You Have to Feel the Pain to Heal the Pain – Lesson in Compassion

Chillin’

Center Fold

Q-T Pie

I attended a 3 day SelfQuesting™ workshop, a couple of weeks ago.  When my friend told me about it, there was an energy behind her words that got my attention.  I was fixated.  It was enticing and inviting.  I didn’t experience the energy, when I checked out the website.  I began to wonder if I made the best decision.

It had been awhile since I heard from the Voice.  About a week before the workshop, the Voice spoke.

Voice:  You’ve got to feel the pain to heal the pain.

Me:  What?

Voice:  You’ve’ got to feel the pain to heal the pain.

I began wondering what painful episodes I would have to visit in order to heal them.  I tried to remember as many as I could.  Would it be one of them?

The first day, I questioned the workshop’s power and I wondered if it would have any impact on my life.  When I got home, I had messages from Mom and a cousin.  All of the sudden, I felt the rawness of my emotions.  I felt exposed and vulnerable.  I didn’t want to talk to anyone.  I got into a tug-of-war with myself.  I know how Mom gets when I take longer to get back to her than she’s comfortable with.  The longer it took, the more anxious she would become.  I considered my options.  I could call and tell her that I didn’t feel like talking and I’d call her back later but why call to say that I didn’t want to talk?  I was making a sandwich, when it hit me.  I went down an unexpected emotional path.  I felt that my Mom’s emotional needs were supposed to be more important to me than my own and I had to choose between my needs and her’s.  I lost my appetite.  I couldn’t eat.  I took the time I needed and eventually called her.

I wanted to know why I felt that way.  What happened that led me to believe that Mom’s emotional needs were supposed to be more important to me than my own?  I recognized that I have struggled with this feeling before.  I was able to work through it all, the next day in the workshop.  I no longer questioned its power or what impact it would have on my life.

I learned how to take an issue and trace it to its root cause, to its inception.  From there, I can bring light to it, release it and any other persons involved and recover that part of myself that had been reliving the same incident ad infinitum.  Since the workshop, I’ve had the opportunity to identify and heal a few issues.  Things that use to be hot-button issues no longer have an emotional sting.  I realized that the upheaval I experienced at the end of 2011 was only the beginning.  Now that certain issues had come to light, it was time to address the ones that needed healing.  It wasn’t enough to know how I felt.  I needed to know what happened.  It’s one thing to work with managing my emotions when my buttons get pushed.  It’s another to actually disarm them.  I understood, “You have to feel the pain to heal the pain.”

I began setting intentions to heal unresolved issues.  One of the intentions was to heal the hot-button issues in my relationship with Mom.  We have a really good relationship.  She’s my treasured friend and confidant.  In spite of all that, like any relationship, we have our issues.

While addressing an issue, I usually get images.  Some are memories.  I experience them with such clarity that it is as if it is happening in that moment.  There was the day that Dad talked to us about grandma’s cancer diagnosis.  He said that he couldn’t tell us not to smoke because he smokes.  Mom interrupted him, pointing a finger at each of us, and said “Don’t smoke. Don’t smoke.  Don’t smoke.”  Some are metaphorical images that illustrate the way I feel and act.  There was an image of a courtroom with Mom on trial.  I was trying to get her to plead guilty to various charges.  It was painful to see and even more painful when I accepted that I indeed treat her in that manner.  I wanted her to be guilty, to be wrong and admit her guilt and error.  Getting the image wasn’t enough.  Like a weed, I had to get to the root to the why.  I took myself deeper.  I arrived at the point of inception.  I found the original cause and saw the truth.  I could feel the tension in my gut ease and my energy shift.  I returned to the courtroom and spoke to Mom.  I apologized for putting her on trial and for trying to force a confession out of her.  I told her that she was guilty of the assertions but not for the reasons set forth.  She was correct.  I sent her into the light.  I spoke to the fragment of myself and explained that even though her assertions were correct, Mom wasn’t guilty of the charges.  Both of them were all at once correct, innocent and guilty.  I told her it was time to leave.  I filled the room with light and let it dissolve.  Together, we returned to my consciousness.

Why Am I Holding On To This? – Let It Go!

“Hanging Out”

“Up, Up & Away”

“Glow”

The past two weeks have been really quiet.  There haven’t been any overwhelming emotional episodes.  As Friday, Jan 6^th, approached, I began to panic because I didn’t have anything to write for the next post.  The prior emotional upheavals gave me plenty to think about and insights to share.  Now that my life had quieted down, the lessons and insights seemed to come to a halt.  It gave me the opportunity to question my motivation and commitment to writing the blog.  Though, I couldn’t answer all the whys I did know what I wanted.  I don’t want the blog to be a weekly public diary summarizing my daily life.  I want to share insights and lessons I’m learning.  I want to be an example of a person that tries to live a conscious life.  For me, that means that I am a person trying to live my life from the perspective that I am totally responsible for the quality and character of my life.  There are no accidents or coincidences.  I am not a victim but a student, learning through the experiences that arise from interacting and relating to others.  Nevertheless, I was down on myself for not having a post.  I was beating myself up pretty bad by late Saturday evening.  It was between mental beatings that I heard the Voice in a very low whisper say, “Let it go.”