Unfold Your Wings and Watch Life Take Off

Dark brown waters move with serene steadiness. Rippling reflections of banked trees, blue sky and white cloud shimmer silently. Leaves and grass float past with silken smoothness. Water gently laps the grassy bank. All around traffic passes oblivious of the river's great depth.

Your Healing From Fear, Anger And Grief

Our emotional life is to be found in the depths of our heart. There are only two core emotions - love and fear. Associated with fear are a host of other emotions like anger and grief. It is by feeling and expressing these difficult fear-related emotions that the fear in us is transformed to love and its associated emotions of joy and peace. As we explore our potential we become emotional alchemists, instead of changing lead into gold, we change fear into love.

My first encounter with fear, I mean real terror, not a minor fear and anxiety, was when I lost my job because I had a disability and could not cope. This was different from previous situations when I had lost my job, because this time I could not get another one. My schizophrenia was sufficiently disabling to make it impossible for me to cope with any job. I remember the day I came home from my interview with the psychiatrist. I sat in a big easy chair in my parents' lounge. Suddenly I chose to accept the belief that I could not work again. I felt a terror I had never known.

In that moment I chose to give up my dreams as a young man of having a career, earning money, getting married and raising a family. I was terrified and I was angry. These negative thoughts made me very angry. I was angry at being cheated of the life I had planned for myself and the life I had worked so hard to help achieve.

I did not know how to cope with the feeling of rage that was surging through my veins. In Glencaig I had a friend who worked in woodlands so I asked if I could work with him chopping wood. He was felling large trees at the time and was glad of the help, so I joined him. I think he was utterly amazed at how an "Office Johnnie" as he saw me, could chop up so many logs vigorously in such a short space of time. Enormous amounts of energy were being spent chopping wood, because I was trying to work the anger I was feeling out of my system.

I stuck at this for a few days but try as I might I could not come to terms with the anger I felt. Eventually panic feelings overtook me and I had to be taken into hospital. When in hospital the panic left me and severe depression took over. I didn't know it then, but I had just locked all those intense feelings I was experiencing deep inside.

The fear, anger and grief remained locked away for the next two years. These were the worst two years of my life. This was the devil's chair. This was how I was choosing to torture and enslave myself in the years ahead. I simply survived those two years lost in a black depression caused by the limiting beliefs I had about myself. I had become a slave to these beliefs and could see no hope of escape. After two years I began to listen to inner guidance. My intuition led me to experiment with feeling the emotions I had locked away. At first feeling these emotions was difficult. They were shut away as if behind a wall.

However I slowly began to experiment with letting them out. I did this privately in my home. (See Your Calling Is Elevated Through The Release Of Pain). I would lie on a couch and let the terror take over. Anger came out along with the terror. I expressed the anger by thumping cushions, kicking and shouting. Behind the anger there was often grief, which I expressed by crying and sobbing. At the end of a period of emotional catharsis I would lie exhausted on the couch, cover myself with a blanket and find comfort.

This practice went on for years. Initially the fear, anger and grief that I uncovered were loud, raw emotion. Gradually the rawness of the emotion eased and to my surprise, while I was releasing emotion, I began to have memories of early childhood traumas and eventually even of birth experiences. These memories were more of a sensed inner feeling, than distinct events remembered visually. I realised that by this process of emotional catharsis, I was shedding decades of fear, anger and grief that had somehow become stuck in my body, mind and heart. I knew when to engage this emotional catharsis and how best to express the emotion by listening to and following my intuition's gentle inner promptings.

As the process of emotional catharsis continued I began to receive insights. I saw that the feelings that had surfaced were due to an unhealthy and rigid adherence to my life plan. As my catharsis proceeded I learned a new way of relating to life. I became more flexible and less determined that my life should work out in a certain pre-ordained way. By becoming more sensitive I learned to depend on inner guidance.

I lost my materialistic tendencies with all the associated dreams of owning an airplane, big house and fancy car. I found abundance in the little that I had because in reality I had all I needed. I didn't long for the career I had lost. That career was of interest because of what it could do for me. Instead I learnt to serve others simply and directly. As long as my goal was to serve, I realised that I would always find sufficient activity to engage my talents, despite having a disability. I learnt that having a family was not the panacea it was often held up to be, and became a contented single person. Through realising that I was being protected, an inner calmness developed. I could sense that everything was going to work out.

I also lost the fear of trying new challenges. If I felt fear associated with a challenge I knew I could release it as inner pain. I dropped my limiting belief that I could not work again and began to take on new challenges like organising and managing a rock concert for Africa and starting a management consultancy practice part-time. By trying different things I discovered that although I could not work in a nine to five job, if I accepted my limitations and worked within them there was plenty of work that I could do. I discovered real power in this approach and began to unfold my wings and fly.

I have learned to live with my disability, to accept it and work with it. This has challenged me to become more creative and to have new and exciting beliefs. Today I believe I am being called to support others in transforming their lives and am responding accordingly.

By expressing my locked in fear, anger and grief I became healed of a cripplingly severe depression and gained many spiritual insights and healings. Listening to my calling and following it saved me from the devil's chair and took me to a previously unknown place where I am blessed with feelings of love, peace and joy.

Unfold Your Wings and Watch Life Take Off

Part 3 - Your Healing

Your Healing From Fear, Anger And Grief

Envoi