by Ross BIshop
Unhealed emotional wounds make us slaves to our beliefs and our emotions. They retard our development, stifle our passion and keep us from experiencing the joys of life. Although they are also the fertile soil in which we will cultivate our enlightenment, so long as our wounds remain unhealed, they are like weights we hang onto that drag us under.
The way humans hold on to woundedness is a most intriguing dilemma. At first glance, you would expect to see intense motivation for everyone to rid themselves of their limiting and restrictive negative influences. After all, they are an enormous source of pain. They inhibit us, wreck our lives and keep us from being happy. Although some individuals do work to eliminate these influences, the vast majority of people are held hostage by the fear that has been created by their beliefs.
In fairness, healing emotional wounds is not a small undertaking. The process dredges up a good deal of pain and brings you face-to-face with the fears and misgivings you hold about yourself. And so long as you accept your beliefs, it does not matter that they are untrue. Healing also disturbs your defenses and leaves you feeling naked and vulnerable, at least for a short time.
Healing requires significant motivation because even though the benefits of healing are that the long-term gains significantly outweigh any short-term losses, at some point you must make a leap of faith from what you believe and are accustomed to, no matter how detrimental it has been, into a world that is largely unknown, with nothing but promises that things will get better.
Healing means exposing the core of your being and admitting how you really feel about yourself. The decision to heal requires the willingness to accept that you may be as flawed as you fear (you cannot be). It also requires an almost ruthless commitment to find and live in the truth, as difficult and unpleasant as that sometimes seems.
But, therein lies the root of the problem. Your fear and pain are present. They are now! And although the promise of peace and contentment is appealing, it is in “Tomorrowland.” Healing is indistinct – on a far horizon and difficult to hold on to in the face of your immediate fear and pain.
Most people choose to avoid dredging up their inner turmoil if they can find a way to get by day-to-day. It is only when pain pushes them, either to the limits of their endurance or into a corner with no way out, that they will reach for other ways of being.
But we are extremely good at coping. It’s what we do! Squeezed between the pain caused by the way we see ourselves and the fear of the unknown represented by change, we adapt, we cope. Faced with the fear that our negative beliefs might be true, it is understandable that we would try to get by and not challenge this potential dark truth. Coping is also useful and necessary when we are not ready to face the real truth about who we are.
Copyright Blue Lotus Press 2023
