What agreements are you making with yourself? What agreements are you constantly upholding? What decisions were made without discussion? What longheld beliefs keep you from pursuing your fullest potential? The subconscious loves to attach and it does so very easily, but it is also extremely intelligent, flexible, and ready at any moment to move in a new direction. Tell it something new and it will agree. Give it new, positive, healthy commands. Imbue it with new vigor and it will snap to. Change agreements and see what happens. You won’t be disappointed!
Be honest, especially with yourself. Don’t hide from the truth or uphold a dishonest opinion simply to not lose something. If you are living a lie then you have already lost. There is a saying—Live Your Truth—and that means coming clean and being honest with yourself. Honesty requires a fierceness that dishonesty lacks. Consider how you are living your life now. Are you being honest with yourself? If not, what will it take for you to turn in that direction and be utterly open and honest about everything with a fierceness that you have never tapped into?
It begins with deep calm in the body, the soul’s physical extension into this life. The true father of all modern somatic therapy, Wilhelm Reich, brought intimate attention to the opposition between natural impulse and defense in human musculature.
The suppression of sexual and aggressive energies, as well as powerful emotions such as sadness, is executed through what Reich called bodyarmoring, the tensing of muscles that freeze the free flow of instinctive and emotional energy.
A tense throat constricts the vocal expression of emotion. A tense belly and solar plexus create a wall that short-circuits the natural energetic current of tender emotion, natural reflex, and instinctive movement that issues from the lower half of the body.
Love is the energy of union and wholeness, the glue that binds together all of creation. To embody it we must soften our armored muscles.
The standoff between impulse and defense creates pools of charged energy, which in turn generates fears of an uncontrolled tidal wave of chaos and eventual loss of control. Indeed, a cathartic release, such as a deep cry or scream, might be necessary before a natural balance between expressive and receptive energies can be established.
One can directly speak to the body and receive a response. “Stomach, relax and release tension,” or “Shoulders, let down, release tension,” are suggestions to the body subconscious that result in immediate relaxing of rigidity.
Be gentle and accepting of small increments of release with each suggestion. Allow the body to gradually let go and adjust to the influx of freed energy. As the body musculature releases, invite and allow the breath to flow gently, expanding and opening new channels. The key word here is gentle. Follow each gentle breath with a slightly more deepening next gentle breath. Force nothing; gently widen the channel over time.
On the mental plane, Carlos Castaneda’s suggestion to suspend judgment is foundational. When we judge we create separation; this is good, that is bad. Thoughts, feelings, sensations and intuitions that are ‘bad’ are suppressed, and the body responds by rigidifying against them; they are not allowed.
In a shamanic recapitulation, or in an end of life review, as reported consistently by many who have experienced near-death experiences (NDE’s), the salient feature is total acceptance of every experience and every person one has experienced in life, regardless of their abuses and failures. This is the mood of love embracing everything with equanimity.
Boundaries may be absolutely necessary in this life but love knows no boundaries, all is accepted. Love and boundary can coexist. That was Christ’s golden message: Love All!
Total acceptance of self and other, of every aspect of life lived, and lost, is the path to embodying the mood of love.
When it seems that nothing is happening, when your cause seems to have lost its steam, when no new path appears, wait. In waiting patiently there is the opportunity to slow down the inner self as well as the chaotic world around you. Sit still and listen to birdsong, to the wind whispering past you, to the crunch beneath your feet, the Earth itself speaking to you. Notice that you are not alone but that all of nature supports you in your quest for change. When it is time to act, to take the next step, you will know.
A journey of change may at times appear to slow down, stagnate, but that is never so, for change is constant. There is never not something happening. On days when your journey of change seems dulled, it may just be a time when things are being prepared for a new step and your job is to wait patiently for the next sign to come along and show you where to go next. Remember, you have plenty of helpers in the background, whom you never see or hear, constantly working on your behalf. So pay attention, even on those quiet days of seeming little activity. Something is always happening. What’s next?
