Many of us have been burned.
I mean literally. We know what it’s like to have this thing called “heat”
where something that is very hot meets with our skin or body
and it burns. The skin is altered, it changes, there is seering pain….
and we now know never to go near that hot thing again in the same way.
If someone gets severely sunburned once, they often put on 70 Sun Block
in the future…..but only when the sun is shining. It would be crazy to
wake up every morning and put on 70 Sun Block when outside it was
winter time.
When someone has experienced a third degree burn, the most severe,
it’s pretty unlikely that they might be just walking down the street and run
into a huge firey explosion. That would be VERY RARE.
But our minds will return to images of terrible fires, meteors hitting the
earth, loud explosions, or the burning house over and over again, and fear can enter
the body just remembering the incident.
Often people write of emotional pain in the same way as getting a terrible
burn. We even say this…”I GOT SOOOOO BURNED”.
The ones that are third degree emotional burns feel so damaging, permanently
painful, devastating….like there is no recovery, no chance of feeling whole
and good again.
Without the Work, and the possibility of questioning whether or not your
story is absolutely true, you can run a painful experience in your mind
over and over and over again. And over and over. And over.
Enter The Work. When something is really scary and frightening that I’ve
gone through, the first thing I can ask is…am I safe right now? Am I getting
burned right in this very moment? Is there fire anywhere near me?
Well, ahem, clearing-throat…I guess the answer would be “NO”.
“But I feel so terrible! My life is ruined! I’ll never be the same!!!!”
Question #1: Is that actually true? Is your life actually entirely ruined?
Are you still breathing? Are you sure you feel terrible in every minute
of every hour? Are you positive that never being the same is the worst
thing that could happen?
I mean, do you want to be the SAME, really??
Wow, what if that thing that happened that was such a BURN was
something that GAVE ME NEW LIFE. Something that helped me
love more, something that helped me see how I was OK even though
I lost “everything”, something that helped me feel compassion, to
feel less afraid of my fellow humans, to feel more connected to
joy.
Every time I’ve been burned….healing has happened.
The power of the group to help question stories and find the joy again
is FANTASTIC. Come join a spring group to discover the truth about
all your stories of being burned. You can leave your 70 Sun Block in
your first aid kit, you’ll be safe.
Grace