Highway to Soul
I wrote this song over 15 years ago when I was struggling within the experience of my boyfriend’s suicide.
Society has changed somewhat since, there seems to be an emergence taking place of embracing the emotional body back to health and alignment. We are also; let’s admit it, still in the Dark Age as far as really understanding where emotions fit in and what part they play in our collective spiritual evolution
What would an environment be like where feelings were supported and understood? A world where our felt experience has such clear language that understanding becomes instant. If we took on board acknowledging and respecting our needs and others feelings is a major necessity for the development of a co operative world?
The core aspect of anything is referred to as ‘’the heart of the matter’’ we also say the soul of something when describing its entirety. The heart and soul are interchangeable .The aspect of us that is not physical but emotional and felt. The soul aspect is innately healthy so when we experience emotion it can become a stepping stone where we connect and feel uplifted by the soul enabling this through the emotional level. Understanding feelings and going through them all with presence is one of the most spiritual practices necessary for total integration and evolution.
The central part of relationship itself is the heart which is our feelings so if this is such a main part and emotions play a huge role in everything doesn’t it make sense to understand them so we can live in a healthy emotionally open climate where addressing feelings becomes natural and progressive.
The healing catalyst for me as mentioned was my partner Richard who took his life age 21 with painkillers
For 2 years after his death I told myself I was over it, little did I know I was in shock and denial .When we go through loss and trauma this is a common reaction in order to survive such an overwhelming experience.
Unfortunately for me nobody around me at that time knew much about health healing and how emotions can also show up as health issues. So when my periods stopped, I began to realize how I had shut down my feelings too.
I began a series of acupuncture treatments and learned meditation. This was when a torrent of emotional energy began to surface with the force of an earthquake.
Imagine the scene, it’s the morning I discover Richards’s body in our attic room dead through an overdose. His friends informed of the event arrive offering condolence and drugs, a common way people deal with each other at such times .This is the day I felt a cry from my spirit to rebel against getting lost in escapism. Rather than ingesting substances aimed at feeling better I desired to get better at feeling whatever was actually going on deep down .I also felt that any drugs would distort authentic alignment with emotions.
Something vital was unfolding and it had a wild and natural edge to it that called to my higher sense and values of living an authentic life
If I could sum it up I would call the experience ‘A Rebirth of self through trauma’ .Time to totally die to the old way of how I used to live which was very unconsciously suppressing emotions, I had such a deep urge developing to begin to learn the importance of acknowledging and respecting how I truly felt.
I began exploring body work and learning meditation as a way to enable this energy to find its way through as it was unleashing itself on a daily basis.
This journey was sometimes made even more challenging when I related to others who proclaimed they were on a spiritual path. I was often told all emotion is illusion or ‘’it’s your karma’’ and many other ungrounded unhelpful misinterpretations.
This is something I continue to witness in many spiritual teachings, an outdated denial and suspicion of emotions creating an effect of squashing them down, especially anger which is after all a vital part of us that arises when our needs are frustrated.
There is no point in feigning a spiritual detachment if there are feelings that need a voice this is dangerous and it bypasses authenticity of the moment. Navigating feeling involves swimming through all ranges of emotion as if there were no good or bad, in doing this we gain energy and our intuitive muscle develops magnificently
I found out years after their deaths that both of my Grandfathers had also committed suicide. I can now see clearly how ancestral patterns get passed down subtly through how we deal with our feelings. It seems that this time we live in is changing into an opportunity to transform these emotional states like never before. Clearing any emotional holding that prevents us from being fully alive. This is real empowerment for all generations.
On the day my Mother’s Mother passed away I was to experience something that gave me more insight into why I was going through this constant streaming of emotional vividness
The night of my Grandma’s death I was lighting a candle, when all of a sudden I saw in my mind’s eye a spinning vortex it felt something similar to a good meditation, a concentrated state and deeply relaxing … powerful so much so that I had to surrender to the now spinning vortex
As if inside a dream a voice narrated a story as the spiral spun anti clockwise it spoke ’’ re live to relieve’’ Once (the past) and future then it turned and spun clockwise as the voice said ‘’Into the great mother’’ Integrate to heal.
The spiral then changed into a crescent moon to my left , a sun appeared at my right, a bolt of light shot from them merging into a Chinese Yin and Yang symbol, again a voice relayed that mother and father self in the psyche are parents to the inner child self who contains the essence of both within it
This vision like experience seemed like a healing gift from my Grandmother on her passing
Over the coming weeks I began to understand what it all meant.
I saw how patterns of holding denying and demeaning emotions had impacted me as a child growing up. As a child our needs especially if pre verbal are many times unmet unheard or misunderstood and this is where they become buried pushed aside into the unconscious and held in the body. This can manifest as pain as we grow up and can be healed by listening to rather than covering up the symptoms of something deeper more the physical body. Our bodies speak volumes. If we listen through a felt sense we own its power. If we give away this power we can end up in the hands of others who may not know our bodies
Our care givers may demand we agree with their timetable and thus emotional disconnect begins. The pattern this creates is one of looking outside for approval, needing to conform and losing touch with our deeper self.
Hiding feelings, making how we feel taboo, being uncomfortable around emotional depths not exploring big subjects like the emotional aspect of sexuality, impacts us as a society when feelings are the very thing that we all share. Is it not through our Hearts and souls where we share intimacy with each other and existence itself?
Is it possible then to re learn how to recognize when disconnection is happening and how to gently re establish whatever we can do in order to re connect?
Anything that numbs us out of inner connectivity is a habit given to us as children we can explore the ways we cut off from ourselves and look at patterns.
Any work on ourselves must be done with the care and love of a good inner parent. Developing and encouraging this is vital. You will never speak to any one more than yourself in your mind. When confronting our deepest depths of emotional navigation the communication needs to be genuinely loving.
This song I give to you, mentions tears as a great healing source. Throughout recollection and integration of childhood/ancestral wounding tears has been a way for me to reform a connection to my soul
Tears bring the past in to the present.
Repressed, stuck energy from experiences where feeling was not allowed can finally flow free again through the power of this emotional monsoon purification
I’ve often wondered why it is not realized that the myth ‘’boys do not cry ‘’, denies such a deep sensual power of emotional detoxification to those who would benefit a lot. Seeing this emotional release mechanism as weak is a violent perspective blocking nature and thus not allowing her to flow through us.
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There seems to be such an unconscious fear of fully feeling what lies within, I have used the term dance with the shadow as a metaphor for redeeming this… to be lovingly present with all aspects of our inner world dark and light … Yin and Yang the two opposing energies of the Chinese symbol that together form total integration. Embracing the shadow self means becoming whole dark and light. This is Balance.
Finding a container for emotions is vital .This can include activities such as writing out feelings without censor. You do not need to show it to any one and burn it after words if you want. I find that this a very healing way to connect with my emotional body giving it a voice
The elements purify the emotional body use them consciously and creatively every day
Breath is a key to healing and reintegration of emotional numbness or surfacing feelings that become unfamiliar and may be met with fear, Slowing ,deepening and connecting the inhalation to the exhalation is a powerful way of staying connected and focused on whatever energy needs to flow through you.
Asking yourself what is it I need right now? , speaking directly to the feeling level will reveal a felt answer if you can wait for your body to respond in its own language. Stay with the experience and go as deep as you need to.
When we begin to give ourselves more attention in these ways our confidence grows and our actions and choices as we really listen to the deeper underlying aspects of our being.
We are less likely to say yes when we mean no because our authentic feelings are familiar and going against them is understood as living outside this experience and seeking approval. Therefore our giving will also be flowing and authentic too.
If we look at parenting we can clearly see there are no clear instructions as to how a functional relationship with emotions can take place. So we see a similar way of dealing with the inner world here as we also see the justice system dealing with humans in society. Reward for being a good boy or girl and punishment for being bad.
What is a good person? Someone who complies with the social order and behaves in a way the rules say is ok. Do we need good people or do we need whole healthy human beings. If we were to look at the feelings behind why a child is angry and ‘’misbehaving’’ we might get somewhere and help them to understand themselves… there will always be a deeper reason as to why anyone is feeling angry.
So we have risen to the challenge staying with feelings without ignoring them, found out what was needed, validated and recognized this vital part of ourselves we are on the path to spiritualizing
After any healing work remembering to have fun and to remind ourselves how we are becoming renewed at the core is necessary to optimize the growing stages .May you find your Highway to soul an evolving journey of celebration and empowerment into love