Those of us in pain are the ones who have not allowed it to be expressed in the safe circle of our own company.

We feed our pain and allow it to fester through avoidance, denial and shame. Awakening happens as we evolve out of this pain… and therein lies the journey.

We vacillate between the head and heart while the suppressed, repressed, distressed and abandoned parts of ourselves beg for emancipation. The struggle between the identified mind and the awakening soul creates an opening for consciousness to emerge.

Witnessing the patterns of behavior and lifetime of judgment against ourselves is challenging. The part of us that is still identified to the false self does not let go easily. It is in recognizing our true self that we begin to release and unravel our attachment.

Cultivating Presence is a practice and prerequisite to this work. Allowing repressed emotions, dramas, traumas and vibrational injuries to be released requires our nurturing attention.

As long as we keep choosing to give loving attention to our inner world, we are doing what we can to transmute the shadow. This unfolding has its own pace and cannot be rushed.

Spiritual bypassing feeds into another ego, “the enlightened one”.
It’s helpful to have a guide in this journey...someone who has traversed their way back home to their heart. Ram Dass said, “we’re all just walking each other home”, helping each other remember the truth of who we are.

When pain gets our attention it’s time to surrender, get still and allow your body’s emotional intelligence to go to work. We must feel it to heal it. There’s no way around this process.

Seeing our unconscious ways; facing our fears; choosing not to turn away; feeling the waves of repressed emotion, triggers and injuries; learning to give yourself what was not given to you in times when you needed it most... this process is not easy.

We've been asleep to ourselves, disconnected from our inner world. When pain comes calling, the way out is through.