This article is very well contextualized by “Archangel Gabriel via Shelley Young: Shifting With Grace and Ease & Becoming Your Own Hero” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/05/08/archangel-gabriel-via-shelley-young-shifting-with-grace-and-ease-becoming-your-own-hero/
The clearing that’s happening for me at this time has a different character to that which has been happening so far. Perhaps I can explain how and why in case it’s the same for you.
I think it safe to say that the clearing I’ve been doing in my life so far has been in the surface musculature of the body, what’s often called our “character armor” or “holding patterns.” I think it’s the bulk of what Eckhart Tolle means by the pain body. (1)
But the clearing now is much deeper and I don’t even think it’s in the physical body. I think it’s in the emotional or etheric body, where conditions are known to start.
Some time ago I wrote that I had processed surface anger, and then connected with subterranean anger. I processed that and I ended up in a space I called “normal.” (2)
This happened again today. Only this time the subterranean feeling was anguish.
To feel anguish for me means to feel more pain than one can possibly manage. The images I saw when I asked my mind where this came from were the various instances of violence in my family working up to the death of my mother.
The first time I encountered one of them (anger), I characterized it as “subterranean” but did not get at that time the significance of that word.
But this second time I connected with one (anguish) I did see the significance of it.
The subterranean feelings are the seeds of our surface feelings. If not seen and experienced through to completion, the seeds sprout again.
I recognize this subterranean feeling of anguish as what a past relationship used to call my “scared wolf” look. It wasn’t “scared,” I now see. It was “pained.” And it was almost more pain than I could bear.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had a chiropractor do kinesthetic work on you. You hold your arm out and he presses down on it and you can’t hold it straight. The arm is weak and dips because of some bones that are out of joint, etc.
By the same token, as long as a subterranean feeling continues, we’re also weak in our emotional body. We find difficulty remaining balanced in the face of trying circumstances. We’re often wrestling with ghosts.
In all the work I’ve done in the past, I’ve never noticed the subterranean feelings. In effect, I’ve been clearing surface feelings that reside only in the musculature as holding patterns and thinking I had completed the work. But I never did.
The proof was that I very seldom ended up in the space I call “normal.” There always seemed more work to do.
But once a feeling is gone into in its subterranean depths, I do end up in the normal space. Again I had not seen that until very recently.
Lest you’re chuckling at the notion that one ends up in “normal” and shouts hallelujah, normal for me is not somehow a trivial space. I see it as the first step towards deep spiritual growth. “Normal” for me means in the center, in balance, in equanimity. From there one can dive deeper and deeper into the center to ultimately reach the heart or soul.
But as long as one continues to exist on the peripheries of strong emotion, diving deep is not possible. So feeling normal is for me indispensable to the next stage of spiritual work.
As long as I failed to process these very subtle, subterranean seed-feelings, they sprouted again and remained with me. But in fact, once recognized, they yield even more easily and completely to processing than the surface feelings I’ve been processing so far. So it isn’t that they’re difficult; it’s that they remain unseen.
To me seeing and completing them represents encouraging progress.
Footnotes
(1) “Eckhart Tolle: Living in Presence With Your Emotional Pain Body,” Oct. 14, 2013, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/10/14/eckhart-tolle-living-in-presence-with-your-emotional-pain-body/.
(2) “What I Learned on My Spring Break – Part 2/2” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/the-path-of-awareness/what-i-learned-on-my-spring-break-part-22/.