What Do You Say You Will Never Do Again?
Feb 19, 2021
Do you notice the patterns of your life? The patterns that drive your experiences. Your motivation, your inspiration. What do you do unconsciously? We all have different patterns that we have developed unconsciously. Those unconscious patterns are what drive our behavior. What’s really cool is when you’ve slowed down in your inner world, to notice what patterns you are having, to be curious about them and see whether they are serving your life or not. Unless we can notice the pattern; it will never change, instead, it will get more deeply embedded.
Some of us, when we were little, we experienced being shamed when we spoke up. Maybe by a teacher, a parent, or other kids. When that shame experience happened, it was so painful a part of us may have made an unconscious contract of, “I will never speak up again.” Then we may have the experience of having something we want to say but we automatically don’t speak up. It’s just what we do.
Others of us may have had the experience of where we were bullied; and some of us want to shrink, get really small, and diminish ourselves so we can’t be seen and bullied again. We may make a contract within ourselves to be invisible. Others of us, when we were bullied, we decided we would fight back and worked hard to develop ourselves and made a contract more like, “I will never be beaten again. I will never back down.” And some of us may end up becoming a bully ourselves, without awareness of what we have created within ourselves.
Then, there are others of us who watch the world silently, from the sidelines. We don’t engage, we don’t speak up and may have an unconscious contract something like, “I will stay silent, so no one engages with me.” Maybe that experience was one where we just didn’t experience people engaging with us. We watched from the sidelines to figure out what we were going to do, because we didn’t have anyone to interact or engage with, to discover a different pattern, until much later. That can be caused by neglect, where people just did not check in on you, or encourage you to communicate in any way.
What each of these different experiences have in common, is that they have laid down very active patterns that guide their behavior. That is what their system uses to make decisions in their lives. We don’t realize a lot of our decisions are being made unconsciously, until, we have an experience of attuned resonance with another being. Another way of saying that is we get to have an experience engaging with somebody that has awakened. Somebody that has developed a sense of self that can read the nuanced patterns of energy and information flow in relationships with others. They interact with precision and gentleness, checking in for consent. This is a key: checking in with other people. They listen with their whole heart, not just with their mind, they listen with their body.
When you have the experience of getting to engage with somebody on that level, the unconscious contracts begin to release. They start to dissolve and become less entangled. You can begin to sense life in a different way. We get to make sense through those experiences while laying down new neural patterns. Those new neural fibers and connections sync up with our prefrontal cortex, which is our seat of creativity; where we socially engage and become present. This calms down our nervous system from the fight/flight/freeze reactions we can have and nurtures our own inner resonating witness who is with us wherever we go.
In order to have an experience like this it’s helpful to have others accompany you on your journey so you can practice developing new skillsets and thicken those new pathways you are growing within you. This creates resiliency in the face of stress. It’s rather astonishing to recognize that you don’t need to stay silent, you don’t need to be blind or not hear things. Instead, you can stay present and open. You get to experience the freedom to be who you are; the freedom to be who you were created to be in our world.
This has been the path in my life; as a child I was very quiet and shy, I didn’t want to take up space. When I was with children and animals, then I would light up and become who I really am. But, when I was around most humans, I would diminish and become quite small due to the trauma patterns that were lodged in my neural fibers. Yet, I am living proof that healing is possible, because now, I do speak up. I actually make videos and share my life story in order to support people to recognize themselves. In order to support people to recognize it’s possible to heal, and that there are others that will recognize them, welcome them, and walk alongside of them.