When your emotional world is on ablaze and you are looping in the claustrophobia of ruminative thought, pause and return attention into your body, into the senses. It can be hot, sticky, and suffocating inside the loop, where thoughts are triggering feelings which hook you into more thinking which give rise to disturbing impulses, all of which reflect the burning of your historical, core vulnerabilities.
Before we know it we are stuck in habitual consciousness, in the circulation of old, embedded pathways, longing for the encoding of fresh, spontaneous, creative circuitry. But it only takes one moment to return to curious attention, shifting awareness out of the swirling narrative and into the life that is moving through you.
The voices are not wrong or bad or unspiritual or “illusion,” but are operating within a confused, charged mass and spiraling of unworkable energy. You can return and listen at a later time, once the fire is cooled, for they too carry information and intelligence. You can dialogue with them, ask why they have come and what they need, and come to terms with them in your own way.
In this, you offer rest for the guests of the psyche and surround them with warmth. While it may appear that they have come to attack and take you down, they only wish to be allowed back home, to take their rightful place in the ecology of the heart. They represent aspects and figures and fellow travelers who have become lost in a lonely forest and despite their wrathful appearance seek the light of your awareness.
They have something to contribute but can only do so in a clouded and chaotic state until met and washed with love.
The offering of this sanctuary is what allows relationship to take place, the arising of a field of safety, empathy, and attunement where the entirety of what you are is permitted to make the great sacred return.
Photo by Kristendawn/ Vancouver
My most recent book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available
The next book, A Healing Space: Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come
The next event is The Healing Shame Retreat: Spiritual Awakening and Transforming the Core Wound of Unworthiness, April 24-29, 2019 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado, with co-facilitator Jeff Foster
