The extent to which we find it difficult or uncomfortable to deal with things is termed stress. Stress is considered to be a personal, internal or subjective experience. What stresses you, may not stress me. What I fear, may not bother you. What makes others anxious, may be the thing that you are best at resolving.
Stress is a personal matter. Stress is not the problem…but rather stress is the wake-up signal informing us that something needs to be dealt with. Ignoring the stressor or shutting down in reaction to stress does not deal with the problem…it only keeps hidden and unconscious the thing that is stressing us out.
In an effort to live consciously, can suffering be seen as a cue in the spiritual movement of wholeness?
- Is it beneficial to become conscious of our suffering?
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If so, how then can we employ suffering to facilitate healing and wholeness to increase consciousness within the mind/body/emotions and relationships?
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And with the volition of our will, how can suffering be transformed into empowered, conscious co-creative living?
In the holistic health model, the goal of life is to become whole … no longer broken, fragmented, hurt or separate. To this end, stress patterns, such as tension, pain or trauma, can be seen as a valuable self awareness tool:
- Stress is like a friendly reminder call informing you of the less than optimal, — wounded — dysfunctional pattern that continues to be felt and experienced still today.
- Stress patterns point out that something inside of us is still being experienced as unbearable, unhealed and unresolved — that we remain wounded.
- Stress patterns quickly identify areas of your life or body where you have made a choice to unconsciously remain wounded.
- Stress offers the opportunity of increased awareness that will bring to light (to make conscious) the unconscious repressed (forgotten, hidden, unresolved) hurts, traumas and wounds of years and events past.
Suffering in your life or body ─ physical pain, emotional, mental, relational, financial or spiritual stress ─
are present to increase your awareness of the limited, fear-based choices that you have historically chosen,
so that you can NOW in this moment make a new, empowering whole and conscious choice.
- If you fear public speaking, for instance, and never choose to change that perception, then you are choosing to live in fear.
- If you find yourself in a relationship that encourages disempowerment, and never seek to unplug from that pattern, then you are choosing to live in fear.
- If you worry over issues like money, health or love, and never change these worrisome thought forms, then you are choosing to live in fear.
- If your body is wrecked with pain, and you continue to numb its outcries without taking time to consciously listen and respond, then you are continuing to live in fear.
Healing is a conscious choice, a choice based upon Empowerment Thinking!
Like completing a jigsaw puzzle, healing is reintegrating and bringing together all the wounded places and fragmented aspects within your being. It is a conscious choice to no longer live amidst the pain and suffering that separates you from Perfection. It is a conscious choice to move out of fear-based thinking and embrace empowerment thinking.
Healing is a conscious choice, an act of will that embraces a new, empowering level of consciousness.
To heal, we must be conscious and aware. Gaining awareness requires a volitional use of the will. Observing what we have created, we then have a choice of whether to accept the consequences of the past decisions and the resutling suffering, or to transform the past creating the experience of a new, whole, empowered and conscious reality.
We could consider that suffering is a way of increasing awareness.
After all, how willing are we to initiate change and create a new experience when things are still going ok? When our defensive patterns are still somewhat protecting us; when our wounds are still being defended; when the resentments are still feeling justifiable, our gain from remaining wounded seems to far out way the vantage and the risk of change.
Like the old adage of the suffering addict, change comes only when there appears to be no other option. A significant life change often comes only after a last resort experience of being down in the gutter. It seems as though we often wait until there are no further gains from staying in the unconscious, wounded pattern before we find the courage to change … this is suffering and continuing to live in fear-based thinking. This is waiting until the gains (benefits) of suffering no longer outweigh the risk (percieved loss) of change; waiting until it hurts too much to keep on doing the same old, same old unconscious and dysfunctional routine.
Presenting the opportunity for you to change your mind, let go and make a new choice, suffering invites greater awareness, and ultimately, guides access to a higher space of consciousness.
In its effulgent usage, suffering can be used as a catalyst for healing. Inviting awareness and the integration of past wounds, suffering can be a roadmap to wholeness. Highlighting the choices that have lacked integration, suffering can graphically illuminate the wounded (separate/fragmented) parts of body and aspects of self.
The act of suffering protectively holds the place card of our wounds serving to remind us of the perceived necessity, the emotional reasons and rational justifications for our bitter angst. Like a splitter in your finger, wounds left uncared for never fully heal; they only fester and protectively harden creating suffering in our lives, our bodies and the world. The wound festers, not for the purpose of creating suffering, but rather to create the integrated state of wellness and wholeness: The Unified State of Perfection.
Recent shifts in consciousness have begun to transform the out-dated mindset of the western model of dis-ease where we are considered victims to the onset of microbial attack. The emerging holistic wellness model interrelates well-being with the unification of mind, body, emotions, and spirit. In the quest for wholeness, we embrace all aspects of ourselves. Suffering is a gift that increases your awareness and invites you into the state of integrated wholeness and unity.
Suffering is a catalyst for change that invites integration from Separation Consciousness to Unity Consciousness.
- Holistic Health is a result of integrating all aspects of our life and our being into a unified and balanced whole.
- Unity Consciousness employs empowerment-thinking ─ we are divine spiritual beings co-creating our reality.
- Disease is NOT considered as something existing separate from us or happening to us. The beliefs that our bodies, our lives, our relationships or our well-being could be separate from the interconnected and unified whole is an expression of victim-thinking.
- Separation Consciousness employs victim-thinking, which fragments our awareness and reinforces the mindset of fear, powerlessness and separation from Source.
- Unity, the state of integration and wholeness brings an end to the experience of separation and the illusions of fear-based thinking..
- Healing is the integration of the fragmented and wounded parts of yourself that have kept your awareness separate from the whole and complete experience of unity.
Moving from fear-based, victim thinking to unified, empowerment-based thinking, the shift of awareness is from a thing outside of us needing fixing to a thing inside of us requiring integration.
Awareness Exercise
1. Notice with gentle and compassionately detached awareness those areas of your life or body that are signaling stress.
Notice (sense, perceive, feel, know, listen) in the body where suffering is being held and experienced: pain, hurt, tightness, tension and even where there is no sensation at all … numbness, emptiness, darkness, etc. Review and use the Present Moment Awareness Exercise.
2. Allow the mind/body to notice, recall or remember the relevant instances or situations over the course of your life when you have experienced similar stress or suffering: anxiety, worry, sorrow, discomfort, anger, shame, abuse, regret, anger, resentment, hate, distrust, afraid, etc.
To access and heal these memories, feelings, traumas and fears, use the following
Memory Integration Method Exercise (MIME):
- Continue by imagining yourself sliding along a gentle water-slide of memories. As you glide along the line of memeories, simply notice where your mind/body stops your awanress; notice what you are rememebering, what happneed, what are you feeling, what is important here…use the very first thoguth and feelings that come into your awareness as the truth of what you need to recall.
- Using this gentle ater slide, gather into your awareness all of the similar energetic reference points of the subconscious programming in order to transform and integrate them into conscious awareness.
- Gently allow your mind/body to flow throughout your lifetime noting ages, places and events where this stress lies hidden and unconscious.
- (Note: Past lifetimes and genetic imprinting may also enter your awareness through this process; see also the Post-It Note Transformation for further transformative insight awareness.)
- (Note of explanation: For expedient and efficient reactions to stress, the mind/body has a way of organizing similar situations. Serving as a shortcut mechasm for the subconscious mind, this filing systems allows for quick, unconscious reactive responses when experiencing similar situations. This means that if the present situation seems to be similar to an unhealed (unresolved) event of the past, the mind will route you to fiile of that past issue. You will then perceive and react unconsciously in a very similar manner as occurred in the initializing memory. This happens without any conscious choice! These similar instances that you revist are like nodal points on a timeline that carry the same energetic charge as the stress experienced today. These energetically charged memories can be consciously processed and spiritually integrated with the following consciousness exercise. Relieving any present and future simliarly filed stress-based patterns, the unconscious, reactive fear-based responses of the past are haulted.)
Its time to transform these fears of separation into the empowerment of the unified whole by continuing with the following Transformational Consciousness Exercise.
Consciousness Exercise
The Co-Creative Process of Spiritual Integration:
Integrating fragmented aspects of self through the Transformational Flame of the Heart…
- Engage the conscious alignment with the Golden Energy of Higher, Divine Will described in Being One with the In/Out Breath and Being One with Higher, Divine Will and Heart Focused Co-Creation.
- Allow the suffering you are experiencing, all of the wounded aspects and stressful thoughts and feelings ─ the pain, the discomfort, the numbness, the emptiness, the uneasiness, the rejection and resentment ─ all of the fear that is being represented by this suffering ─ to move easily, elegantly, efficiently and expediently into the transformational chamber of the heart.
- With detached compassion, embrace the suffering…the pain, the dark, empty detached, unwelcome, hidden, buried feelings, thoughts and aspects of your mind/body.
- Co-Creating with the Golden Energy and the transformational consciousness of Higher, Divine Will , welcome the suffering deep within your heart and allow it all to merge with and be transformed by the Golden Energy of Higher, Divine Will.
- Notice that there is an inner Transformational Flame that ignites to transform the separation of fear and suffering into the empowerment of Unity Consciousness.
- Open your heart, mind and body to this experience without judgment and with detached compassion.
- Invite yourself to forgive and let go of the suffering and judgment both for yourself and for others.
- Oftentimes we have made a trade for the right to feel what we are feeling. We may have decided it was worth keeping our anger in order to prove the other person as wrong; or perhpas we needed to feel right in order to punish the offender, etc. With this new insight of positive gains, give yourself the gift of the posotive gain (ex.feeling right, feeing strong, feeling worhty, etc.) without having to stay angry or resentmentful.
- In addtional, free yourself of any further oaths, vows, pledges, promises, commitments, fealties, obligations, needs, wants or desires to remain wounded, needing to protect your pain or wanting to continue to live through fear-based thinking and separation cosnciousness.
- As your subconscious mind shows any of these secondary gains or the many positive reasons for staying in this old pattner, simply confirm for yourself the ability to have the sterngths, giftsand attributes of those gains without the trade-off or sacrafice of your own personal power.
- Add these symbolical images of suffering to the Transformational Flame to be resolved, reclaimed and empowered by you and brought into wholeness.
- Image the puzzle pieces of YOU being fully restored in the wholeness of Unity Consciousness.
- Use the Golden Energy of Higher, Divine Will and the Transformational Flame of the Heart to continue engaging this co-creative choice process of letting go of the need and gains of suffering, reclaiming lost and wounded aspects of self, freeing yourself from the past and integrating your whole Self until it feels complete.
Conscious Choice
This is the Co-Creative Process of Spiritual Integration – reclaiming of your power by freeing yourself from fear. With consciousness, you have transformed the limitation of fear, accepted forgiveness and embraced a change of heart. Your conscious observation has allowed for a new, empowered choice to now be noticed and chosen.
Action Step
Follow by posing to the Infinite Universe the following conscious empowerment formula, which will further transform any limitations of suffering and guide you effortlessly into the space of Unity Consciousness:
“What empowered space of being could my body and I be without this suffering? I move myself wholly and completely into the empowered space of Unity Consciousness now! Everything that stands in the way of creating that, I now destroy and un-create it all! With gratitude, grace, joy and ease … It is Done! It is Done! It is Done!”
- No longer blocking the integrating energy of the Infinite Universe, notice the new opportunities to create from an empowered and unfied space of being … without fear, without limitation and without suffering.
- Notice how your mind/body feels, notice opportunities to transform your emotions into peace and calm, notice the space of freedom that presents within your being.
- Notice the feelings of wholeness and the empowered space of being that you have now created and have the choice of continuing to create.
- Continue to notice your choices and any reoccurring need or desire to suffer.
- Choose to partake of this Co-Creative Process of Spiritual Integration as you continue to gain increasing levels of awareness and trasnform the limitations of the past.
- Allow suffering to guide you into wholeness by integrating all wounded, stressed and painfilled aspects of yourself. The result will bring forth the empowerment of the True Self.