Question & Answer

Question: How to release deep-seated patterns of thought and behavior?

My question has to do with a particular aspect of emotional release. I understand the need to become aware of the underlying belief that has created a particular negative emotion but how does a person actually release it? Once I have became aware of the false concept that has been operating in my life and the circumstances that it has created, what specific strategy could I employ to feel and release all of the negative emotions tied up with it?

I have done a lot of introspection over the last few years in an attempt to understand myself and I believe that I have been successful in making conscious most if not all of my false beliefs, negative traits, destructive patterns, and fears. But the frustrating thing is that I still have not been able to break free of them. I have come to realize that mere intellectual recognition of negative patterns is not enough to release them. I feel stuck. I have worked with several practitioners of several different healing modalities and still I have not experienced a significant shift in my consciousness, which is something that I desire ardently. I am tired of trying to change my patterns and life circumstances by attempting to disempower my negative concepts with my resolve to change my attitudes. Resolve and positive self talk are no match for deep seated fears and engraved patterns of thought and behavior. I am ready for a profound experiential change in myself but I don't know how to make it happen.

Another issue I wish to ask about involves choosing how to approach dealing with and healing my physical imbalances. For several years I have been living in constant state of anxiety. My body is always tense, although the degree of my tension varies. It's as though tension and anxiety have replaced calmness as my natural state.

This is not an exaggeration. I also have pain and soreness in my lower back, hips, thighs, legs, and feet. Another problem is that my physical sexual ability has waned and decreased, although my desire is still strong. I have tried chiropractic treatments, acupuncture, homeopathy, and supplements, but nothing has worked.

I realize that these conditions have emotional and mental causes so I wonder if should approach them by dealing with my emotional issues, or whether I should take a physical approach.

-Lou

Answer: Both of your questions about emotional release and physical healing are the same and have the same answer.

First of all, we often think that we have seen most of our negative perceptions, and we want to believe we're done with it, to think that now we are "good and clear and ok," but in truth there are many more things to understand. I thought years ago that I had done most of my work in that area - and I had done a huge amount of work - only to come down with a very serious illness which showed me that although I had done some of my work, I had really not gotten down to the core issues. I was stunned!

Think of it this way: It's kind of like being at the beach... if you stand by the ocean, you can see only so far out to sea. If you climb up the ladder and sit atop a life guard station, you will see things that you had not been able to see from standing on the shore, maybe a boat way out there. If you go higher still (with your awareness) and have a bird's eye view, you will see things that you had not seen still - past the boat, maybe you will see land, etc. Because you have not been able to release these negative programs yet, and because you are experiencing it as physical pain, you have still not gotten to the core issues. You may still be standing on the shore. There is no right or wrong in a person's timing. It is all perfect.

It is a process of gathering enough power in your system to handle releasing the negative energy and changing the old perceptions. Until you have gathered enough power, in the form of wisdom and clear insight, and built this power up in yourself through some form of spiritual work, such as meditation, you will not have enough power in your system to clear it yet. Think of it this way: say you go to the gym, and the trainer sets you down by the weights and says, lift this 200 pound weight. There's no way that you can do it unless you have spent a lot of time building up to it gradually. It's like a light dimmer switch, or rheostat. As you push the switch up (allowing more truth and understanding into your being), you get brighter and can hold more light and see more clearly what is actually going on. Until you get less dense in your body, mind and soul (density is caused by false beliefs that carry a lower vibration of energy - including habits such as eating patterns, etc), you will be too dense to hold the higher vibration of light/truth etc. The higher vibrations would blow you out if you had not gradually raised the rheostat level bit by bit, getting lighter and lighter to carry the higher voltage of energy, which = truth. Bird's eye view, in other words.

What you shared about your physical ailments tells me a lot. The back, generically, archetypally, has to do with feelings of being supported. Hips and legs have to do with feeling that you are grounded and safe, and that you can move forward. Anxiety means you do not trust that you are safe. That all is well. All is not ok, you believe. And so you are not well, or ok, as you mirror this belief.

At the core of all of any of our issues is the belief that we are inherently evil. As long as you carry a belief in evil, you will not heal. If you see anything in the world that you label evil, anything at all that you judge in any way, you are caught in a basic, core and false perception of the very essence of what life is all about. This life is simply god's play. Everything is god, and no one really dies. God is just playing and learning through all of the experiences and situations, through ALL that is created. Even a murderer or rapist is god. This can be terrifying at first to understand. But, if god is everything - and you label anything evil, then god, and you, also, since you are god, must be evil as well. That's the logical conclusion our minds must make if we believe this.

Think of it this way. We dream, correct? When we wake up, we know that although we experienced things in our dreams, and learned things, and came to new understandings, no harm was done. We just wake up. It’s the same for god. It’s god’s dream. As above, so below. No harm is ever done. But we do learn to grow in love through what we experience and play with. It all comes from Love - even what we could label as something awful - it's just an experience to learn about Love . God loves itself so much that it wants to grow and learn - and that means god loves us that much, as we are god. In order for there to be this world, there has to be polarity - and what we want to call evil is just one end of the spectrum of polarity - it's an important part of the whole deal - we couldn't be here without it - and so it is also Love, and also god. It allows these experiences to be. Like a see-saw. One end of the see saw isn't evil. Both are needed for the movement to happen. If this blows your mind, then you are still in the process of building up the power to have this level of understanding. And you have other layers to go through to arrive there. And that's perfect too.

When you really get that, and you undo the core core belief in "the devil", or "Lucifer", or evil, you are freed to heal. In the meantime, it is a process of, layer by layer, undoing false perceptions and building up the power to lift stuff off of you.

You asked how to do this: I do this by allowing myself to completely feel the emotion behind the belief. If, for instance, I track a belief that says "there's no one here for me", and I tune into what the emotion(s) is behind that belief, which probably could be deep grief and/or terror, I allow those feelings to come up, rise up out of me, (knowing that this is how the game is played - it's ok to do this - to have the feelings) and I sit through it like it's a big storm blowing. I keep, to the best of my ability, some part of myself aware that I am safe - that I am simply taking (excuse my French) an emotional shit. That's all it is. Those are the rules of the game - you take something in - you release it when the time is right. So, feeling it has to be safe. That's how we are made. That's how it works. I don't buy into the emotion as Truth - ( in other words I don't say to myself,"See, I am all alone"! It's true!" Which actually, if we take it all the way back to the core is still that belief that I am evil or I would be loved, isn't it?) But I may use those thoughts of feeling unloved to allow the feelings to get pumped out of me.

Do you understand the difference? It's the difference between being conscious or unconscious with what is going on. Instead of feelings or issues "running" me, and controlling my life, I run them! In other words, I may think to myself, "Oh, I'm all alone! OH! Oh! Oh! It hurts!! Oh!! I'm dying!! I can't do it alone! I'LL die if no one loves me!! My mother was never there for me! She left me!! I'm scared!! etc." - and as I think these thoughts, I really feel all the pain I ever felt from feeling and believing I was alone. I feel what that feels like - but I use that thought to consciously pump out the emotions.

You have to get to the emotional level - feeling the energy, to release it. It can't just be, as you said, just an intellectual pursuit. You have to allow yourself to feel it. And as you feel it, as you let the storm blow through you, some part of you is winking, aware and knowing what you are doing. On some inner level,while still being in this storm, I am accepting that it's unneeded energy releasing, as we release after we eat a meal. That keeps you safe, if even a tiny part of you can remember that. What we no longer need, we release. That's all. And we no longer need it if we have created a new perception that makes the old beliefs, and the emotional energy that comes with them, obsolete. My new perception, (climbing up the life guard station ladder) that allowed the release of the old , might be something like: "I am never alone. That was only a belief I created out of victim consciousness. I see that my mother loved me, and I accept she was where she was in her process - and it taught me this..." And you continue to do this, peeling away layer by layer of false perceptions and the emotions that come with them until you build up enough power to sit through an emotional hurricane easily - but feeling it completely.

-Ayal