STWDM 11 - Healing Your Hidden Issues

Day 11 Message: The light within us can always identify our mind’s darkness. ― Munia Khan

In today’s meditation, we become more aware of what’s really happening inside, including our old issues from the past.  It can feel scary to acknowledge these feelings, but this can be done with knowledge and patience where these issues dissolve in the light of awareness. Today we explore our true self as luminous awareness.

O:  At some level we all spend energy working hard to avoid our unresolved negative issues.  We think that if we can keep those negative issues at bay, they aren’t a part of who we really are – they don’t affect us. All of our experiences and emotions – negative and positive, are a part of us.  The feelings we wish we didn’t have actually do impact us until we face them and move beyond them. When we spend energy trying to separate from feelings we don’t want, we actually end up feeling worse, perhaps without even knowing why.  We can harness the peaceful foundations we’ve built and use them to help us shed the burdens that weigh heavily on us.  In stillness, we can recognize our negative feelings without being attached to them and when we face those issues, they soon cease to have power over us.  By clearing out our negative fears, we create space. We open up a channel  of new energy, energy of healing, possibility and light.

D:  Meditation does two things – it takes us to a place of peace and calm inside and at the same time it brings up old issues – our sleeping dragons.  Being comfortable with the second part takes knowledge and practice but the healing process doesn’t have to be scary, painful or difficult.  Quite the opposite.  It brings a sense of joyful renewal.  It sounds safer if dragons sleep in their cave but that is a false security.  If we continue to deny and repress our old emotional wounds, they grow stronger and sabotage our life from the unconscious.  As you meditate over time, you stop believing that avoidance, denial and repression are helping you. Fortunately the awareness that sees the need to heal, acquires the capacity and strength to heal at the same time.  This may sound like magic but think of what happens naturally in your body when you cut yourself or have some other minor wound.  Instantly the body starts to repair itself and become whole again.  Modern medicine still finds the body’s healing system a mystery and even more so when it comes to healing our mental trauma.

At some level we all fear our dragons, our unresolved issues, yet the World’s Wisdom Traditions declare it is the same self that creates the fear, hides from it and then dispels it.  While we are trapped in a view that sees us as separate from our painful past, it is easy to feel like it is a fearsome dragon attacking us from the outside.  The next time you feel the beginnings of anxiety, anger, resentment, or any other negative urge, pause and say to yourself, ‘this is all me’.  ‘There is no one else in here.  The mind has learned to compartmentalize itself so that ‘good me’ occupies one space and ‘bad me’ another space, yet all of us put parts of ourselves in the dark, out of sight.  Only awareness can bring light to those hidden places and in the light we are healed and the dragons melt away.  With that knowledge, you can face your dragons as an act of purpose, confidence, freedom and even joy.

Journal Ideas:  1)  Consider one personal issue you’d like to heal, such as anger or insecurity. List the ways that you were aware of this issue today.  2)  Having listed your awareness of the issue, write down how you could have reacted differently.  3)  Reflect on the healing victories you have experienced in the past. Maybe you used to be afraid of dogs as a child until you gradually learned to be relaxed around them and enjoy their company. It doesn’t matter how small these victories may be. Write about how you have healed in the past to reinforce the belief that you can heal your present issues through awareness and the power of intention