MODULE 18:
Graduation and Gratitude
As you graduate from one level of your care to another, resolve what no longer works, and start really opening up to the health you deserve, sometimes pain, problems, conditions, stressors, or aspects of yourself seem like they’ve been around so long that they have seemed like a part of you.
It may sometimes seem that the challenges have defined you. The good news is that they don’t anymore. There’s a pause and a peacefulness that you’ve been looking for all along.
Being Healthy Enough to Let Go
What does that mean? The distractions are now gone. You can “zoom out” from the narrow focus of the splinter and begin to see your finger again, possibly with new eyes. You likely wouldn’t even have put all this energy into your finger if there hadn’t been a splinter in the first place.
Changing Your Focus
As this shift happens, it can go pretty far. You may begin to even notice space between your thoughts as your brain slows down from “fight/flight” into “being”. Your “human” brain finally relaxes, and there’s space for your “heart” brain to silently enter the conversation.
I used to be afraid of Stage 8. I defined myself by my intelligence and my ability to contribute, to do. I really thought that if I couldn’t do things to take care of other people, if I couldn’t directly help someone, that I didn’t really exist! It seems crazy now, but that’s what I used to believe! So one day, as I was exercising at home, carrying 70 pounds of weights, I slipped and tumbled down a stairwell. My brain was concussed. It was like the thoughts were literally knocked out of my head. I observed this complete mental silence, with no thoughts, no plans, and no inner monologue, and I just started laughing.
For the next few weeks, I was unable to practice. My body felt like gravity was three times as strong. I was slow, sluggish, and tired. I was emotionally volatile and simply could not focus my mind. Basically, my worst fear had come true. I could not think and could not help people.
At any previous Stage of Healing, this would have been Hell on Earth. I would have been suffering, despairing, polarized, blaming, and all that good stuff. Yes, there were moments like that, and they were really just fleeting moments. At this Stage, I literally laughed at the perfect timing for me to literally get “knocked out of my head”, to “zoom out” my perspective, to see that I am more than what I know and what I do. I am a SOUL! I am a human BEING! There is far more to me than my thinking mind. I was and am the observer of my thoughts, my feelings, my plans, my emotions, my body. I was and am the space between those experiences, the space within those experiences, and that which includes those experiences.
Basically, my concussion allowed an “acute onset Stage 7 to 8 experience”, where I was whole enough to discharge who I had been, like a splinter being ejected from the body, and to experience the “bigger picture” of who I really am.
With this experience, I was so grateful to be alive! I could have easily died in that fall, and I was ALIVE! How wonderful! I felt so grateful. I was so grateful for my team at the office. Without them, the practice could have easily shut down without me. It kept running! How wonderful! I felt grateful.
I was so grateful for my wife telling me to STAY HOME. She supported me and cared about me as a person, not as a project to be fixed or completed, as a PERSON! How wonderful! I felt grateful.
Discovering a New Baseline
The more whole you become, the less you need major catastrophic injuries, breakdowns, and challenges to “Wake up” to these experiences. Gratitude and appreciation become more “normal” as your baseline way of engaging in the world. It’s experiencing and expressing gratitude “just because”. The more attached you are to your old limitations, the more life MUST drop kick you to move through. That just reveals where earlier Stages of Healing get to be addressed in your health adventure, so you can even be grateful for that! Your body is smart. This is the junction where your spinal nerve system and your brain start engaging with a different kind of brain, the heart brain. So take some time to enjoy the space… the adventure is really just beginning!
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