Detoxifying your body will do much to enable you to take in life-giving energy and release substances that are not good for you. But you also need to enable your mind and spirit to release attachments that are toxic to you. Ask yourself each day, What am I willing to let go of? Identifying unhealthy attachments to things, people, work, or life situations will allow you to evaluate whether you need to enforce boundaries, adjust the situation, or leave it altogether.
Crying is one way we release attachments. When we are sad or grieving, our bodies contract, the lungs and chest tighten, and this pressure is released in a cry or moan. Failing to surrender to the need to cry and let go results in a lower state of energy in which we haven't the strength to power ourselves upward.
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Denial and resistance inhibit the proper expansion of lung energies and are counter to the spirit's upward and outward direction. While it is natural and necessary to mourn significant losses, mourning that continues too long puts you at odds with yourself, preventing you from establishing a higher order, which can be achieved only through surrender. If you cannot accept external reality, then your internal wisdom begins to unravel. A split develops between perception and reality, which exhausts vitality and creates havoc. Ovulation Not Getting Pregnant
To prevent this from happening, ancient Chinese societies decreed that when a father died, his son was allowed three days of total immersion in grief, during which time he wept uninterrupted as he cared for his father's body, After the three days had passed, the intense grieving period ended and life went on (although the mourning period could last one year). The lesson of this is that after immersing ourselves in our grief it is essential to then let it go.
One of the most potent ways to heal grief is soul-to-soul cornmunication in which we connect with another person's release through tears. As rivers flow into the ocean, our own affliction can be relieved by aligning ourselves with the waterways of another. Have you ever felt like crying when you truly felt someone else's grief? When we join our tributary of tears to another, the soul is touched and healed.
I witness this incredible form of healing at every Fertile Soul retreat. As women who are going through similar heartaches share their stories, dramatic healing takes place. As they see each other, care about each other, and share their pain, their own pain lessens a bit. Though each of them may feel broken, when they connect with another person going through similar pain, they still see the other person as whole - and than can't help seeing themselves that way, too.
Emotional healing comes through surrender, when you allow yourself to be taken to that unknown place where you have no control. There you let the pressure within your depths work on you, transforming your rough edges and transforming your carbon potential into a diamond. Complete abandonment provides utter release and freedom, actually restructuring you and enabling you to live according to a pure state where your energies actually vibrate at a higher level.
Sophia, an Eastern European immigrant and only child, saw her grandfather die when she was six and lost her father when she was ten. At a retreat she revealed how her mother, who barely survived World War II, clutched Sophia to her tightly, hardly letting her breathe. Sophia felt joined to those who had died, and lived her own life unhappily, feeling dead inside. At the retreat, we worked on restoring her po using her acceptance and release of death with acupuncture,intention, and journaling. After she surrendered to the deepest grief she had ever felt, she became able to embrace life at last.
The Metal Energies' Transforming Power
Just as metal can be reshaped by intense heat, the metal energies can combine with other energies to enable transformation. When metal, water, wood, and earth combine and are allowed to gestate deep within you, they enable you to reach your highest self. Through the process of alchemy these energies mold you into a new state of being.
But you can't force or control this interaction - it comes through release. And its power doesn't manifest on the surface. Just as metals form deep within the earth, transformation takes place deep. There, the intense pressures of life do their work - suffering and pain are turned to awareness and enlightenment. The highest, purest creations come from the strongest pressures of life. In my own case, learning to let go of the immense suffering I went through is what enabled me to reach the ecstatic heights I later experienced. It was the fuel for my transformation. Ovulation Not Getting Pregnant
The transformative process begins by knowing yourself and loving your source - deeply.
- Water - You must accept yourself, wrinkles, warts, shadow aspect, and all. From this state of being, the desire to create, to become, grows.
- Wood - You hold the vision of what you desire to create. Then, to enable creativity, you align your love of self with thoughtful intention and action.
- Earth - What actions do you need to take to align yourself with this focused intent? And then, by letting go and not resisting, you let life mold you into a new and abundant state of being.
- Metal - Surrender to what is. You don't run or hide. You release the old so a new order can be established,
- Fire - Open up to your highest aspect of being, your spirit.
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The downward energy of metal is what propels us upward. In this way, you follow in the footsteps of one of the highest mythical representations in Chinese mythology, the Queen Mother of the West, Xi Wang Mu, goddess of the ultimate yin. The Queen Mother resides where the earth turns away from the sun, representing the death of all things that no longer serve. She symbolizes the aspect of the Divine feminine that lets old habits die, releases inappropriate partners, and stops harmful life interactions. She also represents the death of the physical form when we are finished with this earthly vehicle.
Phoebe was a model whose greatest fear was losing her youth and beauty. Whenever she saw a wrinkle, she saw death sneaking up on her. The spiritual teacher Bhagavan Das says, "When you can't remember God, remember death. It will bring you there." After I talked with Phoebe, she decided to face her fear of death directly and began to visit a nursing home, spending time every week with those who had no family.
After doing this for some time, Phoebe realized it wasn't death she feared; it was a new phase in her life that she was afraid of. Who would she be without her looks? Realizing this made her feel shallow, which she didn't like. She worked on creating a newer, better self by visiting the home almost every night, reading to the elders, combing their hair, and making them feel loved and cared for. In that way, she also loved and cared for herself. To learn more, you can check out Ovulation Not Getting Pregnant.
