A Societal Fear of Feeling

So Many Feelings

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So Many Feelings 〰️

Is anyone else having an identity crisis?

These past few weeks have been really intense for me, and perhaps for you, too.

It's tempting to think that when we feel challenging feelings come up, or our stress response kicking in that we are doing something wrong…but I don't think that is always the case. I think those gnarly feelings are really important sensations trying to tell us something.

Difficult feelings are not harmful in and of themselves, actually, I think it is our resistance to these feelings that cause prolonged and unnecessary suffering.

Our mind's response to these feelings is often self abandonment, most likely because of childhood scripts that tell us to push them away, hide them, and be alone and ashamed of what we feel. Perhaps we even have scripts in our minds that tell us that somehow these feelings will overtake and devastate us, that we can't handle them and that having them is a sign that something is fundamentally wrong with us.

But is is possible that nothing is wrong with us, and that our feelings are part of our natural process of transmuting and/or alchemizing energy?

Lately, I've been thinking about the discomfort of processing old energy and experiences so we can clear away the baggage we are holding onto and make room to grow.

I don't know if you have ever done a dietary cleanse, but there is something called a ‘die off symptom' when you're cleansing your body. Die off symptoms are the uncomfortable physical sensations you can experience as a result of the toxins leaving your body and making themselves known on their way out.

I think this can also happen energetically, that we have energetic “die off” symptoms when we are releasing and letting go.

This is why when you are going through a time of intense processing, you can feel really really off before you are on the precipice of truly deep growth.

For example:

Perhaps you are learning what courage really looks like for you and as your soul is really committing to this lesson, fear and avoidance are kicking up because your ego is doubling down on what it knows well and what it (falsely) believes will keep you safe. (I would add that courage shows it's face in different ways at different times, i.e. the courage for one may be to speak up and for another, courage is listening).

Those egoic attachments are making themselves known on their way out and in those moments of ultimate self doubt, rawness and vulnerability, we are tempted to step away from the edge of some big change and go back to where we were to avoid discomfort.

But when you attempt to walk backwards towards your old ways, your old reality feels just as uncomfortable as the discomfort of potentially changing or doing something you don't know how to do (yet).

What do we do in this situation?

I think we become patient and also brave, and we listen for the inevitable moment when the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of doing something new and we cultivate the willingness to take the risk of growth because doing nothing becomes a reality that our soul can't live with.

If you find that your uncomfortable feelings are usually met by a harsh voice in your head that tells you that you shouldn't feel the way you do, that you should be less afraid, less worried, more happy, more confident, then you are not alone.

What makes us think pushing away the aspect of us who is afraid or hurrying it along by trying to replace dominate it with a new positive way of being that we aren’t fully aligned with yet will help?

In my experience when something cries out for help, what it really wants is to be heard. What it really needs is curiosity and compassion.

Pick Up Here from Newsletter

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Pick Up Here from Newsletter 〰️

So get a pen out next time you're feeling something that is murky, twisty a little knotty and ask yourself -

What is the uncomfortable sensation you are feeling?

How does it feel and where does it live in the body and what is it trying to tell you?

And then transmute it, let it move through you, let it become something else, something artful, something not for anyone but you.

Give it a space:

In a movement, in a dance, in therapy, in a beautiful conversation with a good friend where you can both be vulnerable? In a drawing?

In a patch of your garden?

Where can you make space for that voice experiencing painful resistance to sprawl out, to unknot itself, to unfurl and to start feeling like it belongs to you as a part of you, that it can integrate into the fabric of your being?

And when you stop rejecting it and start compassionately listening to it, what does it become?

I really want to know. Drop me a line in the comments or email me or dm me and tell me what it becomes? Could it become fuel for your creativity, your magic, your growth?

Join Arizona Smith from Purple Diamond Tarot & I on June 28th for a He(artist) to He(artist) talk on how Creativity is a Mirror and How Art Connects us to our intuition.

New Podcast with Seher

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New Podcast with Seher 〰️

On Being a Manifestor & Pluto

A conversation with Seher.

I am wildly delighted to share this vulnerable and winding conversation I had with Seher on the Myth’s Podcast. We talk about the manifestor archetype in Human Design, strong Pluto transits and placements and the meaning of the North and South Node in astrology as well as how all of these questions and ideas intersect with the lived experience of being a human.