The Bottom of the Creek

I am frequently asked about choice. The conversation goes something like this… “If I have choice, why would I choose to still have this physical symptom that won’t leave me alone?”

How much choice we have is always a loaded question! 

My work touches many with health issues and life situations that make us feel powerless. It’s human. It’s real.

When we feel frustrated and at the end of our rope, so tired of the current situations from which we can’t seem to find our way out, do we really have a choice? 

What choice do we have when we endlessly try to find our way out of a challenging situation but dead ends are all that seem to appear? When we tirelessly search for answers and still nothing breaks loose and shifts? 

Have you experienced this frustration, this hopelessness, this lack of power? I certainly have.

This is the place we must travel to lose ourselves and discover the newness within. It is a rebirth of sorts. The old layers of how we view the world must be crumbled, chipped away, loosened, and discarded. But these layers have been with us for years. They permeate our physical form and our subconscious mind. How do we lose them if we don’t even really know they are there?

The term black night of the soul indeed! Stuck with no flashlight! 

My work helps illuminate these blocks, helps shine light into these dark places so the barriers to healing can be released. But did you know every day life gives us moments to heal ourselves and keep moving forward? Through a process I call triggering.

Triggering is when an event in our current experience stirs up energies from the past. Triggering gets us in touch with old emotional energy we packed away and buried in our past. We usually have no idea it is still with us, have no idea it is holding us back, preventing our progress. And often, we are afraid to touch it. So much so, that we can create many distractions...injuries, car trouble, weather events, the list goes on and on…

When we get triggered, we DO have a choice, an immediate one. How do you want to move through this moment? Do you want to push it down? Or leverage it to let go of what is holding you back from your highest potential?

What can we do when we get triggered to keep our ground and leverage the situation for healing as much as possible, to hopefully prevent a re-do the next time around?

Follow this simple three step process to choose growth and progress:

Step 1: Recognize it’s triggering. Recognize your reaction and feelings have little to do with the present moment and much more to do with the past. Likely the size of your reaction is outsized to the current situation (think: losing your cool with a pet or child when repeating yourself for the 100th time…). If this situation wouldn’t normally bother you that much, triggering is likely at play. Just knowing this gives you a huge amount of your power back and with it, your grounding and balance.

Step 2: Allow the emotional energy. Rather than distraction or trying to talk yourself out of your feelings or using a coping mechanism like launching into anger or frustration, just let yourself feel the feelings that got triggered. Just connect to them, briefly feel them. No need to wallow in them, no need to get stuck. Just connect and allow any other information to come to your mind. Events? People? Relationships? Ties to your past. Anything.

Step 3: Give it permission to leave. There is no need to hold onto baggage that doesn’t serve us. It’s just spare weight to haul around. Give permission for this old emotional energy that got triggered to leave. It was stirred up, like sediment on the bottom of a creek bed, so the current of water can wash it away. With a willingness to allow it to move, we are setting ourselves free. No particular action is needed: just a willingness to let it move. If it’s helpful to you, see it flying away from you like a dove.

This simple process keeps us from restoring the old emotional energy. It keeps us from holding onto past hurts. It keeps us from just pushing it away and having to deal with it another day down the road.

An added bonus: each time we move through triggering and leverage it, we ditch the pain of the past and lighten our load. The next time around, the triggering will be less, will be easier to deal with, easier to allow to move.

Until life just moves through us, without encountering old pain, without triggering.

Truly living in the present moment.

What a delightful destination❤️