by Ross Bishop
Unhealed wounds make us slaves to our beliefs and our negative 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 the rocks we hold that drag us underwater.
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. And although some individuals do work to eliminate these influences, the vast majority of people elect to be held hostage by their fear-driven 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 time.
Healing also requires significant motivation, because 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. Plus, your past life experiences haven’t gone so well. But, they were built around your ego and therefore could not have gone well, otherwise, you would not have come back, but we don’t want to see that.
The benefit of healing is that the long-term gains significantly outweigh any short-term losses. But, therein also lies the root of the problem. Your fear and pain are present. It is now! And although the promise of peace and contentment is appealing, it’s in “Tomorrowland.” It is indistinct on a far horizon and difficult to hold 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.
Healing means making yourself vulnerable by 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, irrespective of the cost.
Consider what you would do if you found that you really were as unworthy as you fear? What would you really do? If you were permanently flawed, with no hope for change, staying around would be an extremely depressing prospect. Many people say they would end it all.
But at the same time, 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.
To repeat: your inner child, feeling unloved and unlovable, is convinced that she is unworthy. It does not matter that this cannot possibly be true, but remember she has access to your emotional power. Faced with the prospect she is convinced will go badly and feeling powerless to do anything about it, she strenuously avoids confrontational situations because she has plenty of proof that she is not OK.
She has been operating “as if” for years, and the feedback has not been good. If she had any doubts before, she has become convinced that something is wrong with her. It does not matter that the feedback is because of her fear-based behavior and not who she really is. She has little idea of the truth and what she does know, is troubling. And so she works very hard to find every way she can to avoid and get by.
The irony is that what she fears (and you may also believe) cannot possibly be true. There is simply no way you can be damaged or defective. It would conflict with one of the fundamental laws of The Universe! That is not to say that you cannot FEEL that way, but it still cannot be true. Your behavior may sometimes be appalling, but who you are cannot be. And this is a very important difference. Yes, you have some things to learn, that is why you are here. It also explains why you sometimes mess up. But that does not make you bad or defective, it only means that you are sometimes confused and lost with some things to learn.
Many people are concerned about what they are supposed to do in life. The confusion is because there is no plan. So we turn instead to making money, looking good and being socially acceptable. The Universe doesn’t care about those things. You are not “supposed” to be doing anything other than developing yourself. The Universe is only interested in how you live your life, in the completion of your work. It does ask that you not interfere with that. Other than that, you are free to do as you wish.
(Excerpted from Healing The Shadow, by Ross Bishop)
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