Are You Picking Up On The Intensity Running Through The Collective?
Jan 15, 2021
I’m wondering if your body has been picking up on all the intensity that is running through our collective society now? That’s running through the collective culture of our world!
Does your system feel some exhaustion? Does it get tired? Maybe there’s irritation and frustration that comes up because what’s happening isn’t working for the human beings in our world.
Or maybe you get scared, really scared around the lack of compassion between human beings. People forgetting that we all belong to the same human race, and there is a lot of division that is being leveraged in our world right now.
What’s it like for you when you get really tired? Or you get frustrated? Or you get scared? What happens in your system? I want to acknowledge that for many of us, who have experienced trauma in our past, those intense energies can trigger a cascade of automatic reactions within us. These reactions are not intentional at all, in fact, they are learned behavior, and very unconscious.
What this can do is “shift us left” which means we move into our left hemisphere; which is more analytical, judgmental, pragmatic, and non-relational. It’s all about the facts. When I “shift left” what I’m doing that is most harmful is I’m leaving the relationship with my own sense of self. I want to be able to stay anchored and rooted in my sense of “Being” inviting my left hemisphere to come forward and be in service of my right hemisphere, which is very relational.
It’s through this part of ourselves where our bodies wisdom comes up through our gut, our heart, and our lungs. Ninety percent of all information comes up from the body, in service of the wholeness that we are. Only about ten percent comes back down from the mind to the body. When the mind is in service of the body, we can experience a sense of harmony; of being centered and grounded in what we value. Then we can be in full choice.
So, when we’ve had trauma in our background, that capacity might not be so available, especially when it’s triggered unconsciously where we can find ourselves being in this state of being non-relational. We can feel very irritated with other people, we want to be by ourselves, and we isolate, which is self-sabotaging behavior.
And yet, I want to acknowledge that when we go into that type of a pattern, we are doing the best we can to protect ourselves and survive something that, most likely, felt unsurvivable.
What’s important is to begin to have relationships of trust that when you get triggered and you feel tired, or you feel frustrated or scared, you have a place you can reach out and you can trust you will be met right where you are – without being made wrong.
Because that’s been the pattern for many of us who have had trauma. We repeatedly show up in ways that others make wrong. They might say, “Knock it off, why don’t you just get over it.” “Get on with your life!” But there’s a lack of compassionate understanding in those messages, and they just don’t know how to respond differently.
So, in that moment of feeling that exhaustion, or the irritation, or the fear; to be met there by another being who sits with you, who understands and gets you. Who acknowledges what it’s like to be you in that moment, that is just amazing! They might say, “No wonder this has come up for you!” and acknowledge the pattern of your life experience. “Of course, this happened because this part of you has never been met in this way before. Maybe this part didn’t even know this was possible.”
But, when you get met in this way, your whole sense of self, you’ll feel your shoulders drop, your breath deepens, you might yawn and release pent up energy. It’s so amazing! For the system that was on high-alert to begin to relax into Being – that’s where the healing happens at a cellular level.
I want to acknowledge the compliance we have been conditioned into, the automaticity, to acknowledge that it makes sense. When that part begins to make sense, it gets to relax and to integrate into the wholeness that we are.
For some of us that part that instantaneously leaves the relationship, it leaves first to avoid the pain of being abandoned. That abandonment, that lost, alarmed aloneness, is too much for our younger parts to hold on their own. That’s why we need accompaniment. It’s why we need to be met right where we are, in how it feels to be us, so we can begin to come back into connection with our heart energy.
A practice I invite you to explore with me, is to notice what it’s like to drop into your body, into your heart, and imagining breathing in and out of your heart space. When you can really come into your center in this way, it balances all of your energies from above, and from below.
When we come into that space, with compassionate understanding, that’s where we can begin to reach out to others. We first need to meet ourselves there. And, that is much more easily done, when we have accompaniment.
Our Spirit lives within our heart, and that is what empowers our Being. We can come into that still, calm, soft, slow space, and be energized and inspired.