I’m experimenting with my heart.

I live in the jungle of Costa Rica, you see and the internet has been broken. . . for 3 days. So I have a lot of time to be. To analyze my life, to think about my choices and to debate, endlessly, the sufferings of my soul.

In this involuntary social media and internet cleanse, I found myself laying in the hammock, with a lot of time to be in “my stuff”. . . that is, my problems, stresses, discomforts and everything and the other that I want to change about my life. It all is coming up into my consciousness, and there is no little blue thumb like button for me to click on (aka, nowhere for me to run and hide).

See most of the time, we distract ourselves from “this stuff”, the pain that we don’t want to feel. And the number one way we do this is through our busyness. We distract ourselves. It’s just easier that way, or so we think.

Wait, let me back up.

You have to feel to heal it. “This stuff”, this pain that we hide from, we are keeping it beneath the surface, thinking we don’t have to deal with it. Or that we’ve already dealt with it.

But all too often, the reality is that we really didn’t process it. We just pushed it out of our consciousness, where it will sit below the surface, until the time comes where it will rise and pop, no, where it will erupt back into our life. Yes, erupt like a volcano.

See this stuff, this pain, it ‘s all energy. And energy wants to move. Energy wants to go somewhere, it wants to transform, it wants to flow. But because we don’t deal with it, it gets pushed beneath the surface and therefore stuck within us.

This is a problem, because we’re human and evolution has motivated us to want to progress in life.

But here we are, instead, getting stuck, not going anywhere.

So we need to actually process these pains, this stuff, this energy. Otherwise it will keep us in the same loop of awareness, in the same confusing and difficult problems that we just cant break free of.

Distractions & Your Busyness

Ok. So distractions, this is what we do to avoid the feelings that arise from our uncomfortable experiences. Distractions show up as ANY kind of busyness.

This is anything from staying busy with an outside activity, to looping endless anxious thoughts in the mind.

For example, work, cleaning the house, traveling, more schooling, more dinner parties, alcohol, television, movies, perfectionism, non-stop worrying, non-stop talking, more dates, or even just swiping for your mindless pleasure. See ANY activity can be used as a distraction.

If the activity prevents you from being aware and feeling, than it is a distraction that may be keeping you trapped in your misery.

Let’s take a look at what happened when one of my distractions, social media and the internet, wasn’t available for 3 days.

Oh yes we started this discussion, “my stuff” started to come up.

So on this very hot day, after who knows how long contemplating in the hammock, I felt the need to be productive . . . Or did I really just start to get too uncomfortable, as I felt my stuff come up? …. Umm, so my busyness reflex muscle kicked in? Yeah that’s more likely. (Yes, needing to be “productive” can sometimes be counterproductive to progressing in the personal development, inner world. Wrap your brain around that.)

So to satisfy my productive/busyness craving, I picked up a book from the shelf that I hadn’t looked at or read in 3 years.

I remembered it was a gem, but reading it now, it blew me away.

But no, I couldn’t be distracted for too long, because this book is high-level conscious thinking. So after every few paragraphs, I had to stop and consider how these truths were playing out in my life. Which was undeniable of course.

So I re-read the first few chapters. And here are my key takeaway insights, re-envisioned. These will make a world of difference in your life too, if you take time to understand the concepts.

*****

I get it. We all have problems that we want to move through.

But we get stuck from moving forward and through our problems:

• Either because our mind endlessly loops on the problems we are aware of, trying to figure out solutions (this only traps energy in circles).
• Or we never processed our problems, and as a result the energy got pushed below the surface and into our subconscious (stuck there of course).If we can process ANY of these stuck energies, then we will feel a shift in life, and be able to finally move forward once and for all (…to new problems! But that’s for another story).

So to process the stuck energy, we start with the mind.

We can work with the mind, to calm it down and quiet it. Yes we can practice yoga & meditation. Then, as a result, we have mental spaciousness and quietness, to tune in and really feel into what is going on for us.

We feel into the energy, to then be with it. And as simple as it sounds, just being honestly with it, it will move and shift. We need to honor and accept, without judgment or making it mean anything about us. It simply is.

This attention and focus into presence, after clearing the mind with meditation, will transform our stuck energy. This is really processing it, if we can be with it – discomfort, electrical charges, maybe anger or tears, maybe worried nauseousness or outright despair. If we can be fully with it, we can transform it.

*****

It was after this contemplation, the day the internet died, that I made some major shifts in my awareness, through releasing my stuck energy. Right away, I saw it clearly. I realized that manifesting is a lie and you need to stop now. I’ll discuss that in Part II.