As the previous post noted, we try to bring awareness to the patterns which repeat in our lives. However, they can often have very deep roots in the emotional wounds which we carry with us from the past of which we are unaware. This quote points to a way of working with them as they actually manifest in the day-to-day of our experience. Most of our deep wounds are connected to relationships in the past and therefore we can imagine a situation where a current relationship causes our anxiety and fears to rise. These then give rise to a cascade of thoughts about ourselves or others, painting worse-case scenarios or stories about deficiencies in ourselves. What is the best way to work with this? In this moment we do not know the roots in the past which the experience has touched into. However, we do have a very real feeling – of fear, or of flight – in the body. So we stay with that. We acknowledge, if possible, the story line that the mind is running, but leave it to one side. We try to stay with fear or anxiety as an embodied feeling and work with the energies associated with the feeling. Stay with the emotion with kindness and non-judgment as much as you can as a feeling in the body, breathing into the feelings and widening the space around them. In this way we hold ourselves and our fears in awareness and acceptance, just as a mother would hold a frightened child.
You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware.
Eckhart Tolle
