I started listening to Deepak Chopra, another spiritual teacher. I am listening to his book Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul. I am still processing much of it, so not super settled on what I want to say about it. I did have one section that I wanted to process, so here it is.
He was talking about habits that create stress in our lives. Thought patterns, behaviors, emotional grooves. Sometimes we get into a habit of negative thinking (the world is against me), of creating drama (life is unfair) or doing an action (like overeating). That last one is one I have been struggling with my whole life. As we engage in any of these habits, we wear a pattern into our brains. More than the physical pattern in our cells, we wear a pattern into our soul energy.
From soul to body we are energy. When we get stuck in a pattern or groove of energy, the energy can get stuck there, in a loop of sorts. Any stuck energy, whether we view it as positive or negative will begin to block our Chi, or energy flow. In order to feel well mentally and physically, our chi needs to flow freely through our body and soul.
We think of Love as a positive energy, for example. A stuck love pattern can actually become toxic to the body, though. What might have started out as pure love, when we hold it there, get attached to it, focus on keeping it, keeping that feeling, it gets stuck. It can then turn from pure love to obsession, anger, resentment, fear, anxiety etc.. A pattern then begins to develop. When we begin to feel love, since love is stuck, we might move automatically to fear and anxiety about losing it.
Patterns like this can begin at any time in a person’s life. We sometimes know they exist, and sometimes they are not conscious at all. If a pattern is very old, we might on some level be aware of it, but have long since lost the connection to its source.
That is my issue. I eat. Mostly I eat sugar. Over the years I have worked to develop more healthy eating patterns, only to discover that I actually eat healthier than a lot of people. With the exception of sugar. I eat way more sugar than is healthy for me, for anyone. I have been successful at changing the sugar overload, but it always turns into overeating something else. While when that becomes carrots, it isn’t as big of a deal, but when it is potato chips, it is. In other words, I now understand that I have never been able to change the sugar thing, only transmute it to something else temporarily. I want to actually change it, sort of. I love sugar, and so my whole heart might not be in it truly. I accept that.
On the other hand, I spend every day in pain. From my lower back to the tips of my toes hurt all of the time. Every muscle, every joint, every tendon hurts. The degree of pain varies, but it never stops, except when I am asleep, and it wakes me up too. Add headaches and migraines to the mix now and then, and you have the picture. I have tried everything to get rid of it. I have exercised, done physical therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic adjustments, energy healing, medication, meditation, rest, and also eating sugar. All of those have worked to some degree, but none of them gets rid of it. I cannot remember the last time I was not in pain. It has just gotten worse over time. I am not complaining, just being clear about what is going on.
With this new book, I am understanding that I created the pain with patterns of energy that have gotten stuck. With energy healing, mostly my main chakras are open, though in the most recent healing my heart and throat chakras were closed. There are more than the 7 main chakras though, and healings can’t necessarily get at all of them, at least not all of them at once to make perfect balance. In addition, if the pattern or groove that creates the stuck energy or blocked chi in the chakras isn’t changed, the healing cannot work long term. I want a long-term solution.
I am struggling with conflicting thoughts though, and thoughts are the source of the problem, I know, and still they exist in conflict with one another. On one hand, bodies do not exist. They are a creation of our mind. If I feel pain, then it is in my mind, creating it in my body. On the other hand, if bodies aren’t real, and thoughts aren’t real, then how can a thought pattern create a pain body??!!
Ah, I think I just now got it. That is exactly what they are all saying. They, being the three spiritual teachers I have mentioned before. It isn’t a contradiction with one another. Bodies exist only in the mind. That includes the physical structures of the body and the brain. When our energy, our soul, life force, or higher self, whatever you want to call it, loses touch with our body/brain through certain thought patterns, we create a body of pain. Eckhart Tolle also describes a body of pain that is shared, which is the collective thoughts and actions of people that are harmful, like war. So there is your personal pain body and a shared pain body created by your mind.
That is a way simplified interpretation of what he says. The bottom line is that our bodies are a reflection of our connection to our soul. Our soul, or higher power is pure and perfect. It is when we forget this and disconnect from our true selves that our bodies and life begin to fall apart. He has numerous stories of this on both sides, when connected and when disconnected. Bodies are physical and our soul is not. It’s just energy, but our bodies are energy too. Our souls then are the juncture between the visible world and the invisible world.
If I create a habit of thought or action, and I deny that I have the power to change it. If I say that I am powerless over my pain, my addiction, my life, then it will not change. I need to begin by acknowledging why I want to be stuck. Every energy pattern we create served us at one time, even if it does not serve us anymore, and yet we will often still refuse to change it, no matter how badly it is serving us now. We can become attached to the comfort of the habit or pattern and fearful of what it would take or mean to change it.
They question is not why do it eat so much sugar? It is why do I not really want to change that pattern? Why do I choose to hold onto my pain in my body. At this moment I heard the answer. It is trust. Fundamentally my trust in the spiritual realm was broken severely by my interactions with a Christian church as a child, then several times over as an adult in different Christian communities. It soured me on all things spiritual for many years. Recently I found a new opening to begin a spiritual journey again, and fear stops me constantly from moving forward. From fully embracing the new patterns my growth path has begun. I cling to the old patterns I trust, even if they cause me pain. I do not fully trust that if I let them go and just move, that I will be safe. I was not safe in my faith ever before. I have not every truly felt safe in spiritual faith.
Right now my mind tells me that I am safe, but I also do not fully believe that. I am clinging to a fear of what it would mean if I am wrong in my mind. My soul is there calling to me, telling me to trust myself, trust my soul, but I keep turning back to my mind which was the last thing I trusted. My mind has been what I thought saved me before. I am smart. I have good thinking skills. I can solve a problem easily. I can organize information and present it in a logical way. I believe in that. My spiritual life when I have attempted to trust my soul, was not safe. I trusted the church, God, Christians, and in truth that trust was broken with at best no support and at worst with abuse. I struggle with all things spiritual because of that. I do not want to trust it again in fear of it again being something harmful to me. I get very close to it spiritually, then fall back on my mind and thoughts about my spirit. I disconnect from my soul because I fear that it will again fail me.
In truth, it was my mind that failed me in the past, not my soul, or the realm of spirituality either. Yes, people in churches or spiritual communities did things that became harmful to me. I do realize that it was not so much what they did, but how I interpreted it, and how I wore down the pattern of seeing things of a spiritual nature as bad and harmful. That is a groove pattern in my mind. If you call it church, I will hate it. If you call it God, I will not trust it. I can more clearly see a reason to trust my own soul, but soul is actually my connection to a God that in my mind, has failed me.
It is in my mind. If I did a Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet from thework.com and Byron Katie, I would be able to dissect this mistrust on an intellectual level. I can completely see it and have actually already done that. I see the disconnect and why that mistrust is not necessary, and still it persists.
Deepak understands why this is from a physical standpoint. I am 52 years old, and “the church and God” have been a source of my emotional pain and suffering for all of those years. Recently I began a separation from that belief and pattern, but the connection is strong. I am attached. Early in my journey this time, I realized that I was directly connected to Jesus and his life on Earth. I was told in a past life reading that I was not only contemporary of Jesus, but in his inner circle. I was not surprised by that. It explained much of my rejection of the church and also my rejection of things not Christian too. I actively cut a cord of attachment to that life and to Jesus as it was, and began to feel more connection to him on a peaceful level rather than a confrontational one.
Still the mistrust persists. I do not know how to let it let go of me. In a class I teach, I tell people that to “let” another person make a choice does not actually give them the power to do so freely. Letting you choose still lays the power of permission to do so at my feet not yours. If I let you, I can take it away too. Instead I tell people to open space for choice. I ask them to step back and get out-of-the-way of another person so that they can step into their power and make their choices, discovery what is important and best for them, and learn how to become more independent. If we are standing their letting them do things, they will either try to do what they think we want, or in other cases do the opposite of what they think we want. If we step back, they will learn to do things that are what they want and that are good for them. That may not be what we would choose for them, and that is okay.
And so applying that principle to myself. If I keep trying to let go of something, or trying to let it let go of me, I will not have enough space for it to actually change. I need to stop that, and just be open to it changing.
Deepak also talks about how to do just that. He might use the term let go, I can’t remember, but it is not that. It is just an effort to pay attention and be present with it, whatever it is. Not hold it, not let it go, just be with it in space. No effort to push it or pull it, just be with it. With no resistance to it coming or going, there is space for it to actually show itself as what it is and then do what it needs to do.
Our souls, or higher powers, are the same. We cannot bring them in, or keep them out. Their natural state is to be one with us. The effort we use to block them from ourselves to hold onto our old patterns and not to hear them is exhausting and damaging, but we cannot actively do anything to stop the pattern. We can only be present with it and open space for the soul to shine through it. Any effort we exert to bring it or change it might actually backfire.
Since I first drafted this post in October, I have begun a new book by Dr. Joe Dispenza. He and Deepak are on the same page. Dr. Joe, though, is a Scientist. His application of the principles I was discussing above are from a scientific standpoint. It is really interesting. I do not have a solid grasp on it yet, so stay tuned for more on this process.
Namaste