Last time I wrote about creating affirmations, and said that such activity is great but not enough to help heal the mind, body and spirit. Since then I have been deep within my own processes, releasing of old patterns of thinking, and creating affirmations for myself. All this energy activity was in response to things happening in life; my kids and their kids coming to visit, my good friend Marsha flying in from Chicago to hang out for a while, and my husband; my best friend and the truest messenger for my own unconscious ways of perceiving and thinking about the world. (See blog entry dated August 16,2015.)
Also this month, I had another wake up call. My doctors and I discovered I have a lyme infection. The day my tests came back I tumbled into a pit of fear and shock. “Poor me, I have lyme (some times its written lymes) disease.”
At the recommendation of my homeopathic doctor I’m starting an “alternative” protocol of monolaurin, a natural antibiotic made from coconut. I learned that lyme infections commonly go undiagnosed because many medical doctors do not have a solution for it and it is difficult to test positive. My blood was drawn and sent to Igenix labs, with a Lyme IgG Western Blot and an IgM Western Blot result of 6 positive and 4 positive respectively. I know that means nothing if you are not looking at the test with its interpretation, but to have 6 markers is a lot. (poor me.)
And with that we come to today’s theme. When healing the body of energy blockages
(and corresponding dis-ease) is it enough to speak affirmations and cultivate positive thinking? (part II)
My experience is that it is not.
It is like a cat who licks her wound enthusiastically before the blood has had time to wash the wound clean. The result is a premature scab and an infection that spreads, remains sub scab, and has no way to flush clean. Similarly, the negative and half true beliefs we assumed early in our childhood (to cope with all the data we received in order to fit into our worlds)(John Bradshaw does a great job of exploring this in The Homecoming.) remain deep and unknown. Without knowing them and releasing them, they form blockages in our healing process. Our mental and emotional wounds can not heal without acknowledging and feeling them first. Positive thinking is like that cat’s licking. It seals the wound but does not heal the infection.
What’s missing is the clearing away of old hurtful thought patterns (beliefs.) Carol Tuttle in her live online class, Soulprint Healing, says the clearing of these old beliefs and energy is a healing of your inner child, between the ages of 0 and 6. She says as an adult, when we get hooked or plugged in emotionally, it’s the reactivation of unresolved emotions formed in your early years. When that happens, ask yourself what belief you are honoring. Then ask yourself how old you were when you heard some adult speak it or you made it up to make sense of your world. Then go back mentally, imagine yourself at whatever age you were, and reassure that child. She or he is safe now. You are are all grown up and no longer need to blindly believe that. You can choose how you see the world, and you can create your own beliefs today (using affirmations). Take time to build trust in your inner child, and you will be able to release that old, no longer useful belief. You’ll heal the original pain and no longer be hooked emotionally.
The process is to acknowledge the discomfort/pain. Become aware of the pattern thinking, feel the pain that was triggered, own it, then release it with a script. Louise Hay in her book Heal Your Life taught me this script, “I am releasing the pattern of thinking that created the condition of____.” After I speak that, I stop thinking all together, I let it go, like paper burning in a fireplace. It is an idea, and no longer useful to me. It is not empowering, or I would never have felt the pain that it brought to me. After speaking this, I can usually feel the open air between my thoughts flowing into my body, and I breathe in and out for a few minutes. Here, finally is the opportunity for positive thinking. I have now cleared some space inside of me in which I can create a new belief about the world, and about myself. The clearing is necessary before I can affirm anything. If not, neither my mind, emotions, spirit, or body is honored. Not one will receive or believe the newly created positive thoughts.
Buddhist Nun, Pema Chodron has written some wonderful training books, and has made even more wonderful tapes on how to allow the feelings of pain, anger, fear, sadness, resentment to rise up from within, and to stay with the discomfort until the energy dissipates. This leaves open air within you. You feel the love, light, and feelings of peace fill you up as you breathe out. Tong glen is a great practice for healing the emotional pain, and leaving space for more positive energy to fill up both you and the world.
In my next entry, Is Positive Thinking Enough?, Part III, I will share my experience with clearing old beliefs and creating new ones. Let me know your experiences.
I am happy to be able to share this process with you. Try it and make it your own. I don’t think we use this practice enough while on our path to healing, and I don’t see how the mind, spirit, emotion, or body can heal or evolve without it.