20 years ago, at the age of 44, I came to a place in my mind when I just had to see things differently if I was going to be happy. Up till then I truly believed that I was at the mercy of what others thought of me and that there was no room for my feelings. I had suppressed my feelings so deeply that I wasn’t even able to experience anger, and certainly not love. You could say that I was paralysed by fear. If I got triggered I became emotionally paralysed for a long time. I remember once it even lasting for six weeks. Suppressing my feelings this way was creating enormous tension in my body. I was denying my feelings so much that I thought religion, spirituality and personal growth was only for those that needed it.
At 44 I started going to yoga to try and release this tension, thinking it was just a physical problem that I had. There was a girl at the yoga that kept telling me that I should get myself rebirthed as she could see the state I was in. However, I still didn’t get it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to work with my mind. I didn’t believe it had anything to do with my mind. I didn’t realise then that this was a form of denial.
Whether it was what this girl said or perhaps it was because I had finally suffered enough that I was ready for a real shift to occur. It happened at a movie where I saw a reunion scene between a mother and her son who had been separated since birth. It felt like a needle was pulled out of my heart and I broke down into what I now call a spontaneous rebirth – breathing heavily, sweating and crying and for a whole hour!!! Everyone else had left the cinema by the time I stopped. Then I ran home, phoned my mother and said: “I love you and you have made me so angry!” Bless her, it seemed like her arms came down the phone line and held me and I cried for another hour. After 2 hours of crying my body felt so much more relaxed and the big ‘AHA’ of my life occurred: “This is all in my mind and it is safe to express all my feelings!” This was a big step for me. The next day I phoned this girl and said I wanted to be a rebirther and asked her what I have to do to become one. Well, the following weekend I started my training (synchronicity!) and trained with a very powerful teacher for 9 years.
At the beginning of this training I still believed that others were the cause of my pain, especially my mother. Part of the rebirther training was to study the book, A Course in Miracles, which I did religiously, but without any real understanding or enthusiasm. The truth was that I had enormous resistance to what it was teaching and I just glanced over the message. I wasn’t ready to look deeper into myself. I started to realise that in all the relationships I had had in the past I was terrified of commitment. I went from one girlfriend to the next, leaving either because I couldn’t feel anything or because uncomfortable feelings were coming up which I thought were caused by them. If someone I really fell for left me, I was devastated and paralysed. I was, therefore, either feeling guilty for leaving or feeling afraid of being left, but I could never speak about it.
After quite some years with A Course in Miracles (ACIM) I read another book, ‘Disappearance of the Universe’ which describes ACIM in a simple and quite amusing way. Suddenly I felt ready to really start looking at the message of ACIM. I started for the first time to see that I am the one who is responsible for my feelings, and that I cannot be hurt by the words of another but only triggered.
I have been through several stages in this process, and I can see now that we cannot jump steps. First I was paralysed. I could not feel any real feeling and and definitely could not speak about it. Then I began to be able to feel (I first felt anger after 18 months of rebirthing – I had shut down on my anger after feeling so guilty for slapping my mother’s face when I was 18). Then I was able to express myself and say, “When you do that, I get to feel this (sad, angry etc.)!” Then I started to take responsibility for my feelings and started letting go of blaming the another and worked more with the feelings on my own. Now I am learning to be grateful to another for triggering my blocks. I can always feel that the negative feeling and the blame come up first, but as soon as possible I work with gratitude and actually often thank the other for triggering my blocks as the other has given me the opportunity to look at them and let them go.
The thing that is becoming so clear to me is that this is a long journey of training my mind this way, and I will need to do it until it becomes a habit. I still get triggered but what the training has done is shorten the time it takes for me to come back to peace. 20 years ago it could take 6 weeks, now I can often do it within seconds. If it does take longer and the other person asks if something is wrong I often say: “I am just working on something”. Then later when I have worked it through I can tell them about it and thank them.
I now see relationships in a very different way than I did before. I am letting go of many of the conventional customs and rules that we have set up in the world. I am letting go of seeing a relationship with a woman as a safe haven where I do not have to feel my loneliness and where I can live happily ever after. I see it more as my primary classroom where I can let go of all my blocks and awaken from the dream state I am in.
I really trust that if I truly forgive others (but in the way A Course in Miracle teaches us) for triggering me and look at my blocks without judging myself, that these blocks will eventually fade away. I am able to feel much more than I have ever done before, and this includes feeling a lot more love.
I hope you find my story helpful.
Blessings,
Douglas
