When in Search of the Higher Self
Follow the Path of the Feelings
by Jay Ray
Many years ago this sentence was said to me by a client as a way of summing up her work with me. The more I work with people as a therapist, the more I know this to be true for all of us. It has become the heart of my work to help people get in touch with their deep feelings, because I know that without doing so they cannot touch the heart of who they really are. Without knowing that, life becomes a hollow shell, and depression the end result.
By the time most of us reach adulthood, we have largely lost contact with our feelings on a day to day level. Oh sure, we can shed a tear occasionally, often in private. We can certainly get angry at the kids and the lover. But the bulk of our feeling nature has long since gone underground. Unfortunately we justify this as being part of 'growing up'. Truth is it is part of a slow internal death, that's starts in childhood as we are discouraged from expressing our true selves for fear of upsetting others.
In many ways that was our parents way of protecting us from ostracism from the community. We all know inside us that we need acceptance within our 'tribe' to survive. But when acceptance within the community comes at the cost of the expression of the individual self, the community itself begins to die for the want of new blood. In many ways this has, and continues to, happen to Society, worldwide. It causes us to either accept and suppress our true selves, or rebel against the community, doing the very opposite to what is required of us. Neither of these ways of dealing with the problem work, because neither of them is about expressing YOU. It is either about going with or against somebody else. Usually those we see as the 'authority' in our lives.
The problem still lies in the fact that we don't 'know who we are', so of course we don't know what it is we need to express of ourselves in the world. It is so easy then to listen to this one, and that one, in the search for the missing 'Self'. Satisfaction comes only by accident that way. Other people do not know what is best for us. They are not us. Their experience of life is unique to them. They are not, nor can they be, in your body and life to know what it is like to be you, so therefore are unable to advise you on how best to live your life. Let's face it. If advice worked, we have all had enough of it in our lives to be totally enlightened by now. Most of us are far from that.
So, how on Earth do we know how to run our lives? Well the truth is most of us don't. The very skills that would have allowed us to do that have been expressly forbidden us: The use and expression of all our feelings, our emotions, sensations, intuitions, even inspirations. As a result of this conscious neglect, we follow others peoples direction. We go off course. We turn round at some point in our life and wonder whatever we are doing here anyway, and run for a prescription, which is Societies only acceptable (or indeed understood) way of dealing with what amounts to death of the soul.
At the heart of each and every one of us is a deep sadness and anger at the loss of our purpose in life. At the loss of the expression of the being that we came here to be! Many of the things that we have chosen to do with our lives are worthy endeavors, but if they are not 'your' endeavors, if they are not coming from the heart of 'who you are', they are of no value in your life at all.
When we look to the thinking mind for the answers to these questions, we find that what is contained there is more of the same. Our mind contains all the beliefs and attitudes that others have taught us. It contains an accurate record of all our past experiences (whether we consciously remember them or not), but it contains nothing to tell us what to do with the unique experience that this moment offers us. This moment has never happened before. How can our mind know what to do with it?
Stuck? Well we certainly feel that way. But there is a whole other set of functions, relegated to the psychic basement that, given half a chance, can solve all the above problems. Our feelings!
Covered up by layer upon layer of emotional trauma that has accumulated as our true feelings were suppressed, denied and finally locked away, there lives a feedback mechanism that will always tell you what is right for you. Now note this. It does not know what is right for other people, even if it can sense much of other peoples needs, because it is not, ultimately, them. But for you, who it is, there is no doubt that its messages are always spot on and directed towards your well-being every time. That energy is your own Self! Your own essential being! It speaks to you through your feelings on all levels. However most of us, until we begin the work of opening up the Pandora's Box of unexpressed feeling from the past, and bringing our experience into the present, can't hear it and don't even know where to look.
After years of trying to help people clump around in the contents of their minds, I discovered, what I instinctively always knew, that healing comes after every expression of the deep pain that gets in the way of us being ourselves. It brings us closer every time to the 'real' person that lives inside us. It is to the discovery of that 'being' inside of us, which is us, that I now dedicate my own life to, both professionally and personally. If you have tried many ways to sort things out in your lives, and as yet have found no answers, come and see me. Maybe together we will be able to locate the Self inside of you, and reestablish the communication that puts you squarely in the centre of your own being. That makes you the 'authority' in your own life.
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Jay may be contacted via email. For further article by Jay you can visit Jay's website.
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