Week 77 - Listen

The most wonderful gift we can give ourselves is to listen to ourselves. No matter if we are sobbing, worrying, screaming or lamenting, we listen from our soul. We listen from our heart. We listen. Because each one of us is worth the effort to be present for.

Imagine if you were in front of a small child feeling lost, crying, fretting, or joyful. You would get down to their eye level and listen to them. That is the gift you are giving yourself when you sit in silence.

Our world is changing drastically. In the energy world, everyone is moving into heart-centered consciousness. Human hearts are activated by the chaos, struggle, and pain we are all experiencing.

Each of us is a warrior, a lightworker, managing to survive through this turmoil, no matter how messy we define survival. Life is not fair. Life is struggle. As typical of human kind, we make changes when our safety or the safety of our loved ones are in question.

We live in a broken system evidenced all around us. Sometimes we must fight for our needs using a fierceness from within, but this fierceness is sourced from good. Sometimes we fight from anger holding a war mentality of us versus them, othering everyone because of hate. The choice sifts down to love or fear.

Eckhart Tolle has taught us about our pain body. He writes, “A pain body is in every human, made up of emotions.  Any emotionally painful experience triggers the pain body.” Excerpted from A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.

We hold emotions in our bodies. When we experience trauma, especially as children, emotional reactions can get stuck within because of the difficulty in processing them.  At this time I am undergoing trauma-based therapy reprocessing childhood memories frozen in my past. I was unable to deal with these dormant memories until serious physical problems manifested, and recently a professional GI physician told me these problems were trauma-based, as all my medical testing was normal. It was then I was able to move forward under the guidance of a professional EMDR therapist.

So how do we take care of ourselves when we listen?  Awareness is a big first step.

Be patient with yourself as you would a small child. Use your breath and envision your adult with your small child and practice being together. Use your breath, be grounded in the NOW and those are the two keys.  As we practice silence in the NOW we strengthen our experience of our inner awareness.

Eckhart talks about breathing the pain body down to calm the trigger. Once a trigger is recognized, taking a breath and slowly blowing through your lips, much like blowing into a straw, gently and calmly. This breathing technique gives space to the experience. Keep your eyes open if you need to. Sometimes open eyes keeps one in the present.

So, when listening with your heart, be aware of your breath, use your breath to bring in calmness. Treat yourself with loving and respectful care, and stay present with your heart in the NOW. You are there for yourself.