healing

Navigating the Path from Fear to Love

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The death of illusion is an opportunity to breathe new life. (Image created using AI on CANVA)

There’s a lot of death these days. No, not the physical death. That’s arriving at some point for all of us. Physical death is constant — a sure thing and like all of life’s cycles on this beautiful planet.

No, I’m referring to a spiritual death. People are losing their souls to the ego to the tender parts of themselves they’ve numbed with everything from downing social media or drowning themselves in the rabbit holes of comparison.

Look, we all do it. We all have an ego. We all spend moments in this precious life Edging God Out (thank you Wayne Dyer). When the pain gets to be too much, we instinctively push it away, deny its presence, rationalize it away. We buy, gamble, watch porn, hashtag until our eyes burn from the blue light drilling a fresh migraine into our skulls.

But at some point, the ego’s armor starts to fall away. The whisper: “You’re off track,” grows louder. 

Right now, the Higher Self knows right from wrong. And the chasm between those who heed their soul’s whisper is growing wider. Fear on one side, Faith on the other. The disparity is stark, maddening as life’s pace ever-quickens.

Humanity is standing on that cliff: the space between authenticity and arrogance, between kindness and cruelty, between self-effacement and self-reflection.

Death is all around me these days. This spiritual death carries the stench of denial. 

Watching those I love fall prey to their ego, to being right over being kind is a bit like mourning. There is a great, palpable grief I feel for those who are encased in the false promise of blame and the temporary relief their denial and control grants them.

The Good News

Whether you are clinging to the cliff of Fear or Love, the spiritual death arrives with good news: transformation and transcendence is on its way.

For those steeped in Fear, they will roll their eyes at my words. Humor is often a way to deny our pain. Their soul will only grow louder, wreaking havoc on their peace until they have no choice but to surrender — even if this means a physical death.

The choice to remain or go to Love can feel like a white knuckle clinging these days. I encourage you to keep clinging. Do not trust the illusion of Fears’ family: blame, control, and manipulation. They are weapons meant to take you down and join them. There’s a reason the aphorism, “Misery loves company” exists. Don’t join their company. Take long walks and deep breaths. 

Hope ironically arrived when I chose to no longer have hope that the fear-based loved ones in my life would ever change. 

Before, Hope caused me to outstretch my arms to Fear only to be hurled stones of Manipulation and Blame.

I’m residing fully in Love now and no longer accepting the breadcrumbs of Fear’s cubic zirconia of love. 

Am I in pain? Of course. Mourning? Absolutely. 

But with mourning, your wounds can start to heal. With death, there is now space to heal and grow.

Freedom is agency within — regardless of what the world is doing without.

Know you are on the right path when you align with the whispers of your Highest Self. The spiritual dying of others often causes many a figurative death rattle of blame and an attempt to shame and diminish you.

Their anger is more proof that they prefer to lash out rather than explore the pain in their heart.

Allow the spiritual death of what could never be in your relationship with those steeped in Fear. You’ll notice the white-knuckling to remain in Love will dissipate and, over time (with heaps of self-compassion), you will be standing with both feet in Love, far away from its edge.

Healing from Childhood Wounds: A Journey of Self-Discovery

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It’s human nature to avoid pain. Yet distraction only takes us so far — especially when it comes to emotional pain. At after half a century of life on this beautiful Earth, I am starting to embrace Rumi’s timeless quote on a much deeper level:

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Rumi

In my 20’s, I didn’t want to look at the wounds. Half the time I didn’t know they were there because I was so busy. 

Distraction is a powerful tool to keep pain at bay.

But the wounds remained, festering within my psyche as I continued to look outward for purpose, validation, and worth.

Looking back, I see that my youth was spent in a quasi-cocoon state: inside I was a gooey mess but outside it looked like nothing special was going on. I worked, I dated, I married.

The gooey mess within would get triggered by something someone would say or do. But instead of addressing the source of the pain, instead of going within to look at that dark goo, I got busier.

Life continued and with it, psychological blisters that hurt a little more each time. I looked for love in all the wrong places. I was a widow at 25, engaged at 27, married again at 28, pregnant at 29.

Go. Go. As fast as you can. You can’t catch me. — The internal battle between the cocoon of armor I’d held onto with dear might and the brimming-to-come-out wounds within.

The fifties have been a time of addressing the wounds, allowing the cocoon to fall away and finally allow the light to enter.

This second act of life offers an opportunity for radical acceptance of others and ourselves. It’s a chance to pull up a chair and put a compassionate stethoscope to the fractures in your heart.

The Russian Doll of Aging

I used to ( and still do) love those stacking Russian dolls. Every time you think you’ve freed the last Russian doll, you discover there’s another and yet another still.

That’s what aging feels like: the allowing of ourselves to — with compassion — explore the layers of our life story. 

It’s not until we are willing to explore the landscape of our heart and mind that we can begin to heal. We need to become like emotional excavators if we want to unearth the effects of those early seeds planted.

The Five Childhood Wounds

A popular psychological concept is that there are five potential core psychological wounds from our childhood. Many times, we are unaware of the wounds and walk around this life feeling triggered without knowing its origin.

Our thoughts, behaviors, and relationships in adulthood are often deeply influenced by our wound in childhood.

It is when we don’t address those core wounds that they have a greater chance of manifesting in our adult relationships.

Here are the five core inner child wounds:

🤕 Abandonment

🤕 Rejection

🤕 Shame

🤕 Betrayal

🤕 Injustice

Each fear arrives with certain behaviors. For example, if you were sent to your room without dinner for a bad grade, a seed of rejection may have been planted.

Fear: being rejected for who you are

Behavior: people-pleasing or perfectionism

The power to heal from our wounds begins by recognizing where and how the wound began.

And that healing continues when we carve out a safe space for ourselves to alter the narrative and know that we are not our wounds. 

I often think of that Frosted Shredded Wheat commercial in the 1980’s. 

We can tune into the gooey cocoon of our psyche at any time. It may hurt to listen, but that shell we carry is falling apart anyway. And when we allow to see our wounds with compassion, we are creating a sacred space for our wings to unfurl.

You were meant to soar. You were meant to transform your wounds into something beautiful. 🦋

Healing Mastery XI Code

Confronting Inner Wounds: Steps to Emotional Freedom

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He was poking me. Not physically. Emotionally. His words landing like shards of glass in my throat and chest.

The pain was unbearable. It was a suffocating thing. All consuming and deep.

So, I did what typically happens when we are in this level of suffering: I lashed out with biting words of sarcasm. I knew my words were wrong and irrational, but rationality takes a back seat when pain is in the driver’s seat.

And then came the tears. My tears. Deep, guttural tears that had nothing to do with his poking words and everything to do with the unaddressed wounds within me.

The pain in my heart lasted long after he hung up on me. It ached between my bones and clung to the pores of my skin, stinging my eyes with unshed tears.

There is no greater pain than living with unaddressed wounds. 

Emotional pain holds on greater than a rabid Rottweiler biting down on a pant leg. It’s unwavering, unrelenting and feels like your soul is coming apart.

Break Out to Break Through

The pain I felt was so intense that I knew there was only one thing left to do: explore it.

“When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out, because that’s what’s inside. When you are squeezed, what comes out is what is inside.”-Wayne Dyer

I looked at the wound within me. And there I found a history of wounds. I unravelled each wound until a pattern began to form. 

The wounds were from a lifetime of false narratives, all of them being told by unhealthy, narcissistic, insecure men.

The pain I felt was a lifetime of me contorting myself to fit their narrative. 

We each have the power to transform our pain to empowerment.

The man goading me was just another manifestation of that false narrative. He was able to “get a rise out of me” because of the unaddressed wounds that I’d bandaged up, with psychological pus oozing out of them. 

A peace arrived within me when I addressed the root of the wound:

I was a victim of abuse. I am not the abuse. The power is always within me. I can choose to love and be love, regardless of what others do.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t experience moments of sadness or grief, pain or disappointment. It means that I allow those emotions to rise and fall within me, no different than waves in an ocean.

“Don’t think you’d be free if you just didn’t have these kinds of feelings. It’s not true. If you can be free even though you’re having these kinds of feelings, then you’re really free — because there will always be something.”-Michael Singer

When I allow the pain, it passes through and doesn’t stick around to form a new wound.

Emotional pain arises because of the unaddressed wounds we carry. It’s ripping off the figurative Band-aid that allows us to heal. It’s allowing ourselves to feel the pain and breathe through it that brings us true peace.

The need to poke another emotionally is sourced from an unaddressed wound. Those who manipulate, lie, and deflect responsibility are walking around this planet with significant unaddressed wounds.

True peace arrives when we realize we can only be responsible for our own inner healing. 

I cannot get sick enough to make that man healthy. You cannot get poor enough to make someone else feel wealthy.

Freedom means allowing another to choose their own path, however destructive that may be. 

A peaceful life begins when we embrace the four C’s: I will not control, change, cause, or contribute. 

But we can choose to be light and love to others. We do this when we prioritize our own healing.

XI Code to Peak Performance

To the Loved One You Can’t Reach

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When the Shit Hits the Fan (Literally)

This past week, the shit (literally) hit the fan. 

You know those moments when you are holding life together by a flimsy strand? You think: “This is tough, but I got this.”💪

The self-pep talk renders you akin to a duck on the water. Sure, you look smooth on the surface, but you are paddling furiously just below the shallow current.🦆

Still, if you could hold it together for a tad longer, you think you can make it through the day/week/month without imploding.🤯

And then, the shit hits the fan…

While the aphorism is apropos of anything negative happening on a grand scale (where no amount of duck paddling will work) in my case, 💩 floated through the first floor of my home, a river of it swimming through like a feces canal.🤢

The short version of this smelly (true) story: a broken sewer line pipe caused the issue, and it’s going to cost a year of college tuition to repair (Let’s not even speak about insurance…).

What’s In YOUR Plumbing?🤔

Remember that duck analogy? Yeah, my waddle was already quacking upstream when the R.O.P. (River of Stool) hit. 

A home’s pipes are like the arteries in a body: everything’s connected.

I thought about this idea of connection a lot. Each of us is connected to each other in this world, on a micro and macro level. And those arteries, while not always physical, either close or open and sometimes need to be replaced altogether.

It was when the R.O.P. hit that I started to become aware of the R.O.P in a close relationship. My heart would always ache when I spoke to this person. Invisible cracks would start to form. I’d Band-aid the pain up with rationalization and distraction.

I was regularly this person’s quasi-therapist — a sounding board for her to throw her deluge of negativity my way. I’d sop up her violin music with emotional pompoms that I’d shake until she felt better.

But there’s a price paid for being someone’s emotional tsunami and it’s much higher than any insurance deductible.

It took my literal (sewer) pipes breaking to realize the shitstorm I was accepting in my personal relationship.

Waddling upstream, I could remain in the comfort zone of rationalization for this person’s toxic behavior.

But when I was at ground zero, emotionally, physically, financially and could no longer waddle upstream, I needed a lifeline. I was drowning.

And what did she do? She continued to do what she always does: she took out her violins and made the moment all about herself. She pulled out the “one up” card: “You think you have it bad. Let me tell you what I’m going through.”🙈

I wasn’t looking for anything more than a lifeline. A simple handful of words like “I’m so sorry.” or “That must be tough.”

Nope. Instead, she regaled me with violin music about how tough she had it today, yesterday, and always. It was all about her. I couldn’t reach her over her whiny notes. I realized then that the crap in my home was nothing compared to the emotional crap she’d been dishing me for years.

I’m in pain — much more about this relationship than my home. A pipe can be replaced. A house can be rebuilt. Money can be replenished. 

But our personal relationships…those are spiritual fingerprints. They touch our soul.

The emotional pipes cannot always be replaced. But they can be examined and if needed, reshaped and recycled so that the heart doesn’t continue to get broken. We can shift our perspective, through the aperture of compassion — for ourselves and those we love — recognizing that some emotional pipes cannot provide the oxygen our heart needs to thrive.

Allowing Our Problems to Help

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Seeing our problems as an outward symptom of a deeper issue offers us an opportunity to heal.

The other day, a friend asked me to pick up some books for her. Well…over 600 books. I drive a small car. An even smaller voice whispered to me: “I don’t feel comfortable putting over 600 books in my car. This will not end well.”

Alas, since the voice inside of me was much smaller than my car, I psychically “shushed” the voice and picked up the books.

The next morning my rear tire was flat, like Flat Stanley flat.

The problem might externally look like a flat tire that needs nothing more than a replacement; the problem might sound like a headache: calling AAA, waiting at a tire store for hours, and finally, getting that new tire installed.

All of the above is correct, but there’s a larger problem, one that has reared its head in many forms in these decades of my life on this floating planet: ignoring that small voice.

I’m not angry with my friend for asking me to pick up the books; I’m angry with myself for not heeding that small voice. I’m angry at myself because this is far from the first time that I’ve chosen to help another while ignoring my intuition.

Recognizing the problem, the REAL problem, is when growth can take place. The problem is the portal to changing our self-sabotaging habits or triggers. According to Counselor and Instructor, (Core Belief Engineering) Lisa Sidorowicz:

“Imagine for a minute that your “problems” are actually portals to resolution and healing…. Imagine not having to turn away from them anymore, but stepping into them…transforming your issues and getting beyond them.”

If we think of our problems as opportunities, as breadcrumbs on a trail to understand ourselves instead of something to avoid at all costs, we can actually dissolve the problems themselves.

In the case of the flat tire, the tire will get fixed, and I will drive again. But the source of the problem, the issue of ignoring my inner voice, a habit I have grooved into my subconscious when it comes to pleasing others, is no longer present. By stepping INTO the problem, I have journeyed through the core issue itself (putting others before myself) and come out the other side (honoring my inner voice).

So, the next time you are facing a problem, consider it deeper than its face value. Ask yourself:

What’s going on here that’s shown up in different forms before?

What is the core issue I am avoiding and need to face?

When we embrace discomfort, we find our pain offers a clue to our healing.