So often we are waiting for the future to fix the past so we can heal. Be it on a personal level or a global level. We are waiting for an apology, we are waiting for an acknowledgement, we are waiting for someone else to make a change.
Does healing ever come through these channels? Yes, it does. But slowly, painfully and powerlessly.
Healing happens in the present. In the moment you choose to take back power of your thoughts.
Healing is coming back into wholeness, whatever that looks like to you personally. When we feel something is missing, something has been taken from us or we were harmed in some way, we are supporting our own fragmentation, we are keeping ourselves separate from the energy of LOVE.
Yes, in the physical world those things very well may have happened. You may have been harmed, mistreated, robbed, abused or any number of horrible things. But those things only happened that one time in that one moment. It is your choice to recall the memory and relive it day to day that keeps it alive, that prevents you from healing.
That’s what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is to give away the repetitive memory of the incident and allow yourself to move forward from a new point of reference. When you allow the thoughts of what harmed you to run wild in your mind you are not allowing yourself to grow, expand and live beyond that point.
Every new day can be a new point of reference. We choose what thoughts we use to anchor ourselves into our life experience.
Sometimes we can pinpoint the exact situation we are anchoring ourselves in. We can verbatim remember where we were, what things smelled like and the words that were said. And we run that movie over and over again. Those are the easy energies to shift, simply because they are more apparent.
Other times we’ve created an experience to anchor the feelings, the pain, the anger, the emotions we don’t want to acknowledge. Those energies are harder to pinpoint, because we’ve created a habit around them that we often just chalk up to being us or how things are.
I had A LOT of those. Habits I created to still run the energy, but mask the situations that created it. The most long running and vigilant was my habit of bulimia.
When I was 15 I was raped by an older high school boy. This along with a few other things that happened sent me into a long relationship with bulimia. I easily forget the situations, including the rape. Never talking about them, never associating myself with them. But I anchored that pain into my binging and purging sessions. Which were easy to disguise in the beginning and rationalize to myself. I binged by exercising, so I was healthy, at least that’s what I’d tell myself. I’d exercise 4-8 hours a day depending. When I went to college it turned into full blown anorexia, which then turned back into bulimia with purging both through throwing up and exercising.
When I went to college I also started binge drinking and binge drugging. Both of which were more accepted by society, so I’ve never felt ashamed by them, and have freely talked about those experiences. My bulimia, on the other hand, has been my biggest secret and some of the people closest to me have no idea to this day.
My bulimia has been the source of my biggest shame. The place where I allowed myself to run the energy of guilt, shame, blame for anything in my life. Keeping it active, without realizing I was keeping it active. It had been the place in my life where I would not allow healing to happen. This habit had become my comfort zone. The only place where I would allow myself to really feel. Or so I told myself.
I’d created a habit that allowed me to acknowledge those feelings while simultaneously disconnecting from them. If you have created a habit that allows you to bring your suppressed emotions to the surface without actually healing them, you may recognize that you have to create a situation to allow you to let those emotions rise to the surface. Some examples of that are needing a sad movie to cry, road rage to release anger, gossip to release disappointment, these are just a few examples.
It wasn’t until I learned to feel safe in feeling all my emotions that I was able to allow healing, shift the energy and heal that destructive habit that had been the way I relived my traumatic experiences.
I allowed healing to happen in the moment by:
- learning to be present in the moment,
- letting go of the fear of experiencing all my emotions,
- releasing self judgment for experiencing those emotions,
- and most importantly, loving myself, no matter what.
Whether you are aware of the cause of your suffering or not, allowing healing is the same for both. Healing can be done in two easy steps:
- First and foremost your awareness of your suffering is the first step to healing. Acknowledge that you are feeling lack, less than whole, hurt, pain, whatever it is that is holding you apart from living in the energy of love. You will be amazed at how this simple step of acknowledgment starts to shift you.
- Forgive yourself for feeling this way, for not honoring that you have felt this way, for ignoring yourself, whatever you need to forgive yourself for, do it. Simply say “I forgive myself for…” Even if you think it’s about someone else, it’s really only about you. If you think it’s about your sister then say “I forgive myself, for letting my sister …” And then take a deep breath and slowly exhale, do this as many times as you need. You are literally releasing the stored up energy.
That is the simple, quick and easy, allow healing in the moment process.
You can take it further by practicing non-judgement of self and self love. (I will write about this in next week’s article.) These two go hand in hand. And for me they are a practice of learning to be present in all my emotions, all the time. Allowing my emotions to rise to the surface and be acknowledged by me.
This doesn’t mean if I feel hurt I burst out crying or if I feel angry I start yelling. It means I am not afraid to feel anger or sadness, because I know they are temporary. I know that I do not need to get stuck living there. I know I have the power to feel their expression, receive their message and move back into alignment with the energy of LOVE.
For now you have the tools you need to start healing in the moment in any area of your life at any time. You don’t ever need to know the cause, you only need to be aware of the emotion as it arises. This is why many of us create experiences to express these emotions, because we know deep down that they need to be healed.
And you start to heal in the moment, by choosing the thoughts you think and how you think about them.
