I want to write about postpartum depression, because this issue is an important problem which is inadequately addressed by those who are connected with the health industry. I want to offer perspectives on how I work with this particular life development process. This essay composition will spill over into a larger scope consideration of healing principles as I know them. It would be the same if I were addressing hypertension, arthritis, diabetes, cancer or any other “diagnosis label” that is applied to an individual life process.
The personal anecdotes which I offer in this entry may or may not interest you, but at least I am offering some history about how I arrived at my perspectives.
The western allopathic diagnosis label phenomenon is a type of conditioning which we have grown accustomed to since the time that the medical industry gained prominence in the post WWII period. The current medical system’s deeper origins took root in the 1920’s development of the pharmaceutical industry. In that period medical schools dropped homeopathy, nutrition, and other healing modalities from their curricula. The diagnosis became an important decision to arrive at, and for good reasons—it led to treatment!
However, these days, the diagnosis terminologies attached to patients’ disease states seem to result in the condition, and the attached patient, being overmedicated. There are innumerable and classic examples of this fact. For instance, it is very injurious to use statin drugs to drive a patient’s cholesterol levels down into the 120’s, 130’s, and 140’s. Cholesterol is necessary for the production of sex steroid hormones, cell membranes, immune system health and many other life essential et ceteras. In a few more years I predict that it will be shown that statin usage is associated with an increase in dementia states, and immune system problems.
Pharmaceuticals are often helpful in the short term, but long term usage leads to many deleterious drug-nutrient depletions, harsh side effects, and demise. Death from pharmaceutical usage, and medical system errors, is the fourth leading cause of death in the USA, and may even be ranked higher according to some authorities. However, you will never see that in a listing of causes of death in any of our 50 state’s Bureau of Vital Statistics, an annual compilation of health data conducted by all of the United States.
I view a diagnosis as a description of a process in a client who has a whole life story about how he/she arrived at a point where a life story energetic takes hard form in the flesh, the cellular matrix which is supported in an electromagnetic Light Body.
This introduction may seem to you that I think that I am a rare one in the healing arts that has a full spectrum handle on postpartum depression. That is not exactly the impression I wish to convey, but I have not yet ruled out the possibility. I am confident that there are many others who have assisted women expeditiously and effectively through this problem, and I assume that their prescriptive assistance is met with a high rate of successful outcomes.
Usually the discomfort just resolves on its own without major intervention. A life healing experience may slip away, however, unaddressed.
The only good redaction on the subject which I have come across, brief as it is, is in the book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, the classic by Christiane Northrup, M.D. (See pages 500-502.) Like me, she feels the problem is significantly under diagnosed, and approaches 80% of postnatal mothers, 10-15% of which may go on to develop a more severe form of mood disorder.
The spectrum of abreactions may range from depression, to anxiety disorders, to true psychosis. The latter can occur in 1 in 1000 births. There are many causative and contributing factors at play in these dynamics. As one of my holistic peers likes to say, “It’s the whole enchilada.” This expression is apt.
Factors which predispose to postpartum depression include a history of prior depressive episodes, a history of prior PMS symptoms (a progesterone issue; more on this later), unresolved difficulties between the mother and her own mother and her biological family of origin, and any element of trauma in the childbirth. Traumatic births may include birth under anesthesia, birth by C section, fetal distress problems, forceps delivery, need for episiotomy, problems with the umbilical cord, problems with placental delivery, etc.
Please note, trauma is only trauma when it is perceived as such and memoried as such in the individual’s belief systems. Our core belief systems exist in our subconsciousness. A memory imprint of the traumatic event is formed. The trauma is then held in memory at the subconscious cellular level.
Trauma memory is reactivated (triggered) by reflexive psychobiological cascades when shame and guilt are reintroduced into the psychic awareness at any time with sufficient perceptual awareness to recreate the trauma memory cascade. The trauma triggering cascade filters up to the conscious mind through our belief filtering process.
It is appropriate to state that trauma is an issue of perception, and belief. Trauma is also an issue of memory.
I have not discovered practitioners (yet) who approach the issue of postpartum depression from a full spectrum consideration of body, mind, emotion, and spirit perspectives. Perhaps I am too isolated down here at the end of a county road, but it is nice here, that’s for sure. Just being here will raise most peoples’ serotonin levels on account of the slower pace of life, the spiritual inclination of the community, the friendliness of the inhabitants, and the profound influence of the natural surroundings. The essentials of the last statement are recommended as a general good health prescriptive.
As our Mothers heal and evolve, so our planet will also heal and evolve. The Mother is primary to the healed child, and a healed Earth. The evolving Mother will enable the ongoing generation of evolved daughters and sons who will then enable the next evolved Mother. Generational cycles of parental chaos will recede and diminish. This will come to pass within a few generations hence.
I am going to write about postpartum depression in 2 Journal entries. Part I will address aspects of the psycho-emotional concerns. Part II will address the biochemical considerations which are important to consider and treat.
This malady is multilayered, and is deserving of a more thorough consideration. Even so, what I write here is actually superficial commentary.
General Comments about Part I
The usual allopathic treatment for postpartum depression is supportive, and consists of helping the mother move beyond the period of suffering. Usually the problem is self limiting, and resolves, although the underlying psychic forces from the mother’s past invariably remain as unresolved issues. It is essential to address the past issues to help improve future happiness for mother and child, and anyone else in the biological family, or otherwise, who may be present.
The “fourth trimester” is an enormous time of change for everyone concerned. The mother needs significant support during this time of stressful adjustment. Most mothers are exhausted from sleep deprivation and the usual demands of the household, especially if other children are present, and even more so if the father is not supportive and helpful, or is otherwise absent physically or emotionally.
On rare occasion the depression may be more severe; the mother may sink into a difficult psychic and physical trench such that she may be a danger to herself and her child or children. Obviously, aggressive intervention is needed in such cases, and the past backlog of life difficulties will require an ongoing guidance, compassion, opening, and healing.
Sometimes pharmaceuticals are used. Pharmaceutical usage such as the use of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI’s), such as Paxil, Prozac, Effexor, Zoloft, Celexa, and a host of others, is usually not necessary, however. These drugs do not really build up serotonin, they only inhibit its breakdown in the synaptic cleft, and thus give a false show of up-regulated serotonin effects.
Unfortunately, for most allopathic practitioners, the use of SSRI’s may be the only prescriptive they are familiar with. This is a lamentable shortcoming of our pharmaceutical driven dumbed down medical industry.
Serotonin is the principle neurotransmitter which is low in the depressed state. However, other neurotransmitters can be low as well, and such abnormalities are important to address. Serotonin assists balanced functioning of the neural matter by regulating sleep, rest, and symmetry. Symmetry refers to balance of the major neurotransmitter interactions, and also refers to balance of feeling states. Symmetry implies no strong mood swings, as is seen in bipolar conditions.
Serotonin (like all of the principle neurotransmitters) can be built naturally by ingestion of its precursor molecule, namely 5-hydroxytryptamine. 5-HTP can be used successfully to assist people in overcoming their depressed states, but I would consider the assistance incomplete without addressing all of the associated pertinent chemical concerns, and especially the old psychic wounds. More chemistry concerns will be described later in the Part II entry.
I think it is important to note that it was shown in prospective, randomized, double-blinded clinical trials conducted by the pharmaceutical manufacturers of these drugs in the 1980’s and 1990’s that the drugs were no better than placebo. The FDA never allowed the release of this information, and a multibillion dollar industry was born. I heard this information in a conference in Boulder in 2005. The presenter was an M.D. psychiatrist who was presenting a day-long symposium on brain and central nervous system health. I have encountered this FDA malfeasance from other sources also, but I cannot recount them here. Perhaps you can research this information, if you feel so inclined.
Many of my clients who are on these drugs indicate to me that they are having difficulty feeling anything. This is not good. We need to be able to feel what it is that we want to heal. If our feeling states are compromised (dumbed down), then we are adrift without our emotional tools to protect and heal our lives.
As an additional editorial aside, the Food and Drug industries are in cahoots and nepotistic collusion. These industries do not have our best interests in mind. They are motivated by financial profit, not our welfare. This is an example of corporate fascism which has developed during the post WWII period. Many of our personal decisions can be guided by our understanding of the corporations who are not truly intent on serving the welfare of our society. Monsanto is my oft repeated example of a Gaia crippling big industry.
My personal cognitive and experiential learning process about healing was refined in my surgical years into what I now offer as the Haelan LifeStream model. Upon leaving the surgical world I was more able to focus on, and refine the components of this model that I have found to be essential in my own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual development. From my own personal growth experience I was able to become more effective in assisting the development of other lives.
If you have not lived through something, all you know is like hearsay.
I have found that the solution to postpartum depression is straightforward, relatively simple, does not take very long to accomplish, and may help steer a mother and a woman’s life and a family into a whole new world. There is never one single focal point, or “magic bullet” in healing. This is especially true when considering postpartum depression.
The main focal points that require attention, education, and evolution are: 1) sex steroid chemical pathways and balance, 2) neurotransmitter balance, 3) assessment and correction of abnormal thyroid hormone status, 4) consideration of central cellular mitochondrial production of ATP, the energy molecule, 5) consideration of the biochemistry of inflammation, 6) clarification and improved usage of the exact emotional frequencies associated with postpartum depression, and 7) honoring and opening into forgiveness of the old traumatic cellular memories which are the foundation of the emotional chaos referred to in #6.
Introduction to Psycho-Emotional Considerations and Trauma Imprinting
This entry, Part I, will initiate a consideration about issues from the past, focal points #6 and #7, which were listed in the preceding paragraph. Part II (a separate Journal entry) will address the important biochemical considerations. I shall attempt to cover rudimentary biochemistry in a brief manner, and without my usual drawings and sketches which I make for clients. The word rudimentary also refers to my computer skills. I do not know how to make charts and graphs and sketches with a computer. I just know how to write and post an entry.
In those who suffer any form of depression, there are always old wounds to be healed, some old history to resolve, some “same-old” recurrent stories which need to be drawn to the conclusions of forgiveness. There is always a precedent series of experiences, maybe large and difficult, or perhaps small and not as difficult. The magnitude of the held trauma lies in the perception and belief system of the individual. The individual is challenged by their “victim” identity mentality.
A perceived traumatic memory, accompanied by some synergistic chemical imbalances, assists the depression in expressing itself. The exact feeling of any form of depression is a feeling of physical and psychical overwhelm. This feeling of overwhelm is synonymous with the emotional state which I term “shadow apathy.”
Realistically, we all have old wounds to deal with. We are probably all suffering from post partum depression at some level. After all, we were all born, and then we all went into the postpartum period of our lives, and from time to time we get the blues.
So, we are all postpartum, and from time to time, we all feel down in the mouth, down in the body, down in the mind, down in the Heart. Passion vanishes. To engage the being with animated and enlivened purpose becomes challenging, or impossible.
That we all suffer post partum depression is just an idea. Don’t get too captivated by this idea. I don’t want you to develop an Identity crisis while reading this. If you do, just take a deep relaxing breath, stop reading, go outside, take a walk, work in the garden, or reconnect with Nature in some manner. Then, try this reading again.
I view “disease” as the beginning of the healing process. If you can feel it, you can heal it.
Regarding Point #7 above, trauma memory, stored at the subconscious cellular level, is the source of all so called disease entities. At their base, all disease diagnosis labels indicate unresolved emotional chaos. This concept is understood and well accepted in the emerging science of traumatology, but it is largely ignored in mainstream allopathic practice.
Since the late 1990’s and early 2000’s the science of trauma has advanced to consider early trauma imprints which shape our foundational blueprint. In all of our personal history there are seven vital areas of very early experience. The mother is the central figure in each area; hence, my repeated plea in these Journal writings that we must endeavor to assist the healed Mother. It is she who is transmitting into her infant fetus both a blood borne chemical imprint (many chemicals), and, the all important Heart frequency imprint.
The seven vital areas of our very early experience are: conception, implantation, discovery of the pregnancy, the pregnancy, birth, bonding, and infancy (preverbal period imprinting).
Each of these periods is a vital coalescing embryological and post natal series of milestones, all of which are entirely within the Mother’s domain of chemical and Heart based electromagnetic influence. What the mother is doing, thinking, and feeling during these 7 periods of development renders the child’s blueprint. The Heart based connection and influence of the Mother and child goes on forever beyond our limited conscious awareness of space-time.
Emotional chaos is foundational to the generation of all disease states. Emotional chaos is transmitted by the Heart to all cells over time, and hence, an ensuing cellular chaos develops. Cellular chaos, or incorrect cellular expression, is assisted by incorrect chemistry, and by the Heart’s chaotic messaging to the cells. The end result will be altered DNA expression.
You can gain an excellent understanding and appreciation of these biochemical influences from the book The Biology of Belief, by Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., a biochemist who connects biochemistry and the psyche.
I began my personal study of these 2 subjects when I was a freshman medical student at Tulane in 1973. I set up an elective course with the professor of the biochemistry department. We sat every week in his office, and had an hour long chat about the biochemistry of altered brain states. These chats were formative and influential for my nascent curiosity. It was very generous of this teacher to give me so much of his time and guidance.
As a senior medical student, I studied hypnosis as an elective course study. My teacher was Dr. Dabney Ewin, M.D. Dr. Ewin was a surgeon, and a well known and respected hynotherapist. He cemented the psycho-biology concept in my thinking. You can look him up.
I carried the psycho-biological learning into and through my next important learning curve, Heart based consciousness, a learning which began in the years of my post doctoral surgical residency.
Negative subconscious belief systems, self sabotage patterns, and learned distress patterns can be identified and healed by a variety of energetic techniques.
The Heart is the most important player in how we heal, and how we don’t heal. Its electromagnetic processing of our moment to moment condition may be conceptualized by your understanding that the Heart is 60% neural; i.e., the heart cells are mostly nerve cells. These neural cardiocytes are knowing, longing, and feeling.
They are remembering everything about the journey of your Spirit and the Soul entity it comes from. Furthermore, there are more pipes, and tubes, and wires going from the Heart to the Brain than there are such going from the Brain to the Heart.
For the latest science on what the Heart is doing besides pumping blood around, you can research the large volume of study and the excellent information coming out of the HeartMath Institute (www.HeartMath.org). Preceding the relatively recent development of Heart electromagnetic studies, there were more than 2000 prior studies since the 1960’s which indicate that Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is likely the most important and predictive of the vital signs.
The medical industry knows so very little about HRV, and does not employ it in lifestyle assistance and counseling. This is unfortunate.
The Emotional Guidance System, Personal Anecdotes, and More on the Heart Mind
The Emotional Guidance System, which I also call The Emotional Tool Box, is identical in all of us. It is designed to protect and heal our life. One’s understanding of one’s emotion states is the most foundational and general step in healing and spiritual evolution.
I encounter a number of people who, for a variety of reasons, affiliate with a spiritual path or spiritual teacher. Some people may take this step in order to deal with their past issues. Others may take this step in order to employ a denial mechanism and thereby escape dealing with their emotions and their past issues.
In place of a human’s own built in intelligence mechanisms, the teacher may inform the devotee on how they should think and feel. Mantras, meditations, chants, shrine rooms, altars, and austerities may be prescribed. I am very familiar with this approach personally in my own life, and I have listened to similar stories from many other spiritual seekers.
I have often encountered this particular predicament of the spiritual seeker; from born again Christians to Buddhists. Conflicted spiritual seeking clients continue to arrive at my threshold. It’s no wonder—their emotional concerns are not being properly addressed. I also regard and respect this issue as an ongoing aspect of my learning curve, and moreover, how might I assist their journey.
I am not wanting to render judgment here, but, nonetheless, I encounter the paradox: spiritual teachers are not offering the most important advice of all, and that is advice and clarity about emotions, common everyday feeling states, and what it is that the feeling state/emotions are trying to inform us about.
As I indicate, I’m just continuing to study this vital spiritual growth issue, in so much as a lot of spiritual seekers come to me for advice on concerns in their lives which are not being adequately addressed.
I do not know many people who are knowledgeable about the Emotional Tool Box, or Guidance System, as I like to call it, and so I set about studying it out a while back. This started in earnest for me in about 1972 when I was suffering from my own postpartum depression while in college.
I have studied with many mentors, and great spiritual teachers who I would not trade for anything. What some of them did not teach me is perhaps as important in my personal evolution as what others did teach me. Voids can teach. Eventually, I found a variety of very good spiritual teachers.
Over a time period of several decades, I was able to assimilate my life experiences into a package which works in my psyche, and also for others. I came up with a somewhat obscure name for this package. I call it Haelan LifeStream.
Here is the basic theme I try to arrive at with clients: What is God’s idea of how It wants to express Itself as my life?
One can rephrase this working theme: It is not what an outside God can do for me, but how can God work through me as me. This flow of Divinity through our lives is founded in Heart based consciousness.
Haelan is an Old English word that the present day English words “heal, whole, holy, holistic, and hologram” all come from. LifeStream is a terminology that I use to help people understand the quantum holographic nature of horizontal, vertical, and circular time. We do not understand time correctly in terms of how it all expresses in the Now. Shamans and mystics and spiritual masters seem to understand Time. I am just a student.
The Stream of our Life is infinite and multidimensional, and is vast; ineffably wondrously beautiful. I do not know how to use word abstractions to define it. Nevertheless, I try to explain what I know. That is one reason why my Journal entries are so long. One of these days I shall evolve the most succinct descriptions, but not today.
We heal chaotic emotional states through Self Love, which includes the components of forgiveness and non-judgment. This is a matter of the Heart Mind. The overly active Brain Mind which is usually running the dissociative scripts of Judge, Critic, Skeptic, Pusher, and Victim must be tempered, quieted, and brought into useful subservience to assist the individual Heart’s spiritual journey and to assist in the development of Heart’s primary motivators and Gifts.
One should identify one’s Heart based primary motivators, or passions, and then set about manifesting what one wants via some sort of Vision statement. That is what I help people do: figure out their passions, figure out their Gifts, and then figure out the manifestation of what they desire from the field of holographic time.
While we are figuring on all of these Heart based cognitive constructs, I am assisting clients in becoming adept in their toolbox of emotional frequencies which are concomitantly used to protect, heal, and manifest the life which they desire. The emotions are the key to health and happiness, simply put.
The essence of all healing lies in the Heart, and in culturing its inherent resonant frequency, which is 0.1 cycles per second. This is easy to illustrate to clients with a simple biofeedback interface utilizing the HeartMath technologies via a laptop computer and a simple finger sensor plugged into the USB port.
In this state of Heart resonant frequency we feel calm, we can access higher emotional frequencies, higher cognitive abilities, higher intuitive abilities, and our Heart can entrain other Hearts to this frequency.
The Emotional Frequencies, More about the Heart Mind
There are 17 emotional frequency states in the Emotional Guidance System. Two of these states are the lowest frequency states, and are reactivated in the flesh by daily trauma triggers. The triggers can be externally generated, but are always internally evolved. These 2 lowest frequencies are shame and guilt, and these states of feeling are indicative of unresolved trauma memory. These 2 states are always felt in the flesh in a negative manner as humiliation and blame, respectively.
The authentic child (The Magical Child) expresses feelings and needs for nurturing to the shame/guilt-based parent.
The shame/guilt-based parent (who is bound up in defenses such as denial, delusion, critical retorts, control, rage, and addictive/compulsive behaviors), responds to the child with a process of shaming, abandonment and neglect by: humiliating, manipulating, abuse, intimidation, exploitation, ridicule, objectifying, and ignoring.
The shame/guilt child learns: shame/guilt based rules and roles, idealizes parents, doubts self, and practices poor self esteem. Repeated cycles of this occur in the pre verbal and post verbal periods and the end result is a shame/guilt based child whose authentic self is cloaked in pain.
This child emerges into later stages of life manifesting a variety of convenient self sabotage patterns of learned distress. There are 6 primary self sabotage reactions which we enact when faced with change. We usually major in one of them, and then we minor in another one, just in case the first pattern fails to sabotage us.
These patterns are: the defeatist, the idealist, the caregiver, the optimist, the perfectionist, and the dictator. I have mastered all of them, and I can pull out these facades whenever I want to. I can also move beyond them. In order to learn how to move beyond them, I had to wallow in them first.
The first Rule of Holes is this: When you find yourself in a Hole, stop digging.
If shame and guilt are active in the system, then this felt state will influence the next 6 emotional frequencies to play out in the shadow. These next 6 frequencies, listed from lower to higher states are: apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, and pride. I will cover each one of these states in subsequent Journal entries. I have written about this in prior entries. Some general comments are in order here.
We express these 6 emotional states in the shadow or in the utilitarian manner. The shadow expression is the unhealed trauma announcing its influence via the shame/guilt reflex.
The shadow expression of these 6 emotion states is usually executed in the emotionally unknowing individual by bundling all of these feeling states into an uncomfortable ball which is either: 1) hurled out into the world at someone or something (hurts other and creates more shame/guilt), or, 2) buried back into the inner world that they came from (because choice #1 may be too scary for the individual).
There is a third option to practice when these emotions surface in the shadow. This is the correct option to practice.
The exercise of this option requires a cognitive discernment that the shadow is being felt in the body, and an attempt to shift to the utilitarian expression of the emotion is in order. The shift from shadow to utilitarian entails asking the correct question that the shadow emotion is trying to bring to our attention, listening to one’s Heart for the answer, and then acting on Heart’s advice.
Accessing and listening to one’s Heart requires the practice of Heart based consciousness. One must first be able to feel where the Heart is in the body. One should be able to feel one’s Heart pulsing throughout one’s body. Your Heart is in the center of your chest where your breath merges into you. With practice you can begin to feel the chambers contracting and pumping blood as well as the valves closing. This is a start.
In your advancement of a meditative life in action you will begin to understand that the Heart is doing much more than just pumping blood around. The Heart is tied to the entire Field, and is informing the Field about its felt vibrational state of scarcity or abundance, thereby attracting more of the same: more scarcity or more abundance.
Heart is also sending the same vibrational information to all of the cells of your body, informing them about chaos, or coherence. The DNA of the cell then starts replicating Heart’s energetic at the cellular level, and expresses this chaotic or coherent energetic at a biochemical level via DNA transcription.
As stated, these 6 emotional frequencies, when felt and expressed in the trauma informed shadow states, usually all come up at once. They usually come up layered and entangled around the emotion of grief. By understanding this mechanic of layered emotional states, we can begin to practice pulling the emotions apart in order to discern which one is the predominant emotion that needs to be immediately addressed.
It may be necessary to know this so that immediate action can be taken to protect boundaries ( utilizing utilitarian apathy, fear, and anger), access what it is that must be forgiven ( utilizing utilitarian grief), access what it is that one truly desires in life (utilizing utilitarian desire), and to access one’s passions and gifts (utilizing utilitarian pride).
The most important shadow emotion to understand is one’s grief. One will feel shadow grief in the body as a variety of feeling states, such as every synonymous state from “abandoned” to “wounded.” There are about 40 such synonymous feeling states with grief, as well as with the other 5 shadow emotions which get wrapped around our Grief Box.
We wrap the shadow states of fear, desire, anger, and pride around our Grief Box because it is too painful for us to bear the memory of our grief, and furthermore, we don’t want anyone else knowing about our hurts, shames, guilts, losses and our secrets.
Eventually, when we are strong enough, and it is safe enough, we will open the layering of the Grief Box, and go inside and honor who we are, honor what our journey has been, and forgive all experiences that we have judged as hurtful. We discover that it is OK to feel vulnerable. We learn to release and trust.
When people cry and weep, they are doing a form of letting go of self imposed self judgment about their process. We are entrained to self judge our experience during the time of development of the second and third chakras. The demon frequencies of these chakras are guilt and shame, respectively. Shame and guilt assist to continually recreate judgment of self and others, and this process reinforces the shame and guilt.
We can begin to have more compassion for our individual history and current state anytime we so choose. An important part of healing lies in the desire to be healed.
I have clients fill out 6 inventory sheets of the synonymous feeling states which relate to apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, and pride. I ask them to allow themselves to feel these states in their body. Then they can begin to develop cognitive awareness of what they are feeling in the body. We need the body to heal in, after all.
Emotions are felt in the body, not in the Brain. We think about emotions in the Brain. That is part of the problem, too much thinking, too much “victim” mentality. Something outside of us did something to us, we think. It becomes our story.
More feeling and discernment about what one is feeling is necessary in order to be able to shift from the shadow to the utilitarian manner of expressing the emotion.
You will need a clarified Brain to do this with, and hence, there is, more often than not, a need to balance some neurotransmitters and neurohormones and some other assistive chemistries. Such balancing is very helpful.
One must learn how to disregard the Judge, Critic, Skeptic, Pusher, and Victim. These Brain Mind thought typologies are not the real you. The real you is pulsing away inside of your Heart, far beyond this Identity Crisis problem of thinking judgment which we manufacture on a daily basis. This thinking problem is constantly being retriggered into old patterns of learned distress. The result is self esteem problems and a life lived without joyful individuation and authenticity.
Upon filling out the inventory sheets, the client then identifies which of the 6 shadow emotions the words on this sheet represent. Then I have the client write down on the sheet what the question is that the shadow emotion is trying to get our attention about. Without the question, how will we find an answer?
For instance, with shadow grief states, the question is “What is it that I must let go of/release/forgive?” This question is probably the most important question of all.
If we know the answer to this question, and if we can forgive, then the layers of shadow fear, desire, anger, and pride begin to fall away, and we will find our way to freedom. Oftentimes, the unfolding of the answer to this question evolves over time as the client gently takes the question all the way home, to its source. There is no need to hastily beat ourselves up about our past.
With shadow apathy and anger, which are the same emotional tools at different frequencies, both in the shadow and the utilitarian expression, the question is, “What is the boundary that must be restored?”
It’s true—apathy, when used correctly, can define boundaries by allowing the user the right to simply ignore the issue being pressed upon them. Thus, we can create a type of boundary.
Anger, on the other hand, is a much higher frequency of energy, and allows one to express boundaries more definitively. Utilitarian apathy and anger are the instruments we use to express our boundaries. When used in the shadow, however, the result is depression and volatility, respectively.
Utilitarian anger is the only emotion which is the instrument of compassion. The correct use of this emotional tool is essential in the healing journey. If we are in a dysfunctional relationship, and if we do not express our boundaries, then we are enabling the pathology of the relationship to continue. It is more compassionate to call the boundary on the relationship stuff, and move on into harmony and love, rather than living in a dysfunctional codependency. If it is insoluble, one must walk away from the relationship, or, ignore it. This is a form of utilitarian apathy, and is not to be confused with denial states.
Depression (shadow apathy) is frozen and buried anger. The anger has been subverted through incorrect life practice into shadow apathy. Apathy in the shadow is every synonymous feeling state from bored to depressed to despair, discouraged, hopeless, indecisive, overwhelmed, powerless, unfeeling, wasted, worthless, and many other felt and cognitively recognized states.
When feeling such a state in the body, one must call a boundary around the self sabotage patterns that are being recreated via the triggering mechanism. It is helpful to be very familiar with one’s triggers. It is also helpful to be familiar with one’s resources. This will enable the development of resiliency, the hallmark of trauma healing, and the sine quo non of the balanced and functionally correct autonomic nervous system (ANS).
The autonomic nervous system, consisting of sympathetic (SNS) and parasympathetic (PNS) pathways, can be understood at cognitive and Heart levels via the HeartMath biofeedback interface. I have covered descriptions of these divisions of the ANS in prior Crestone and Beyond Journal entries.
What are the remaining 9 key emotional states in the Emotional Guidance System (Tool Box)?
These 9 emotional states have no shadow synonymous feeling states. We access these 9 emotions when we are pursuing healing and manifestation. These emotions are: courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, and enlightenment.
Briefly:
We are engaged in ongoing practice of shifting from the shadow to the utilitarian expression of apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, and pride. Simultaneously, we are practicing accessing the higher emotional frequency states in the body.
Our journey begins with courage, which is synonymous with affirmation and empowerment. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is moving on with dignity and pride, despite having the fear. We never should relinquish our fear tool. It is present to alert us that we may be in a condition of threat, and that boundary formation by the fight (anger) or flight (apathy) mechanisms may be in order.
Neutrality is synonymous with trust and release. We are learning to open the rusty hinges (shame and guilt) of the Grief Box and turn the key of Self Love to open the Grief Box and begin to regard it as the Treasure Box of our healing journey.
Really, honor your Grief Box, just don’t wallow in it. Maybe organize it and clean it up some. Throw out some old belief systems from your subconsciousness which no longer serve you, such as, “I am unworthy of the best that life and love have to offer.” It is important to define one’s primary motivators (passions), and set the intention of how to manifest what you desire which is in alignment with these motivators.
Willingness is synonymous with optimism and intention. Having performed the prior release, we are able to reset to Heart’s desire to manifest higher intention. This vibrational emotional frequency is also known as the “Sacred Yes.”
We manifest by feeling the feeling of what we desire as if the desire is already present. This would be the emotional equivalent of acceptance, or abundance and gratitude.
Acceptance is also synonymous with forgiveness and transcendence. This is the only way we heal. It is one step above the “release” and “intention” mentioned above.
Reason is a felt state of cognitive understanding, or knowing. This state is the state of utilizing the Brain Mind correctly to serve the Heart Mind. It is a true emotional state which is dependent in its finest expression on the accessibility of Heart Resonant Frequency.
This is the hallmark of a refined Ego, which one will need for healing. No matter what all of these spiritual teachers may say about throwing out your Ego, and denying/detaching from your Ego, I say to honor and refine your Ego. You will need it to heal with, and to advance into your spiritual Identity.
Love is unconditional reverence and revelation. Joy is serenity and transfiguration. Peace is bliss and illumination. Enlightenment is ineffable and is pure consciousness. These last 4 emotional states are supreme, and are very rare in a human life, consistently maintained. Those who live in these states are known as Masters. If you can find a real one, you have a worthy teacher.
Ending Notes
I am going to express some ideas, some critiques, and some past history about my experience in the allopathic system. I left the conventional allopathic world in order to develop and offer another perspective on healing: all healing comes from within.
In most cases, this healing from within is assisted by other “outside” people. And yet, in quantum holographic consciousness, we are all one in the Mind of God.
There is One Mind which is knowing Itself through all of Its creation and that includes all of us human beings. There are infinite and manifold varieties of beings on our Gaia, and in the multidimensional Omniverse. No need to feel humble here. Feel proud that you are part of All. Just look up at the night sky. The same Omniverse is inside of you. You cannot be separate from this wonder.
My personal healing journey has allowed me to more assuredly own the information and energetic that I am able to offer to others. One cannot give to others what one does not own. The ownership of one’s healing comes in incremental degrees and in the course of days, via small steps. There are also many instances of the descent of Divine Grace, or, miraculous spontaneous healings. However, it is usually in the graduated steps of a lifetime of practice. That is why patients are called patients (patience).
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond
Associated Reading
- What Does the ‘Best Evidence’ Say About Antidepressants?…”Antidepressant drugs — the most widely used therapy for depression — are also among the least effective, and often make the situation worse, especially in the long term.” This article, posted here on 4-4-19, is a must read for anyone who is using antidepressants and wants to get off of them. The dangers and complications of this class of pharmaceuticals is discussed. The correct natural alternatives are explained. This class of drugs is essentially no better than placebo. Antidepressants numb out what it is that we need to be able to feel. As I often tell my clients, “If you can feel it, you can heal it.”