When you're awake enough to understand you've been living in a Familiar Bad Feeling Place you can choose to stay or go.
If you go, you'll hear your FBFP calling your name every time the slightest thing goes wrong AND when things go really well! The next awakening stage is seeing a clear choice, again, to cross the threshold and re-enter or walk away.
In the beginning, walking away can feel like saying NO to lungs that are begging for air. The need to return to the cozy comfort of terrible can feel like an irresistible craving.
So, at first, we may have to push hard against it. To shout NO as loudly as a toddler fighting against bath time. To run away as fast as cats getting hit by raindrops. To think of it as fighting a battle in a critically important war for your freedom.
We may have employ anger to stop going back there.
We may have to activate the Warrior archetype to fight the addiction.
We may frequently fall asleep as a way to break the cycle.
We might temporarily find a Familiar Sorta Kinda Bad Feeling Place as an interim step.
When we consistently refuse the Siren call to go back to comfortable-discomfort, the call does fade. It gets softer and easier to ignore. You find other places to go when life happens, and you choose to keep breathing rather than hold your breath.
Expansion over contraction turns poison into medicine.
Then one day something stressful happens and you take a deep breath and handle it. Later you realize - oh wow, I used to go right into my FBFP when that happened and now I just handled the thing!
You no longer have to manage your emotions because you're practiced in feeling the sensations.
You no longer have to catch yourself when you're spiraling downward because you understand your power works best when you dive down quickly and spiral right back up.
The wavelike nature of life is understood as the kaleidoscope source of creativity and delight.
Finally, you can look back on your now Un-Familiar Bad Feeling Place with a poignant compassion.
It saved your life.
That place kept you from becoming a psychopath or a serial killer or a curmudgeon yelling at kids to stop watching TikTok and get a damn job. "Back in my day, we really did have to dance like no one was watching!"
It gave you rest and refuge when you needed to survive. It gave you a place where you knew the rules, and Mind does so love itself some rules.
Sweet self-pity, we thank you.
Social isolation, we thank you.
Precious pessimistic world view, we thank you.
Chronic complaining, we thank you.
Hair trigger temper, we thank you.
From here, we can see the others still sleepwalking through the nightmare of their FBFP. We can feel the heart spasm of compassion and the sting of tears because we know what it's like.
We can plant the seeds now for their awakening just like someone, somewhere, maybe even a version of you from a thousand years ago, planted seeds that bloomed in your Heart and woke you up.
Where are you standing on this path of awakening?
XO,
LMW
P.S. If you’d like to join me for a somatic writing workshop on March 23 from 11 am to 2 pm Eastern time, you can explore HERE