Emotions and Rocks

Image from Bing

Yesterday morning I was fortunate to be able to participate in a two-hour Emotions Mentor pilot class as an introduction to a three-day expanded one. Teresa needed to give two of these in order to get her certification. The grand finale was a guided meditation which I wish I could have recorded. I will attempt to recall as much as I can.

Closing your eyes, you imagine you are about to embark on a journey to the top of a mountain. However, the backpack you brought with you is filled with rocks. The road is long and the weight of the backpack drains your energy. 

You stop along the way, but only take one of the rocks out of the backpack before you continue on. It isn’t long before you are tired again from the weight of the backpack, once again choosing a rock to leave behind before you continue the journey.

This step is repeated multiple times.

Finally, you have let go of all the rocks you’ve brought with you and are able to climb to the top of the mountain.

Since I’ve been up in the mountains before, it was easy for me to imagine I was there.

What are these rocks? Subconscious beliefs about who you are, the conclusions you made during vulnerable moments when you were a child, and what you’re capable of accomplishing in life.

I knew some of the rocks I had let go of in previous years were my conclusions about the degrading words my father often spoke in our presence. I believed they were about me. I was worthless and unlovable. No matter how hard I tried, I was never good enough. 

I continued this pattern on in life attracting partners (and employers) I constantly strived to prove my worth to, resulting in perfectionism. I had to do everything I was asked to do and do it perfectly, putting my own needs last. I allowed circumstances to happen – no matter how uncomfortable – just for the sake of feeling I had value. My soul rebelled by manifesting illness and physical pain. It was my only perceived way out, even though the consequences were dire.

During this meditation, I discovered a new layer to my perceived subconscious money blocks. It helped that Teresa had shared how she had come to the conclusion that SHE wasn’t good enough when her mother said certain words. Yet, Teresa had carried the conclusion on into her adult life which ran as a background program in her subconscious mind. In her marriage, when she heard her husband say certain things, she lost her temper and walked out of the room. It turned out what her mother said meant something completely different and her husband didn’t mean what she made his words mean. Until she let go of her ROCKS, she was unable to become successful at what she does now. I greatly admired her transparency.

I’m in the meditation, walking the path, carrying rocks in my backpack, digesting the words Teresa had spoken when clarity began to surface.

Dad was the youngest child. He wanted to be as big and strong as his brothers. His older brothers did well in the world financially, while Dad didn’t. (Keep in mind Dad was challenged with Aspergers which he never figured out – we did after nephew Brett was diagnosed.) I often heard Dad talk about his brothers in derogatory ways regarding money and women. 

I had concluded based on these words that not only was it not OK to have money, it was not OK to be a WOMAN and have money, never mind be successful.

I have been looking up to the women who could get on a stage, earn thousands of dollars giving amazing speeches, putting them on pedestals, wishing I could get there, too. It’s why I joined Toastmasters. I’d be happy if I could even stand in front of a dozen people and speak. In Toastmasters, lots of women are getting on stages, doing workshops, and giving amazing speeches. Lots of women are highly sought after public speakers. 

YET, something – one or more rocks – continued to hold me back. I thought it was fear of losing the security of my disability benefits. Maybe this is still one of the rocks, but I think I discovered what the BIG one is  –  the subconscious belief that it is not OK for me to have lots of money or be successful.

I bought a bag of small flat shiny rocks yesterday afternoon for symbolism.

The meditation helped me realize which rocks I was still carrying.

What if I could leave behind the last of them? How far could I go?

What if YOU could leave behind the rocks you carry? How far could YOU go?

Note: Theta Belief Work, EFT, and Essential Oils are tools for letting go of rocks.

Searching for Love

Hopefully this post won't come across as a sermon you would hear in a church. Often times I have epiphanies while in deep conversations with another person and one of these conversations occurred on Wednesday night. 

I am going to talk about the (11th) biblical commandment, "Love one another as I have loved you." (John 13:34). Back in 2011, I asked one of my sisters the following question: "How can I love others as God loves me if my perception of love is distorted?" She had replied something in the line of, "Perhaps the commandment should read: "The Greatest Sin is Not Loving Ourselves as God Loves Us," which sparked an entirely new journey for me. How many of us can actually say we know what the true essence of God's love is? GOD's love vs. HUMAN love?

Thus, I set out to find out what this essence of love was... as well as what I'd been missing. In my initial research, I found that we make conclusions/decisions about who we are as early as three years of age. We live our entire lives based on this conclusion. Indeed, I had concluded that I was not lovable and therefor did not deserve the best that life had to offer. I tried extra hard to prove that I was, which continuously backfired.

I absolutely LOVE Facebook... especially the times that messages I most needed to hear showed up on my feed. One day, a message came with a video on YouTube: The Miracle Of Human Creation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCbS2ybYvUc

I watched this video over and over again... asking the question... how could I have ever believed that I was not a miracle? How do any of us ever begin to believe we are not miracles? How could I have ever believed that I was not loved into existence?

With this new seed planted in my mind, a garden began to grow around me. I had gardens grow around me before, but with much smaller flowers. This time, each flower that bloomed was bigger and brighter as I walked on a new road to uncover yet another layer of who I really was. As my flowers grew taller and my love grew stronger (from within), many amazing people began to show up in my life to reflect the person I was growing to be. I saw many walls (ones I had built around my soul to protect myself from unknown threats) come tumbling down. 

Love is such an amazing thing when you begin to feel it to its fullest for the first time. I relate it to finally getting a hearing aid after a life time of being partially deaf... in which I can hear sounds I've never been able to hear before for the first time. All the Bible lessons, books I read, and spiritual teachers who told me how much God loved me, didn't do any good when I had no clue what this love felt like.

In the meantime, I was also learning about Law of Attraction... how you will attract what you focus on. Back to the conversation I had on Wednesday night. The morning after I told this person that what shifted in my life was learning how to focus differently, I realized it was much more than that. What shifted was my perception of love. As I began to feel a tremendous expansion of love from within my being, I seemed to begin attracting everything that is good and wonderful in my life.

The second missing link in my life was TRUST. While I do not declare myself as a Christian, many of the teachings of Jesus ring true to my soul... such as, "whatever you desire, when you pray, BELIEVE that you will receive them, and you shall have them". (Mark 11:24). I searched for most of my life in every religion and in every religious / spiritual book searching for the answers to questions I had. How many of you have done the same thing? What were you really searching for? Do you even know? It seemed that I had to find the essence of unconditional love before I could get to the point of believing... that is, believing that I deserved to have what I desired.

What did you start to believe when you were three years old? I just read another blog post written by a beautiful woman whose mother doesn't even remember the day she told her daughter that she had an ugly nose. Just one careless comment can scar you for life... unless in your seeking, you stumble upon the thing you were told, realize it wasn't true, and burst into love. For me, it happened that fast... the sensation of bursting from inside.

Within this essence of love, I find myself loving many people as if they are family, partners, and even my own children. It is a very different way of living. Perhaps before, I was merely existing. I wonder what life has in store for me now!