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:
- 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
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
Having had what is termed medically as a nervous breakdown I can say from experience that if we do not address and completely renounce what led to the breakdown in the first place then our bodies will present it in another way. I had two mental breakdowns, followed by years of psychotherapy but it wasn’t until I met Serge Benhayon and attended his workshops especially Universal Medicine Healing level Two which is all about childhood imprints that I really started to clear the negative energy from my body and to absolutely know that I would not have another mental illness because I had cleared that energy from my body for once and for all.
Alison there is a huge concern about anyone suiciding but, you have highlighted an interesting point as to why there has been an increase in suicide rates in men in general, which is a concern around the world.
During a recent incident at work I observed a father yell to his son, ‘why are you crying, you are a boy and boys don’t cry’, it was very disturbing to hear. A man once led to believe by others and this is passed onto the generations below.
Men are just as sensitive to their feelings as women, and emotions are not gender related. What differs us is the organs between our legs and that is it. We need to see more men being sensitive and I have observed one man in particular show his emotions from time to time with people around him. A beautiful reflection for others to feel but also give permission that it is ok to cry and show your emotions and not necessarily anger ones too, which are just a mask of buried sadness anyway.
Understanding cause and effect brings an honesty to how we live.
Most people understand ‘cause and effect’ in chemicals, or something structural but not many like to look at this within the human body, especially the emotions which once buried can erupt one day like a volcano, in whatever format that maybe. It is time to get honest with ourselves and with others. How we live has a massive effect on ourselves and everyone around us.
True intimacy is our ability to let people in so opening our hearts / inner-hearts to being transparent in all we do is like a revolving door energy flows in and out without any blockages, thus no illusion about dis-ease.
Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and transparent, ‘could this lack of expression actually be holding us in a prison of suffering, when being vulnerable could be the key to emotional freedom?’
I feel from my own experience that we hang on to emotions as part of who we are or as a form of identification because if we were to let go of them then who are we?
Things break down because they weren’t solid enough to stand through anyway, so why would somebody want to keep hanging onto something which can’t withstand what’s in front of it?
We certainly do not need to have our glasses smashed or our whole world turned upside down to know the truth, we already know it – every single one of us, but what we need to break is the arrogance running through our body which paints the picture of what our world is.
‘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 we champion pushing through adversity, this actually does nothing to nurture or honour our true inner feelings or respect our sensitivity. When we negate these things, we set ourselves up for ill mental and physical health, a trouncing in our relationships and a flat, hard and loveless society.
Cycles are what offer us a healing and growth, time and time again. When we say no to the healing we go back to our old ways until such time that the opportunity is offered again and again and we get as many attempts as we like to heal and then expand and move onto the next cycle to consolidate and deepen what we have just embraced so that the next cycle can be presented.
So what you are presenting Henrietta is that there is no fail we just keep going around in the cycles until we heal the hurt that stopped our natural expansion we expand as the universe expands.
Sadness we feel is often a letting go of the old so that we can embrace the new and true. The sadness in this case of embracing the True, is often confused as missing the old, when in fact it is expansion into the “new” and the feeling of re-bonding with a dear old friend which is in fact not the “new” we thought it was but a return to a grander way of being within. The re-connection with this grandness can bring the sadness of having missed what we have always known and have finally re-found.
Henrietta Chang, I agree with you there is a sadness of having missed what we have always known and have finally re-found. This is when we need to bring understanding and deep caring to ourselves. That God doesn’t judge and un known to us was walking by our side always.
When something is not true or does not serve a purpose any more then it is best for this to be exposed that it has come to an end, and so it might break or wear out or simply be time for it to be thrown out so that things can be begun afresh. However, there are times when we hold onto the old for fear of stepping into the new and this too needs to be understood deeper and then eventually let go of for a true way forwards.
It is important to express or nominate what we are feeling, to feel this and to then let it go, ‘The letting go is the healing and a very necessary part of someone’s growth and development.’
What hurts is the choices we’ve made against our true essence and way of being. Take responsibility for that and it no longer becomes an issue.
‘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?’ A whole new perspective on life that may just support us to get to the truth of the protection we live in.
I definitely agree with you Alison that the letting go is the healing and as we let go so the healing can take place. I feel its the letting go of the right to feel hurt by other people. Is it possible that we get hurt because we have not read the energy passing through them. Is it possible that humanity gave up reading energy in order to live a more comfortable life? After all if we stop reading energy and everyone can do this we don’t have to take responsibility to bring the truth to everything we do. It’s obviously much easier to dull ourselves down and stop reading because that is what we have done.
Sometimes, in order to see where we truly are we have to have our glasses smashed. So when we are going through something that may seem like it is the worst thing in the world, it can actually (and in most cases is) the best thing in the world because it evolves us, it gives us a different perspective and we can grow from it.
Well said Victoria – for when we are too caught up in wanting things to be a certain way, it locks our vision and then the only thing that can shift it is when the glasses break or are broken for us, finally allowing us to see the truth again.
Yes, it is a very sensible approach and clearly one that is needed, to be more openly vulnerable and allowing of our and others feelings, and not let our bodies become like emotional pressure cookers. Not letting ourselves or others express is really another way of saying it’s not ok to be ourselves.
Allowing ourselves to feel what we are feeling, ‘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.’
Alison this is brilliant we really do need to start to look at the excess baggage we carry around with us so this is a great conversation to be having because no one seems to want to understand that everything is energy first and I quite understand this as it has taken me a long time to accept this myself. But having accepted this truth it is so easy to then see through the games we all play with one another and I can then choose not to get caught up in it all.
I have noticed a pattern over the years whereby there’s the build-up, the avoiding of the hurt/s because I assume and think that they are too big to handle. Then the explosion, lots of pain from holding hurt/s inside and not dealing with them. Then there’s a part where I may literally or figuratively be laying in a crumpled heap on the floor. But after that, I stand up, brush myself off and feel so much lighter after all of that.
Or, more recurring now, is feeling what I feel and not dismissing or hiding away from it. It clears then I am left feeling lighter and with more understanding of the situation.
Resilience seems to be a key word I am hearing a lot more lately in that it is a good thing, but if we are making ourselves resilient are we ignoring what we truly feel or what is going on? Just putting that out there.
We constantly need another peak after the peak we have conquered, that’s why our sugar cravings are becoming stronger and stronger, that’s why the amount of food we consume is never enough and we want seconds, thirds and so on. We push ourselves, look for happiness on the outside and then wonder why things are the way they are.
“Learning to cope, to be resilient and ‘keep it all together,” are the damaging ingredients to living a life where we bury how we truly feel, and so end up living a life that is nowhere the quality that we could be living. The ‘keep it altogether’ encouragement locks within us what is waiting to break free from us, and from that breakthrough can come the healing that is being asked for
Burying what we are feeling has many consequences, ‘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.’
Spending a lifetime not expressing ourselves and then internalising everything that is said or done to us, is it any wonder we get to the point where the body needs to lighten the load. Getting ill does not happen by accident, it’s a response to the way we live.
Pearls of wisdom Julie – our body is in constant communication with us – but how much do we heed this and then change the way we live and allow more love to be expressed?
The body clearing what does not truly belong, ‘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’.
Yes “The letting go is the healing and a very necessary part of someone’s growth and development.” But I can understand how unsafe it feels for many to let go when the world is constantly bombarding with messages that encourage you to put the lid on and pretend all is okay. The best gift and support we can always offer one another is the love, understanding and space for the person to let go and explore for themselves what this feels like and how it translates in expression.
‘The letting go is the healing and a very necessary part of someone’s growth and development.’ So, true Alison and we often don’t realise how much we hold on to stuff until we surrender and let go because the tension we carry reduces our awareness.
When we do not resolve our hurts and just keep going we build up internal pressure and like a pressure-cooker if we do not release the pressure we eventually explode. However, if we do not resolve the cause for the hurt the release is only a relief, not a resolution, and the pressure builds again and again and …..
Is it possible that addictive behaviours are born from seeking relief from the pressure cooker of life. we use anything from alcohol to the more extreme forms of seeking relief such as taking drugs, cutting, extreme sports all to seek the temporary relief of the internal agony of not being connected to our soul. The eternal unrest will eventually be so in our face that nothing we do will alleviate the tension and then we will have to face and deal with the separation to our soul.
So true Doug; sometimes we have to go right to the foundation of how we have lived and be open to dismantling it, and beginning all over again. For if we try to fix it, or as you say “tinker with it” we are only putting off the inevitable and if we do, eventually the choice may be made for us.
If we have lived our lives surrounded by layers of protection from our perceived hurts, it makes sense that at some stage there has to be a ‘breakdown’ of these self-imposed walls. From this breaking down we are offered the opportunity to ‘break through’ all that has had us building these walls, so that we may finally live our true life, not one where we live so much lesser than the one we are naturally born to live.
If we didn’t have that limit by which we eventually hit and breakdown from the world would be much worse off if we were allowed to continue to build our defenses without repercussions.
Letting go of these layers of protection is a must if we choose to truly love and be transparent, ‘The breaking down of our layers of protection is the key to letting people in and living a more love-filled life.’
Sometimes we may not be aware that we are holding onto emotions, like sadness, anger, frustration etc. until we allow ourselves to feel them in our body. For example, one morning I woke up feeling like my chest was compressed, my body felt heavy and a yucky feeling in my body I couldn’t shake off or ignore. I didn’t know why I was feeling this huge tension and I was going to sit down to start work but felt I couldn’t even concentrate. So I laid down and allowed myself to fully feel what was coming up, and immediately my body released a huge package of sadness. If I had pushed through and kept working, I would have buried this feeling further into our body due to ignoring it. Now, I understand how important it is to allow ourselves to feel what is coming up and surrender to what we feel and our body will naturally clear/heal when we are ready to let go.
To me our downfall starts as children because we are not encouraged to express how we feel but instead we are actively encouraged to suppress feelings and we then put into the strait jacket of societal life. But those feelings that have been suppressed do not just vanish into thin air they cannot as they are energy and if too much of this is stored in the body rather than just passing through it we get sick. It’s quite a simple process that we have complicated. So is it possible that if we were to deal with the stuck energy this would reduce our health problems substantially?
I totally agree Mary, that ‘our downfall starts as children’ where we are conditioned to conform to a certain societally accepted way of living, a way that definitely doesn’t serve us or anyone else. Those straitjackets sadly come in very small sizes and can get very heavy indeed if what they are being used to hold back, is not identified and healed.
Ingrid a member of the family is going to have a child in a few months time, the parents to be were offered a 3D scan and video and all that saw the video of the baby were reduced to tears because they could feel the delicateness, love and the purity of the boy yet to be born. My question to the family is, then how is it possible that having been reduced to tears by the sheer purity of the baby boy yet to be born, how is it possible that we then seemingly forgot their preciousness within a very short space of time, so that the delicateness, love and purity is quashed by the society we live in? This ability to squash such beauty in children has to be a pandemic, because so few of us grow up with our delicateness and purity intact. Why do we do this to ourselves generation after generation?
We all carry our past hurts with us wherever we go and they colour our perspective of life, and I agree that actually we can never truly embrace life and all that it offers when we have such a distorted view of it.
Absolutely Mary, this makes sense of why we react to life instead of responding to life when we carry hurts. Our hurts triggers reactions and our reactions then hurt people around us. So, if we all carry our hurts, we will just keep feeding this cycle of hurts and more hurts.
It is key to heal and let go of our hurts if we wish to respond to life.
Regardless of how clearly we live our bodies will always accumulate stuff whether it be our own choices or group karma and illness and disease is always a clearing. However, that clearing can be due to us listening to and working with our bodies or not listening to our bodies and being somewhat made to listen. There is quite a difference in each case and it is helpful to discern which it is.
In certain circumstances if we did not ignore or abuse our body and build up the mess in the first place we would not need the clearing – it is really lovely to develop a relationship with our body where it does not have to shout for us to listen!
Thanks, Nicola for explaining this so clearly. Understanding this supports us to look at illness and disease in a very different light.
Thank you for this explanation and I very much agree a breakdown allows us to clear things we have been accumulating and carrying along and when we accept this wash of clarity as a support and do not shame ourselves we can move on free of this package, instead of when we hold on we drag ourselves back into old habits.
When we use a breakdown sensibly we have to conclude that our free will is at times not as free as we thought and then come to the understanding that we have to surrender instead to the stillness within instead of using willpower to truly break through.
We have to dig to the roots of all the ill that we live with, not only in our bodies but also in our societies. As when we neglect to do this we only give solutions to the issues at the surface but underneath they will fester deeper in our system and cause all kinds of disabilities in our movements that at intervals will erupt to the surface in a disease or extreme violent act.
Sometimes in life things may have to break down in order for them to be re-built. Our pictures have to be smashed (strong word, I know) for us to see through again. Not always, but sometimes the low moments are actually as a result of us getting a deeper understanding and making a steadier step in life – like you say sometimes a breakdown may actually be a breakthrough. We just have to remain open and keep going regardless of the situation.
it is about embracing life in full, no matter what comes to you and to just see each situation as an opportunity to learn and find more of who you truly are.
‘The breaking down of our layers of protection is the key to letting people in and living a more love-filled life.’ Yes, no matter how vulnerable or fragile we may feel at times.
This is a great part to highlight and it is a great reminder for me because I can sometimes go into protection with certain situations/people and not allow myself to be vulnerable or fragile. It’s a work in progress to let go of the many protective layers I’ve constructed.
When something happens to me I can look at as that’s “Terrible”, or I can look at it as “Why did it happen?”. The first way, I have judged it, which makes it difficult to look at what happened, objectively.
The second way I have a much better chance of learning from the experience.
Everything happens for a reason, when I can look at things like that, it supports me to hear the message that is being presented.
Yes we are responsible for everything that happens to us – it does not just happen. Knowing and living like this is very empowering and makes way for greater understanding.
And for greater responsibility.
Brilliant Ken, I like the second approach because it supports us to learn and grow. Any form of judgement will cap our opportunity to evolve.
‘… or better said, freedom from our emotions’ – My experience of life has been to keep a lid on what I was feeling and when I haven’t I have been undermined and ridiculed for allowing my fragility and hurt to be observed by others. Yet to live as you have expressed here Alison is so simple and once we expose the old beliefs that have imprisoned us, the response from the body is immediate and can be clearly felt.
I’m still learning at the tender age of 65 years not to put a lid on what I’m feeling but to express how I’m feeling. I learnt from a very young age that adults did not appreciate a young child speaking out and exposing so called ‘family’ life. So I learnt to keep my feelings to myself, so that if there was a disagreement I would go into silent running and pretend that everything was fine when clearly it wasn’t. We definitely carry our hurts around with us so that as has been said we react, ‘not to what’s right in front of us but to everything that has been thus far’.
When something breaks down we do have the opportunity to be honest about what may have lead to that situation and this can be a pivotal time of healing and breaking-through, although it needn’t be an either or situation.
It takes so much energy to keep protection in place… One of the greatest revelations is to feel how much energy is consumed, and when released, to feel the extraordinary sense of spaciousness and energetic freedom.
Absolutely, transparency is naturally spacious.
Recently, on my way to work on the busy street, I saw a man on a bicycle, full of anger, yelling as he whizzed passed a crowd of people. It was very interesting how everyone just carried on their ways, totally ignoring the man. I was almost getting impressed by how everyone seemed to be observing and not absorbing, but no, it did not feel like that. Something felt devastatingly sad in all of that. I recognized the anger that man was enacting as I have done so myself, and seeing how that just repels people was one thing, and maybe I was in sympathy with that man, but I kept wondering whether that loneliness that man was in was just entirely for him to be responsible for. There was something that deeply disturbed me in that.
Absolutely – and because we don’t let go, we pile up unacknowledged, unexpressed feelings that get translated into some kind of emotion to create a pocket for itself to dense up what could otherwise be just an energy passing through. And it’s just amazing how the body can orchestrate a healing in a timing and manner that cannot be more apt.
Serge Benhayon has often presented on the power of healing hurts that we carry, after reading these alarming statistics on suicide one only has to feel how important and very needed true healing is for the body.
Sometimes we need to break down something in order to break through to a new level of awareness. On the other hand we could just accept what is there to be accepted and then no break down is needed.
..and this requires a level of honesty and willingness to accept the responsibility we have with what we choose and the outplay of those choices.
I’m learning to appreciate being sensitive to feeling my hurts over situations that could easily be brushed off as ‘nothing’. Stopping to feel what the ‘little’ thing is all about and I see it’s a keyhole into revealing many hurts of many lifetimes sometimes. If I ignore these small incidences and the universe has to offer you opportunities you are hard pushed to ignore.
This is true Karin. Our everyday interactions are opportunities for the old held onto hurts to come up, better to pay attention sooner than later because we will get what is needed and not necessarily what we want.
Great blog that is so practical in its message: without opening up to ourselves – i.e. allowing ourselves to feel what we’re actually feeling, instead of putting a lid on it and pushing it down, we deny ourselves and others deeper connections and relationships and make-do with being on the surface of life – and then constantly looking to distract ourselves from that feeling of emptiness. When we start to feel and express that, life feels richer and deeper, and so do our relationships.
Learning to ‘keep it all together’ as a child gave me the ability to keep everything functioning but in a way that isn’t true for me or actually supporting anyone else. I have seen in people who have various aspects of their lives ‘fall apart’ such as health or work and just how much they grow and blossom from the experience. Living in comfort and security does not allow this to occur.
There is such an honesty available when we are vulnerable that can offer us the option to treat ourselves more gently, honouring our innate tenderness and sensitivity.
Life is very simple when we understand and start from the premise that we are already everything, we are in fact Gods behaving as un-gods!!! Therefore anything that is not of love or our Godly nature is not who we truly are and is something to become aware of, bring understanding to and renounce ie let go off.
What I love feeling is that the simplicity of life is so clearly communicated to us through our body. We know innately what it feels like to live in rhythm with our body’s natural ways, and even though we might have temporarily moved away from it, our body is always calling us back.
The breaking down of old ideals and beliefs that are considered normal or true, can be challenging, but the breakthrough out of illusion is the re-establishing of a deep inner foundation to live from and well worth re-connecting to.
Bringing the Soul into the equation regarding illness and disease, brings a whole new understanding as to the nature of our choices throughout lifetimes awaiting to be exposed for healing to occur. If not dealt with, this ultimately leads to the Soul bringing in the package of illness and disease to support our return to love.
“Enter illness and disease – the Soul’s way of clearing out our unresolved baggage”.
Taking the lid off our well hidden sensitivity is key to showing our amazingness and let that quality of energy flow through our body – enjoy this video by visiting Serge Benhayon TV https://sergebenhayon.tv/episodes/episode-14-the-gods-making-love
“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”.
Sometimes we need to breakdown in order to breakthrough.
It does appear that we have a predilection for choosing the hard way but it does not have to be that way!
Being honest about how it really feels when we live governed by our emotions is where we begin to see that we are the ones, at the end of the day, that have allowed our lives to be orchestrated in the way we experience it, through the quality of energy we are aligning to. As such we can feel then if we are living who we naturally are or not. The more honesty we are willing to live with the more the falseness becomes apparent, freeing us to be aware of the quality of our choices and respond with greater truth and knowing.
So true Carola, accepting we choose the quality of our alignment and that we are powerful creators is key if we are to truly see clearly our potential.
If we are open and willing to heal our hurts, to be truthful, honest and transparent there is no need for a breakdown. Breakdowns are the result of the build up of the energy of suppressed emotions that can no longer be contained.