Sex and HeartHow I transformed devastation into love and loving lust

I often suggest sinking into feeling before falling asleep, deeply into whatever feeling it is, for this is the time when you are at your most vulnerable, when you are most open and thus available to suggestion and change. It’s a fabulous way to rewire your neural connections.

If you fall asleep immersed in good feeling feelings, you are training your body and mind to accustom to these feelings again and thus feel them more frequently and with increasing levels of comfort.

I was asked a wonderful question this morning though. If you fall asleep while feeling bad, while your mind is looping negative thoughts, when your gremlins are yapping away at you, won’t you reinforce feeling bad, or maybe you will reprogram yourself back to the old ways?

It would seem contradictory to say NO to this question, yet it’s not at all.

When you are asleep your body goes into a very deep state, deeply relaxed, deeply receptive too. If you check in with your body the second you wake up, EVERYTHING is completely and utterly at ease. Nothing hurts anywhere, not physically or emotionally.

You may only be able to feel this for a split second, for you could start to tighten up right away. This is simply habit, your protective mechanisms kicking back in, unwarranted maybe but there nonetheless. But the whole time you were asleep, you were in total relaxation.

Your body WANTS this, craves it even. It wants to feel good, at peace, calm, but we immediately start to THINK upon awakening, and the tensions set in, the negative, gremlin voices may start talking to you too. Your fears take over, and you close down a little here, a little there, maybe a lot, and maybe you are even unaware of any of it.

When you are on the brink of sleep, when you can really sink into whatever feeling you are having at this time, you WILL have even more of an opportunity to transform when you fall more deeply still, deep into a state of sleep. The bad feeling stuff will be more able to move through you and more quickly. The good feeling stuff will be more able to settle into you on a cellular level.

So you might ask, why would the good feeling stuff stay with you somewhere in your body if only as a trace memory and the bad feeling stuff move on out?

You were born in a pure state. Somewhere inside, your body, mind, heart, and soul remember this; they know this peaceful state, and desperately wish to feel this and be this, as in coming home. They will soak good feeling stuff up like a dessicated sponge.

The other stuff is at core foreign. Remember we are all born as love.  So you will in a sense reject it. Reject is not the best choice of word, for that seems like passing judgment, so maybe it’s more of the body wanting to let this stuff go because it’s not what it knows nor needs to thrive on at core. It’s not what you really desire despite the constant barrage in your waking state.

In the sleep state, your body can operate from its wisdom which we aren’t always so much while awake. Your smart being releases what doesn’t feel good, and it incorporates what does feel good.

And so when you know this on a conscious level, you can keep at it so that more and more your sleeping wise being more closely aligns with your awake being though I would say that our sleeping body’s eyes are far more open and awake, and our awake body far more asleep with eyes wide closed.

The body and mind really DO want peace and love. ALWAYS and ALL THE TIME.
xxoo

It’s possible to be a good person and not love yourself. Not loving yourself doesn’t make you evil, troubled maybe but not necessarily bad.

But doesn’t this sound limiting? Yet loving yourself for most of us is not an easy thing to achieve.

Since many of us were made to feel unworthy or undeserving at tender ages, as in we were maybe abused, physically, emotionally, or both, or we were neglected or ignored, the message received would have been the same whichever scenario you experienced.

“I must not be lovable.” or “I must be a bad person.” or “If I was (any number of things which I will leave to your imagination and the memories of your past) my parents would love me take care of, cherish me.”

You would surely have tried to gain their love, and certainly you would have thought that maybe if I try harder to be good or if I do more chores or if I do better at school or whatever it was, then they will love me. And your efforts mostly if not always proved fruitless, didn’t they? But you kept on trying, didn’t you?

And you carried this with you through your younger years and on into adulthood. You may have come to know intellectually that you are as deserving of love as anyone. Yet you don’t own this, not completely. You still carry levels of self-loathing. You still “beat yourself up” over small things, big things, anything. You still treat yourself badly sometimes, maybe by not taking care of your health through poor eating, exercise, or sleeping habits or telling yourself nasty things such as “you’re ugly or stupid”.

Changing these patterns is difficult, especially if you never knew love during the critical years of early childhood. Your caregivers’ love maybe was there somewhere, but it was too deeply hidden in the deep and wounded recesses of their own hearts, so it felt as if not there to you.

Learning to love yourself when you don’t really know love is a challenge, but it’s a doable one. IF you want it. It’s as important maybe more so if you want to then continue on to have a special someone with whom to share this love. Look at this in another way; if you don’t love yourself, how can another person love you?

First of all to cheat yourself of yourself sounds so sad. Even if you can love yourself a little bit, this makes all the difference. You can build on this. It may ebb and flow, but if some sort of spark of self-love is there smoldering, love CAN grow between two people, as it blooms for yourself.

And every time you love on yourself and/or have good thoughts about yourself, this registers in you, in your brain, in your body, and in your heart. And this is how you rewire neural connections. This is how to grow love for YOU. And loving yourself makes room for another to love you. The more you learn to love YOU, the more they can love you too.

This is a hard one though, as I said, especially in the early stages or for those who come from a dearth of love backgrounds. We have to train ourselves not to be expecting the other shoe to drop at any moment. We have to teach ourselves over and over again to revel instead of wallow.

And each time you feel the tentative feelings of joy disrupted, your beautiful feeling cocoon you have created burst, as in someone says something to throw you or is abrupt with you or slights you whether it’s misperceived or not, yes you will feel awful for awhile, but it’s not the end. You can overcome.

You will have to tell yourself each time and maybe for always that this person’s reaction or outburst has NOTHING to do with you. NOTHING. And you can still love yourself despite what goes on around you.

AND each time you are able to reconnect to your good or better feeling feelings in a positive way, the more solid and secure you will feel within. So every time something or someone attempts or succeeds in upsetting this, the easier it will be to NOT let them affect you at all or at least allow you to re-establish the good feelings more quickly. You won’t feel as if tossed into a pit.

Everything you do in your life is your choice, even if it doesn’t seem like it, even if it seems out of your control. You have the choice to change. It may not feel comfortable getting to where it is you want to go, but that again is your choice. Do you want to go through a phase where you are out of your comfort zone to feel good, or would you rather stay where you are within your self-created illusion of safety and not feel so good as an example.

You have the choice here to love yourself in each and every moment, and this may feel unbelievably scary to you, for the thought of changing these deep feeling thought patterns around this can be terrifying even if it’s something you desire. Yet the choice is there. What are you willing to live with? For now? For later?

At some point it will have to feel so bad for you that you will feel at the end of your rope, and you WILL refuse to tolerate it anymore. Then you will take your first steps.

Learning to love and adore myself is something I have danced with and around most of my life. It’s not been an easy lesson to learn to say the least. And quite honestly I still struggle with it at times.

Let’s say for example I feel bad. Maybe I’ve been feeling bad a lot of the time. I ask myself if this is habit. Yes it is, yet it’s also part of my original programming. Do I want to feel good or at least better? Of course, but still I feel bad. And I just can’t seem to pull out of it.

Yes it could be hormones at play, BUT bottom line it is MY choice to feel good, so when I feel stuck, I can swim about in my moaning how this isn’t the way I want it; that isn’t right; this feels bad; I feel inadequate, BUT I can also look around and see how much wonderfulness I do have, how hard I have worked to create much of this wonderfulness, and I can choose to take pleasure in that instead. If I made that choice, I would instantly feel better, if only a little.

Feelings come and go all day long, all life long. One thing you can count on is that they will move and shift. You CAN choose to have those feelings come from love.

You deserve to feel your own love. It’s good. It’s beautiful. Enjoy it as much as you are able in this moment, in every moment. You can learn to love you more and more, SO much even and all of you, even the parts you may not like so much. They’ll love you back soon enough.

So love on yourself tonight. Love on yourself all day, every day. Be it kind words. Or a smile to yourself as you pass a mirror. Or maybe blow yourself kisses. Or take a hot bubble bath or shower. Or self-pleasure. Or anything that makes you feel warm and safe and LOVED.

xxoo

This question has come up often enough that I feel it needs addressing. How long does it take to heal?

Clearly everyone is different. We all have different issues and degrees and depths of issues to heal, our hurts, traumas, fears. Within these areas of healing, each one of us has varying levels of tolerance to the pain that will arise and the courage and resilience to work through the pain which healing entails.

This question is not an easy one; in fact it’s an impossible one to answer, but what I can let you in on is what to expect while you work through your issues, as you walk your healing path though anything I posit may NEVER come to be for YOU, or you may experience each and every one I detail and then some, things I haven’t anticipated.

First of all whatever you feel and whenever you feel it is perfectly NORMAL. You will never be alone in your feelings. There will always be someone or many someones out there who feel just as you do. So you can at least put aside any notion that you are weird, different, or broken in any way.

As you walk, skip, jump, or run about on your journey, you may wonder at times if you are changing at all. Sometimes you will feel sure you’re not, as in you are stuck in the mud and muck that is your maybe your lot in life, as in you will feel like this, icky, low, depressed, forever.

But there will be other times you will be just as sure you are moving forward, as in everything looks a little brighter and smilier, so shiny and beautiful, rainbow colored, YES!!!

Yet there will be other  times you’re just not sure of anything at all. Any and all of this is NORMAL.

You may feel so lost at times.

You may feel like you don’t understand any of it, you, your partner, nothing at all. This too is NORMAL.

You may wonder if you are doing it the right way. There is no right way. Whichever way you do it, whichever road you choose or find yourself on is right for you, for YOU. Whatever works for you even if only a little is right for YOU.

You may at times wonder if it’s even possible for you to change at all. Are your issues maybe too deeply ingrained? Do you have what it takes, the perseverance, the fortitude, the ability? Is it too late for you? Are you a hopeless case? My answer to all of these questions and any others like them is this; if you have the desire, even if it’s just a hint, if you can imagine it, even if it’s just a wisp of an image, then you CAN do this.

The only way through the sometimes very dark tunnels is to go through them. Sooner or later there will be light. The farther down the path you walk, the shorter will be those tunnels and the sooner will there be rays of sunshine, for the most part.

However big or small your steps may feel, they are huge simply because you are doing this work on yourself at all. It will feel sometimes that you haven’t gone anywhere at all, backwards even, but that’s just not possible.

Once this journey has been embarked upon, the journey will continue, sometimes seemingly without your consent or approval. It can feel at times as if it has a life of its own.

AND you can’t fall into old patterns because you will know it, feel it immediately, and you WILL stop yourself before you continue into the once familiar pattern. You won’t be able to do it any other way anymore. And in time the old familiar will feel totally foreign, and the new familiar will feel like just that, familiar if not comfortable, at least once in awhile.

You may feel like you’ll never get there. Well this part is true. Where is there anyway? BUT you will eventually feel a nicer flow, a more relaxed feeling around most things. Things, life will just feel easier. Your heart will feel more open and loving and receiving of love. And really what else is there?

So how long your personal journey will take to where you feel as though you’ve come to that “somewhere”, a better feeling place, a more peaceful state? This is undetermined. It may take a short amount of time, or it may feel like forever. However it plays out for you, know this, this journey is a lifelong process/proposition.

So the short answer, really the only answer to the question, “how long?”, is that there is no definitive answer to this question.

It will be what it is for YOU. And please sink into it all, every icky feeling and every wonderful feeling and everything in between. The deeper you can sink, the sooner will you heal.

xxoo

Have you ever woken up one morning feeling as if the world is pressing down so hard on you that you feel as though you may very well crumble and break into pieces? Negative or “bad” thoughts swirl ceaselessly in your brain making you feel as if you are losing your mind?

Or maybe you feel as if you want to give up? You may yearn to crawl back into bed, pull the covers over you and sleep all day, all week, forever.

Has the sadness taken over, overwhelming you to the point that you feel as though you will sink so far down you may drown in the sorrow? You may feel as though you are falling into a bottomless pit.

And have these feelings seemed to come from nowhere in particular? As in nothing special or notable happened to cause them?

You feel so awful. You feel as though you are being crushed. Or you feel as though you are melting. The tears are at the ready, about to fall at any moment. Maybe they do. Maybe they flow like a river, streaming down your cheeks. Your hearts aches. Your body may hurt too. You just feel SO awful. And you don’t know why.

There seems to be no reason for this. Your life is mostly wonderful or at least good. Maybe you have a man who loves and adores you. Maybe you have a successful career or at least one that fulfills you if not compensates you nicely. Maybe your life is mostly filled with things you like to do and are passionate about even. Things aren’t perfect, but there’s no such thing anyway.

You “should” feel happy, ecstatic even, but you don’t. And to add to these tear filled feelings, you feel guilty for feeling like this. You have a lot. You have more than so many. You know there should be NO shoulds in your life. There is nothing you should do. Yet you feel you shouldn’t feel this way.

But still you have woken up on this day feeling so bad. And you wonder what this is. And you ask yourself what you can do abut this.

Why is trickier, yet it’s not really. This journey you are on is a process. Yes? So as you walk along your path, there will be shifts, changes, letting gos, releases. Each time this happens, something unlocks inside, and what was in there will come spewing forth. And sometimes, like this time, it’s especially icky.

Usually it’s old stuff. Past hurts, ancient pains, old traumas. You have in essence opened up a relief valve, and all that has been living beneath this stopper wants to come out. And it can feel REALLY awful. In a sense you are re-feeling what once was. This is far different than re-living an experience. You will likely have no specific memories.

For example I carry areas of tightness in certain places in my body. These are all areas into which I stored my pain. I have over time become acutely aware of these places to the point of at times extreme frustration and anxiety because I feel them, every one of them, and they don’t feel nice, and they don’t seem to want to let go, or maybe they’re not ready, and they are in my way, keep me from feeling love, and I feel SO frustrated.

They don’t seem to leave me alone, won’t seem to set me free. I work at them, and I work at them. I’m kind to them. I try to embrace them, love them, but they hang on to me like what feels to me the strongest crazy glue yet to be created.

Oh yes sometimes I get respite, but far too soon the holdings come back or shift to another place. Yet when I’m calm and being honest, I can recognize that over time, bit by bit, they have been releasing. If I look back with open eyes and my heart as wide as I can manage, I can see and feel this. I do know that the more persistent ones carry my deepest fears, and this is what remains. This is what I still feel.

Sometimes it seems as though when there is finally a tiny shimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, I become almost more anxious and impatient, for I want it NOW. Yet on the other hand there may also be a fear of being free of the familiar even though it feels bad. Still it’s a known factor which may be why some of the tightness comes back, albeit to a lesser degree. It can be a nasty tug of war in a way.

I really, really want to be love, live as love, feel only love, but then what will that be like? Will it hurt more? Such extreme vulnerability. The unknown can be VERY scary. Still I really, really want this. I do.

The desire for freedom and peace is FAR stronger than the fear of something new. And one day, as in this morning when I feel life suffocating me in despair, one of the last tenuous threads that’s been in the way teases itself away from its mooring. Some of the way? All of the way? It remains to be seen or felt. This latest one is in the muscles behind my heart. As it strains to relinquish its hold, it feels as though a dam is breaking, and I am flooded with an ache so deep, so profound. I feel as though it’s going to push me beneath this onslaught of feeling.

Old “bad” thoughts surface, familiar yet at this point of my journey no longer comfortable in its familiarity. Old insecurities, old fears rush to the fore. My heart is literally at stake.

I instinctively want to fight these bad feeling feelings, but I know better, so instead I do all I can to welcome all of this because I know what’s happening to me. I know that this is an amazing opportunity for further growth, deeper releasing. It’s hard to go against what comes naturally, but I sink into these feelings as much as I can anyway.

The only way through this is to feel every awful feeling feeling that’s coming up so it can then pass through me and become something else, something much better feeling.

I know that this spell will pass, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for weeks (oh please not weeks this time; it’s so hard when it takes a longer time). But when I do come through to the other side, my heart will be even more free and open to love and to receive love. I will feel good, awesome even.

And this is how the journey to your heart and your soul, your very essence works. It can test you to your very limits, yet it will bring you rewards, joy, bliss you can maybe imagine but not really “get” until you feel it. I can do this. I want to do this. You?

xxoo

You will always be working through things. That’s life I suppose, that is if you wish to accept the challenge, to live as full a life as you can imagine, create, and maybe even and then some.

There are certainly those who choose to remain stagnant throughout their lives, maybe barely living is more accurate, for the work required to expand their horizons seems perhaps too difficult and/or too potentially painful.

This feels very sad to me, for there is SO MUCH more available to you to experience and with more depth and breadth if you are brave enough to plunge, headlong if need be, onto this path, the one that leads to YOU, to your core inside, your deepest depths.

I won’t lie to you and tell you that your path of life as a human will be entirely strewn with rose petals though some of it most definitely will be. There will be much that is beautiful, and there will be much that hurts. Believe me when I say the hurt is essential, for how would you know just how stunning the beauty if you never know the ugly and the painful? The richness, the joy, the bliss that will be your reward when you take yourself on in this way though is beyond the worth of any agony you might happen upon.

The trajectory of inner growth is never a straight line. I believe all would agree with this, but I have heard repeatedly from many sources that your journey is one of one step forward, two steps back, as you learn new ways of being and behaving, relinquishing habits that no longer serve you, trying on new patterns, releasing old traumas, making room for more, including more love, as you rewire old neural connections. With this I CANNOT agree.

I really hate when this is spoken. It sounds defeatist to me. It smacks of assured failures along the way. It reeks of negativity even though you will also be told, but you WILL make progress, albeit SLOWLY. I can imagine that anyone hearing words like this would want to give up before even starting. It’s feels awful.

There is something I wish to propose to you, an alternative viewpoint I wish to present. Try thinking about this completely differently.

You will NEVER take steps backwards. To go backwards once the journey has been embarked on is impossible. Absolutely, totally impossible. Whenever you are armed with knowledge which enhances your growth however small a tidbit it might be, whenever you let the smallest trace of old residue go, you have moved closer to the real you inside, the love being that you were born as and are still.

Yes you will likely stumble along the way. Yes you may trip over a root or a stone lying in your path. Yes you may twist your ankle. Yes you may even fall down big time, sprawled face down in the dirt, your knees skinned and bleeding, but you will NEVER, EVER fall backwards.

What you are doing is continuously walking that path deeper into your heart with maybe a distraction here or a diversion there, but to go backwards which sounds like retreat to me CANNOT happen. Try calling these as steps sideways. It’s far more positive. It feels doable. And doesn’t this feel so much better? This is the TRUTH as I see it and feel it.

xxoo