These are just a few excerpts from Jeff Brown's
latest book, Hearticulations. So many
treasures here. — Molly
It's not about "letting it go." It's about letting it in. It's about letting it deep. It's about letting it through. It's about being true to your feelings. It's about giving your experiences the attention they deserve. And that may take a moment, or it may take years. The trick is not to shame your need to hold on to what has yet to be resolved. "Let it go" is the mantra of the self-avoidant, feigning resolution because they lack the courage or the preparedness to face their feelings. Let's not play that game. Let's let things in and through, until they are fully and truly ready to shift. Let's let it grow into the transformation at its heart. We write our story by fully living it. Not be "letting it go" before its time.
* * *
The glorification of busy will destroy us. Without space for healing, without time for reflection, without an opportunity to surrender, we risk a complete disconnect from the authentic self. We burn out on the fuels of willfulness, and eventually cannot find our way back to center. And when we lose our contact with our core, we are ripe for the picking by the unconscious media and other market forces. After all, consumerism preys on the uncentered. The further we are from our intuitive knowing, the more easily manipulated we are. And the more likely we are to make decisions and affix to goals that don't serve our healing and transformation. To combat this, we have to form the conscious intention to prioritize our inner lives. To notice our breath, our bodies, our feelings. To step back from the fires of overwhelm and remember ourselves. It may feel counter-intuitive in a culture that is speed-addicted, but the slower we move, the fast we return home.
* * *
What if it's only a 'nervous breakdown' if you bottleneck and bury the emotions that are trying to come through you? That's what causes the breakdown—the resistance to what is, the stopping of the process before it has an opportunity to move toward realization and resolution. What if something beautiful is actually happening within you, something that wants to heal and move into full authenticity? What if this is not a nervous breakdown—but a nervous break-through—a profound emotional cleansing, a dissolution of the false structures that have ruled our life, a breaking through to a more authentic state of being?
* * *
The story does not change when we pretend it was all an illusion. The story doesn't change when we get addicted to transcendence and float above it. The story doesn't change when we feign forgiveness and resolution. The story doesn't change when we confuse dissociation with expansion. The story doesn't change when we tell ourselves that there are no victims. The story changes when we own our pain. The story changes when we work it through to the lessons at its core. The story changes when we are truly seen in our suffering. The story changes when we heal our heart. We are made of story—there's no shame in that. Either we work through our story, or our story will work through us.
* * *
Depression is frozen feeling. It's not a disease of the 'mind.' It's a disease of the heart. It is sourced in unexpressed, unreleased, and unhealed pain that is held deep within the physical and emotional body. You can talk about it in therapy to soften its edges, you can medicate it in the hope that it becomes more manageable, but the real work has to happen somatically, deep within the body itself. the frozen material has to be thawed out, worked through, released. Our shadow is not our enemy. Repression is. Unfortunately, we still live in a world that is afraid of the source material. So we shun it, bury it, 'manage' it with dissociative spiritualities, medications and feelings-avoidant psychoanalysis. All of this merely perpetuates and concretizes the problem The only way to heal depression is to get to its roots. To get right inside those frozen feelings, and thaw them out somatically. We felt the initial pain in our bodies. We must go right back inside of our bodies to feel and resolve it. No more damming up our emotions. No more defenses and denials. THE FEEL IS FOR REAL. Let's feel our way back to life.
* * *
We are not just here together to keep each other company. We are here together to show each other God. The portal is each other.
From Hearticulations On Love, Friendship,
and Healing by Jeff Brown
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