Ha! I am all about anti-space.
I insist on filling every minute of every day and every neuron in my brain and every feeling in my body and every square inch of my living and working space with something (anything) to avoid uncomfortable feelings.
So along comes author Jeff Brown (again) and blows the lid off the limitations of the delusion that I live in.
Moving forward becomes hard to impossible.
Nothing is resolved. Only submerged and hidden beneath my surface and the surface of my life.
Waiting.
Am I familiar with the depression that arises from this limited space cramming/emotions stuffing strategy? Duh.
In this exchange, Jeff Brown (JB) and whoever M is (not me) have a conversation about depression and its likeliest causes. This spoke to me.
JB: No, Michael, there is not so much to be depressed about. There is much to FEEL. Depression is frozen feeling. Depression is what happens when we have blocked our emotional fluidity. You can be sad about it, but you don’t need to be depressed. We have repressed so much material that we are no longer energetically mobile. The very reason you hurtle into depression, is because you have not allowed yourself to truly feel the pain of the world. Rise above, rise above, that is your approach. How about go deep down in the trenches, and FEEL it, Michael. Weep for the world. Feel the pain of your human brothers and sisters. Let it pierce you. Let it rip you open. What you find on the other side just may surprise you.
M: Ugh. I can’t. I just can’t. It’s overwhelming.
JB: It’s overwhelming at first, because there is an extreme build-up of unfelt pain. If you release it, new space will be created. A new vista will rise into view. We need to keep the river of feeling moving. Sadness and grief are a fluid and vital experience. You feel it deeply, you cry and cry, and then it lifts. And you come back to what I call a beginner’s heart.
M: You mean beginner’s mind?
JB: No, I mean beginner’s heart… the freshness of appreciation that arises after we truly, madly, deeply feel and liberate our emotional holdings. You can only heal your heart with your heart. To do that we have to open the heart wide enough for its healing elixir to rain down on our pain. Why bury the tears that heal us? Why bury the emotions that fertilize our expansion? Emotional release is a potent way to regain a genuine experience of the moment. Tears are God’s heartshield wipers. They clear the dirt from our heart so we can see the path clearly. Let our quest for spiritual expansion begin with emotional authenticity. Nothing to hide, nowhere to hide it.
After all, enlightenment is not a head trip—it’s a heart trip, gusts of God blowing through the portal of the heart, the aortic love valve merging with the love that courses through the universal vein. If we want to expand our spiritual consciousness, we have to shake our heart tree often. Opening the heart unlocks the heart of the universe, and we see what is always before us. May we be committed to shedding the armor around our heart a little more with every breath…
(~an excerpt from my conversations with ‘Michael’ in Grounded Spirituality. Grounded is now available in bookstores and on Amazon (paperback, kindle, audiobook) at https://www.amazon.com/Grounded…/dp/1988648033/ )
Expressive Compulsive 