalia:

I would like to read and answer your thread when I am back to the computer in about 16 hours or so. I hope other members will read and kindly reply before then.

anita

Hi Natalia,

This is my first time here and actually, this was the first post I read. I felt compelled to reply to you. I understand you fully and as somebody who has also experienced a trauma, I want to assure you that what you are experiencing right now, will come to be seen as essential for your spiritual growth and you will come to feel gratitude for the unique lessons your life and upbringing have given you.

The very fact that you have such awareness and inner resource to recognise your emotional trauma for what it is, and are taking steps to heal yourself, is testament to the progress that you have made and will continue to make on your healing journey.

Emotions can be terrifying and their reach unlimited in how destructive they can be; but this is only because they are not understood.  Emotion is the most powerful resource we have in re-connecting with our spiritual selves.  I want to tell you that it is 100% possible to transmute any negative emotion into unconditional love. This isn’t by bypassing, this is by experiencing and allowing it to be, so that it can be processed.

The focus is not on me, so I won’t tell you my story. But I want to summarise a few points:

My trauma was such that I was suicidal for over a decade, experiencing chronic anxiety, intrusive thoughts, panic attacks. The lot. I went to the depths and back.

The conversations I would hold with myself, went a little bit like:

I am weak

I am ugly

Nobody loves me

I want to die

Now, in complete contrast, after learning how to harness emotion and changing the way I treated myself, in terms of being kind, compassionate and forgiving towards myself, the conversations now go like this:

I am strength

I am beauty

I am grace

I am love

I AM my heart…

I won’t lie, it was a long journey, but it all begins with understanding the relationship we have with ourselves and the language we use with ourselves.  Our thoughts create our reality by way of altering our perception and consequently our interaction with the world and ourselves. By shifting the focus of thoughts in our minds, we can re-calibrate how we respond to our emotions.

Here are some places to start:

Start with observing your thoughts and how you speak to yourself. Are you being kind, or cruel to yourself? If you say “I regret doing that, I’m a fool”, instead say “I did the very best that I was capable of, at the time”.  Instead of, “Why am I so unhappy?”, try “I am healing”.

Realise that emotions can trigger a cycle of thoughts, that continually engage further emotion.  This can keep you locked in a despondency. When you experience the emotion, disengage from your thoughts (or if you are unable to do so just yet, try simply observing without interacting with them) and allow yourself to experience the emotion in your body.  In the way we that we experience laughter or joy, those emotions flow through us so easily, because we enjoy the experience. On the other hand, fear, jealousy, anger, sadness, are all emotions we may not want to experience therefore we repress them. Emotion is energy and our energy bodies can accumulate emotions that haven’t been given the chance to be released. What we resist, persists. Intend to experience your emotions and release them.  Intend to surrender into the love in your heart.

Practice stopping your thoughts daily, hourly, or every minute of the day.  A simple technique, is to focus your hearing 100% outside of your body and try to listen to that which you cannot hear.  This has a magical effect of stopping your internal dialogue.

Practice feeling your heart. Centre your bodily awareness on your heart, while maintaining silence in your mind.  Cultivate the physical feeling of your heart where-ever you are.

Forgiveness. I cannot emphasise enough, how important this is energetically.  In interactions with others and emotionally charged events, there is an exchange of energy.  When we hold onto a situation because we have been unable to let go of it, due to sadness or fear or injustice, we hold onto the energy of that situation and equally, keep our energy held in person who affected us.     By forgiving (not condoning) we release what we have held onto, and call our power back to us.  This will also help you in establishing your energetic boundaries.

The most important thing right now, is learning how to truly love yourself, being compassionate and kind. The things above have helped me considerably and I hope they help you too.

Now, in response to what you said about having no close relationships – I too went through this and it is extremely challenging however throughout the years you will make connections with special people who are on the same path as you. They are rare. When you find them, cherish them. But for now, don’t judge yourself on the basis of not having close relationships. It will happen in time.

I would also recommend trying to find a healer who specialises in Soul Healing.  If you are in London, I can recommend somebody who changed my life and was instrumental on my journey into my awakening in my heart.

Emma

P.S. Read The Whisperings of The Dragon by Lujan Matus

Dear natalia:

I think that the loss of passion in your life, the passion to write, to create music, to help people heal when you grow up, is because you “do not have close relationships whatsoever”.

We are social animals, social beings. We thrive when connecting with others. When you were a child you reached out to connect with others, through writing, music and you wanted to heal others. Your family environment of chaos, dysfunction and abuse took emptied you from your passion to connect, eventually (it takes time to do so). And so, you find yourself empty.

The answer is to connect, only have to be selective, so you don’t connect to abusive, aggressive people, like those you grew up with. Connecting has to be slow and gradual so you have time to learn who is the person you are connecting with and is the relationship healthy, a Win-Win.

I think your passion will return when you successfully connect.

anita

Hi, the feelings of emptiness you speak of. Can be a terrifying thing, as this means that everything that you know love and have committed to….Isn’t real. Your ego doesn’t want this, the part of yourself who has made up the story of Natalie who identifies with her experiences as a genuine part of who she is.  This person does not want to let go because you don’t know what’s on the other side, you avoid it all costs. Doing anything to get away from yourself and how you feel.

Pursue this emptiness, you will find yourself. I’ll try and explain this the best i can.

Imagine each and every moment you have live so far, from moment to moment. Each moment has a perspective, and understanding, a knowing, a reaction. We are only allowed to pick one perspective, one understanding, one emotional response (which can by more than one emotion at a time). Now there are an INFINITE amount of interpretations each moment could possibly have. You are the collection of each moment and that interpretation of each moment gives you the identity you have now that you are clinging onto. Myself included.

Emptiness is existence, all you are is pure awareness, we are like sponges and mirrors. We soak it all up and then project/reflect our understanding back onto the world.

However that understanding is limited to ONE perspective per moment. There are many perspectives.

Clinging onto this idea of yourself, a self that doesn’t really exist. It is made up. Just another story, like the one i am typing right now. It can be a very frightening thing but with enough understanding or framework it can be the most liberating experience you ever have. Because you will realise that all the positions you took on everything is completely arbitrary and you could have just as easily taken another position. Ultimately any interpretation from this place of “nothingness” is a lie.

This is our condition. There’s so much more this cascades onto but if this resonated with you. People like so call it an ego death and i hope you find what you’re looking for. Enquiring into the nature of reality and how our awareness interacts and integrates with external world would be a good place to start.

Perhaps you haven’t heard of Leo from actualised.org. You can find him on youtube. He has in depth video’s about all this stuff. I am new to this forum and perhaps everyone knows him from here. If so great, if not then it definitely wouldn’t hurt to look him up. He is an incredible teacher. I am honestly in awe of how much he understands and knows and how accessible he makes all this information.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by misterman.