Recovery

It has been almost 9 months since I wrote a post called “The Relapse”

I have not been sticking to the valuable energy work that I have been taught, so I still feel I have taken a step or two backward.

This has given me a good standpoint to comment on what happens when you aren’t so careful in looking after your energetic self.

Let me recap though in case this is the first time you are reading one of my posts.

Around 4 years ago, I worked with my teacher to learn some amazing disciplines to look after my energetic/emotional state. They worked, I became way more objective and despite life throwing some decent curve-balls, I got to a place where I could face something difficult, work on the emotion, and bounce back fairly quickly.

I got to the point where I believe I had let go of some of the shallower traumas of my past. I reacted less from an emotional place and saw the great benefits of being objective. I even got to a point where I had a couple of quite profound spiritual experiences. Not entirely new to me, but I could tell that they were happening more because I was working on my inner world.

Then life got really shit for a while, hell time at work and my father passed away.

It’s not that I dumped my disciplines all together, I just didn’t put the necessary work in daily. Great shocks in our lives can diminish our internal fire… This can lead to a feeling of depression. It’s not necessarily depression though, we just need to work on increasing that internal fire once again. It’s all to do with how our internal/metaphysical energy works.

See “Fire and Water Chi”

So, I didn’t do that, or at least not enough, so the depressed feeling hung around. I indulged more my bad habits, especially alcohol. It’s levelled off now but I know through experience that it messes with my energy and does me about zero favours.

So here I am, present day, I am thankfully still with my partner and we have both started a promising new job.

The slip in energy work has made me a certain way now, and this is what I want to write about and comment on what happens, why, and what can be done about it.

First and foremost, that unreasonable voice in my head, full of judgments labels and predictions started to get a little noisier.

I have called this voice a few different things since starting this blog, perhaps what I’ll stick to is simply calling it “the Judge”. As this is it’s favourite thing to do. It sounds like our own thought processes but one of the most valuable things I have learnt is that it is not actually our “self”.

The priority then, in this line of energetic work is to start “witnessing” the activity of the judge and simply to recognise its patterns. The judge also likes to label and predict. The idea is not to get caught up in these thought processes, or to argue with them, just recognise them and internally say “stop”. This is a fundamental part of this energy work, to disengage with that awful part of our egos that tend to add misery and drama to our lives. Without doing this it becomes very difficult to release any stuck emotions.

I have certainly noticed this of late, the judge has been very noisy. The thing is with the judge is, unless we actively stop it, it is the same voice which will judge us in so many things we do. Identifying with this voice is truly unpleasant and has knock on effects to those around us.

I am not sure why, but it does take a fair bit of courage to own things and take responsibility for our actions. I think many of us like to blame others or at least external circumstances for our actions. It’s just easier to blame others for why we feel bad, and ironically, the worse we feel the more we blame and lash out at others.

I have certainly become more like this of late, and it really hasn’t been a picnic for my partner. Of course it doesn't seem to help us that we are both so sensitive, not much has to be said in order for the other to realise they've been judged for something. It’s human, no one likes to be judged.

So, my plan, currently...

STEP 1… Disengage with the judge,

STEP 2… Increase the fire.

I mentioned above how shocks, especially loss or bereavement can diminish our internal fire. It is easy to confuse this with depression… because that’s exactly how it feels, flat, sticky, heavy. It’s a horrible feeling place to be.

We work on this by increasing our internal fire. This is done mainly through lust and anger, there are other ways but this is what mainly works for me so I can write about it better. How is this done? We simply express, and express, and express. I get so sick of having to do this sometimes, but it does feel much better when I do it. Exactly like taking exercise, going to the gym etc

Lust would involve saying out loud a sexual fantasy that really gets you going, getting to the point that you feel very sexually aroused, and just keep going. Anger, likewise, you must spew and lose your shit. This can be hard to do as the judge will get in the way and make you feel bad for doing it. This is one of the many reasons on this path that we must disempower it. Remember, anger is JUST an emotion and not a problem in itself until you make it someone else's problem. Beware of the lust thing, it’s fine to express it, but it’s not an excuse to use someone else for your own needs.

ALL of these emotions and feelings can be adequately handled alone, and we don’t need another person to satiate them. It’s a bit weird to get your head around this, but once it’s experienced. it’s extremely empowering. We can get to a point of profound security, to know that we are uniquely equipped to deal with all of our emotional fluctuations without needing to pass them off or blame others.

As usual I have digressed a bit…

As I mentioned earlier, I believe I have shed quite a bit of the shallower hurts and trauma in my life by following these disciplines which I write about. What remains now is the deep stuff. Preceding this year I would say I was in a strong enough position to face this, but facing the deep stuff from my past plus the deep anger and grief I felt after my Dad passing really overwhelmed me.

Therefore I have been hiding somewhat, and it wont do. It’s making my life more uncomfortable than it needs to be at the moment.

I just had a thought whilst writing this. If I’m not doing what I’m talking about on this blog, there’s no point me doing it. So instead of struggling to the end of the post, I went to the garden shed and unloaded. Got into the anger that I’ve been speaking of. It feels better, a lot better. There is still more to do, I can feel something around the solar plexus (a normal area for the body to store anger). And that’s the way of it, ongoing work on this path is like this, something comes up and we release it, before it lodges and becomes toxic.

The permanence of this work can be a little overwhelming until we look at it as a lifestyle choice, something to do a little bit of every day. I’ve hated it, ran away from it, but also been incredibly grateful for it. I don’t care to think about what a person I’d be had I not taken on these disciplines.