When You're Stuck in the Muck, Part 4

The Self Salutation Newsletter

This week I’ll conclude the series of posts where I describe how to use the Self Self Salutation when you’re swept up in negative feelings.

The meditation series can be used as a way to set intentions and gradually shift your ways of relating to yourself. But it can also be used to help you pull yourself out of a negative state.

In case you’ve missed the other emails, I began the series with a high-level overview of the process.

Next, I described how the process works in general terms.

Last week, I gave a practical example of what the process is like.

This week, I’ll explain how you can uproot a challenge in your life that comes up repeatedly.

When you find yourself coming up against the same problem over and over again—whether it’s a frustration with a person in your life, a frustration with your career, or a frustration with your own perceived shortcomings—there’s another step you need to take to move beyond that problem.

But before I describe that process, I want to explain something which is in response to a question that came to me after last week’s message.

A question about the process

A friend reached out to me after last week’s message to say the process I’m teaching seems very complex.

That surprised me at first because I’m a lover of simplicity.

For the sixteen years I spent as a monk all of my possessions* could be packed in a single bag in about 5 minutes.

*Okay, I did have a few boxes of books as well. :)

But truthfully, I’ve worked hard to boil things down to a very simple process.

The process is simple but we’re complicated

In reflecting on my friend’s comment, I realized that while the Self Salutation process may be simple, we are complex.

And there’s no richer complexity to us than in the areas of repressed emotions that need to be resolved.

Because of this, when I created a map of how to sort through repressed emotions I called it a Labyrinth!

So it’s true that there is real complexity here.

But so far as the process goes, the method you use to navigate through the Labyrinth is simple: there are three meditations that you focus on according to your need.

You turn to the Eagle Meditation when you need to lift yourself to a state of greater clarity.

You turn to the Moose Meditation when you need comfort.

You turn to the Lion Meditation when you recognize that there is something within you that you have not yet surfaced.

Now, although I’m assuring you that the process is simple, that’s not the same as easy. And this week’s message is about the most difficult part of the Labyrinth—the Chamber of Your Greatest Pain and Potential.

But before we get there, let me set the scene by describing the problem that lets you know that you will need to enter this dreaded chamber of the heart.

The Endless Loop of Repeating Syndromes

Now and then, you’re bound to encounter a problem that keeps returning. This could happen in several different ways.

Perhaps you have a person in your life—like a sibling, a parent, or a spouse—who is particularly expert at pressing your buttons.

Or you might find the same challenge recurring but with different people. Like dating the same kind of guy over and over again.

Or having the same challenge with bosses again and again.

Or the same life situation over and over again.

Like the Boston Red Socks, you might feel like you’re suffering from a curse. You’re not going to get many sports analogies here, by the way, so I hope you enjoyed that one.

At any rate, I call this phenomenon the Endless Loop of Repeating Syndromes.

You’ll be tempted to think you’re going around in circles in life but that’s not the case. It’s a spiral—and you’re getting closer to the center.

When you recognize this—usually due to a feeling of enhanced frustration and exhaustion with the recurring nature of this problem—another step is necessary for you to resolve what’s going on within you.

You need to enter the Chamber of Your Greatest Pain and Potential.

The Chamber of Your Greatest Pain and Potential

The first thing you should know is that entering the chamber often takes a prolonged effort.

Buried within your heart is a wound that originated in your childhood. At that early age, you weren’t able to resolve the emotions you had around a painful event. And so you stuffed it deep down.

Now, all these years later, that painful part of you is calling out for healing.

You must build up your resolve to enter that place over time.

When you realize that this is what is needed, it can be especially helpful to make the Self Salutation a daily practice, if it isn’t already.

During this time, as you call forth your courage day after day, focus on making the journey into the Chamber of Your Greatest Pain and Potential.

You can’t rush your healing, but you can commit within your heart again and again that if there is some pain buried there, you want to bring it to the surface and heal it.

When you’re ready, the feelings will emerge.

If You Panic, Don’t Worry

You should know also that sometimes approaching the chamber can cause you to panic.

You’re not going crazy.

Panic is a natural response. It’s a good sign, actually. It means you’re getting close to encountering a feeling that you’ve been running from for years.

The reason it’s so frightening is that it’s not just the wound itself that is stuck in time—a part of you is stuck there as well.

You’re encountering the fear of the child you were.

You see, the name I gave to this part of your heart is not hyperbole.

Getting more support can help

While much of the Self Salutation process is something you can do on your own, you may need extra support to enter this chamber.

If you’ve worked with a therapist or a coach who is trained in this kind of deep work, now is a good time to return for a few sessions.

This depth of healing often requires the help of a guide.

The main thing to know is that deep within you have an inner wisdom about how and when to enter this chamber.

You can trust that wisdom to guide you.

The most important thing to do is to maintain your intention and listen within yourself. The feelings will surface and the healing will happen in their own time.

A Key to Entering the Chamber

Here’s one more key that can help. Ask yourself the following questions within the deepest core of your heart.

Where does this feeling come from?

What is the history of this feeling? When have I felt like this before?

What’s my first memory of experiencing this specific feeling?

If you’ve done a bit of therapy around your childhood, you might arrive at a basic idea of what has caused the pain.

That can be a starting point but, unfortunately, generality it’s not enough for this level of healing. You need to understand it specifically.

Suppose you had an abusive parent. It’s not enough to vaguely assume this pain originates from that relationship.

You can probe in that direction, certainly, but this wounding may be from something different entirely.

It may be from the way your other parent neglected to protect you from your abusive parent.

So keep yourself open and probe until you get there.

You will know it when you arrive

When you unravel the history of that feeling, you will find your way back to your original wounding—the moment in your childhood when an event happened.

In this place, you will discover feelings that were so unbearable that you had to bury those emotions to survive.

When you arrive, however, all the frozen memories will surface.

The memories can be from events that happened sixty years ago, but they might as well have happened yesterday because of the force with which you will feel the emotions tied to the memories.

What you will usually uncover is an overlooked part of your story.

Or you might discover a part of your story that you’ve remembered from a child’s perspective but that you can now understand from an entirely different view.

When you uncover the origin of the pain, it will make perfect sense why this behavior has been so triggering to you.

Along with the buried wound, you will also likely find some aspect of the child’s reasoning about the pain that you internalized—often a way you falsely blamed yourself for things that happened in the adult world.

Time for the Moose Meditation

While the Lion Meditation was critical to help you summon the courage needed to surface this pain, now the Moose is essential.

There is one soothing balm for the wounds within your heart: love.

When you learn to tap into that love yourself, learn to give yourself the felt sense of acceptance that you needed but didn’t receive when you were a child, is what will bring true healing.

In fact, I emphasized focusing on the Lion Meditation in preparation for surfacing these wounds but the Moose Meditation is just as important.

Knowing that you can love even this buried part of yourself is part of what will give you the courage you need to face it.

Your greatest potential as well

Entering the Chamber and healing the wounds there is a glorious victory in life!

When you get here, it will end the repeating problem in your life. You will break the curse.

Healing this wound will create a shift within you. The whole reason you attracted those repeating events was to bring you to this place of healing.

Now that you have healed, you will be free from this issue.

But that’s not all. With that wound healed, you will find access to the part of you that was frozen in time.

Your adult self will now be able to step forward in situations that were previously bewildering and triggering.

Because of this, you will unlock all the potential within you that was previously tied up due to this debilitating wound.

Your life will change in powerful ways.

There may be more work of integration left for you, but you will no longer be plagued by this particular challenge in your life.

You will be free.

May it be so, friends, may it be so,

Simon

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about the Self Salutation process, you can read all about it in the book available here.