Feeling Fully
Plus, last chance on summer special.
Was it possible that life had more to give us
than we could ever take for ourselves?
- Michael A. Singer (The Surrender Experiment)
A couple of weeks ago, a client mentioned that I always seem to maintain my groundedness and inner peace, regardless of the challenges in my life. She was referring to my ability to be sanguine in the face of chaos, which is definitely my reality at present. I explained that I no longer borrow emotions from the past that can amplify or undermine current challenges. Instead, I greet new challenges with an emotional clean slate, ready to flow through what wants to arise. For her, every new challenge activates emotional burdens that she’s been carrying for decades, so what could be a hiccup, becomes a major hurdle as past emotions require present management.
This client is not exceptional in this regard. I see this in my practice consistently and I know it intimately, because it was my reality once too. In late 2012/early 2013, my life completely unraveled. I suffered heartbreaking losses, chaos, and major life transitions in such a short span of time, I ended up with Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome and depression. Grief was overwhelming, because once my emotions were given permission to flow, decades of unresolved emotions began to pour out of me involuntarily. Every emotional trauma that was repressed, every angry word that I didn’t speak in the face of injustice, every measure of control and composure I’d constructed, was powerless to stop the flow of emotions desperate for release. This lasted two years! In hindsight I realized, my life broke down, so I could break open.
At the time, I was horrified. I would start to cry at dinner parties or cancel plans because no amount of make-up could fake a happy face. Some days, I only got out of bed to take care of my son. I went inwards and what I discovered surprised me: I’d been underfeeling for most of my life. It’s a defense mechanism we learn in childhood. It becomes a source of comfort through control. We do this, because the enormity of feeling fully is overwhelming when we don’t have healthy tools to move through our emotions in real time. So we pack away months, years, and even decades of emotions that were too much at the time. The trouble is, these emotions get stuck because emotions are meant to flow; we’re meant to slow down enough to be present to what needs to move through us. And once these emotions get stuck, we’re in ongoing cycles of emotional management.
Every time something incites feeling, we decide - consciously or unconsciously - how to greet it: head on, in partial measures, or deny it entirely. Most of us feel - only up to a point - because what wants to break through is immense and it means really committing to the inner work. It means being uncomfortable for a time, before a new sense of ease and surrender can be attained. We don’t consciously know what’s possible which causes fear, so instead, we consistently exert a measure of control. But what lies on the other side of defense mechanisms is emotional freedom and ironically, a quieter mind. What most of us don’t realize, is that we spend a huge amount of mental energy on emotional management; we think about our feelings more than we actually feel them.
It seemed the quieter the mind, the more that solutions became self-evident.
- Michael A. Singer
Once liberated from the emotional burdens of the past, we move into a new kind of presence. We can face the enormity of feeling fully, because all that we need to feel exists in the exact moment we’re feeling it, and while it might be immense, it’s never going to destroy us. More than likely, it’s going to remind us how alive we should actually feel. This creates an inner ease to be present, intentional, and surrendered to what life wants to bring us, after all, everything in life has something to teach us.
This is particularly true where our purpose is concerned. Experience has taught me that most of our repressed emotions are situated around lessons we need to learn to actualize our purpose fully. For me, I felt misunderstood and unheard for most of my life, but the anger that I’d internalized as depression was deeply connected to ongoing self-doubt and an inability to speak up for myself. I’m not condoning the behavior of others that likely reinforced my beliefs about who I was, but when I started taking responsibility for how others showed up in relationship to me, it was easy to forgive. When I stopped being angry at myself for my self-betrayal, it became much easier to feel my emotions fully because I understood their source.
Letting go of past emotional burdens, awakens an aliveness that exits beyond our control mechanisms. Feeling fully, being completely present, dropping our need to constantly control outcomes to maintain composure, liberating our overtaxed mental energy, we become exalted in ways beyond what our limited minds can perceive. This is where we dance with life in co-creative magic.
☀️💛☀️ Celebrate the Sun ☀️💛☀️
Last Chance for Summer Savings on Hand Analysis Readings!!!
Come have a hand analysis reading or gift someone you love . . .
and enjoy $75 off! until July 15th.
Use the code: SUNSHINE at check out. 😎
It’s my purpose and joy to help you align with your purpose and joy! 💫 Feeling the need for support and want to do some inner work? Book some quality time with me below. I hope you’re all enjoying some summer magic! 😎
With love from my whole being,
Lisa 💋❤️
P.S. This may be my last post for a minute, as I’m returning to New York City next week. I have no idea what’s coming, as I’ve surrendered my path and asked the universe to show me how good it can get! 😘
'it seemed the quieter the mind, the more that solutions became self-evident.' - This is so powerful Lise, seeing you go through this journey and embracing silencing the mind to allow solutions and decisions to flow is the way to stay connected to the flow of the cosmos. You have truly lived this and are here now to show us exactly how to do it. Your Purpose is to show us "how' as we navigate our own roadmaps of life. Thank you!