Are you paying attention?

This is the second installment of my guest blog spot on Laura's amazing site. Her art work is amazing- honest, soulful, beautiful and from her heart. All the artwork in this piece is hers and is a perfect compliment to my words. Her own insights on health and healing inspire me to go deeper on my own journey. 
 
I love that story about Mother Theresa where she was asked if she would join in a rally against the war.  She declined quite simply, but said she would gladly attend a rally for peace.  I see pain, dis-ease, and suffering  in our bodies and lives similarly.  There is no healing where there is no love.  That’s why a “war on drugs, war on cancer, war on anything,” doesn’t work.  It comes from a place of fear, the opposite of love.
We enter into this life both with an inspired purpose and default expectations about how our lives should be.  Hope and fear.  Where we are on this spectrum is what we manifest in our lives.  If we are stuck in ancient themes of fear, if we are attached to safety, if we are believing in our history then we will manifest situations in our lives to reflect this. Are you living your authentic path or staying in the comfort zone of your karmic default? Are you living in love or fear?

And how do you know?

Ask yourself this.  If you are not living your authentic life who’s are you living?  Your parent’s?  Your partner’s?  Are you believing the story society tells you or what your own fear tells you?  Either way you’re going against the organic flow of the unfolding of your life.  It’s like running your hand against the grain of wood — it hurts, you get splinters. Something feels really wrong because it is.

If you find yourself with repeated health problems, attracting people or situations in your life that don’t serve you, feel uninspired, anxious, angry, or bored… if you find yourself echoing the same victim story… pay attention.  Notice it.  Understand that this is an opportunity to change your beliefs about yourself and thus change everything.

“Follow your bliss.” Find where it is, and don’t be afraid to follow it. If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track, which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living”

-Joseph Campbell

How do we find our bliss?  How do we change those default beliefs about ourselves?  How do we find our authentic soul path?   How do we heal?  Great questions.

The answer?  Follow the trail of pain.  Follow the suffering.  Follow the discontent, because it is there for a reason.  Pain does have a purpose.  Illness has a purpose.  It is our way in.

But we often don’t see it that way.

In fact our collective thought is that discomfort is a “bad” thing. I mean who likes to suffer?  Who likes to be ill?  No one.  In fact most people come to me because something is wrong and they want it better.  Often, our first response to any upset is to intellectualize it, deny it, ignore it, and find something or someone to blame it on.  Then we try and get rid of it as soon as we can.  We make war on it.

It’s as if we believe suffering’s very existence is a mistake.

Why?

OK sure, the obvious, we don’t want to be physically hurt, we don’t want our hearts broken, we don’t want to see people we love hurting.  Bottom line dis-ease hurts.  It’s agony.  But I propose we fear suffering beyond any physical sensation.  I think it is more than that.

We don’t want to feel pain because we don’t want to face the truth lurking in the basements of our egos.  Because facing our pain, our shadow, our default beliefs require us to see the truth about ourselves, our life, and the choices we make.  We would often rather stay where it’s familiar (even if it hurts) than take a chance on what might be.  We might rather stay in illusion than risk it shattering our story into a million pieces.

We make war on our pain and thus ourselves, because it is easier that facing our deepest fears lurking in the shadows of our being. It is easier to deny than accept and easier to ignore that forgive. Or so we think….

“If we could see that everything, even tragedy, is a gift in disguise, we would then find the best way to nourish the soul”

-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, MD

So I ask you…

What if your lower back pain means you have to get real once and for all about your money?  What if your stomach problems mean you have to admit you no longer love your partner?  What if your headaches mean you have to face the truth about how you hate your job?  What if your throat issues mean you have to get real about setting boundaries? What if your chronic condition means you actually don’t want to take responsibility for yourself and want to be taken care of?   What if you keep eating because you feel so empty inside? Can you face that emptiness?  Can you face the very thing you are most afraid of?

Could you do it?

The truth shall set you free.

All healing is first a healing of the heart.
– Carl Townsend

So find where you hurt – have a physical illness or otherwise, and go deep.  Seek truth. Risk.  Defy your old story.  Shatter your default beliefs that never got you where you needed to go.  Plunge headlong into your possibilities.  Have the courage to let your misery speak to you and defy your history.   Change your story.  Be inspired.  Find your bliss. Become empowered.   Give up the need to be right or even of needing to be secured an outcome.  Allow.  Then live in awe of what will unfold.

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi