There is always two sides to every coin

These are interesting times as cosmic forces usher in more change. We are being asked to go deeper still, to seek out the wounding and harm done, to heal and set ourselves free so that our future is not based on what has happened previously and all the various conditioning and limited beliefs, which arose because of this.

I have been deep diving with Brandon Bay’s The Journey, a technique I used many, many years ago now to heal ovarian cysts, which turned out to be the result of internal angst towards another pupil in my year at school who ended up with the boy of my dreams. Or so I thought at the tender age of 15. It was heart breaking, truly, because I have always had a tendency to fantasise about life, one of those dreamers, which inevitably leads to repeated heartache because reality and my fantastic dream world rarely match up!

The recent ‘journeys’ with a Brandon Bay’s facilitator have been intense; the first one caused me to have a healing crisis which found me in bed for 24 hours as all my cells went through a significant releasing. The second was kinder. But both served to remind me that the body keeps score and that we are our own worst enemy in the narrative and stories we tell ourselves and the limiting beliefs that we make so in our lives, limiting our potential for love, truth, peace and trust.

The first journey with its significant healing crisis, took me back to university days and the intense homesickness and loneliness I felt. It is so easy to dismiss these experiences, but I missed my family enormously and felt anxious for a lot of it with a deep lingering fear of not getting a degree at the end of it. I have no doubt that the anxiety and fear promoted the eating disorder which I had developed during Sixth From as a way of coping with the pressure of A-Levels and the fear of going to university in the first place, which you can read more about in my book From Darkness Comes Light.

I knew something was amiss as I kept getting the same repeated dream and waking up in a minor panic that I had failed my degree. I never did of course, I got a 2.1, but the fear was still there, all these years on. It never ceases to amaze me how much our dreaming points the direction to whatever lays unresolved within us.

Furthermore, it was helpful healing this wounding in my body, which had settled into my stomach with this increasingly frequent feeling of emptiness, and the pain in my heart around any form of separation, since gone. The emotions which needed processing were intense; sadness, grief, rage, confusion, and enmeshed within all of this were unhelpful limiting beliefs and fear around separation in its many guises and it was such a relief to finally get to the root, which has made life infinitely easier since as the previous triggers are no longer triggering.

The second journey also took me back to university, which had quite a profound effect on me in so many ways, not least the intensity of eating disorder but using alcohol, cigarettes and cannabis to overcome my shyness, which was so not me, but became so simply to cope and feel as if I fitted in. The wounding this time though was around unrequited love and the deep heart pain this caused, as I watched my best male friend since age 4 (who had also chosen Swansea for his degree, albeit at the college rather than the university), fall in love with a beautiful Spanish student who later became his wife.

My dreaming of our life together was shattered, and I internalised this in unhealthy ways around my lack of lovability and my non-deserving of joy, because clearly I wasn’t worthy, given that he had chosen another woman. Inherent within all this was a confusion around the nature of our friendship and a feeling of betrayal.

To uncover all of this was uncomfortable, the heart pain felt very real, like a literal stabbing (or how I imagine a stabbing to feel), let alone the range of emotions which accompanied it, from sadness to anger, to frustration, to rage, to more sadness, to betrayal, to grief, and finally to recognition of our innocence and from there to forgiveness and release. There is a lightness that has arisen since.

Again, I am amazed how much the body remembers all that has happened and lays unresolved inside us, pushing to be heard and seen, so that it can let go of its unnecessary carrying. I am also amazed how we have these life experiences and depending on our nature, we either process them or we don’t. More often than not we don’t give ourselves the space, or we simply don’t know how to go about it so they lay unprocessed. I wrote about this in my book From Darkness Comes Light, but I prided myself back then in never showing emotion, because I thought that was the way.

With a sun in Cancer and a moon in Pisces, I am primarily water, a pool of emotion at times, so to hold onto it all and pretend I was OK was a huge wounding, which of course led to intense bouts of depression, suicidal at times, let alone the PMS, which plagued me for years. I can see that so clearly now that my whole being was saturated in unprocessed negative emotions and negative self talk - it was quite inevitable that my heart armoured up and my spirit flagged.

It’s not just the holding of emotions that is the problem, albeit it is, because emotions are energy in motion and if we don’t allow them their movement and expression then they create energetic blocks in the body which can lead to dis-ease if not released. And this to the extent that stuck emotions cause more disease that any virus or bacteria, simply because of the negative impact on our energy field (which leads to tiredness and lack of vitality) and weakens our immune system, which then makes us more susceptible to foreign bodies.

The other problem is that every emotional holding also brings with it a negative thought and unhelpful limiting belief. It is this which often blows my mind simply because we really do create our reality by the thoughts we think. Not that we can necessarily change these thoughts. Those who meditate and try and watch their thoughts will know how they arise spontaneously, endlessly and randomly so that we have little choice but to think them. The difference comes though, when we notice them and stop giving them energy. So if our thought is “I am not good enough”, then we start to cultivate the awareness (become conscious) of this thought as it arises and challenge it, so that over time it stops arising, or if it does arise, we merely laugh at it without buying into it as a truth and making it so.

This isn’t easy of course, because many of these thoughts and the limiting beliefs that have arisen are deep in our psyche, unconscious then, and our behaviours surrounding them are normalised. I was having this conversation with a client yesterday, about how our lack of kindness to self is often very subtle, to the extent that we don’t even realise that we are being unkind to ourselves, not least in terms of the internal voice and the way we might criticise ourselves for our perceived imperfections (because of our false belief that there is a perfect), but also in the decisions and choices we make in our life.

I had thought my internal voice was kind, until this latest journey, when I realised the subtly of the negativity and the unhealthy limiting beliefs that had been laid down almost thirty years ago now still, on some level, play out in my life. These are not uncommon beliefs, most of us have them embedded in our psyche from our religious indoctrination let alone societal conditioning and our educational and cultural systems. We have been fed the idea that there is a good/bad, right/wrong, worth/worthless, perfect/imperfect, pass/fail without appreciating that there are always two sides to every coin, which means we are no more good than we are bad.

Yet it has been helpful for society to allow us to believe that there is a good and a bad, for example, because then we self-police, which makes it easier for us to be controlled. Furthermore, it keeps us trapped in this idea that there is something wrong with us, that we are never enough, that we are somehow flawed and all these beliefs therefore keep us disempowered and more controllable, it’s a clever and vicious cycle.

At the end of the day an experience is just an experience, life is as it is, some of it wonderful, some of it funny, some of it sad, some of it challenging and some of it just plain boring. It is how we relate to it, how we define it, how we narrate it and make it into a story, how we create beliefs based on it, which creates the harm. This is where we have choice. Always we have choice about how we respond and judge a certain situation and how we then experience our life.

We have to be mindful of our judgement system too as we often only hear one side of a story and we forget that there are various ways of looking at a situation - there are always two sides to every coin. To be OK with whatever is arising knowing that there is always more to it than we realise can help enormously.

This was highlighted to me in a book I was reading recently, where a man was caught sexually assaulting a child. Everyone thought he was very bad and reacted very negatively towards him, full of judgement. Then they learned that he had been sexually assaulted as a child and they saw another side to him, they felt sorry for him and had more compassion. this story is a helpful reminder that we have to be careful how we judge our experiences and the experiences of others because without doubt the universe will draw in opportunities for us to opinion differently.

There is this wonderful parable which highlights beautifully the benefit of holding the middle ground:

There once was an old farmer. Every day, the farmer used his horse to help work his fields and keep his farm healthy.

But one day, the horse ran away. All the villagers came by and said, “We're so sorry to hear this. This is such bad luck.”

But the farmer responded, “Bad luck. Good luck. Who knows?”

The villagers were confused, but decided to ignore him. A few weeks went by and then one afternoon, while the farmer was working outside, he looked up and saw his horse running toward him. But the horse was not alone. The horse was returning to him with a whole herd of horses. So now the farmer had 10 horses to help work his fields.

All the villagers came by to congratulate the farmer and said, “Wow! This is such good luck!”

But the farmer responded, “Good luck. Bad luck. Who knows?

A few weeks later, the farmer's son came over to visit and help his father work on the farm. While trying to tame one of the horses, the farmer’s son fell and broke his leg.

The villagers came by to commiserate and said, “How awful. This is such bad luck.”

Just as he did the first time, the farmer responded, “Bad luck. Good luck. Who knows?”

A month later, the farmer’s son was still recovering. He wasn’t able to walk or do any manual labor to help his father around the farm.

A regiment of the army came marching through town conscripting every able-bodied young man to join them. When the regiment came to the farmer’s house and saw the young boy's broken leg, they marched past and left him where he lay.

Of course, all the villagers came by and said, “Amazing! This is such good luck. You're so fortunate.”

And you know the farmer’s response by now…

"Bad luck. Good luck. Who knows?"

One of my beautifully wise students, who wishes to remain nameless, sent me this poem that she had written for her children, which further highlights the idea that there are two sides to everything:

When darkness falls and your light has dimmed

Remember life requires darkness and light

Remember good things grow in the dark, just as you did

Without distractions you have time to focus and reflect

Know darkness as your friend and not your enemy

Don’t fear it, as it is necessary to grow your heart and soul

Know the greatest compassion is fashioned in the darkest of corners.

Your life is rich with different hues, shades and colours and by making friends with the dark your truest self will become known to you.

Rest easy in the dark and know this too shall pass and a life worth living is yours…!

Personally, I have found that the dark times are actually the most fruitful. Those times where we feel lost and empty, those times when we don’t know which way to turn, when the world we knew is dropping away and we haven’t yet found a hand hold for the new life to be lived, when the stepping stones have disappeared, these are often the most fruitful times of our life.

Many are being asked to let go as we flow into spring. The moon and cosmic forces are really encouraging change as we move towards the major lunar standstill in June. We can expect the unexpected. Currently we are being cleared out, made empty, so that there is space for the new to enter into our lives. This is uncomfortable for reasons explained in the previous paragraph but essentially because we have a really hard time setting into the unknown and the uncertain.

But there is no going back! If you are reading this then you are in process and on this path, knowing that life cannot continue as it has been, with negative self-relating and limited core beliefs leading to much of the same - I am reminded of that marvellous quote from Einstein, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Our soul seeks freedom and our heart seeks greater expression. Joy is our birthright, if only we could open to it and get beyond our guilt and shame and other lower vibrational emotions that prevent us being all of who we are in this lifetime.

It is worth remembering that we have choice - we always have choice. But sometimes we don’t realise we have choice and this is where spiritual practice is so helpful as it often shines a light into the shadows, helping us to become conscious of that which lays unconscious, to realise the many ways that we restrict our choice and buy into the illusion, and to do something about it - to set ourselves free so that we can truly realise our potential.

It is this - this drive for greater consciousness and the freedom it gifts, to truly know my own truth and the truth of this universe, which inspires me in my sharing of yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda. If it wasn’t for these practices then I am sure I would be dead by now, or living a mundane life. Instead, as I heard towards my 50th birthday in June, I feel truly grateful for my life, for all the dark and challenging times and the lessons learned. I hope that I get to enjoy many more years of living life to its fullest and diving deeper into love and truth with all the various obstacles and challenges this presents.

I am eternally grateful to all of you who trust in this process and show up time and time again, courageously delving deeper into your shadows so that you can live a truer and more heart-felt and soul led life, shinning increasingly brightly and lightening up those around you too.

This is how we will create positive change in the world. Not by changing the outer, but by going deeper inwards. All spiritual philosophies acknowledge this. It is only be changing the inner that we affect and therefore change the outer. And the moon and the cosmic forces are supporting this - asking us to go deeper still, heal, forgive, let go, and show that there is always another way.

We are also being asked to heal our relationship with the universe to - to appreciate and embody, to rest into the fact that it is a kind and fair universe if only we could let go of our conditioning which tells us otherwise. Most of us have been taught to distrust it, to confuse it with humanity’s idea of right/wrong and good/bad, which keeps us trapped in the cycle of judgement and fear. Remember, on this too we have choice.

It is safe to trust in the universe. It never lets us down. We can never get it wrong or fail. All of our challenging experiences offer a lesson and a blessing, to give ourselves a hard time is pointless, and yet we do it, because of our conditioning. We have a choice of the beliefs we believe, of the words we use to communicate to ourselves and others, of the actions we take and the manner in which the effect of this ripples through the universe. It is a benevolent universe, it is only your mind that judges and makes it one way or the other, good or bad.

For those of you between worlds, stay centred in the not knowing and the uncertain. This is not a time to try to force things to happen. It might feel uncomfortable but it will pass. My advice is to dig deeper to practice, hug a tree, get on your mat, enjoy some Reiki, eat well, sleep well and get outside as much as you can.

Until next time, enjoy the wane.

Love Emma x