Healing Pain

"Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors. Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny. " - Gandhi

Our basic state is one of joy. This may have different flavours such as gratitude, love, acceptance, but it is always joyous. When we are experiencing joy we are wide open and accepting and there is no room for negative emotions such as anger, revenge, jealousy, fear. We are in touch with our own wisdom

When we are in joy we intuitively know the right thing to do, we act from our truth and our life path opens out effortlessly before us.

This joy is deeper and more complete than anything that the thinking mind can experience. The thinking mind has its place, it is there to solve problems, calculate, learn, remember, anticipate. But it is a tool. It is a tool for the being to use much as it uses its other organs: its liver, its legs, its lungs and in much the same way it work for most of the time unconsciously. It can evoke pain and, as with any other part of us that is in pain, then we notice it. Things that cause the thinking mind to evoke pain are its thoughts: it remembers past experiences and reminds us of grief, anger, fear that we felt then; it anticipates the future and causes anxiety. When we are in pain we are out of touch with joy.

As well as evoking pain, the thinking mind takes on beliefs. Beliefs about itself and about life and, where these remain unexamined, they make us close down and cause us to avoid experiences, they make us feel separate from joy.

In our culture the thinking mind has become paramount. Perhaps this is since the enlightenment and Descartes’ famous word ‘I think therefore I am’. Since this time the thinking mind, reason, the intellect has been held in greater and greater esteem and for many in the Western world it is now unquestioned.

My vision is about getting people back in touch with their joy. I have several powerful tools that I can use and I can select an appropriate tool that the client is comfortable with and that makes sense to them.

For people who have a strong thinking mind, I find that the best tool is often Byron Katy. The Work befuddles the thinking mind so it loses its grip and the client has a momentary experience of their inner wisdom and they feel joy. They may not even realise what has happened, but if The Work is used often the domination of the thinking mind is weakened and the client becomes increasingly open. I know for myself that when I am holding on to a negative belief I feel constricted inside. I do the work and I open. I open to the joy that I really am and when in a joyful state there is no room for pain. Simples.

For people overwhelmed by pain, such as grief, despair or physical pain then the pain release technique is useful to use first. This allows the sufferer to accept the pain, surrender to it and open to joy. Once in joy they will be in touch with their own inner wisdom and their own answers will unfold.

For people who are very stuck and keep dropping back in to the same painful state then a journey may be called for. This is often the case, for instance, when the stuckness goes back to childhood or to an overwhelming experience such as a major trauma. It is very deeply entrenched and you just get the sense that the client has not truly let go and cannot stay open for more than a few seconds before the pain returns.

The journey is the most complete healing. It goes back to the event or childhood state and re-examines it from the perspective of inner wisdom and joy. Once the healing is complete the painful state can be released, there can be true forgiveness and a lasting freedom can be enjoyed. Most people do one or two journeys and then simply get on with their lives. This has been true for most of my clients

As with all spiritual work, the journey will attract people who are suffering very deeply. Many of these will go on to become healers themselves. Lots of people continue to do journey work to deepen their spirituality, becoming increasingly joyful and open. These may include therapists or coaches working to be more ‘there’ for their clients, they will stand out as being relatively balance (ego free) and open. People who do journeys regularly find them easy and quick as they are addressing recent pain that is not so deeply entrenched, or touching on remaining pockets of pain form the past leaving even greater freedom.

I must admit that I often have resistance to doing a journey, but once I have done it I am so grateful – the more resistance I feel the more good it does and the more I realise I needed it, I think the resistance is about the thinking mind avoiding pain.

I also do the Work often and of course it is quicker and can be done alone and is highly effective, but sometimes a different approach is good because it reveals different stuff.