Recoiling From Pain Intensifies It

Recoiling from pain is futile.  For me, trying to do so actually makes it worse.  It significantly intensifies it.

This goes for any kind of pain--physical, emotional, mental or spiritual.  But in this instance, I am referring to physical pain--the kind that brings deep suffering on every level of existence.

Part of the problem is that I unconsciously resist pain.  This is an automatic and very unconscious response from me.  I don't like feeling pain.  Resisting it always comes first for me.  

In the resistance, I begin tensing up my muscles and my joints in some kind of unconscious effort to brace myself to surmount and bear the pain.

It is not easy to stay conscious and aware that I am in pain avoidance mode. Usually I discover it when I am feeling even more pain and I do a "body check," and I realize that my entire body is now into the resistance of the experience.

It is completely natural to want to avoid things that feel so uncomfortable.

A total mind-blower to me is my discovery that by mentally directing my attention into the center of the pain, facing it, focusing on it, allowing it and accepting it, alters it in a positive way for me.  

This seems very illogical to me.  But I am here to tell you that sometimes it is the only thing that brings relief.

Perhaps the relief comes from not adding the extra tensing and anxiety to the already difficult experience to bear.

I am not sure.  But I know that for me, relief is in the heart of the pain.  That doesn't necessarily mean that acceptance and allowing makes it go completely away.  But it surely does bring some peace and liberation from the depths of the suffering.

Try it!  What have you got to lose?  Maybe some pain!!

Love and Hugs,
Barbara

© Copyright 2009-2015, Transformation Of A Mystic | Barbara F. Manning. 

All Rights Reserved

 Thank you Google Images, for the Commercial Reuse of your Images!

 

Exhausted and Trusting

I am whooped beyond my understanding.  It does not make any sense that I could get so very depleted and from such little exertion.

But it is what is, for now. 

I used to have such high energy.  But I have over-expended it many, many times, too.  I miss all the energy I had in my past!  Boy, do I miss that a bunch!

The pattern for me lately is that I get myself back into an energy flow and then...WHAM, it all drains out of me like someone pulled the plug on my energy tank.

I've got things I want to do.  I've got places I want to go.  I want to have the energy to do these things.  

It is hard to be patient with myself!

But I do not have energy--not this minute, anyway.

It is alright.

There is a Phoenix in me, readying to be reborn.  I've seen this pattern in me before.  It is not easy to trust this process.  But it is always the truth that I do rise up out of the ashes.

I will again.

For now, I will Trust...

Love, Hugs & Blessings,
Barbara

© Copyright 2009-2013, Transformation Of A Mystic | Barbara F. Manning. 

All Rights Reserved

Thank you Google Images for the Commercial Reuse of your Images!

Grounded Bird

         Thank You, MiKa, for permission to use your  

     awesome artwork! http://mikaartblog.blogspot.ca/

It sure is not easy being grounded, recovering from foot surgery.  I have had one bizarre reaction after another since the surgery--some physical, some psychological and all of them Spiritual wake up calls!

I have had procedures before and never had this kind of experience.  This time there was not enough Propofol, a general anesthesia medication that is in short supply in the country due to the discovery of spinal meningitis bugs in some vials of it.  Because of this, another general anesthesia was used for me.  

As I awoke from the surgery, I was in a massive panic attack.  It was very uncomfortable!  Every time I lapsed back into sleep/unconsciousness for the next 24 hours, I awoke often and with a start, in the same panicked state!  

It was so hard being in my body, and not be able to create peace and calm!  I kept going into a meditative state, only to lapse into unconsciousness and then waking again very soon, back in the same miserable state--so far from peace that it was hard to cope!

Each time I awoke the panic was about not being able to take care of myself!   

I had a less invasive procedure on my foot with my intention being to create the healing needed so that I will never go to the next, much more involved level to repair my Achilles Tendon.  But as I was waking and panicking, I was unable to hold onto that.  I was not able to understand that I was not in that space of the full-blown, one to two year recovery time, with the biggest part of that non-weight bearing.  I am just in a place of a few weeks of restriction--though, still nothing to ignore or discount, either.

As the week progressed after surgery, it became apparent that I developed some kind of sensitivity to the solution the hospital used on my leg in preparation for the surgery.  My entire leg itched like crazy for days!

Then I decided to color my hair, using a brand I have used for a very long while, and I ended up with a burned scalp! 

It is like my whole body, mind and spirit are on hyper-alert!  So much about me is on edge and reacting in strange ways right now!

I wish I could say that I am through this and in peace about it all.  But in this week following the surgery, I have found myself again, lapsing back into concern about the future and my foot, and way more than just my foot. 

As I have said many times here, I don't believe in accidents.  I am certain that all that has happened with me is shining Light upon my Spiritual Achilles Heel--that being my huge need to be in control of me, of not being able to ask for help well and of not being able to allow in from others well.  This experience is nudging me into even deeper healing work than I have ever done previously about these personal issues of mine.

I am open to whatever God is showing me.  I ask for the courage to keep walking, (OK--hobbling, literally and metaphorically for now, ) into the Spiritual work here to teach me to open my heart bigger, to let go of control better and to allow others kindnesses and assistance more in my life.

I surrender to my needing of others assistance, of having much difficulty asking for help, and asking anyway, and to the intense vulnerability all of this brings to me.  I embrace the vulnerability!

I am grateful for the crutches that help support me.  I am grateful for the family and friends that step forward to help me, (even as I work through my ineptness with all of this.)  I am grateful for the opportunity to learn about this and to heal my significant quirks about all this stuff in me and my life!

 

Love, Hugs &  Blessings,

Barbara

Thank you Google Images for the Commercial Reuse of the Crutches Image!

Copyright 2013.  Transformation of a Mystic.  Barbara F. Manning

 

"What Is Shame?"

What are the tears of Shame?

For me, tears of Shame are about a feeling of disgrace, an embarrassment to others, and to myself. It is about humiliation and dishonor on some deep level of my heart where there is nothing left but a need for separation and severance, to hide out from myself and from others, so that I do not have to feel it…or risk annihilation—either self-annihilation, or being murdered by another for being so hopelessly flawed and unacceptable.

When Shame hits for me, it makes me want to turn inside out of myself, get beside myself so that I do not have to be present to feel it, let alone, to know about it. The pain of Shame is so great that it sucks the breath from my lungs and sends me to the depths of hell.

Shame feels like riding a bucking bronco—one that I often cannot even allow myself to know that I’m riding before I begin the dance of hiding, of defending myself from it, so that I do not have to experience it consciously. 

Shame automatically goes underground in me.

Chocolate—and a lot of it, is usually my go-to drug to help me keep Shame out of my awareness.

What is the texture of Shame? 
Shame is prickly, heavy, hot, overwhelmingly scratchy and rough. It feels bad. It feels wrong. It cuts me until I bleed at my very core.

What does Shame smell like? 
It smells acrid. It smells like burning flesh. It smells like death.

What is the shape of Shame? 
The very first shape I see when I go into my inner-sight is that of a very heavy anvil, plummeting from on high, over a cliff and directly onto Wile E. Coyote’s head! The next shape I see is that of a beautiful spiral galaxy, with a huge black hole in the center, sucking up everything in its path into the vortex of a hell like no other.

How does Shame taste? 
It tastes bitter, brackish, sour, toxic, down-right poisonous, ultimately fatal.

It brings with it a landslide of other emotions and feelings: Fear, Distrust, Judgment, and Pain.

What color is Shame? 
The first flash of color I see is yellow—the yellow of cowardice. Perhaps this is because Shame brings me to a place of spinelessness, of fearfulness, of great weakness and despair. Ultimately, when I hang on for the Shame ride, there is blackness…darkness so pervasive that I cannot see anything beyond it. I do not want to see anything beyond it because the fear of it is so big. I only want it to go away.

Shame sucks the breath out of me, makes my skin crawl, my teeth grit and my jaws ache from the clenching and the bracing of myself against it.

But…

If I can stay present in the feeling of Shame, allowing it and embracing it, (which often doesn’t happen because I usually have already shored myself up against it, defended myself out of feeling it, somehow gone unconscious at the first hint of it in my energy field,)…but…if I can stay present with it, beyond the darkness is Light. 

The Light is tiny and far off at first, and then, ever growing in depth and girth and brightness until it is all there is! In it comes deep compassion, love, acceptance, healing…and great gratitude for being brought through it--IF I can stay on that bucking bronco long enough to find the Light in it! 
 

--Thank you Looney Tunes for my borrowing of Wile’s Photo.

Copyright 2012. Transformation of a Mystic. Barbara F. Manning