Holding On

What are you holding onto? What feelings are you addicted to? What emotions repeatedly surface in your body even when you want to just relax and meditate? Have you ever said to yourself, "I'm going to sit and relax and meditate about peace and love." then jumped up to get something done and found yourself agitated about something else? That is your first clue that you are holding onto something your lower and middle self mind does not want to acknowledge. You find yourself in front of your computer, television or refrigerator or out on the patio with a cigarette in your mouth. These are the distractions we use to avoid feeling what we are holding onto.

We have an experience, maybe not so great, we feel angry, unsupported, unsafe, afraid, bitter, blame, blah, blah, blah....then we blow it up and make it really big, like a huge helium balloon full of our shouts, screams and cries. We fill it with our feelings of revenge and remorse and rage. We tie a rope to it and hold on for dear life because we never know when we may want to revisit that injustice. We end up walking around holding onto dozens of ropes with all of our disappointing experiences, our embarrassing moments, our shame, guilt and blame and whenever we want to just sit down and relax....we can't...we are holding on very tightly to the ropes of our past experiences.

LET THEM GO! more on this later...I have a class starting in a few minutes...

Okay, I'm back.

So, imagine all of these massive balloons that hold your stories and emotions. Some are larger than others. A few may be as large as a Goodyear Blimp. We say things to ourselves and to anyone who will listen, that we are victims of such and such. We have proof and evidence if not chilling stories of neglect, abandonment, abuse, thievery, grief and heartbreak. We say things like, "I'm angry." "I'm sad." "I am furious!" "I am heartbroken.", as if your emotions are who you are. We own our emotions and wear them and revisit them. We hold onto them as a badge of some kind. Suffering becomes proof that we exist. "See my pain?"

Emotions are an energy and energy is transmuttable. Our emotions are supposed to be experienced, allowed and released. Emotions are designed to be temporary. They have a beginning, a middle and an end. But, somehow, in our intellectual evolution, we decided to analyse them, dissect them, focus on them and show and tell them. On one hand, that can be therapeutic, if, and this is a big "if", we use the opportunity to experience the emotion to it's completion.

I had a traumatic experience when I was a little girl. It was a near death experience at the hands of a family member. I was terrified but I was not allowed to cry about it. I was hushed. It was to be a secret. I was not allowed to feel my fear to it's conclusion. Many years later, as a young adult, I began experiencing panic attacks. The fear was re-asserting itself, because that is how energy moves. The experience was just the story. The story was unimportant except to bring up the emotion for it to be experienced and released. Once I finally confronted my panic attacks by asking my Higher Self from where it originated, I realized what was happening. I took a few minutes to process the energy (emotion) without responding to it. I allowed myself to feel that energy I had labeled as "bad" which was just an emotion we call fear, and as it moved through my body I allowed it to do what it needed to do. It took no more than 50 seconds for it to lift off of my body, like letting go of the rope attached to a balloon, it lifting away and was over. I never had another panic attack.

I've written about this process before but it is worth repeating.

If you can't sleep without the television on, if you can't rest quietly for 20 minutes without music, a book, something to distract you, you may want to ask yourself what it is you are trying to avoid feeling. Feel it without responding to it. Feel it, observe it as an energy, a creation of sorts, ...like a work of art, and allow yourself, give yourself permission to let go of the grip you have on that experience. Set yourself free.