How to Feel The Unfelt Might Transform The World?

“What do we need those days? What do we need as humanity, as a Planet?” I asked myself sitting on the train few days ago. It is short before Christmas December 2019. We accompany the old world on its death bed and we are midwifing the new times and hopefully more wholesome civilization. What do we need to uplift our lives and those around us, to experience more happiness and fulfillment? Are we lacking something in the life of our species these days so we put on hazard our future? What is inherent in our being that got dimmed by greed, fear, resentment, or simple survival, which has been triggered in our nervous systems by various economic, ecological, and political conditions? Have we unfelt something that we need to feel again to transition into a more hopeful future? How can we move from survival mode into being alive?

Vulnerability

I believe the first step to changing our little individual lives as well as the whole societies is to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is when we put off our shields and armor and then breathe… Take the courage to feel… Let ourselves be. It is a prerequisite for being authentic and building real intimacy with others, you need to become vulnerable authentic, and intimate with yourself.

Many silent and loud voices in us try to be heard or try to hide. There are feelings that want to be felt. We mostly ignore them or mentalize them for various reasons. We try to do as if they don’t exist. Maybe because we are afraid that when we let the wall fall we would feel pain. We might fear that if we allow the true expression of our feelings we would be judged, rejected, condemned, or abandoned… Possibly we have pushed them away for so long already that we have forgotten their origin and what we see is merely a projection of the old pattern, some old event on actual people in our life. So we keep recreating the story as if it was something real.

Stop!

If you feel that happening just stop… Maybe it will take some time and practice until you manage to stop for a moment, but eventually, you will. Let’s say, that inside-your-head you hear accusation about your partner’s possessiveness, indifference, ignorance of your true needs, or lack of love makes you upset, sad, frustrated, frantic, or furious. Might be that all you want to do is to push him or her away, pack and leave, and treat him or her indifferently too so he or she can also feel what you feel… This is the moment to stop and take a breath. You are not vulnerable here. Your defense mechanisms kicked in. They make you spin the stories that might be, but more likely are not true.

Quite often we do not allow even ourselves to see what is behind those reactions. Though let’s say you stopped, and you lay down on the earth and breathe… What is it that you really need? Do you want to really push him away? Do you want her to feel as badly as you do? What is this real longing that you hide from yourself, that you do not allow yourself to have? It perpetuates this spinning business in your head and body. To let yourself feel the unfelt is to be vulnerable with yourself.  To share it with your partner is to be vulnerable with the other.

A shift

Maybe you actually long for more intimacy and closeness. Then your very thoughts and behaviors have the opposite effect of what you desire. If people are not aware they sync with our emotional field and start to play a part in our movie… as we do in theirs.

I know that at first acknowledging your need, and accepting yourself just as you are is a noble but very hard task. It might make you feel weak and needy while you want to be strong, self-sufficient flawless and you normally just clench your thees and carry your cross on. Yet, just try to breathe out all these stories and tensions, “mussn’ts” and “have tos”. Then say:

• Wait a minute, I really need to be held.
• I really just need to rest.
• I want to lay in the grass on the bare earth and let my body go for 15 minutes.
• I really just long to feel loved and wanted just as I am.
• I want to be desired, etc.

When you stop for a moment and allow this part of yourself be felt heard and accepted something will shift. Probably you will feel deeply touched at first. Perhaps you will realize that the story you spun in your head is not about your partner, kids, boss, or work but some echo of the past: the father who left, was unavailable, drunk etc… or the mother for whom you were never good enough… or…(fill the gap). Maybe they even are patterns just passed since generations in your family and nobody knows anymore where they come from.

Let your beauty shine

When you allow yourself to feel what is under all this conditioning, what is it that you really need at that moment or long for, then there is a shift of consciousness happening. You put your shield and armor a little down. And you get in touch with the deeper and well-protected sense of self, and with your inner child. You became vulnerable. First to yourself. That’s the bigger and more difficult step! Nobody lies to us as we do. I know that when you make this step and finally start to feel your true feelings the real beauty starts to shine through and life starts to pulse more throughout your body. It is worth letting yourself feel what got unfelt in the process of living!

In lak’ech ala k’in

What does it have to do with the world? Firstly, we may maybe lonely but not alone in denial of our feelings, desires, and needs. By choosing vulnerability we improve the quality of our life. We become honest with ourselves and then the others. Yes, not everybody may like it, but it is worth risking. It will create a natural selection of people around you. Tough if they want to stay, there is a good chance that you will stay in your vulnerability, sharing from an authentic place in yourself will create intimacy which then invites the others to do the same. Like this, the walls, shields, and armor can be replaced by connection and intimacy.

Once you start to see and honor yourself, once you develop compassion with yourself – this is what vulnerability does to us – you will have an easier time seeing beyond the defenses of others and developing compassion for them. Them as individuals and them as groups, those different than you. There is a good chance that with time “them” will become “we” on this very planet Earth.

You may also start to feel the vital need of your local population, society, species, and the planet… When this happens, hopefully, you won’t deny it but give it a space within and tend to it with loving kindness… I am another you. You are another me. In lak’ech ala k’in.