I have recently just gone through a break-up and my son has left his primary school and is heading off to High School and so I am feeling a real mixture of emotions, tearful, uncertain, excited and so on, in essence a little up and down. What next is a question that keeps lingering around my mind and body. I say to myself things like I feel excited, I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel hopeful and so on. Yet as I explore these 'feelings' I am aware that I am thinking certain things that are evoking these feelings, they aren't just happening, there is a link. Whenever a feeling of sadness comes up it is because I have had a thought that brings that feeling about. For example; my son will go to High School, move into the tween / teen phase and hate me forever. As this thought invades my mind I feel gutted, my heart and throat are throbbing with heartache and my energy has shifted. Now the reality is that he is going to move away from me, he will find people way funnier than me and probably won't want to marry me anymore and that is as it should be. The chances are those pesky hormones may turn him into a bit of an asshole for a while and he will lose the power of speech and will grunt at me through a haze of Lynx Africa and Fortnite. This however does not mean that he no longer loves me and that I am destined to be an unloved spinster with only my plants for company, and yet I have thoughts along those lines. What I am interested in is exploring those thoughts that create suffering, thoughts that often are not facts but just an idea that has been formulated and has created a feeling. The disciplines that I have studied over the years all lead to the understanding that by managing the mind and thoughts we are able to understand and show up for ourselves in a more healthy way. When a feeling comes into my body, I recognise that I have that feeling and I name it, for example sadness and so I tune in to the feeling within my body, for example a tightness in my throat, and then I consider what thought I may have had that has created this feeling, an example may be, 'I am unlovable!' Wow, what a statement to make and to believe, and so with this insight and gentle curiosity it is possible to question the truth in the statement, then the curiosity leads to a release and the release leads to a clearer mind and the possibility for creating thoughts that actually empower and uplift.
With love
Laurie
