How I learned to stop self-sabotaging, get grounded and wake the f*ck up
When you were growing up did you ever have an older brother or classroom bully do that thing where they took your hand and forced you to punch yourself repeatedly? “Why are you hitting yourself? Why do you keep punching yourself?!”.... Over and over again, and you were powerless to stop them because of your size. That was the worst. Especially when it was someone who supposedly cared about you. It reminds me of what we do to ourselves when we give our power away to fear and resistance. We allow these ungrounded emotions to manifest in ways that sabotage our capacity to show up and do the work we’re called to do. It's like repeatedly punching yourself in the face or holding your own hands behind your back— only now your powerless against your own self-bullying.
This is a serious problem for many people and creates a bunch of unnecessary challenges. Instead of embodying the strength and Spirit of who we really are, we fluctuate somewhere between our mind, body and ego. Yes, there may be occasional moments of selfless joy and inner connectedness, but mostly we alternate between an over-active obsessive mind, and a reactive emotional state. It's too painful to be present with what's really going on inside, so we move outside ourselves and start operating at a surface level. The emotions bubbling up are not being dealt with so we start bumping into things, causing accidents and hurting ourselves and others. Then we become even more ungrounded and disembodied. We find more excuses why we can’t “do the thing” and proof we’re bound to fail....
All these elaborate coping mechanisms to avoid experiencing the trauma, pain and sadness hidden deeper inside the emotional body. Just so that we don't have to actually FEEL what's going on and deal with it!
Feeling all the feels…
I know, you feel a lot. I do too. It sucks sometimes. Solution: Reason your way through it! Hustle harder. Ignore the pain. When you’re in your mind and in the hustle, you can power your way through almost anything. And once the mind kicks in it has this amazing power to cut off the emotional body. Then eventually when your mind gets tired and those feelings start coming up again, shove them down with sugar, alcohol, Netflix, social media and whatever other addictions you can wrap yourself up in. Am I right? Sorry, no. Bad solution. You lose.
What’s really going on? For any human today—and some of us much more than others—there’s an immense amount of unhealed trauma stored in our bodies from the time of birth. Some of this is from our lineage. Much of it we have blocked from memory. The rest just hurts too bad to even touch it, so we stay in our minds and glued to the bottle or the screen or whatever it is just pick your poison.... All this trauma, pain and sadness we are avoiding, this is the root of all resistance. Period.
There are worlds of pain inside us that just need to be witnessed and loved to be released. Some of it just needs to be blasted with light and moved on out. This is what it means to heal. It’s a lifetime undertaking, but each time we heal the wounds and lighten the load that we carry, we become a little more capable of carrying our own weight and walking in beauty. More integrated and effective as a human being. More grounded and embodied in our highest power.
Alternatively, we can just power through the resistance and keep the pain locked away forever. There it will fester and possibly help manifest: Heart Disease (the #1 killer in the world), Cancer (#2 in America), Lung Disease (#3), or any number of chronic illnesses.
Worth the risk...? The main problem I see with leaving this darkness unattended in ourselves is not so much that it can accelerate our own sickness and death, but how it affects the human collective. How it manifests outwardly as violence and abuse, merging into widespread systemic bigotry, a Trump regime, a global war machine, and the horrors of terrorism we are now experiencing at unprecedented levels in human history.
Of course—ironically—the establishment is all for this. Unhealed and emotionally broken people are the prime targets for predatory advertising and social control. They will believe whatever propaganda they are fed. They will become prisoners of consumerism and debt. They will work in shitty mindless jobs their whole lives. They will make excellent cogs in the machine.
What are we going to do about this situation? Or to the point: What are you going to do about it?
At some point it became painfully clear how effectively I was sabotaging myself and getting in the way of my own success and happiness. How great I had become at leaving a path of destruction around me. How angry I was at the world, and how fundamentally ineffective that made me as a human being. Then I saw how different it felt when I worked through the darkness and shadows, when I healed the traumas that were holding me back, when I faced my biggest fears and jumped anyway. I was able to break through so many bonds to new levels of love and strength in my own self it was shocking.
Through all of this healing work and determination to follow my spirit, I was blessed to experience some things that most people dream their whole lives about and then lie in their death beds regretting not having done. I spent years traveling the world and living in countless cities from Latin America to Europe and the Balkans. I loved and lived better than I could ever imagine was possible. It was amazing beyond belief at times, but I’m not patting my own back or gloating over what I’ve accomplished. The truth is that up until recently I was working so hard that I almost killed myself.
I know, work harder so you can have more of what you want!
I won't go too much into the details now, but the bottom line is I took all of the extra energy and strength from my practice and put it into my work so that I could stretch even farther. And it got to the point where I went way. too. far.
Perhaps by now you can guess what was the root cause of my self-destructive behavior in the name of freedom. I can say clearly that it was NOT the manifestation of a self-loving and fully healed person. I was a workaholic, and that is an addiction as harmful as any other. I saw this, and I knew that something was far off in me and my work, and so I doubled down on “the real work” and did even more healer training, attended more workshops, retreated farther from the limelight and dug deeper into my truth.
What I finally came to see this year was that after all “the work” and everything I had learned over five years of healer training and mentorship—not to mention following the call of my spirit—I was STILL resisting the true calling as it was manifesting now. And that was what was killing my joy and keeping me in the big fog.…
Now it’s been a LONG road to get here, but I can finally say without shame or doubt that I have claimed my true role as a healer, teacher and clairvoyant advisor. I work with animal spirits, angels and other spirit guides. I work with energy. I work with the elements. I’m obsessed with power crystals. I’m also a writer and an artist and whatever else I want to be. I love the dichotomy of being both human and divine. I believe the path to liberation is through the human experience. Not above it or beyond it, but right here. Every day. “How can I be a more effective and powerful incarnation of my highest potential?” That is my obsession.
It's a long and twisty, inglorious road...
Yes, I have thousands of hours of spiritual practice and training under my belt, but all the training in the world doesn’t mean shit if you can’t put it to work in the world. I am proud to have learned how to maneuver through the darkest tunnels of despair and self doubt. I know how to manage the dramatic ups and downs of life as a true Empath and “Highly Sensitive Person.” I can find the root to most any problem that is presented to me and advise my clients how to work through it and heal themselves. I’m still far from perfect. I haven’t struck it rich. I don’t claim to have it all figured out. But I do know my strengths and weaknesses and I’m learning more each day.
This is why I've devoted my life to learning how to heal and teach others to heal themselves. Right now I feel a little like one of those men who struck gold after years of traversing the Yukon winters 150 years ago must have felt. Soul gold. Now I need to get better at sharing that divine gold to make the cycle complete. So I’m writing and creating again, teaching the workshops on healing, and doing my part to show up and serve as strong as I can. In real life. I live to serve and explore and that's what drives me. I will not however sacrifice all my health and happiness and relationships with loved ones for "la causa" as they say in the old country.
We all have more of our genius to share. More strength and light to step into. More sadness and anger to release. The thing that holds you back—whatever it may be, whatever excuse you name or whoever you may blame—do you think you might be ready to stop fighting it and throw up your arms already? Because the more you resist, the harder it fights back. The longer you prolong the agony through numbing yourself with drugs and addictions and other distractions, the faster you bring yourself hurtling towards your inevitable death. You and all of us with you.
Are you gonna keep busting a Tyler Durden and hitting yourself over and over in the face? C’mon that’s so 1999...
It's time to stop sabotaging yourself. You are not a victim. You are not a cog in the machine. Be a part of the solution we desperately need right now. You can do this. There’s a lot of good work to do and yes, we need you here—on earth—grounded, whole, and ready for the good fight!! Starting this moment. Every moment. Breathe deeper. Dive deeper. Be real. Do you. No one else can do it for you.
LOVE,
Read next: Call Forth Your Mythic Guardian
