Saturday 30 June 2012

Excavating The Soul

What a journey! I feel completely awed by the enormity, the complexity and the synchronicity of it all, the way everything has come together and now makes sense is astounding...

I always knew I was on a big journey but never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined this. I was always trying to 'get' somewhere, always seeking answers, resolution and an end to all the pain. And there is so much pain and struggle in the world, I honestly don't know how anyone survives it. Yet here I am in June 2012, aged 41 without a single thing I thought I needed to feel OK about myself or my life. No relationship, (well not in any conventional sense – but that's another story!), no glitzy career, no soaring success, no children, and no, not even a big lottery win...

The 40 year struggle to secure something or someone 'out there' has me completely and utterly defeated. Yet, suddenly and incomprehensibly everything makes perfect sense. Despite every effort to 'get my life back on track', every attempt has been categorically blocked. In the space that has been 'forcibly' created, I have set about consciously engaging in a process of letting go, releasing and purifying on a scale that would make anyone's eyes water.

Since the full moon eclipse at the beginning of June, my life has begun unfolding in the most surprising and awesome way. Over the past few weeks I have arrived in a reality that is somehow simultaneously both infinitely simpler and infinitely more complex. I am 'joining dots' and having 'aha' moments all the time, so much so that they are no longer mere 'moments' they have become a continuous State of Being. It's not just one light that has been switched on, it's a whole city! I feel like my mind has been broken open, releasing all the dross and expanding into a whole new way of perceiving reality.

(I began this piece of writing in my journal and then thought this is exactly the kind of writing I need to share on this blog, so I have copied it out for you and will continue with it here on line...)

It turns out my journal writing has been massively instrumental in this recent 'awakening' process. A few weeks ago I was guided to begin the process of going through all my old letters and journals to begin releasing the past and this is some 'guided writing' I found:

22nd April 2012
'We want you to let go of the past Freja. We want you to let go of all that has happened to you. All the people you have released, all the pain and struggle, all the fear and anger, all that no longer serves you and the identity you have created out of your survival patterns. You need to release them all....

You are split between your old identity and the new one which has yet to fully emerge. Your ego is finding the changes terrifying and keeps trying to throw you back into the familiar old ways....

You need to release all the negative writing Freja – all of it. It is doing nothing but holding you back and keeping you in the past. It is time to say good bye, to 'burn the bridges'. You do not need the pain or to identify with what happened to you. You cannot be free while you carry this around with you. You are not letting it go in anger or fear, but with forgiveness, compassion and release. You need to begin this process now. Remember this is about a DEEP let go, not a rehashing of old resentments. If 'stuff' comes up, you need to release it with the rest.

The past must be burned and released. You need to let go of your identity as an 'abuse survivor' and a 'wounded child' or a 'co-dependent' or a 'love addict' – you are evolving and need to release these 'tags' which have enabled you to find your spiritual path and connect with your soul. These 'tags' were a tool; they helped you identify the problem and find a solution, but they are not who you are in essence. It is time to evolve past these issues and become your liberated self...'

And so, very slowly I set about going through all my letters and journals and other boxes of paper work I have been carting around for years because I felt I needed to hold on to it for evidence. This paper work included my teaching 'portfolio of evidence', my coaching course notes and all my 12 Step work/writing. I have literally gone through my whole adult life – the twenty odd years I have been trying to get over my childhood – and symbolically burned or recycled the lot. I also went through all my books and passed on any I was no longer using. Any books to do with my journey up to this point that were no longer relevant for the path ahead were given to people I thought may benefit or to charity.

This massive 'clear out' brought me to finally address my many boxes of journals. The question was, should I simply burn the lot of them? This idea filled me with dread and also seemed to defeat the whole object of keeping records of my life. I have kept a diary from the age of 9 and I felt my writing had at times literally saved my life – so I felt I owed it to myself and my journals to at least have a read through to see if there was anything worth keeping.

I decided to keep the childhood ones as I had read them many times before and there weren;t piles of them taking up too much room. I also decided to keep all my old letters because they inspired positive feelings. I also no longer felt a nostalgic longing or regret for old relationships that had simply passed away. And so began the incredible process of reading through the record I had kept during my 20 year healing process. I began the 'excavation process' with my journal dated April 1992 for it was then that I had made a conscious decision to find a way to deal with the terrible mess I was in, the mess that unfortunately was 'my life'.

In all the years I have kept a journal, I have never tried reading all the way through, I had only ever gone back to read specific bits. This was a full 20 years worth of writing and I decided to go through it all. I didn't read it word for word, for there were large amounts of ranting and processing, especially in the early years – but I did flick through every single page and decide if it was a page I would like to keep or to release. When I started this project I had absolutely no idea where it would lead me – I just felt great chucking out / burning vast swathes of paper with words I no longer needed to read or carry around with me. It was hugely cathartic.

I was surprised to discover that I was 'over' it all. While a few feelings did come up here and there, as I read stuff that I had felt deeply pained by (even when going back to read it many years later,) I didn't feel triggered, I felt for the first time like an observer. There wasn't numbness or torment; it was simply 'time to let this go' and so that's exactly what I did!

I was also surprised to discover lots of really interesting little gems of insight, hope and sometimes even premonition – and I loved excavating these treasures out of the rubble of my early adult life. I also decided to keep writing about key events so I would have a basic record of my journey. The first five years was whittled down from about 6 arch folders down to 1 and the same again for the next five years. This brought me up to 2002. With only two arch files of writing covering 10 years of my life, I was feeling so much lighter!

The best thing about the first part of the process was seeing how far I had come and realising that I was over the soul destroying pain of it. I really never thought I'd see the day. My childhood was pure hell and I spent my twenties flailing about like a piece of flotsam and jetsam in a raging ocean storm. Even between storms – I still felt cast aside, alone and adrift in a vast terrifying ocean. While I already knew I had come out of that place, it was really wonderful to realise that I no longer even felt the memory of it affected me. It was a huge blessing and relief to get the chance to let it all go...

I didn't know what to expect in terms of reading about the next ten years (2002 – 2012) I had imagined that most of the recovery/healing had taken place in the first 10 years, it was, after all the period in which I had painstakingly 'uncovered' all the abuse of my childhood and by peeling away layers and layers of denial both in myself and in my family. (It really was grueling work and it seemed to go on for ever, but then I did have an awful lot to uncover and process...)

What I hadn't seen was that actually most of the healing took place after the uncovering and that actually my process snowballed after that. There was of course some cross over, but once I had completed cracking myself open and all the pieces of the jigsaw of my life had been revealed, a deeper somehow more subtle healing process began. The next task was to find a way to put myself back together, minus all the 'crap' I had inherited/ experienced and to let go of the layers upon layers of defenses and survival mechanisms I had built up during years of dealing with deep suffering.

I was therefore surprised to discover that the closer I got to 2012, the harder I found it to condense my writing. During the last 12 months I had written 2 arch files and have only been able to condense it down to 1! There is much less ranting in my writing and while there has been 'processing', it  has happened increasingly fast – to the point where I have addressed more than 10 major issues in the last 12 months, all at lightening speed and with almost none of the usual 'fall out'.

I also became aware that a clear 'acceleration' began in 2005 and that by 2011, my journals took on a whole new dimension. What amazes me is that I was completely unaware of this until I read through it all! Up until I decided to read through it all, I had only been aware of being 'in a (strange) process' I could neither understand nor control. I have discovered that somehow, while I was busy trying to keep putting one front of the other, I was also unwittingly receiving and recording some incredibly deep insights into my soul, my life path and also into the 2012 process.

Ultimately, 'it' all happened when I wasn't looking (or trying or striving...) I just continued to do what I naturally felt drawn to do or in some cases was pushed to do by the Universe. It has all unfolded so perfectly that I will never again doubt my journey or that I am being guided to exactly the right experiences I need in order to evolve as a human being. And I have also discovered that although I have received much valuable guidance along the way, both from other people and from spirit – the only accurate 'compass' I have on this journey is my soul

I have discovered that my entire process thus far has been about excavating my soul and learning how to 'read', understand and follow her guidance. Now that I have found her and have learned how to communicate with her, I am finally free to walk in alignment with my soul's purpose here on planet Earth. And, seeing as I have kept such an in depth record of it all, I am sure part of my purpose is to help others excavate their own souls from the rubble of this thing we call 'life'.

Writing has been a major part of this process on so many different levels and now I am enjoying the process of sharing it with you. I have come 'full circle' in so far as I have finally 'caught up' with the journey I have been living and come to a place of acceptance and understanding that I never knew was even possible. And I am really not sure what comes next, but for the first time in my life I find this deeply and inexplicably exciting!

Freja






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