Thinking is often driven by churning, unnoticed emotions. When emotions in this state can be expressed, they do not churn thoughts as much, and both mind and will (i.e. the emotional body) can rest. A healing mind with emotions at rest might look more like a sensitive version of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, offering information and its considered opinion when asked, but otherwise staying behind the scenes. To his credit, Spock never took over, he never initiated the action; he waited to be asked. It seemed as though he had usually considered all the angles, because seemingly he had all the information at his disposal. But without a vibrating will, (since for him, emotions were not logical and were therefore banned from his awareness as best he could) his decisions were too mental, therefore too rigid. He didn’t really have the whole picture.
Our mental body’s downfall in its unhealed state is its disconnect from the rest of the self. Through damage or trauma, our spiritual essence, our “I-ness”, the part we identify as “Me”, does not descend all the way into our physical and emotional bodies. It merely has a toe dipped in those waters, and lodges some of itself in the mind, leaving its majority floating somewhere just outside the Self. Similarly, if one is not connecting to their emotions, the mind has no way of gleaning input from the feelings.
– “Proactive Thinking and the Great God of Logic”
When we are “in our heads” we need to take time to express feelings that are lurking just under the surface. Some signals that indicate that feelings are rising to the surface include trying to figure stuff out, having conversations in our heads with other people, or fantasizing how we wish things would have worked out better than they did.
– “Getting Emotional Helps The Mental”
Judgments compose barriers to relating to something and stop us from having a dynamic relationship with that something or someone. Judgments, spoken or thought, are ways we cast spells on ourselves. They are one of the mental body’s coping mechanisms for dealing with overwhelming realities. They give us the illusion of control by making rules or stating the way a situation, person, place, or thing IS. The hidden cost of making judgments is that they become a “thought form” – a rigid structure in the mind that can magnetize and re-create unpleasant situations that match the judgment’s rules and expectations, narrowing the openings for epiphany.
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Judgments get in the way of having what I want. For example, with regards to money, I could say: “I release the belief that I could never have as much money and prosperity as I want without working hard every day for forty years”. Put another way, “I forgive myself for having believed for so long that the only way to have prosperity and/or a lot of money is to work for it”. Parts of ourselves respond to such declarations.
These releases are about undoing the spells we’ve woven against ourselves. The difference can be noticed between these statements intending to release these judgments, and re-stating the judgment, such as “I just can’t get enough money to satisfy my needs and desires!” That reiteration, as has been stated, magnetizes the situation to continue where I don’t have enough.
– Chapter 17, “Judgment Release”
My fear has been that if I allowed myself to stay completely present, letting the pictures of future possibilities roll by unexplored, that I would constantly get blindsided and be unprepared for incoming situations. Yet what does “prepared” really mean? Armed to the teeth with expectations of how I am going to handle the situation that has not yet come to pass? That behavior only locks the future into the past. I cannot allow magic, epiphany and serendipity into my new moments if I have already decided how I will respond and act ahead of time. When I do that, I miss the impact of the new experience and my organic response to it.
The tendency to want to do this reveals a mistrust of self. Mistrusting ourselves isn’t wrong. It’s okay to mistrust ourselves and recognize that mistrust is a reality until we organically come into trust over time.
– “When The Moment For Decision Comes, The Choice Will Be Obvious”
Staying present, staying here, and therefore staying safe does not mean cutting off the past. Some songs and traditional spiritual or new age teachings encourage us to Be Here Now by pretending the past does not exist or no longer affects us since it’s “gone”. These teachings say the past does not continue to affect the present. Unfortunately, this input is steering us down a primrose path, which is attractive to some parts of us because it encourages us to dump out or cut off parts of ourselves trapped in the past. What is a primrose path, but a path that isn’t real, a path of believing that that glossing over reality is doable? Denying how the past affects our present moment often seems easier. Denying can look like less work than working with past pain, but it does catch up with us and eventually brings the reversal of fortune we are trying to avoid.
The parts of me that are trapped in the past are parts that are holding unresolved emotions and judgments. Musing on past pictures can be a signpost that there is unresolved emotion there, or even entire parts of myself that I have split off and abandoned “back there”. To redeem these parts of myself and bring them into the current moment, I need to enter whatever emotional door opens to me in the moment in which such daydreaming reveals one.
– “The Past As Part of the Present”
Assumptions reveal that I have chosen, perhaps unconsciously, not to try very hard to acquire all the information I can about a situation, person, place or thing. It sometimes may take more effort to acquire the information necessary to make a really educated choice or conclusion. Ani DiFranco said, “dig deeper, dig deeper this time” and that is what we assumers all need to do inside and outside ourselves if a more flowing and pleasant set of experiences is to befall us as a matter of course.
– “Hidden Fear Driving Assumptions”
We have trauma around revealing truth and not being believed. We have trauma around being punished for revealing truth, an indicator that guilt is present. When we have given all we have to give and are met with mistrust and suspicion, it is a grave indicator that we contain large gaps of mistrust of ourselves being reflected by the person facing us. We have trauma around feeling too afraid to reveal key parts of the truth. This unprocessed fear and denied guilt generates its worst nightmare when somehow the withheld information is discovered and the other person responds with feelings of betrayal and hurt. Additionally, we have trauma around the guilt we feel when our truth triggers someone else into their hurt.
This guilt within can look like punishment from without. On the personal scale we have been punished for lying, telling partial truths, and for telling the whole truth. On the global scale, withholding or even revealing the truth has resulted in torture, death or perpetration of crimes against humanity.
– Chapter 20, “Honestly!”
Without knowing how to give my truth, I cannot develop the trust I need in myself or in anybody else. Being in my deepest truth can grow with practice, becoming more facile with time and deeds. Being in my truth keeps me safe, because when I speak truth I am in harmony with as much of myself as I possibly can be in the moment. When I can be true to myself first and foremost, thoroughly honest with myself at all levels, it can radiate outward into all of my relationships.
– “Truth Begets Trust”