The Dance

While I was in the deepest and darkest days of pain, there was so much confusion and fear. In fact, I didn’t realize it at the time, but as the danger programs were being revealed, and the strategies to deflect weren’t working, the mind started creating thoughts of suicide as the only option. The sub-conscious brain can be highly irrational in its ideas of staying safe.

Yet, this is exactly what Life was wanting to expose- the separate identity that perceived- danger had been kept hidden. Perceived-danger had been the program for hiding false self- as an identity with the body. The pain was a symptom of that danger going on high alert, and when the suicidal thoughts began, the pain became extreme. Then the fear became a visceral feeling of shakiness that wouldn’t leave and would increase when the brain perceived any imagined potential threat (such as someone looking at me). This was all coming up from the sub-conscious, and I had no idea what or why the brain was perceiving danger- but it was. I was experiencing something that wasn’t created by me- but was something I inherited. I was experiencing someone else’s experience. I was experiencing the past in the present.

It was essential that I meet the experience as it was experienced in the past- as an identity. Not in thought or story, but as a “person’ that is afraid. It was essential that I drop all pressure to get beyond it, or to do it ‘right.” I had to allow the full visceral experience of perceived-danger to reveal itself, so that it could all be seen as “safe’ by the brain. If I had resisted the experience in anyway, the brain, which was already on high-alert, would have seen the resistance as another sign of danger. It was a highly complex dance in Awareness. Awareness became my super-power, and self-compassion the means to bring a sense of safety and comfort to a program that had never known self-compassion. And because of my past tendencies of self-pressure and perfectionism, this took a lot of vigilance. I had to change deeply, and ease with self-compassion was essential.

Even though I was looking at the program of perceived-danger, I was really looking at it’s extreme cousin of self-preservation, which is identity. Instead of inquiring it away, I needed to make space for it, comfort it, and make it feel safe. I found myself talking to my brain like I was talking to a terrified child, because that is exactly what it felt like. As an awareness, I became the Mother of this scared kid, and like any good mother, did not scold it or become impatient. I knew that this program would only come around when it was ready. I could not put a timeline on it, and I had to let go of all my expectations and longings to be free of pain. I had to learn to be indifferent to the pain, even when it was there 24/7. Instead, I had to practice consistent messages of safety to my scared brain, and compassion to myself.

This has been the most difficult thing I have ever gone through. Now that I am on the easier side of it (I still have a little symptom), I can look back and wonder WTF??? How and what just happened? I felt like I was not myself at all most days, and that time somehow collapsed. I can’t believe 9 months has gone by, because it felt like a time-tunnel where I lost all sense of relational reality.

And now that I am beginning to hike again, and feel much more energetic and capable, I can begin to look back (which is why I am blogging about it) and see that there was a much bigger force in charge. I didn’t try and heal, or understand what was happening and how to do it “right.” I, as Joi, was being led down a path that was already in place, and all the people I needed and Awareness I needed just appeared and were there. Success wasn’t “me” getting it right, it was already laid before me, and is continuing to be. Through this experience, which was a surrender of the highest order, I am seeing how literally everything is unfolding. My invitation is learning to relax into it, and trust. My heart is so open with Love and gratitude that I can hardly stand it. And now, being free of those programs for the most part, is giving me a sense of freedom that I didn’t realize was possible.