My Saving Grace

Life as been whirlwind around here, as usual, with activities involving kids, work, & family stuff.

I have had many challenging things occur in the past couple of months, which without the help of EFT, my saving grace, would have had me incapacitated emotionally.

The story that I have always told about my childhood is one of immense struggle and lack of love from my mother. I have, over many years, managed to transmute the feelings and thoughts about that situation. At least I thought I had effectively dealt with all of that, until I received a message, from my sister in law, saying that they all would be moving into my peaceful sanctuary of North Carolina. They included my brother, sister in law, neice AND my mother!

Okay, so perhaps I didn’t have this mother thing under control. The information threw me into a tailspin that took me a while to get out of. I started to have health issues, that, thankfully, resolved themselves.

With the help of a therapist, I tapped on many issues that popped up that I didn’t realize still existed for me.

“Even though I don’t feel like I have any control over this situation…”

“Even though I am afraid that I might fall back into old dramatic patterns when mom moves down here….”

“Even though I am angry that they will be encroaching on space….”

“Even though I am worried that I really haven’t made the changes that I thought I had…”

Basically it all came down to inability to control the situation and doubt about what I really did know. Hmmm… sounds familiar. I wasn’t able to control or even affect any change in my situation while growing up either.

After a couple of sessions, I am finally at peace with the whole situation. Circumstances have changed a bit and the only person coming down here is my mom. We are actually helping her find her way here as well. Instead fighting against what may come of this, I have decided that I will embrace it and allow the NOW to rule instead of the past pain.

The other challenging situation that I am still dealing with is my husband’s illness. It cycles from okay to really bad, on a regular basis. We are in the midst of a medication change and that can either be challenging or disastrous. This phase of changes has been very difficult for everyone in my family.

I have started listening to Echart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” and have been finding some answers to the questions that Abraham hasn’t really addressed. Pain bodies make so much sense to me and I know I have some active ones, and without a doubt, my husband is almost exclusively living in them.

In the introduction of The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle describes how he was feeling before he had is transformation.

One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train — everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point in contin­uing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this con­tinuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.

The Power of Now - pg 1

My husband is in this place more often than he cares to admit. This issue is one that I have been actively using EFT with for a long time. I have come to a place where the emotional charge of what he is going through is not very strong. Yes, do get very sad when I stop and contemplate how this journey may end up for him. I try not to go there very often.

There is life, then there is physical extension of life, and then there is that which is the return to that which is life. There is no death. And so you cannot NOT save a life because a life cannot be squandered, a life cannot be lost. You cannot cease to be. And so you are saying that I should save the sanctity of a physical life experience.

A dear woman had been coming to our gatherings for many years and in time introduced her daughter also, and not long after her daughter took her own life. And her mother, of course, was devastated and then mad at us and at her because she thought that our knowledge of no death had in some way given her daughter permission to take her life in your words and re-emerge into pure positive energy. And as we visited with her, we said to her, we explained what the death experience is and the freedom and well being that her daughter is experiencing and we said in an attempt to soothe her wouldn’t you rather that your daughter is in this place of pure connection to who she is rather than that uncomfortable, painful mindset that she was in before? And her mother said, no! And it really speaks to the way that most humans view this so called sanctity of life. “Yes, I would prefer that you’re here suffering and miserable rather than re-emerged and feeling wonderful. And we really think it’s worth getting your thoughts around. And we know that it’s not the easiest thing to know and understand, and we know that most of the world, as we said to our friend earlier, would not agree with us on this!

Most people really believe that under *all* conditions it’s better, no matter how miserable you are, to stay in this physical body. And we are certainly not promoting suicide, although every death is that you know? Every death is suicide because no one can do anything to you that is outside of your vibrational offering, and your vibrational offering, by way of Law of Attraction is creating everything! And so we think that it’s really one of those things where you do the best you can to express the Joy of life experience through the clarity of your example.

Alaska Cruise 2007

I understand this philosophy and I can, very much, understand my husbands desire to escape from it all. It is hard to imagine the pain and torment that he is going through and living and reliving on a daily basis. My hope, as he travels this path, is that he has the transformation like Echkart Tolle or Byron Katie had. That is a selfish hope, I know, but not totally impossible.

I used to use our children as a tool to make him think about the finality of it all. “I won’t let you screw up their lives like your father screwed up yours”. But I have stopped that. If something happens, our kids will be okay. I will make sure of that. His illness will not be swept under the carpet and hidden away. Our children will know that he is sick and that they are not to blame for anything that may happen due to his illness.

It’s odd. Through all of this, I have come to appreciate the concept of hell, if only for purely selfish reasons. The fear of hell is what is keeping my husband here with me. I will take that bit of hope as a time extender for him to find his way.

My role in all of this is as Abraham says: “do the best you can to express the Joy of life experience through the clarity of your example.” I am still working on that. I am there more often than not. I just need to focus on the fact that I am doing this for myself and not for the potential benefit that my family would have from my connection.

Oh what a river we are all traveling on.