In some of us pain often leads to numbing or masking of the Self. When it feels too much to feel pain or when the underlying belief is that pain makes us weak, we often distract from feeling it. We hide behind our ambitions and addictions. We use several distractions to deflect from feeling it.
We use our courage to project that we are brave and that we are letting go and moving on. We project that we are leading busy, active, happy lives. We find our anchor in being busy or in other distractions.
Source: Facebook
In this case, we may often go about living our life as if nothing is wrong and every thing is alright. This often comes across to everyone as being healed and moving on. It may not really be so and it may only be an illusion that every thing is alright.
Just like everything and everyone else, pain too, needs an “acknowledgement.” It may take time but it often finds its way through.
Sooner or later pain does find its way and screams out loud so that we may pay attention. Sometimes it strikes as mental illness, sometimes as physical symptoms and sometimes as a different crisis like an accident or some other life threatening situation or a deep personal loss.
Sometimes it projects as strife with family members. In many cases, our children often project our own buried stuff. If we pay attention, we see the presence of our own pain in some of their behaviours or even in their rebellion. Sometimes pain screams through our outbursts.
Pay attention to what your body is saying.
Then there are some of us, who feel everything quite intensely. Pain cuts us deep and tears us open. Feeling it and processing it feels like a never ending roller coaster ride. Often it breaks us or leads us to a deconstruction. Rebuilding from there, feels more energy consuming, tiring and simply impossible.
Because of the intensity of the pain, we may unconsciously wall our hearts so that we may not be hurt again. We block our receiving. And, we might keep circling back to the pain over and over again inspite of numerous healing attempts. The rebuilding feels scary and here we may find our anchor in the safety of the known, in this case our pain.
Pain has the capacity to not just break our hope and spirit, but it also has the capacity to open our hearts and break down our walls, if we allow. In this case, we realise that pain is a messenger and it has a lot to teach us. It draws our attention to aspects of self we tend to bury, mask, deny or ignore because of fears – fears which spring through our upbringing or past imprints.
There may be some of us who may allow pain to be an initiation. I am not saying that pain is or should be a pre-requisite for growth or spiritual evolution and healing. But pain can be a mirror reflecting deepest aspects of the self – aspects of the self we are afraid to own, look at and dive into.
This approach to pain that it is not here to destroy us but actually reconstruct us may take a lot of patience, courage and inner resilience. It may feel tempting to look the other way than understanding its wisdom and work towards integrating and embodying it.
A deep acceptance of what is, in spite of volatility and uncertainty, becomes the need of the self. Deep pain, often propels us towards deep surrender. In this case, the person often finds his/her anchor in the Self and in the Divinity and Magnificence of all that is.
What is your anchor? Where do you naturally levitate towards?
I was invited by Karan & Shokhi of the Happily Whatever After podcast on their episode of Sacred Connections. In the conversation, we dived deep into the power of spirituality to transform relationships. I shared insights into why we often attract the “wrong” partners and how this is linked to unresolved patterns within ourselves. You can listen to part 1 of the podcast on YouTube here.
Healing doesn’t happen by avoiding what we are feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by desperately trying to release what we are feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by pushing away vehemently what we are feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by smartly numbing or conveniently suppressing what we are feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by unconsciously masking what we are feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by braving that feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by smiling through that feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by shopping, eating or drinking through that feeling.
Healing doesn’t happen by working and making oneself busy while feeling what you are feeling.
These FALSE paradigms of work through it, push through it, rise through it, eat through it, forget about it, learn through it, seek through it, move away from it – all these have eaten us away from inside.
All our UNDIGESTED pain and sorrow is what IS the “sum total” of what we today see as the violence, abuse, insecurities, jealousy, competition, greed, control, mental illnesses, physical illnesses, etc.
We want society ills to end. But we continue violating our own self, we continue abusing our own self, we are continually either numbing pain or escaping pain and if there is someone who shows courage to live their pain, then we are continually shaming and judging their pain or journey. OR we perpetually advise them to brave their pain or work and forget about their pain.
Introspect an area of your life when you might have unconsciously done this to yourself.
Has it resulted in illness, despair, complaints, victimhood, mental breakdown later?
Has it led to stagnation?
Has it made you feel like a piece of shit within while the world continues to glorify its outward glamour while feeling empty and full of ruckus inside?
Has it made you question your existence?
Have you felt fulfilled by brushing it inside the carpet?
Has your seeking ended?
If not, then PAUSE.
Today, BEFRIEND your pain.
PS: Befriending our pain takes more courage than avoiding our pain. This is why the feminine teachings are not for the faint of heart. There is a reason Durga Rides the tiger.
Foundation of Shamanism workshop is returning on April 27-28 2024. To learn more: ✉️ neelamnanwani@yahoo.in 📞 9979901933 🌐 shamanic-vision.net
Over the last several months, I have poured out a lot of my anger, angst and vulnerability on my social media pages / facebook timeline.
From some, it has invited advice/suggestions as if pouring it out had to be fixed.
From my family it has invited shame and ostrecisation.
And yet for a few, it has given them an opportunity to understand how important it is for us to feel our pain, express it, and how rawness and vulnerability is not weakness but an important way of being.
For those who needed to learn, even my raw uninhibited primal sharing of my grief and sorrow, anger and pain has become an important teacher in their field.
For some, my way of being is a poison, for some, my way of being is medicine.
And I JUST AM.
And in just BEING, I am learning to simply be a witness to both the scenarios unfolding in my space before my eyes.
More often than not, a lot of shame and judgement has followed me as I have flowed shamelessly with my emotional outbursts. Am I being a victim, am I being too clingy, am I getting co-dependant, am I seeking attention, I have questioned myself several times. I have felt the shame when someone has distanced themselves and it has made me unsure of myself.
At the same time, I have allowed myself to deepen into a space of honest self enquiry. I have descended into my pain and allowed myself to trace the roots of what I have been feeling.
I have traced it back to the lineage wounds when women might have been blamed or shamed for men going away or not being present. How many times do women get blamed for a relationship gone sour !!
“He went away because you were a bitch”, “He divorced you because you did this or that”, “He left because it was your fault:.
How many times do we hear this in our society? If the relationship goes sour or a man leaves, the society is so quick to point fingers at a woman.
During the past several months after Paul has passed, I have felt this shame and I have found myself in the question box, “Did I do something wrong? Was I getting too attached or clingy? Was my communication inappropriate?”
I felt this pain of the women in my lineage (both paternal side and maternal side) and I asked the spirit of the fire to destroy and transform this shame, for, it doesn’t belong to me.
As I continued feeling the ripples of this shame, validation etc, and the emotional field continued to be volatile, I suddenly got into a conversation with few of the students (not mentioning names).
Yesterday, not once but thrice, it was validated in my field, how me wearing my triggers/emotions on my sleeve (aka sitting with my pain/anger, expressing n feeling it freely, writing about it, vocalizing it) has helped them realise and understand the importance of being real, the validation that they needed to express and feel fiercely and the safe space where they could be themselves and the ability to see how expressing our emotions, doesn’t make us less courageous but more courageous.
Vulnerability is strength and not a weakness.
Everything that churns in my space daily, and the ability to feel it so intensely and acutely does overwhelm me at times.
I cannot believe the finer layers of the same work that I thought I have completed and processed are arising in my field again.
I am learning to be an innocent wise child, while sending love to the wounded inner child and I am reminded of the words of Matt Kahn,
WHATEVER ARISES, LOVE THAT.
With allowing that, and learning to love that arises, I am being ME and owning it, daily, one step at a time.
