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The Perfect Storm, Our Healing Challenges

Topic: Addiction and RecoveryBy David Ott, M.Ed.Published Recently added

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The Perfect Stormr
Our Role In Healing Dramas

I am always amazed how innocently we enter and how perfectly we are cast for the relationships and healing dramas we are drawn into. If we or others have a lesson to learn or emotional wounds and fears to experience for healing and release, ego needs, circumstance and opportunity all come together in some unexplainable way to create a perfect storm to shatter all our carefully constructed walls and defenses. In hind site, it looks like some all-knowing writer and director have created the perfect drama and cast the perfect actors to play each and every role. Ego needs, weaknesses and strengths are all taken into account so that the words and actions from each character, including us, flow forth effortlessly to produce the perfect plot, conflict, action and climax.

In order to release and heal our emotional pain and fear we need only experience and suffer through it without blame, anger, or any other defensive strategy. To gain this kind of healing opportunity, it is obvious that all our carefully built controls and defenses need to be shattered so the emotional wounds and fears beneath can be experienced and released. The suffering we experience is directly proportional to the energy we put into resisting or avoiding this process. “What we resist will persist and strengthen.” The healing process is like giving birth. By breathing, experiencing, and letting go into the physical pain on every out breath, we greatly minimize the suffering we experience. The more we resist feeling our pain and fear, the stronger and longer we will suffer. The next time you find yourself feeling hurt and upset in a relationship or healing drama, stop a moment before you lash out with anger, blame, or use any defense. Realize the feeling, releasing and healing of this pain and fear within you is “all this world is for,” (ACIM) the only lasting purpose it can serve and the real reason you are here. See this situation and all the people involved as gathered together by some more knowing and higher part of yourself to assist in your healing and release. Understand this drama has been carefully orchestrated as an opportunity for you to feel and release the layers of pain and fear that keep you separated from your inner Peace and Joy. Choose, this time, to let go your blame, anger and anything else that will rob you of the opportunity to feel and release this heavy body of pain and fear you carry within. This is the way we awaken from our ego’s dream of separation, pain and fear into the Light, Love, Peace and Joy that is our Truth.

Breathe, relax and let go into the upset and pain on every out breath. You will usually find it located somewhere in your heart or abdomen. At the end of every out breath, let go and repeat this simple release and healing prayer. “Spirit, I willingly give you the appearance of this pain and fear and ask you to dissolve it into the nothingness from which it was born.” Then let it go and begin again. The more you can relax and let go the sooner will be your release. Our role is to feel, let go and sink into our pain and fear without resistance. Our Inner, Healing Energy can then release and heal us. The doctor sets and then places a broken bone to rest in a cast. Nature’s Healing Energy or Spirit does the rest. This same Healing Energy, with stillness and surrender, will heal the pain and fear of our Emotion Body too, if we are willing to experience the pain and fear, ask for help and give it over to this Healing Energy within us. Continue this release and healing process until you find some degree of calmness filtering into your consciousness. At first, when your mind wanders into the future or past, your pain and fear will probably reappear and you will need to begin this whole process once again. Take heart, however, with patient persistence, the pain and fear you experience that is always “an appearance only and not the truth,” (Joel Goldsmith) will eventually dissolve like mist in the summer sun and you will then feel much lighter and brighter. Whenever you experience inner upset, pain or fear, you might use the approach suggested by Joel Goldsmith, author of, “The Infinite Way.” Speak directly to the experience of your pain and fear the following: “You are an appearance only and not the truth. I will give you no power over me.” I would then repeat again, “Spirit, I willingly give you the appearance of this pain and fear and ask you to dissolve it into the nothingness from which it was born.” “The ego effects can be dispelled merely by denying their reality.” (ACIM) With patient persistence, this process will eventually succeed and, like learning any skill, becomes easier and more effective with practice.

All relationships house potential for healing dramas with opportunities to experience and release our unconscious pain and fear. Unfortunately, few of us are ready and willing to give up our anger and blame so we can feel and release our pain. Until we can meet and release the pain and fear within us without resistance or defense, their vibration will continue to draw us into painful and fearful dramas with ongoing opportunities for their experience and release. This is the “Law of Attraction.” Every pain and fear we experience and release allows us to open more fully to the Joy and Love beneath the clouds of our fear-based ego. All the relationships and healing dramas we draw to ourselves will either mirror or activate some aspect of the pain and fear we house within our own consciousness. We then gain the opportunity to feel, release and finally “Forgive,” accept without resistance or judgment and overlook with compassion this part of our unconscious mind, not of love, (fear) that has been reflected to us or activated within us by the words and actions of others within our healing drama. Since others only mirror or activate the pain and fear within our own consciousness, by forgiving or overlooking with love and compassion their words and behaviour, as well as our own pain and fear, we are forgiving and healing ourselves. We are also undoing the ego by denying its effects or reality. However real the ego perceptions or effects seem, they are appearances only and not the truth. Because they are EFFECTS that were caused by our own ego or fear-based consciousness, they cannot be CAUSAL and therefore can have no real power over us without our attention, acceptance and reaction. Remember always that the only way our ego gains any power is through our attention and reaction. By overlooking, denying and not reacting to our ego’s effects or perceptions, we dispel it and awaken from our ego’s dream of separation and fear into the light, love peace and joy with in us. This is our True Identity as Spirit. This is the process of Authentic Forgiveness. “A Course In Miracles” proclaims this to be our only legitimate function here.

The experience and release of our pain and fear together with the practice of Authentic Forgiveness within our relationships and healing dramas are the most difficult and essential aspects of our healing and awakening journey in this world. This two-fold process takes readiness, the courage to surrender and a willingness to ask for and accept the help of the Healing Spirit within us. To the extent that we can authentically forgive others within our relationships and healing dramas, to that extent we gain healing and forgiveness for ourselves. In truth, we do not relate to others but to our own consciousness projected onto them. That is why “A Course In Miracles says, “When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you think of him you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself. “

David Ott, M.Ed. 30/08/10.
http://www.peakrecovery.com

Article author

About the Author

David Ott, M.Ed., Directorr
Peak Recovery Program, Victoria,B.C.

Trained at the Gestalt Institute of Torontor
Student and Teacher of “A Course In Miracles”

Former guest workshop facilitator atr “The Orchard Recovery Centre” on Bowen Island.

Former Employee Assistance Program Director
for Panorama Ski Resort, Invermere, B.C.

Former Life Skills Coordinator
for the Canadian Military, Baden, Germany

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