It takes practice to rewire neural circuitry, to re-encode pathways with empathy, attunement, and compassion. Unfortunately, for most this foundation was not available; there was no holding environment that could contain, dance, and play with the magic of a little emotional being.
Intellectual understanding, while important, is not enough. It takes action in the moment, a new response to the eruption of dysregulating thoughts and feelings, over time, to reorganize the nervous system and re-author a new, more integrated narrative about who we are.
The good news is that you can begin right now, no matter what is going on in your life. Instead of urgently seeking relief, become curious about the unique ways you become activated in relationship. Instead of falling into the habitual extremes of dissociation and fusion, enter into communion with the burning, the charged, and the claustrophobic, unresolvable alive world of feeling.
The journey of metabolization occurs in stages, which we cannot skip. Initially, we must train ourselves to stay with the intensity for very short periods of time, titrating and pendulating the overwhelming thoughts and feelings, going back and forth testing our window of tolerance. Slowly, we discover that even though it may feel otherwise, we can endure this material. Our survival is not actually being threatened. Before we can begin to move deeper, we must first know in an experiential way that staying with it is not going to take us down.
Once the nervous system has the experience that it can tolerate very small doses, we then stay for two seconds, instead of one. We move from merely “tolerating” to starting to contain it, realizing it is not some enemy coming at us from the outside, but a lost aspect of ourselves, longing to be allowed home.
Once contained, we can begin the journey of accepting it. Not “acceptance” in that we are condoning or settling for something – or that we “like” it or “want” it to say – but in the sense of a fiery, compassionate willingness. We are willing to experience what has come, finally, for we sense that resisting what is, this whole play of experiential avoidance, is the root cause of nearly all our psychological suffering.
We are no longer willing to abandon ourselves. No, I’m not going to do that any longer. Even though it takes everything in me, I am going to move toward my vulnerability and care for it, re-encoding a new pathway. Even though I will not be “perfect” at it and likely “fail” over and over again, I will remain steadfast in my vision.
This is where the work shifts to a more heart practice, where we aren’t as interested in clear insight and pure awareness, safe as a witness on the sidelines, but rather begin to explore what it would actually mean to open our hearts to our pain. To hold it like a mother surrounding and enveloping her baby. This can be pretty radical and truly goes against the grain. We start to bring kindness to the feelings, to the parts of ourselves we had to disown at an earlier time.
It just moves on from there, with deeper and more integrated forms of awareness, compassion, and exploration, traveling into the core of whatever arises and touching it with our hearts. Eventually we may even come to love our triggers, longing to hold them and know their subtleties, standing in awe at the opportunity to learn more about love as it comes into form.
Depending on the degree of trauma and dysregulation, this work is often best done within a safe (yet provocative) relational container, where we can make use of an attuned other’s calm and soothed nervous system to help contain, hold, and integrate this material. That’s not to say that we cannot do a lot on our own. It is kind to allow ourselves to at times turn to another for help, while at other times to stay contained and practice on our own.
In this way we can become vehicles of love in action, knowing that this work we are doing is never for ourselves alone. But is for life everywhere.
For more of Matt Licata’s brilliant writing, visit: http://alovinghealingspace.blogspot.com/
 

There are so many amazing techniques, methods, books, steps. They can be so useful, but they can also distract us from ourselves – separates us from ourselves. Like mental candy that lures us away from our own ability to feel and sense what is real and true for us right here and now. All these brilliant, complicated processes can convince us that if we could just try hard enough and apply the latest idea in the right way, we would solve whatever “problem” we are facing in the moment. But it’s always the same problem isn’t it? Something is wrong with our lives, something is wrong with us, something is just WRONG. “Something’s wrong” becomes the general tone and foundation of life itself. So we seek solutions, we read, we are sure that the latest author is right and if we could just do what they did, then all of our “issues” will be resolved. But all these mental stories and fabulous new ideas on how to solve “the problem” all stay within the paradigm that there is, in fact, a problem. All of those methods and latest ideas just keep distracting us from the fact that there might not even BE a problem. They keep us moving, keep us in action, and keep our attention away from our own inner knowing. They can add to our stories that want us to forget the underlying truth – that all is well. All IS well. All the time. No matter what life is presenting, it is love showing up in some form or another.

As my dear friend Ruth says: This is our Oneness made visible in a really beautiful way!!

“EVERYTHING is an expression of God’s (Source’s, the Universe’s) Eternal Loveliness.”
— St. Francis of Assisi
“Sometimes a thing needs to be retaught its loveliness.”
— Thomas Merton
I recently found these quotes in a book I am reading called Loveability,by Robert Holden.  I love them because they describe what I do. I reteach folks (put them back into contact with) their unique, eternal loveliness. We forget how truly Divine and perfect we are, AS we are. Right now. I love to remind you (and me) about that.
For as long as I can remember, I have consciously worked to “unfold” myself. I keep opening myself to being as “Christina” as I can. Why?  Because I have an inherent knowing that it is my function in the Universe to be the particular, lovely expression of God that I am. (Fill in the word of your choosing if you don’t like the word God. Who cares what we call the unnamable anyway…?!) I’ve had lots of conditioning that has created blocks to me knowing my “loveliness.”  But even as I tango with those blocks, I know they aren’t real. I’ve gathered a pretty fantastic bag of tools to help me reorient to the truth. And because putting myself back into contact with my loveliness – and expanding into that – is my whole focus in life, that’s of course what I created as my “job” with others.  With all YOU eternal lovelies! It’s agonizing to forget your own eternal, gorgeous nature and to think anything less than loving thoughts about yourself. And I can so EASILY see how magnificent each of YOU are!
So I hope this new doodle helps you reconnect with sublimely loving thoughts about yourself and your own value as a beautiful expression of the Indivisible One!   May we remember that we are love, we are loving and we most certainly are LOVED!
I love YOU!
e-hugs, Chris

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