Your Hero’s Journey — Pain, pt 1
Is it okay to write about pain? We all have it, but it isn’t so easy to discuss, especially with those who tend to wallow in theirs. It tends to go downhill. It depends on how we view it, on where we’re coming from when we bring it up. One thing we can all do is to journal, to find the courage to greet it that way.
Sharing our pain or painful incidents with others isn’t generally beneficial, to us or to them. When we focus on the negative, unless we come to it guided by Heart, by our inner wisdom, we only sustain or even magnify the difficulties. Our mind can’t resolve our pain for us, try as it might. It can only justify it, based on our beliefs.
We’ve got to go deeper to enter a useful interaction with pain.
GREETING, EMBRACING OUR PAIN
What is useful? Not repressing pain, not adding it to our list of no-go places, thus allowing it to fester & worsen over time. The longer we repress things, the more challenging they become to resolve. Pain is usually speaking to us of an aspect of self we’re not willing to accept. We don’t want it. We resist it. All of which goes into making it worse.
Running away works only for so long.
We’ve got to find ourselves, friends — first, rather than last. All the things we’re seeking out there in the world have nothing to offer next to the potential benefit of accepting & resolving our pain, finally seeing that it is actually there for our benefit. It’s trying to show us something we’ve thus far been unwilling to see, so it’s morphed from the feather to the ruler to the yardstick in its bid to get our attention. If we don’t deal with it, we’re headed for 2”x4” territory, so it’s in our best interests to do so.
What are we trying to escape? What aspect of the self are we unwilling to embrace? In what ways do we not believe in ourselves? Why aren’t we being the good friend to the self that we are to others in our life? We deserve our own care & attention, I think most would agree. It’s just that society, the way it’s currently structured, doesn’t lend itself to this.
THE MATRIX IS A STORY WE’VE BELIEVED
What does our pain have to offer? That depends, of course, on who we are, on where we are along our life trek. Like each person, each pain is unique, with its own story to tell. What part of the story are we believing? Into what part(s) are we willing to take a deeper look? What parts of our story are basically made-up, self-created? (I would suggest most or even all of it, though we won’t see it that way early on.)
Remember, friends, we live to whatever extent within the Matrix, so things are all topsy-turvy. We’re taught to believe in ridiculous stuff, not even taught who we really are. While we’re learning to trust more in the self, let’s keep trusting less in conventional “wisdom.” Nothing wise is ever found within the Matrix.
So we’ve got this story going about how Johnny or Jane hurt us, what s/he did & the pain that it caused. Let’s stop right there. No one can cause us to be hurt — did you know that? Are you willing to accept (or at least consider) it? We chose to be hurt, to take offense, to tail-spin off into pain, albeit unconsciously. Johnny didn’t do that — we did.
We’re not in charge of Johnny, Jane or anyone else outside of the self, so s/he gets to do as s/he chooses.
What beliefs do we hold that we think Johnny violated? In what ways did we somehow set Johnny up to be in this situation? Until we can look deeply into our own tangled set of thoughts & beliefs we won’t be able to sort such things out. Our pain doesn’t originate “out there,” somewhere, but always within. We set the self up for pain by our choice of beliefs.
If we didn’t hold any beliefs, how could we be offended or hurt?
We hold people to high standards that we don’t always meet, ourselves. We hold them off at a distance when we feel we’ve been hurt. As we awaken, we begin to see more clearly in what ways we’ve chosen to take offense, to criticize or condemn, be it self or others. It’s all about running away from the self, refusing to deal with it. Do you see?
WE SOLD THE SELF OUT
While we see & think life is going on externally, our experience of life is completely internal, largely based on the stories we tell ourselves. We’ve been so distracted into the external world — & more than this, we’ve actually come to self-identify with those externals, with the body & mind, even our possessions, limiting our Self to that.
It’s a bit of a joke, once we step down into our deeper nature, our Inner Being. Witnessed from there, external life is but the epidermis, the thin coating over Who we are, as Source-in-form, the vastness of That.
So how do we handle pain most profitably? It’s clear to me that repressing it is the old way, the way that doesn’t benefit us, long-term. We gloss over whatever painful situation, managing to handle it reasonably well from the outer perspective. As we travel more deeply within we encounter the many scars, the many ways repression muzzles the self.
In our efforts to fit in, to comply with external requests & expectations, we sell the self out.
Encountering our inner woundedness shows us that. More than just wounding the self, we tied that one up, locked it down, refusing to let it express, for we didn’t want to deal with it. As a result, we may be walking around more as a ghost of our original self, a pale shadow of Who we truly are. We have our work cut out for us.
FULL SELF-ACCEPTANCE
Forgive yourself! Don’t hold anything against you. We come to see self-criticism, self-blame as but further tools in the arsenal we deploy against ourself. Once we let the self go, releasing all inward-directed negativity, we’re already removing some of those chains that keep our Inner Being unable to fully express. (While the Inner Being can never be bound in any way, we’ve locked ourselves out of it via our Matrix-type behaviors & beliefs.)
When will we come into full self-acceptance?
It’s surprisingly hard. The mind believes we’ve got it together, that we’re doing rather well. It won’t be disabused of this idea until we go deeper, encountering the inner bindings & woundings, the suppressed aspects of ourself. As I was shown these, it came along with the sense of the great power, the hugeness of who I am meant to be, who I am in potential — so it’s not just the pain we encounter.
Absent self-Love we’re not waking up.
Until we merge into what amounts to the Love of Source, entering that flow, we don’t even see, much less realize our awesomeness. How deeply do you respect yourself? How worthy do you feel of self-respect? In the Matrix “reality” we’ve all been fractured, had our spirit self as if torn away from us, but in reality it was only glazed over, only hidden for a time. (It’s the true Self who deserves that respect, not the persona.)
PLAYING IT SMALL
We are not harmed. We are not damaged goods. We are whole & complete, within. Our desire, now, is to first find, then begin to reflect our inner completion in the outer world — to walk our talk, to be real, to embody Who we actually are. Because we were taught to play it small, to self-minimize in our adaptation to others, to situations, we lost touch with our inner greatness, which we all have, we all are.
By playing it small, so many don’t believe they have what it takes to face their own deep-seated pain — so we run from it, hide from it in endless ways. On the awakening trek — as our walk is legitimately that — we’re brought face-to-face with precisely what we need to see. We’re shown how the way out of the mess leads us ever within. The way out is through. We all walk our own Hero’s Journey, for we are that on the deeper levels of being.
The most important relationship in anyone’s life is with the self — period.
It’s the one relationship that brooks no divorce, no separation, no running away. It just is. This is the relationship we need to mend, to recover. Our divinity awaits along the way of this walk through both the joys & the challenges. Yet, by seeking out only happiness, only joy, we avoid the necessary internal work.
INNER VITALITY
None of us made it here unscathed. Can we not just accept this & recognize that we’re also the very healer we seek? In restoring a deep & full Love experience as our relationship with the self we allow the fractures, the internal cracks & divisions to be effectively erased. We’d all probably have much more energy if this internal wounding wasn’t blocking our vital flow, as I was shown it was blocking mine.
As we return ourselves to wholeness we’ll both find real Love & contentment and experience the blessing of watching the planet heal herself. These bodies are extensions of Gaia, of Mother Earth — they are hers, & we leave them to her, just like all the other creatures, when we cross over. By finding our own internal wholeness Mother Nature also moves into wholeness.
Consciousness, not the atom, is the true realm of cause, the fundamental structure of All That Is. Every atom in our body is conscious, every cell, & they all work together in perfect harmony to the extent that we don’t get in the way of their natural intelligence, their functioning. As we do this work, take this on, we’re healing far more than just some old wounds, results of some questionable decisions.
We’re witnessing, we’re participating in the Great Shift, itself. We’re going Home, home in consciousness, in direct experience.
Namaste
~♥~
Saturday 2017/11/04, 4th, Mayan day 2 Storm / Cauac
