What if the deepest pains you’ve carried your entire life hold the keys to your most profound breakthroughs, purpose, and fulfillment?
Do you ever feel depressed, anxious and frustrated with life, seeing no way out and no light at the end of the tunnel?
You feel unable to take control over the situation due to self doubt, low self esteem and a general trust in your own abilities?
That is how I used to feel. Getting out of bed in the morning caused dread, overwhelmed by the expectations I believed society had for me.
All I ever wanted to feel was the same ease, excitement and enthusiasm that I remembered from early childhood. The same childlike curiosity that made everything feel like a game.
You can download my guide: Mastering your emotions: The first step to success here.
The result:
Substance abuse, self destructive behavior and avoidance of taking responsibility.
This behavior creates a downward spiral, resulting in even lower self esteem and trust in my own abilities and my sanity.
I was avoiding my feelings, suppressing my emotions, numbing all the pain and running away from my fears. Seems logical right?
Run away from your fear, avoid negative emotions and suppress or numb your feelings and you will find the joy and happiness you have been looking for all along!
Wrong!
The wound is the place where the Light enters you. – Rumi
Life’s a paradox. It does not work that way! If you understand the true meaning of “All is One” you realize, one cannot be without the other. There cannot be another way!
Suddenly, my entire life changed. Like someone flipped a switch. A deeper understanding of life entered my mind.
There was unimaginable joy and happiness for being alive. For life itself. With everything it has to offer. That doesn’t mean that the pain is gone. But I was able to feel it, acknowledge it and detach myself from it.
It doesn’t paralyze me any longer.
Suppress your pain and you suppress your joy. Run from your fear and you never find courage.
We cannot selectively numb emotions. When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions. – Brené Brown
Pain, negative emotion and discomfort are messengers. They are signposts. Guiding your way forward. Illuminating your path and showing you the way towards healing.
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. – Kahlil Gibran
If you suppress them, numb them or run away from them, you get lost. You lose any form of reference. You’ll get lost in the fog, you lose your ability or see clearly.
That’s why prescription drugs or drugs in general are such a lucrative business. They take away your pain(temporarily), fail to address the root cause and keep you a dependent slave to drugs and to society – only to make you feel worse than before once the effects wear off.
I am not saying they can’t be(the have been for me) life savers. When you are at your lowest and can’t see the way out, but they are not a long term solution.
Healing is not possible without the symptoms. You just don’t know where to go without clear directions.
The symptoms are gifts. Listen to their message and acknowledge what they have to say. If not, they will only become louder and louder. There is a version inside of you that wants to be acknowledged, heard and accepted.
If you find gratitude for that version of who you are, you will experience joy, fulfillment, and a certain amount of freedom like never before.
Ignore it and it will continue screaming louder. A little child that doesn’t get the attention and love it deserves will start misbehaving and create negative attention. Negative attention is better than none.
That inner child of yours that wants to be heard acts in the same way.
What made the shift for me? A combination of meditations, psychedelics and Breathwork.
- Psychedelics showed me the beauty and the power of letting go, surrendering and the power of gratitude. Psychedelics also taught me the power of breathwork. During a ceremony, every single emotion and feeling gets amplified and you can literally change your state in a heartbeat – from standing at the abyss of hell to the greatest heights of heaven.
- Breathwork helped me release stuck emotions, made me change my belief of who I am and what I am capable of. It made me question everything I believed to be true about myself and challenge every single thought that enters my mind. It taught me trust in myself and, more important, trust in life.When I began trusting in life, I never wished for things to be different but accepted things the way they are. Breathwork teaches you the power of surrender. We are here to live, not to fight. Because life is what it is, whether I like it or not. I can either fight it and suffer or surrender and thrive.
- Breathwork has been the most powerful practice for me, simply because: It teaches you to rely on everything you have inside already, without having to take any substance and, you can achieve results that will take decades with meditation. Still, meditation continues to be an important part of my life. Meditation is not just sitting still for an hour – it is going through life with constant awareness.
If you are troubled by “undesired” emotions, let emotions influence your actions or harm your relationships with loved ones, do whatever it takes to become a master of them. Don’t let them control you.
Don’t waste more time letting anger, frustration or other forms of pain paralyze you. Learn to master your emotions and you will learn to master your mind.
