An echo of my past : today’s reflections

Working to be present and at peace with myself in life takes work and focused attention lately.. I see lately and have read in frequent posts on another blog much about self rejection, that process whereby in being raised or conditioned we come to believe there is someone else we should be, somewhere else that is better to be, or that salvation lies outside of us in the world. It is true we can engage with the world and that is living, but the motivation for our engagement also makes a lot of difference to how much peace and insight and true intimacy we manage to find in the process.

Being present with my breath lately offers me a good way to get out of my head which is always full of a lot of shit to be honest. Being present with the breath anchors me instead inside this present moment. In the work of the Presence Process devised by Michael Brown we use a two time a day 15 minute practice of just being with our breath. During this time we breathe in and out while saying the words : I AM HERE IN THIS… this anchors us in the moment so we can be aware of what is arising and what is being triggered for us or sent to us as an echo or messenger of the past unreleased emotional charge..

Often in the silence my angels send me messages to do or read something, today it was to read pages 137 142 of Michael Browns’ book and having a leaf back through it I was struck by what he writes about messengers turning up which activate old stuff or issues from that past. Lately I have been being triggered by Scott’s stomach ulcer around the time Dad got ill with cancer. (and father’s day as well as my near death anniversary are very close at the moment..both occurred in the second week of September)

My father had an ulcer for a while that eventually turned cancerous, was operated on and died within 8 weeks of the op. The death of my Dad has been a critical activation for my life and my past troubled history with men, there is a lot of fear there around males due to the energy imprint of Dad’s unavailability and death and perhaps an inner child hope of rescue from the pain of this…. I also end up taking on a bit of a fathering role in my family.. especially when people are in need but the critical lesson coming to me lately is I cannot heal anyone else. I cannot take away the pain I went through over my Dad. In time I would hope for a relationship with a man not so tinged with the old imprints and echoes of this loss but that has not yet happened.

At the moment I am reminding myself to practice good self care and take it calmly and gently.. I was also reading a few portions of the book Power Over Panic this afternoon in which the author writes that often those of us who suffer from anxiety or panic attacks try to deny it is anxiety that is affecting us.. She claims that we make better progress when we own this fact, naming our condition while taking personal responsibility for our reactions. Much as we may try to deny our own power or responsibility over reacting to triggers, the fact is it happens and when it does it has a message for us in terms of inner work. Resonances abound everywhere in life and on the path of waking up we met them more and more..

Today when my OCD got activated by my messy car prior to a walk with Jasper. I just reminded myself to stay grounded while saying the following words “I am a good person who suffers from an anxiety disorder” this for me shuts the inner critic up because his is the voice triggered when the car or house is quote ‘in a mess’ (just has things out of place or dirt or stains or spills lying around). I didn’t delay our walk (as the perfectionist critic wanted me too) but when we got home I did get the vacuum out calmly and gently vacuum out the car being extra careful not to do a perfect job..

Jungian therapist Robert Johnson advises us to always leave a little room for the shadow and imperfection in our life, the inner tyrant in us is the one that had ideals of wrong and right, often harshly drawn across strict lines of black and white that SHOULD NOT BE CROSSED.. living in this way just gets too exhausting though, at least for me..

And as far as Scott’s ulcer and treatment go for now I am staying lovingly detached… this is not easy to do I can tell you but I just know at the moment mine is the only side of the fence I feel like taking care of no matter how much the inner do gooder tells me it is bad not to help. For now I may just have to let that criticism flow by me on the river of life… hoping that in time it ends up a long way away downstream from me.