Positive Energy Guide

Profound grief has a transcendent dimension. Powerful pain can bring us right into our humanity, in a base and primal way or in a ways that touch the beauty of spiritual unity. The state of one’s heart is the determining factor.

My most transformative experience of transcendent grief occurred several decades ago, following a crisis that lead to the sudden and monumental loss of an intensive spiritual study group I had been cultivating for three years. This was the only time I had been in an intimate group that felt like lifelong bonds. I felt like dying.

I remember lying down on my bed, staring down shock and grief and taking stock of my life. At the cost of giving up attachment and accepting what life was dealing, I could go anywhere and do anything. I did not WANT to, but I could. I realized that my body was innocent. No use taking things out on my vehicle. Nothing could be done. I would go on. I grieved.

Profound spiritual traditions say, “Die before death.” The freedom of letting go of our conditions is one part of what they are alluding to. I released my conditions for participating in life as it had just become.

As I began to sob I first heard strain my tone. I felt guided to keep my heart open instead of contracting around the pain, and practiced relaxing my throat, letting the sound of my weeping pour through me like breath through a reed flute. I sought to let the pain breathe me and to stay soft.

Gradually I began to listen to my grief like an ancient song of the universe, primal and eternal. Entering my pain even more fully I embraced it and let it expand, remembering places in the world where cultures support this full expression, like the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and a procession of mourners in a Greek village.

Since my heart could hurt no more  intensely, I began to visualize wrapping my heart around the pain being sung aloud by people on several continents. Expansion beyond Self felt good, even as I hurt. Accepting my pain was drawing me into profound compassion.

From this place of beauty I felt generous, nearly at peace. I thought about Western culture, how we repress pain; of all those in terrible pain who cannot cry. I contemplated the anguish of being locked inside one’s self with such distress, while no one around knows, and becoming too stiff and shut down to release it. My clean, pure pain was like a river of life.

Then a fascinating kind of joy arose as I began to pull through my wide open circuits the pain of those who cannot voice it. I prayed to be an outlet or release point for their pain while I flowed in this eternal song of grief, connected to all Beings, yet safely at the center of my own experience.

This timeless passage gradually resolved to land me gently in the here and now, relaxed and in a state of wonder. I saw fresh and clear the light and shadows in my room, textures, shades of color. I thought  again about the losses I was grieving, now without angst or resistance. I just noted them. I felt like someone waking up on an island after a shipwreck, aware of tragic loss but also of transcendent grace. Life stretched out before me with its particularities and possibilities–the miracle of standing before life like a painter with an empty canvas.

If part of you ever feels like dying, remember: Your body is innocent. If you feel like dying, let ego die to your demands of and illusions about life. You can build a new life.  Your body is a gift. You can create new possibilities and perhaps even experience transcendence by releasing any conditions you place on happiness, and participating in the Greater Whole.

What part of you, or your life circumstances, belongs with your past now, but not your future?

Who can you become more fully if you accept this loss and expand instead of contracting?

Getting in touch with authentic feeling is an ongoing process.

Some want their process to be “done”–as if they’ve got something better to do. We don’t. Whatever we do without being in touch with ourselves is vaguely unsatisfying at best.

The clarity we get from knowing our selves and effectively addressing what we really need is inherently satisfying, whether or not we can get what we want. This process relies on authentic feeling.

Learning what our sensations mean initiates self discovery.

Like many of us, I entered young adulthood with a vague sense of the relationship between my emotions and body sensations. I could be overcome by a stew of feelings and their flood of sensations and have only a general idea of what I was going through. Sometimes I got all up in my head so I didn’t actually FEEL my feelings. I thought it was enough to KNOW what they were, but did not give them actual expression.

Knowing does not create release. Rationalized emotion circles around and distorts the way we think instead of arising, building sensation, cresting, and ebbing away like emotion and sensation do when we let them flow.

I began to explore what I was feeling by ‘trying on’ an emotion–saying the name of it while tasting it with my body, to see if the emotion I thought it might be fit my sensations. I asked myself, “What emotion is associated with this sensation?” I also thought about what people look like when they feel it, and what my own posture was expressing. After a while I could I could recognize emotions by feel.

Those raised by parents who accurately mirrored their feelings back to them and acknowledged those feelings in words naturally recognize what they feel. They may find it odd that anyone cannot. In my clinical experience, most people are pretty sketchy about a lot of what goes on inside.

We may not know what we REALLY feel, and substitute in our minds what we think we SHOULD feel, what is SAFE to feel, or what we image someone else might WANT us to feel.

Pay careful attention to your body sensations when you have a feeling, like noticing the resonance of musical chords as they vibrate through you, activating different areas. Sense and memorize what specific emotions feel like in your body and nervous system, so you can recognize them when they arise.

By being in touch with our authentic feelings we begin to understand what they mean and what we need. This leads to being able to respond authentically, and supports the ability to set clear and effective boundaries.

Explore what feelings mean in different contexts. When I am doing Inner Work, for example, a sense of dread means I am on track with something important. Shame means part of me wants to hide something. Fear means I need some kind of support from myself to move forward, like committing myself to take care of an underlying need. Anger means I need to establish a better boundary. The same feelings may mean something else in a session or a relationship.

When tracking down hidden feelings you are not done if you . . . :

• Feel you are moving away from something you don’t like
• Sense something sliding around or trying to hide
• Are in a state of unresolve
• Have any internal conflict
• Feel resistance to your best course of action
• Think something about your process is vague
• Have an urge to distract yourself
• Feel uneasiness, fear or panic
• Have a suspicious urge to eat, drink or smoke something, talk with someone, exercise or work to distract yourself

Getting to the bottom of an issue can feel like . . . :

• Moving into a clearing or having open space
• Solidity and clarity
• Ease or peace
• A sense of understanding that uproots distress
• Having a sense of who you really are
• Knowing what you need or what to do
• Clarity about your boundaries
• Openness to discovery

Useful questions for self-clarification:

What am I trying to get, or avoid right now? What am I hoping for?

How can I get what I need openly and directly, or supply it to myself?

Is there anything about this situation that I find threatening? If so, is there any way that I can I support myself to reduce or eliminate that threat?

“Our old personality patterns change without effort on our part in proportion
to the depth of awareness that we bring to them.”
(Understanding the Enneagram, 365)

Of the myriad classes I have taken on techniques for clearing emotional blocks, none have addressed self-observation.

Bringing depth of awareness to self discovery takes courage and dedication.

It can be shocking to discover, through insight and life experience, that we are someone other than we always thought we were. We may find that in some ways we are a different person than the one we took ourselves to be and telegraphed to other people. Newly encountering a well of habitually suppressed anger, for example, can be such an experience. Some shy away from revelation.

We can trust ourselves only to the extent that we truly know ourselves. 

The more we avoid, the less trustable we are to other people too. 

However well-meaning our intentions, when we act without knowing our own hearts, we may betray others unwittingly as our unconscious motivations come into play.

Habitual defenses retain subconscious influence, exerting control over us as if from behind a screen, like the little man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. Awareness offers freedom of choice. Without awareness we remain habitual–asleep to possibility.

By coming to understand our denial and defenses we become trustworthy, to ourselves and to others. We can act with healthy self-interest and remain truthful about our motivations. 

Underneath the intense emotions of our defenses is a good place to look for what we really long for, deep inside. When we look beneath our defenses with compassion we can see that they guard feelings and longings that are vitally important to us. By knowing our deepest needs and desires we can support them more directly.

We hide things from ourselves not as much because of what the things ARE, but because of how we REACT to them. 

Reactive behavior is almost always defensive. It may hide shame, fear, self-condemnation, or helplessness.

Getting angry with ourselves, for example, can be a way to avoid feeling shame. Shame, however, can function as another defense. It can keep us from actually addressing the conditions and behaviors we feel bad about. Fear of failure may underlie this. If we can relax shame we are very likely to discover a perfectly-natural, vulnerable need which we’ve been afraid to acknowledge.

Blame tends to distract us from taking on what we can change on our own, in order to make ourselves more comfortable.

Self-loathing is a way of acting out, internally, expressing condemnation. It’s like a tar pit. Gently addressing our condemnation itself offers a path out.

“Running” negative emotions (letting them take over your body without self-observing) ramps up distress. Avoiding or denying blocks self awareness.

Accepting, observing, FEELING distress and RELAXING it:

• Allows compassion in
• Allows us to feel into what we can do to successfully support ourselves
• Supports real healing
• Brings us into the present, where we have real influence and the power of choice
• Allows us to discover our essential Self–which is NOT a pattern or collection of learned behavior but a vital expression of our unique Being

How do we proceed when the reflex of guarding old wounds keeps reasserting itself?

We contact our own essential nature through positive vulnerability–loving openness to possibility, with a sense of wonder.

When we actively USE despair as a doorway instead of becoming mired in it, we can move THROUGH it by learning to surrender ever more deeply into what is real.

What do you want to hide?

What makes you want to hide it?

What do you feel when your ask yourself to explore it?

What are you afraid will happen if you accept it?

“If you are interested in transformation, no element is more important than developing a love of truth. The truth encompasses both our fearful reactions and the greater resources of our soul.” (The Wisdom of the Enneagram, 345)

Working on ourselves is one of the hardest things because success depends on uprooting our own blind spots. It is also one of the most intrinsically rewarding habits we can adopt. We can do it anywhere, it improves our life, and once we develop the habit we need never be bored again.

When first learning to self observe it is not unusual to react with frustration, condemnation, disgust, shame or rage when we find out we were “wrong” about something we thought we understood. If we find we have mis-assessed our own motivations, for example, or have come to realize that we were indeed responsible for something we were mad at someone else about, we may swing from denial into condemnation.

Self dis-covery is a spiritual victory. As we develop, we learn to invite experiences of seeing-through. We begin to celebrate the grace of awareness when we suddenly see through a blind spot and discover a ‘new’ pocket of which we were previously ignorant. It is a small but important wonder to find out that a self-concept or assumption about life is incorrect. As we awaken this way we discover that what we imagined to be ‘awake’ was yet another set of concepts. Learning to welcome insight keeps us humble and cultivates compassion.

Learn to sense the difference between shutting down to protect an old belief or a wound and opening to discovery. We can recognize the shift from the former to the later by the feeling of being flowing and open, and by an easy willingness to look at how we respond to and impact others.

In the absence of honest self observation, attempts to ‘BE’ positive backfire in an attempt to get rid of or avoid having negative feelings. Suppression or denial of real feeling is not a positive state. It is a subtle form of annihilation. Authentic positive feeling springs from self-acceptance.

Staying in touch with discomfort while simultaneously practicing positive intention makes us powerful and creative.

As a beginner I used techniques as a means not just to identify, accept and balance emotions, but in an attempt to eradicate them. After spending more than a decade using different means to track down, explore, and sedate emotions, I realized that I still didn’t allow myself to fully FEEL them.

I still believe techniques for working with emotion have value. They increase awareness. They help us to identify hidden emotions. They can release energy blocks that make wounds into strongholds of resistance and denial. I do not question the value of such techniques.

Intention is important. Most beginners want to be RID OF the nuisance of negative emotions. I know I did. The basic thrust of trying to eliminate our humanity is not an act of love.

Finding ways to orient ourselves that relax negative emotions and make them less likely to show up is a qualitatively different process.

Methods and techniques do not make us super-human. Inner Work makes us flexible, humble, and self-accepting. Even the most developed therapists and the most advanced spiritual teachers remain fully human. A major spiritual leader, Meher Baba, even said, “Becoming fully human is the most difficult thing to do on the spiritual path.”

Every personality has weaknesses and points of sensitivity. What changes as we grow is not whether we have challenging emotions but how we respond to them. Techniques and practice assist us to accept and acknowledge and communicate what is going on inside, and to move easily into balance and resolution.

What is the difference between sinking in to feel your pain and feeling self pity?

How is the energy different in your body?

What the difference in your subtle intention in the two states?

During a process of self-discovery, keeping a journal may help clarify your thoughts and feelings and keep them from becoming circular.

Intense emotion and energy can evoke trauma. Being in the face of the same intense emotions and energy while consciously choosing to be okay and to USE that energy for change can employ this intensity in service to transformation. The same intensity that memorializes experience into tissues, nerve, and brain as trauma is instead used to catalyze change.

Using potentially traumatic experience intentionally has general two applications:

1. Rising to the occasion to make lemonade when life gives us lemons.
2. Entering situations you might otherwise avoid with the intention to do spiritual work.

Please note that this second practice is only useful if you are well established working on yourself, have adequate support, are prepared to assimilate powerful experience, and feel guided to take it on.

Potentially traumatic experience can function similar to or actually be a kind of initiation. Intentional Work in the face of intense energy can galvanize or activate spiritual energy by bringing new skill levels forward with all of your resources focused enough to create a lasting change.

Here are two examples:

At a ten day meditation retreat I became really sick, with intense physical pain. I worked very hard to surrender all preconceptions and allow everything that was happening to be a part of my retreat, keeping my attention on my inner processes and my breath. I kept bringing myself back to the moment and remained committed to using this opportunity to transform. I came out of this experience with a different internal landscape.

Years ago, I started to date a man and discovered he had extreme emotional attachment issues. He lived out of town. I had seen him on two visits. The third time I went to visit he was feeling insecure. He greeted me by saying, “Marry me or get out!”

This man showed some signs of volatility the visit before. I was concerned about my emotional safety and therefore consulted with my main healer prior to this trip. We agreed that one last visit was the Highest Option, rather than canceling my trip.

My healer told me that the horrible sensations I got in my guts when he began to escalate were caused by my chakras tilting sharply to one side when I became afraid. She coached me to focus as much as possible to keep my chakras even and level in the midst of intense interaction.

I entered the actual situation with a back-up plan in case I felt physically threatened. The man did go ballistic when I replied to his demand, saying gently that I would never make a commitment under pressure. He yelled at me full voice for about two hours without stopping. For half of this I curled into a ball.

This is what I was doing inside:

• Watching my chakras, leveling them if any began to twist, and noting the differences in my sensations and emotions when I did
• Telling my body I was safe and maintaining the strength to exit if this changed
• Reminding myself that his intense reactive state was a product of his history, not from me
• Remembering all the people who love and respect me
• Trying to keep my muscles relaxed
• Keeping my guidance channels open in case I needed to do something different
• Telling myself I would never need to do this again
• Waiting for the storm to pass so I could exit in a caring way

When the man had expended his tirade of self-protective criticism and the rage he used to protect his inner wounds, he was ready to talk reasonably. We ended our association unequivocally and with understanding. I gained and retained the valuable capacity to maintain my self esteem around angry people instead of dissociating and losing my self-support.

Effective spiritual work very occasionally requires such intensity. Simply watching your breath and staying present while you enact non-ideal habits, and wearing away numbness and dullness, sets up the preconditions for transformation.

When has disturbing intensity served your development?

What did you need to do to make it work FOR you instead of against you?

Practice leaning into any uncomfortable inner spaces.

This one practice will help you to reclaim parts of yourself that you may not yet be able to engage directly. Such parts hold valuable keys to what you need and want. They open doors, lead to personal revelation, put you in touch with your inner voices, promote sincerity and authenticity, and gradually bring about the wonderful solidity of personal congruence and integration.

I am not suggesting that you sit in distress at every moment. I am suggesting NOTICING distress and touching in for enough time and with enough intention to feel, assess, and express authentic feeling. Then you can make an intelligent accommodation to your actual needs.

These additional practices promote self discovery:

• When you feel discomfort of any type, explore it by asking yourself questions about it. (Examples of question chains)
• Sense into your body and be aware of any emotion that arises as you focus on a particular symptom. What does this symptom tell you about your feelings or needs?
• Be willing to accept that there may be benefits to being ill, incapable, or in pain. Do not judge yourself for this. We all have a Saboteur part. Being able to be aware of it is a big advantage. Be skillfully curious about the potential advantages of distress.
• Notice inner conflicts where part of you wants one thing and another part wants something different. Stay objective and seek to mediate fairly between these parts. If a part is destructive, ask the destructive part what it needs until it brings forth an answer, image, or sensation to which you can make a constructive response.
• Practice identifying your most vulnerable underlying feeling. Be gentle and kind, inviting it to let you know what it needs.
• Stay with your experience during these practices and notice what emerges.
• Keep looking deeper until something arises from within. This ‘something’ may be a feeling of emerging clarity, a fresh insight, or a moment of realization. You have come to the core of the issue and are ‘done’ when you will begin to feel grounded, easeful, and congruent. At this point you may naturally rise back up and out of your issue with a feeling of accomplishment. This feeling is quite different from stopping without resolution, or getting distracted.

Intentionally devise intelligent ways to take care of any real needs you have discovered underneath your discomfort or emotional pain. You may, for example, need to set a boundary, establish time for yourself, speak out, change a habit, or begin to talk with yourself more kindly.

Doing this sort of practice actually develops areas of your brain. Using your intelligence to process anxious feelings actually reduces firing in the part of your brain related to anxiety. This type of intervention also helps to develop brain function related to sensing. Practicing sensing and talking intelligently to yourself about your emotions develops the ability to change your state intentionally.

The Well of Grief
By David Whyte

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.

What cues tell you when you are in an expanded or contracted state?

Notice when your heart opens or closes. How does having your heart open or closed bias the types of solutions you are able to access?

Let’s look at the way the pain body operates when we take significant steps to improve our lives:

The pain body is an amalgamation of prior experience and an expression of our subconscious personality defense structure. As such, it can kick into gear when we begin to grow emotionally.

The pain body becomes most active under two different circumstances. The obvious one is when we become “triggered” (set off emotionally) by circumstances that mimic old wounds, or become re-wounded. The less obvious is when we begin to make some real headway in our lives toward moving OUT OF circumstances, energies, habits, relationships, or other conditions that keep our pain body in control. In other words, when we make real emotional or spiritual progress, the pain body kicks in to subvert this forward movement.

Why does this happen? We get scared. We get afraid we cannot do it, or sustain it, or manage the life changes, or that we will be SEEN or be vulnerable, or lose something we associate with security. For example, someone may fear that by becoming emotionally healthy they will not longer be able to tolerate their marriage or job, or that they will be drawn to a spiritual activity their friends may judge.

Look at this process as an unconscious movement toward homeostasis. It’s as if we snap-lock back to the same settings after a temporary change. We want to feel good–but what will it cost us to make the changes? We will have to rework parts of our lives, stand differently, breathe differently, say different things, attend different events.

Identity, while seemingly abstract, asserts itself at this point in the growth process. We want transformation, but will be be OURSELVES if we get it? Self-definition is a bugaboo. When we think we ARE a particular why, and that is our SELF, real change can be met with nothing short of a fear of self-destruction, which equates to death as far as the ego is concerned. The pain body tells us that we need our defenses–including defense against real change–to prevent death.

Being aware of the conflict between living into what we really want while being drawn back into our most unpleasant patterns is one of the most awkward and uncomfortable junctures in personal growth.

From an energy perspective, our situation tends to be intensified by external energies that are drawn to and feed on emotional conflict, pain, and distress–especially when our conflict is subconscious. We may also take on non-useful mental or emotional energy from people around us by being in resonance with their frequencies. This is one reason we can get thrown off from an expanded state by interfacing with friends.

For the reason above, breakthrough processes like transformation workshops sometimes rely on getting people into an environment away from their daily lives and anyone who is not a part of the process. What is rarely addressed in expansive work is the nearly inevitable backwash from the pain body, which seeks to reestablish emotional homeostasis once one is required to live into the changes.

Compassion is the get-out-of-jail-free card. The pain body–and the assorted energies it draws in–maintains itself on self-judgment, self-loathing, and resistance to being our true selves. The surest way to disentangle ourselves and slim down the pain body is to RELAX our way out of the patterns. Learning to bring forward self compassion as we encounter our issues is the key to release.

How does YOUR pain body kick in when you are on the brink of something you deeply long for?

What does it tell you will happen if you really do make the life changes that will allow you to have what you want?

What does it FEEL like to be aware of the pain body?

When we become aware of the pain body we feels something like:

• Sinking into a pit of shame or despair
• An overwhelming sense of incapacity
• Grief, panic, or distress, screaming through body sensation
• Intense emotional-blending-into-physical pain
• Feeling incapacitated by emotional intensity
• Being crammed through a very small hole
• Stinging almost burning or cold pain like a sheet or shape around you
• Alternations of nervous energy with exhaustion

For the most part we do anything and everything to AVOID experiencing our pain body, including:

• Numbing out with alcohol, drugs, excessive work, excessive sleep
• Overeating or destructive eating
• Perfectionism
• Extreme exercise
• Sex or porn addiction
• Watching too much television
• Obsessive engagement with Facebook
• Creating conflict to distract from deeper or more frightening pain
• Saying we’re fine and over-focusing on other people
• Motormouth
• Compulsively disappearing into books or research
• Constantly poking your electronic device instead of actually connecting with people
• Wallowing in negative emotion or being stuck in self pity
• Fantasizing or enacting violence against self or others
• Sapping other people’s energy
• Becoming demanding
• Habitual irrelevance
• Chronic complaining

Numbing behaviors are called ‘narcotization.’ These behaviors are automatic. We are not fully present when we engage in them. The problem with these behaviors–even the ones with silver linings like working too much–is that they do not resolve your pain. The pain and avoidance behaviors keep looping on and on. Then we get drained and the results are not positive.

I am not suggesting losing yourself in your pain, but finding yourself THROUGH your pain.

Notice the ways you ‘narcotize.’ What does it cost you?

I am not suggesting wallowing in pain. Wallowing is static. I am talking about freeing yourself for wholesome feeling, so you can move forward.

I am not suggesting becoming engrossed in negative interpretations about life. I am suggesting noticing, sensing, feeling, expressing, and relieving your pain by being fully present to it so it can release.

You can’t get anything positive by trying to avoid, deny, or get rid of part of your experience. Resistance and denial harden your heart and deafen you to compassion. Compassion heals.

Truly and fully FEELING pain relieves it–message delivered, energy expressed. When we do NOT feel or express it, pain impressions build up until we DO feel it.

How do we hit the “reset button” when pain has built up?

• RECEIVE your pain first. When you fully FEEL it, ALLOW it to dissolve as you attend to it tenderly.
• Do the inquiry exercises in the previous few posts
• Don’t take things personally

Act as if the purpose of your life is to come to full acceptance of everything that happens to you in its course.

Suppose trying to be happy creates unnecessary unhappiness. Instead: ALLOW yourself to be happy. Allow yourself to feel it when you are NOT happy. Let your state flow and change like the river of life.

Around, beyond, and underneath experience is an essential form of happiness. It exists regardless of circumstances and conditions. As we learn to flow with ourselves we can feel this interesting kind of happiness flirting around the edges of our awareness, even during difficult moments.

How do YOU sense chronic emotional pain?

Where do you tend to feel it? Is it IN your body, AROUND IT, or both?

Do you ever feel enveloped or contained by pain?

The Prophet (on Pain)

Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder
at the daily miracles of your life,
your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
Even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Kahlil Gibran (1883 – 1931)

I have mentioned the pain body in previous posts. We have explored why would you care to feel it, but I have provided only a vague idea of what it may be. Let’s examine pain body more closely:

The pain body is like a record of everything painful and difficult that we have experienced. It is an accumulation of impressions, memories, and sensations. When it gets activated by a painful event, the pain body can get us in a power grip and stop us in our tracks. It can potentially cause us to act out.

The Pain Body may have survival value, like learning to avoid putting your hand on a hot stove. When the pain body accumulates momentum from repeated trauma and it is activated by circumstances or associations, it can take over and drive the personality. Self sabotage, emotional deadness, habitual belligerence, acting nice as a defense, annoying other people to get attention, draining people’s energy, shutting down intimacy and other heavily entrenched behavior patterns express an overactive pain body.

The pain body represents the container or limit we hit when we attempt to step out of habitual or dysfunctional behaviors only to find ourselves limited or trapped by the feelings underneath them and our automatic responses. Related conditions are fairly resistant to most treatments and interventions. Self-awareness and intention over time are necessary to lighten up the pain body.

Why is it called a body? 

Accumulated energy from intense pain we have experienced is contained in our energy fields. If we pay close attention, those of us who sense energy can FEEL it around us. When it is active, the pain body has a specific shape, size, sensation, and energy-texture.

Encountering the pain body, we usually just want to get RID OF IT. We cannot. We can, however, gradually reduce its energy charge so it becomes less and less active. And we can use it for Awakening.

Self-sabotage can be seen as the pain body becoming active and temporarily taking control over our actions.

Your pain body can make you:

• React automatically instead of making an intentional response
• Sick when you need to go to a job interview or confront your partner
• Fight with your sweetie when you just want to be close
• Meek when you’re usually powerful
• Dominating when you feel vulnerable
• Cold or mean when you need something
• Pass by or overlook important opportunities
• Tell someone you want something different from what you really want
• Withdraw when you want attention
• Stay ‘in control’ instead of letting people in (when being controlling is the behavior you cannot control)

It’s really hard to ‘see’ the pain body because it’s almost always protected by denial. You get Inner Work Extra Credit if you notice it. 🙂

Since deep pain is protected by psychological defenses and often unconscious, the pain body obstructs spiritual awakening. It keeps us asleep; automatic. Becoming aware of it is a breakthrough of awareness. This makes the pain body a portal or doorway to self-development. Feeling it is a positive accomplishment.

What are your beliefs and assumptions about pain, shame, sadness, and grief?

In what ways do these beliefs affect the ways in which you express pain or grief?

Mastery with Inquiring Within makes us adept at sensing and reading energy.

While some of you may be well versed in personal and emotional inquiry, others may find trying to catch a glimpse of uncharted inner territory vague or even unnerving. The dance between awareness and subconscious processes is complex and fascinating. Each of us can discover new depths or previously-hidden facets.

No matter how committed we are to awareness, parts of ourselves can be wily and hide out. Active curiosity about how and why we hide things from ourselves is a positive stance. Interested engagement allows the neutral Observer or Witness part to do its magic, giving us non-reactive access to our inner worlds.

Here are some Inner Sensing Question Chains which may be useful for inquiring within:

What, exactly, am I actually sensing or feeling in this moment?
When did these sensations begin?
Where do I feel them in my body?
Exactly what sensations am I having?
Do these sensations seem to relate to any events, memories or particular emotions?
How would I describe them?
Do they change as I attend to them or describe them?
If these sensations express an emotion, what would it be?
What body posture am I in, or do I feel pulled toward?
If I saw someone else in this posture, what might they be feeling?

Did anything happen to bring up these sensations or feelings?
Do they feel in any way familiar?
When have I felt this before?
What was going on in my life at that time?
Did something remind me of an event from my past?
What similar feelings do I have now?

Did I react to something I recently heard or saw?
In what manner am I reacting?
What am I resisting?
What do I actually want?
Does my current reaction help or hinder getting what I really want?
Are there any actions I can take to increase my odds of getting what I want in a clean and direct way?

What is my energy doing in related areas of my body, chakras, and in my energy fields?
Are any areas congested, scattered, burdened, sparse, absent, patchy, locked up, over-amped, dull, or screaming intense?
What clues does my energy give me about what is going on inside me, and visa versa?

What other feeling is UNDERNEATH this feeling?
. . .  And underneath THIS feeling?
. . . And THIS one?
. . . And . . .

Where do I go inside when I encounter this feeling?
What do I make it mean about me that I feel this?
Is it true, or merely a biased interpretation or judgment?
What do I actually need when I feel this way?
Is there any chance I am trying to use this feeling or my reaction to it to try and get something I want?
How do I hope this resulting state will cause others to treat me?
How do these feelings cause me to treat myself?

When and where did I learn this pattern of behavior?
Does it work for me?
Is there a clear and direct way to get what I want?

Pay special attention to symptoms. Symptoms frequently mask denied emotion. Get curious about them, like looking underneath rocks to see what might be there.

Cultivating a positive relationship with our discomfort is a major key to self realization.

Diving into discomfort may not be cheery, but it creates access to the parts of ourselves and the reasons we need comfort. Naturally this leads to healing. Unlike pulling away, shutting down, or numbing out, awareness gives us REAL CHOICE.

Discomfort can been seen as a call for awareness.

Discomfort is an essential form of guidance.

If you may find it of assistance, feel free to copy the above question list and paste it into a file so you can print it out and refer to it. In the next post I will suggest related practices for self discovery.

What is YOUR typical response to discomfort?

How does this response serve you?