In a world obsessed with the pursuit of happiness – an ever-elusive destination we live in a constant search of, but never seem to arrive at – having feelings that your life is moving in the opposite direction can be a very scary prospect. But is there something very necessary, honest and real about going through an apparent breakdown that could actually be an opportunity for a breakthrough?

Learning to cope, to be resilient and ‘keep it all together,’ are skills we’re taught to develop as children, with boys in particular feeling the pressure to ‘toughen up’ and ‘soldier on.’ Whilst these can appear like they’re serving us in the world and bringing the acceptance we’re desperately seeking, could this lack of expression actually be holding us in a prison of suffering, when being vulnerable could be the key to emotional freedom?

As everything is energy in this world, our emotions – much like electricity – are also pure energy, just differing qualities of it. We tend to think we can just brush them aside and move on, but these feelings like frustration, anger, grief and sadness have to go somewhere, and that somewhere is in the deeper layers of our body where they are held until such point that the tension becomes too great. Enter illness and disease – the Soul’s way of clearing out our unresolved baggage.

We’re baffled by the sudden deaths of seemingly healthy, happy people dropping dead with strokes, heart attacks, aggressive cancers and the like, but could there be more than bad luck going on here? Based on the fact that “Everything is energy,” Serge Benhayon expanded on this with the understanding that “therefore, everything is because of energy” (Serge Benhayon, 1999), this means that everything in our lives is a result of choice, and the choice to not feel what’s really going on inside us makes us ill.

In light of this revelation, could our apparent breakdown actually be our body’s ultimate spring clean, shedding the layers of what doesn’t belong to make way for the new? Like the calm after the storm clouds have passed, there is a deep settlement in the body when someone allows themselves to feel and let go, like a sigh of relief – “finally I don’t have to carry this anymore!”

Like a dead weight around our ankles we drag our unresolved hurts into every situation, reacting not to what’s right in front of us but to everything that has been thus far – all the moments we’ve felt abused, abandoned, neglected, invisible and unsupported. What can appear like a cosmic dagger of attracting the same old situation time and time again is not a punishment from the universe but can be viewed as a helping hand to get us to look at what’s really going on so that we can resolve our hurts and make a different choice going forward – i.e. the opportunity for a breakthrough.

If we each committed to this process of reflection and healing and took responsibility for our reactions rather than looking to others, our lives and our relationships would transform in every way. As “Everything is energy, and therefore, everything is because of energy” (Serge Benhayon, 1999), there are no pockets that aren’t affected by the past hurts we carry. What can often seem daunting about this reality of energetic responsibility is actually the key to emotional freedom… or better said, freedom from our emotions.

These emotions can feel like they are part of who we are, like being an angry or sad person, when in fact they are just an energy held in our bodies, the apparent difference between people only being how deeply embedded they’ve become. The key to healing then is about giving ourselves and others full permission to feel and let go without the imposing beliefs of it not being ok to cry, or that we are too sensitive.

Looking at little boys and girls it is abundantly clear that we are each equally sensitive and fragile, regardless of our gender. The cultural bias towards it being more ok for women to express how they feel but not men, has unsurprisingly led to the ever-increasing gap in rates of depression and suicide, with an alarming 76% of the 3,027 deaths as a result of suicide in Australia in 2015 being men (1). This statistic alone is calling for a drastic change in the way we relate to ourselves and each other.

Rather than trying to ‘put a lid on it’ and keep things appearingly functional, we should be encouraging one another to speak up and let the tears flow. The letting go is the healing and a very necessary part of someone’s growth and development. Without full acknowledgement of how much we’ve been affected by our past hurts and traumas, we can never truly move forward and embrace new experiences and relationships. The breaking down of our layers of protection is the key to letting people in and living a more love-filled life.

By Alison Coleman

References:

1. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Catalogue 3303.0 Cause of Death Australia, 2015

Related Reading:
The Importance of Expressing Truth
Sensitive – We All Are It
Real Men Don’t Cry