What do you cling to?

So I've been working on (or rather....life's been working on ME) to get totally honest about the things I cling to in my life as a way to avoid feeling the things I don't want to feel, or resist the changes that are happening in me as I am opening up and awakening more and more.

Food has been a big one, using food to emotionally medicate myself, and "keep down" the emotions and energy that wants to come up and be expressed/released. 

It comes with a feeling of desperation, like I just "need" that, whatever it is (usually something sweet) to feel OK. 

We all have our go to "fixes," those things it feels like we just can't live without, or we will suffer horribly if we don't have it. Maybe it's watching TV, smoking pot, maybe it's playing video games or excessive Facebooking, or relationships and sex. Even things that seem healthy like exercise can for some people become an emotional crutch that keeps them in a pattern of avoidance. 

We learn these strategies in childhood, when our emotional needs aren't met. We adapt and find ways to get them met, or at least put a band-aid on it until we can find something better to hopefully fulfill us. 

It's human nature, and I don't say all this to shame ourselves for doing it, because we all do it in some way, and we have to recognize and have compassion for ourselves that it's only because we've been hurt and let down in the past that we do it. But to become Free and truly happy within ourselves, it's something we all must walk through and overcome. 

It's a tricky business unhooking from our emotional clinging and addictions, and it's not a quick fix, but in my own process I've discovered that a combination of sheer willpower (self discipline) and HUGE amounts of self love and compassion is a good formula for success. 

First step is creating awareness, looking really honestly at your habits and when you are caught up in a pattern of addiction or clinging. You'll know because it will come with a feeling of desperation and compulsion, like you've just "gota do it!."

Second is being willing to ask the question "What pain am I avoiding? What change am I resisting? What need am I trying to get met through doing ________?" 

I do a lot of journaling to get clear on this.

Third, and here's the tricky part, you must be willing to face and feel those feelings head on, let them come up, witness them fully, express them, cry, scream, throw a fit, let them come UP and OUT!

Then Fourth, give to YOURSELF the very thing you are seeking underneath that addiction. Just a hint: it's going to be Love. So actively, LOVE yourself. Literally wrap your arms around yourself, and tell yourself "I love you."

Tell yourself everything you ever wanted to hear from others but never did.

Give yourself the comforting affirmations of support and validation you've been seeking from others this whole time, and forgive yourself for seeking it and failing to get it.

Because it wasn't your fault.

Your are innocent.

And you are worthy of Love, now and always.

You've just been looking for it in the places you are least likely to find it. 

Where is it really? Inside of you. Only YOU can give yourself the Love you seek. Only YOU can let it in. 

Lastly comes the self-discipline part, which I should really re-frame and call self-devotion (sounds nicer)....because you are becoming devoted to your own deepest healing and realizing the Love that you already ARE.

So every time you get that urge creeping up inside you....like "oh god, I just need a cigarette.... I just need some ice cream.... I just need to call that guy or that girl..." you STOP, and you go sit on your couch, or your meditation cushion, or in your car, and you repeat steps one through four as above until the craving melts away. 

A special note on this - most of us want to kind of skip over step three, where we express the emotional fully and consciously and FEEL it...because that part is uncomfortable, and we want to just get to the love, thinking that will make it "go away." But I have learned that it doesn't work that way. You can't make your pain any less painful, there is no dancing around it. But when you let go, and just feel it fully, and express it authentically, it doesn't feel like suffering, it just feels like intense emotion passing through. It's when we resist it that it becomes this monstrous thing that we need fear. 

And, of course, you may fail to completely give up whatever your "thing" is on the first few tries. That's OK! It's a process. It certainly still is for me. But every time we don't feed that craving, and every second we spend being willing to face ourselves honestly, we gain ground, and soon the power of that addiction losses it's hold on us and we find ourselves able to live without it, more whole, complete, filled by the love in our own hearts, and free to be moved by the Spirit within us wherever we need to go. 

Much love and heart felt blessings!
~Jessica

Remembering to Remember - A pathway to Effortless Joy

I was inspired to write this post based on a workshop my good friend and soul sister Teri Jo Wheeler and I are teaching this Sunday called Lighten Up! Falling into Effortless Joy.

But I woke up this morning, and I wasn't feeling all that joyful. And I started having self doubt like "how am I supposed to teach a workshop on effortless joy and how happiness is already inside us when I don't feel happy or joyful all the time?

And how am I supposed to write a blog post on the subject when I'm not feeling it?"

And it caused me to look deeper into the whole notion of Effortless Joy, and I realized that in reality, having an expectation that we should be totally joyful and happy all the time is unrealistic, because we are human, and there is a whole array of emotional experiences we are here to have. 

Emotions come and go, thoughts come and go, experiences come and go, but what is it that is always here? In a world that is constantly changing, what is the one constant, effortless, unchanging element?

Meditators know what I'm talking about, and it's defined by many names but can never really be defined, because it is the one thing that exists outside of concepts, and within which all concepts appear.

It's Presence. Consciousness. Awareness. The One Eternal Witness. 

The experiencer of what is experienced, 

The seer of what is seen. 

No matter what emotions and thoughts are on the surface, joyful, excited, sad, frustrated, there is still this aware presence within it all that remains unchanged and uncolored by the experience.

This aware presence has no agenda to fix or change what appears within it, it simply notices it with neutrality. It's our human ego, which is constructed out of thoughts and beliefs from our conditioning and forms our identity that judges what shows up before us and within us.

And I realized today that the goal is not to try and feel Joyful all the time, the goal is to Remember to Remember the One who witnesses it all, (because we so often get sped up and caught up in our humanness and forget). 

The more we remember to remember, the more time we spend noticing the one who notices, and resting back into the experiencer of the experience, the more effortless life becomes on all levels.

Emotions flow through us like passing clouds, instead of sticking around and multiplying, churning into a full on storm. 

When we rest in awareness, we stop resisting the emotions, and they come up and out of us naturally, revealing the clear sunny skies that are there behind the clouds always. 

The sunny skies are like our natural resting place, which is happy, joyous and free. Like a baby, they don't have to try and find the "bright side" in life, they just live there, and when emotions come up, they express it and let it go in the moment, and then rest in the happiness and wonder of Life again. 

It's a process to get back to that state of complete surrender and absolute union with pure Consciousness, because through our conditioning and the development of our human ego, we have accumulated many sticking points in our awareness, areas that pull us out of the moment and into human drama again. And that's okay! That's why we become human beings, so we can fall asleep, get identified with limited ideas about ourselves, just so we can have something to experience waking up from!

The key is compassion for ourselves, forgiveness for the ways we still get caught up and pulled in, and a commitment to gently bring our attention back to the One, the Eternal Witness. 

We just need to Remember to Remember, as often as we can, and inevitably, Effortless Joy and abiding Happiness and Freedom will become our experience.

In Love, Joy, and Compassion for all human hearts,
~Jessica

P.S. If you live in the Seattle area, come on out and join us for our workshop this Sunday September 9th from 3-6pm at East West Bookshop! Click for details