Meeting ourselves.
When we meet an experience that we don't like, that we can't control, or that triggers past conditioning in us we can feel our body's tense up. We contract "Against" the experience. It may be that we close off in the heart centre, in the belly, in our arms and legs or our whole body can go into freeze.
Its quite painful to contract against something, it makes us feel isolated within out skin, we feel cut off from everyone around and our thinking starts to go haywire as clarity leaves.
In these situations we either shut down, or act completely out of accordance with what we know to be true, and cause more harm to the situation and ourselves.
When our body contracts, it restricts our response and veils our perception and we feel stuck.
If we where to give these contractions a word, that word would be "NO!"
These never unwind by fighting them. At a certain point in our individual evolution we learn to meet these contractions of energy. To step out of the continuous thought stream and bring our attention down into the painful contraction. Into the body
At a certain point in ones life there comes the realisation that thinking isn't actually solving anything, it just creates more thinking, and more thinking. So we have a choice at this stage, to bring our attention down into the felt sense of the moment. No matter how painful. To stay with the pain, with the contraction and breathe with it.
We have spent our whole lives running away from whats happening within our body, away from these contractions and painful energies, by trying to change ourselves, by trying to become better people, more spiritual people, to make more money, to rescue and impress others, by trying to think positive thoughts, to act like we have it all together or whatever it may be for you. Most of human behaviour has actually been driven by escaping this simple act, of coming down and feeling.
Finally, we can stop running. And we can meet ourselves as the beautiful broken messes that we are.
Peace,
Matt Nettleton
Senior KI facilitator and trainer
www.mattnettleton.com
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