Have you been feeling turbulent or contracted recently? The moment this happens it looks like there’s a problem with me or the world — but what if there wasn’t?
“In confusion, feelings are caused by the outside world and our thoughts about that are justified. In clarity, feelings come and go in relationship with the thinking that’s appearing. In truth, thoughts and feelings come and go, entirely impersonally”
There seems to have been a lot of ebbing happening the last few weeks; for me, for clients, for friends. A lot of turbulence and contraction. Showing up on the surface in different ways…
Mine has been the feeling of too much to do and not enough time to do it all. Oh, and it has to be done well!
Others have had the feeling of things being out of control and imagined disastrous consequences on the horizon.
Others feeling a situation is unfair or untenable while also feeling unable to say anything or do anything, or that they shouldn’t because that is somehow unenlightened of them, or a form of resisting reality?
And others still have had physical challenges — headaches, fatigue, chest pain, random bruising, sleep disruption.
Our normal first place to go with all of these is ‘what’s wrong and how do I fix it?’. How do I make this stop? How do I make it better?
This can get to the symptom-level of whatever’s happening. Cancel some things, see if anything does look controllable, take a sleeping pill. Generally, put a plaster over the top, hope it gets better and that it won’t come back.
Then we might get curious and wonder ‘why is this happening?’. What’s the cause so I can reduce or remove the chances of it happening again.
This can get to the underlying beliefs behind the feelings or behaviour, for example with mine — there hasn’t actually been too much to do, just the thought ‘there’s too much to do’ and the associated thought ‘I have to do it all and do it well’. These thoughts bring feelings of contraction — that’s how the thought-feeling system works. Think constricted, fear-based thoughts and you get constricted, fear-based feelings.
But then…are these really causes? I’ve had this much to do before and not had those thoughts and feelings, and I’ve had less to do and had those thoughts and feelings. So is this busy feeling really caused by my beliefs?
When I read Dawson Church’s book Mind to Matter I was struck by research that showed an 80% correlation between social upheaval (battles, wars, social revolutions) and sunspot flares. If that’s the case, what else is going on in the solar system, or here on earth, that invisibly influences how we feel?
What if, when there’s an ebb, or a contraction, for us at the individual level it has nothing to do with us, or our lives? What if ebbs and flows are part of a much bigger interconnected system of ebb and flow, expansion and contraction; and all that’s happened is, over the years, we’ve been taught to correlate something to those feelings of contraction. We’ve been taught that there’s a ‘me’ here who has somehow created this and that I should now be able to point to a cause — and then fix it.
Makes us look credible and logical right? Makes us look like we’re ‘doing something about it’ which makes us ‘good and proactive’. And we all know the world has favoured these traits for the last few hundred years.
So next time you’re in a contracted situation — when it feels personal and like something’s wrong — consider that it might not be personal. Consider that something much greater could be at play and that your mind could just be doing all it can do: regurgitating old ‘evidence’ just to prove its point. Like a terrible lawyer, bringing out evidence from a previous case because it kind of matches this one.
Understandable, given the mind loves to be right, and would rather be right than happy.
Which would you prefer?
With love, Helen
Would you like to explore this further? — Join the Connection Call 13th May here… Did you miss the call? Why not book a Discovery Call here.
I coach and guide people who have worked hard all their lives to be the ‘best’ them so that they can drop the stories, reconnect and be the real them. They’re smart, passionate, curious people who care about enabling change. They’ve worked hard to get to here and yet it doesn’t seem to have made the difference they expected, and now they’re wondering what else is available. Thankfully there is something else! The work I do returns you to who you really are, and out of the confusion of the stories, so we get the real you — which is what you and the world really want! Find out more here.