I wanted to share some notes that I´ll be using in my next book, “Healing the Separation from Love”. Here, I´m writing about the mind.
“We come into the world as soul, but during the process of socialisation we move away from our essence and turn, instead to the mind, allowing it to guide us. This movement from the soul to the mind brings with it pain: it is the pain of having moved away from our real self.
In the meantime, we do our best to live a good life. We try to fit in, to do what’s right. We work towards being successful, happy. Sometimes, life seems to go our way and it feels good. There are times when we feel happy, when we achieve the success we want, but living from the mind is a precarious undertaking. It is fraught with challenges.
From the perspective of the mind, there are no guarantees. Nothing is permanent; circumstances can change in an instant. We live with a constant fear that underlies everything: fear of being not good enough, smart enough, attractive enough, we fear that we are unworthy, we fear not being loved.
We fear being ourselves, showing others who we are. We’re afraid that if people know who we really are, they won’t like us. So, we hide those parts of ourselves that we don’t like, those parts that we’re ashamed of, and instead present an image to the world that we believe is acceptable, that people will like. But in reality, much of the time, we are on guard, we feel threatened, disempowered.
Many of us believe that this is how life is, that we just have to accept it, that there is no other option, except death, and no one wants that. And so, we continue to live within the confined space that is the mind, unaware that there is, in fact, something else, something that is separate from the mind, something so beautiful, so peaceful, so powerful that the mind can not even begin to imagine its existence. It is the soul.
Mostly, we are unaware that our essence is light because we live in a mental world of beliefs, thoughts and emotions that occupy our attention most of the time. We don’t realise that when we wander off on a train of thoughts, no matter what the content of those thoughts, the light that would otherwise emanate from within us becomes covered, as if by a blanket, clouding our vision and concealing the knowledge that we carry with us.
Opening up to pain, fear, guilt, shame means re-experiencing these emotions in the fullness and the intensity of their power, for as long as is necessary. Only when these emotions are allowed to play themselves out will they loose their power, and their hold on us. Then, when the intensity and power of this experience has subsided, it is possible to look at our pain, fear, guilt and shame in the context of our lives and to see these emotions for what they really are – normal responses to situations that have been difficult to deal with.
No one wants to suffer, and few people are consciously willing to suffer in order to release themselves from it. When we burn our hand, we don´t put it back in the fire. Instead, we spend our lives protecting ourselves from the flames. The full-on experience of our pain, fear, guilt and shame is indeed a terrifying process because it breaks down all the defences that we have built up around us, leaving us feeling raw, naked, vulnerable, but it is a necessary process if we want to open up to love.”
“Healing the Separation from Love”
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