Learning to Be
photo credit: Casey Kelly
I have worked very hard over the last 30 years to learn to sit with myself, to be with discomfort, to feel all of the feelings, even when they didn't feel good. I have successfully lessened the sometimes debilitating weight of anxiety. I have learned to manage my anger. I have worked through crippling grief. I have healed from traumatic events in my life. I have struggled through hideously low self-esteem and the self-sabotage and sadness that come with it. I have learned to love and accept myself, to practice mindfulness daily, and to allow myself to be the healer I am called to be. I am very proud of how hard I've worked, and I am always eager to do more work because I know I'm not yet done.
But then I had a short Reiki session a few weeks ago with a friend who was a student in my recent Reiki IIIA class. During the session, the goal was for my friend to try out the new energy she had received in the class. Since it was a one-on-one class, I got to be her guinnea pig. I was super excited—I don't get to be on the receiving end of Reiki sessions nearly as often as I'm on the giving end. I lay on the table, dropped in, focused on my breath, didn't attach to my thoughts, noticed how I felt or what I saw—all the things I've learned and trained myself to do when meditating. After about 20 minutes, we ended the session. I thanked her and asked her what it was like working with this new energy. She answered my question then immediately began to tell me about what she had experienced during the session that was not about her new energy—it came from the deep intuition and mediumship she walked in with.
“Don't hear the voice,” she said. “I keep getting that, over and over again: tell her ‘don’t hear the voice.’” Caught off-guard, I snarkily thought to myself, Well, that's certainly ironic, voice!, but I remained quiet to hear the other things she had to share. After talking a bit more, she offered the hardest thing for me to hear: “What if you're already healed?” I was aghast. Of course I'm not already healed! I have healed massive wounds—and worked hard to do it—but surely I am not done. If I were, I would love myself more. I would feel peaceful more often. I would not have moments where I make decisions from a place of fear rather than alignment with my path and purpose. I certainly would not be judging myself—or my level of healing—or comparing myself to others, being critical of my body, or sometimes feeling sad and lonely even though I know I'm inherently connected to Source and all other beings at all times. Surely I have more healing to do—it felt an arrogant and ridiculous to think that I might not. My friend pushed again: “What if the work you are doing to heal is reopening your wounds, over and over, so they can't, in fact, heal?”
Hunh.
For the subsequent week, I slipped into a funk, but I found myself not grabbing myself by the lapels and not coasting on the years' worth of momentum I've built up working on myself. Instead, I sat with my feelings. I didn't analyze them and try to find their source—I just felt them. I didn't work hard to sort out why I felt that way, to process, and to let go. I steeped in my funk. I soaked in it. I was cranky and short with my wife. I became reclusive. I languished on the couch in yoga pants. I ate my feelings. And I was mad that I didn't know why I felt that way, but I didn't try to figure it out—it was like a switch had been flipped, and I wasn't working to resolve my feelings, but I didn't realize it until it had been most of a week. I didn't hear the voice that I always heard that told me I must keep pushing to heal, that I wasn't worthy of the amazing abundance in my life unless I am constantly working for it. (“Don't hear the voice!”) At first, I felt like this was even greater proof that I do, indeed, have plenty more to heal. Once my righteous indignation settled down, I asked myself a question that I've started using very often since to help me get out of my own way: “What needs my attention?” The answer surprised me: “You do.” But I didn't need my attention in the way I am used to giving it to myself—instead of pushing myself to unearth, suss out, process, and release all of my wounds, I allowed myself to feel, to rest, and to process at the speed that felt right for the feelings, not at the speed that I wanted (which is usually fairly immediately). I realized that the self-care I have been urging my clients and students and Instagram followers to undertake for themselves was something that I had been neglecting to offer to myself.
Our bodies are the first to tell us that we need rest. If we don't listen, our emotions soon follow, and then our minds. For those of us who ignore all three, apparently our souls' resounding cries come in next. Some spirit or guide or my higher-self or somethinghad spoken through my friend, reminding me that pushing and pushing myself to keep my metaphorical garden free of weeds was not something I need to do all day every day. If I keep at it, I start pulling out the plants I want there, not just the ones that don't belong. I have been working so hard at healing that I wasn't giving myself the space to heal—I have done the work, but now I must step back and just let the wounds breathe. (Abrupt shift in metaphor, I know, but bear with me.) I realized that, if I persist in tending to myself with such vigor, it's the equivalent of keeping gobs of bacitracin and a band-aid on a sore long after it needs such intervention—it just needs air.
photo credit: Casey Kelly
We put so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect. I have built my practice around trying to deprogram this idea, helping my clients and students to honor their imperfections, to release the learned narratives that lie to us about how we are “supposed” to be, and to hold space for their own healing for however long their wounds need to heal. I realized last week that I have not been listening to my own advice. As a healer, I thought I needed to stay ahead of the curve, always be healing something so that, when I walk into a session, I could offer the best counsel and the highest vibration energy to my clients. My own healing team has told me countless times that the people who are drawn to The Space Within are drawn to me and what I offer, not just to the energy—they could go to any Reiki practitioner to receive the energy, or go to any coach to get some help, but they choose me for a reason. This felt like a nice thing for them to say, but it also felt like a lot of pressure. Now I realize it's the opposite of pressure: it's permission to just be me, flaws and wounds and scars included. While meditating one day during that week of funk, I channeled the following message: We cannot heal anything with work; we can only heal with love. We must accept and love ourselves before we can truly heal any of our wounds—anything else is just first aid. I have realized that I need to just work on treating myself with love and kindness—the healing I have chased for most of my life will naturally follow.
Today, give yourself permission to just be you. You probably have things to heal—we all do—but even in the midst of healing, we need to allow ourselves to be who we are, to hold space for whatever that means, and to rest and allow our wounds to get air. This is the love we give ourselves that allows us to truly heal. If we keep triaging our wounds each time they come to our attention like it's the first time we have seen them, we will never get to the actual healing. We carry the wounds and lessons of countless former lifetimes, and we can't heal everything in this life, but we can do the healing work we're here to do, the work that is aligned with our soul's purpose in this life. Listen to your soul in the quiet moments—those moments of rest—and make sure that you are allowing it to heal instead of forcing it to.
