Clearing. Constantly clearing. Clearing and "cleaning" (aka Ho'oponopono) are normal, daily activities for me now. The more I practice, the better I get.
When emotions arise that I do not like and do not serve my highest good, I work to first listen to the messages they are telling me - whatever it is I need to say or do or be - and then I work to first fully accept and love the emotion; to learn from it if there is a lesson within; and to then clear it. I clear it various ways: sometimes I need to dance it out or run it out while coming into my full power; other times I use EFT (tapping) and positive affirmations; sometimes I journal about it and get more clarity as I write; and still other times I use yoga, meditation or drumming to help me move on.
Whatever the situation is, I consciously work t-h-r-o-u-g-h it now. I don't condemn the emotion, I don't deny it, I don't fear it, I don't chastise it; I accept it, love it, listen to it, clear it, and move on.
Once I am clear, then I can take the action that was the message behind the emotion. But not before I'm clear. Otherwise, I am reacting to the emotion instead of taking action from my true Self -- from my seat of true inner power -- and only a negative result, equal to the negativity of the emotion - can come about. When I clear the emotion first, I then handle the situation from a higher place, and can only get results that serve my (and everyone else's) highest good.
One fine example of clearing came up this past week. I kept noticing a negative feeling around the state of something that, for simplicity's sake, I will label a "messy house." This feeling was nothing new, but was *was* new was my keen observation of it. I separated the feeling from the physical situation that triggered it -- as no situation ever causes an emotion; it only triggers that which you already have within you -- and decided I was going to deal with the emotion. Now. Not later. Now.
I started to write. The more I wrote, the more clarity I got. The more clarity I got, the more I was able to see how this simple emotion - a feeling of shame - has traveled with me along this road of life, attaching itself to various things along the way and expressing itself through unconscious behaviors that my mind then looked at and called "bad" and "shameful."
In a way, I was was shocked. It wasn't until I started working through it all that I realized that a) the feeling I didn't like was clearly "shame"; 2) my mind (a.k.a. ego) was attaching this "shame" to what modern society would label a "messy house" (yet which many happy families would call a "normal house" and what my highest self wouldn't even notice!) and has been attached to this situation for YEARS; and 3) in the past, "shame" was attached to what I can now call disordered eating for many, many years during high school and college.
The "shame" -- the emotion, the negative energy -- took on one form during my teen years, then subsided for a bit, and then stealthily reappeared in another form as an emotion attached to what I like to call "the location of various objects located within my house."
There was no remedy for the physical situation in either case. I could "fix" the physical eating during my high school years, but it would always return because the shame was the real issue, and I could clean my house ten thousand times, but it would always get messy again because, again, the messy house is not the issue, it's the shame.
When I came to this big realization, I did what I've needed to do for years and years and years, and I just started to clear the shame, and to make it fully understood by my heart and mind that this shame in no way needs to come back. The journaling took me to the clarity of understanding it; after that, I started tapping (EFT) and using positive affirmations (this is the EFT youtube video I followed) to allow my body to release it. I cried a lot and journaled some more and listened to music that spoke to me in that moment and helped me wallow IN the shame so that I could FULLY love and accept it, and slowly but surely, the clouds of shame cleared and the light of love was able to come through again.
At that point, I stated my clear intention that this shame would never take over me again. I would remain vigilant about it, and note that if it showed up, I would simply tell it to go away; I would say, "I'm dropping you like a bad habit, shame. Get out of here." In the few days since my clearing, I've done this several times, and every time, it's disappeared before it even had a chance to get its foot firmly in the door.
So now, as it stands, my house still has various objects in various locations all over the place. I don't feel mad or glad about it. It is a non-issue. I know I'd enjoy putting everything in its home because then it's easier to function, it's more fun to be able to find all the pieces to my kids' race cars, for example, when they are all in one place. But it's not necessary for happiness and I do not want it to any longer influence how I feel emotionally.
This is getting long I realize, but there is one more neat event that helped bring this into clarity. Last weekend, I was able to fold and put away about 10 loads of clean laundry that had literally piled up in the living room and had been there for weeks. After I finished, I was absolutely ELATED. I was so proud, so happy, so totally on Cloud 9 -- and yet, I knew something was wrong. Sure, it was nice to be able to have the kids get matching socks out of their sock drawer instead of digging through piles to find a matching pair, but still...why was I SO happy? I wasn't feeling that unconditional Joy of Being -- I was feeling proud of my success; I was giving myself one grand "Good Job!" and a pat on the back. It sounds all dandy, but whenever there is that one-sided ego-related "congrats!" then there is always an opposite side to that coin. In this case, it meant that a pile of laundry in the living room for two months is BAD. Hence, putting the laundry away was GOOD. Both emotions - the good and the bad - I realized, were stemming from that same place: Shame.When I put the laundry away, I buried the shame - but I didn't heal and love and clear it. I just covered it up for a while.
(For an example of this, view my post from January 26. Yes, I cleared myself before I physically cleaned the house, but I don't think I specifically cleared the shame. Or maybe I wasn't as clear as I thought. Perhaps if I were truly clear, the mess and the tidiness wouldn't have been issues at all?!?! Or maybe I *did* clear, but didn't actively work afterward to stay clear?!?! At any rate, the "mess" did return after a couple weeks - and it was almost intentional. I could see myself letting the items reappear about the house, and yet I almost *willed* them to reappear. Like I needed it for something.... Well, I can over-analyze this forever, but let's move on.)
In a way, this whole bit about dealing with the underlying emotion of a physical situation is nothing new. Psychology talks about it all the time. But for me it was a breakthrough in realizing that I don't have to FIX anything or spend years in counseling figuring out "Why do I feel this? What caused it? Who is 'responsible?'"
Truth is, we may never consciously recall who or what made such an impression on us that it programmed a certain emotion and reaction into our being. Instead, we only need to love and clear the emotions that block out the light of unconditional love, and in time, the physical reality will fall in line with the true feelings of Joy.
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