The exploration of the word ‘safe’ continues to be important as new insights and awareness awaken in what seems to be every breath I take. The recent comment on my first blog on ‘The Meaning of the word SAFE’ got me curious, and provided an invitation for me to move closer to unlocking mine.  

“The WEL-System process includes learning that you are safe in your body and with its sensations, and yet if some people are using the idea of being SAFE as protected, sheltered or guarded then surely this will limit their ability to be vulnerable and open, as the purpose of the process is to produce the exact opposite effect, that is to be open to your body and it’s sensations, learning to trust that it’s all just information being processed.” ~Christopher McBean~

As this comment rumbled through me I began to feel the layers unfold inside. Questions:

• Are we open to knowing the sensations in our bodies are just energy and information? Perhaps, yes.
• Are we open to allowing the energy and information to move? Maybe yes, and maybe not so much.

I began to wonder about the sensations that we are willing to engage and those that we are not.

The two that surfaced were pleasure and pain. I don’t like pain, I try to avoid it as much as possible, especially self inflicted, think tattoo, piercings, cuts, being hurt, sadness etc… you get the picture. Yet I know for some pain is part of pleasure, makes them feel good. No good/bad/right/wrong, just different. I am not making a judgement, I know we all have various thresholds for pleasure and pain, the following is the process of inquiry as it presents to me.

Then I began to get curious about what if the pleasure in the sensation of pain is the mask for not feeling something else? Or is that the strategy for how we engage the ‘pain’ we feel inside ourselves? I know from my years of experience working with individuals that we create these extraordinary, elaborate web of strategies as coping mechanisms. They help us get through our days and sometimes nights. My head is aching so I know I’m onto something. Stop, breathe.

We get to a place where we know it’s ok to feel what we feel, to engage it without a ‘fuck you’ attached to it, and yet, I’m curious. What are the sensations we have no desire to engage? What is the coping mechanism/strategy for that? Our mind/intellect is good  at creating strategies to move us out of our body. As an example, I recently discovered that when I put my attention on my heart…all layers of it, my head began to hurt in various places. Interesting…

Ahhh an insight in this very moment…what if my head hurting, ears ringing is telling me what I have locked away is deeply enmeshed with who I believe/know I am?

Where do we take ourselves when we feel the uncomfortableness of saying what’s on the tip of your tongue, then hold back that brief nano second, as we consider what if it comes out wrong. What If I ‘hurt’ the other person. We are taught that words can be wielded like swords, and can cut deeper than a knife. So we become mindful of what we say and how we express it as strategy to minimize impact, based on the impacts words, actions or deeds had on us, in our journey to define what is safe – in I am open to, and, what to put in the ‘safe’- to hide and protect.

This is why it takes a village, a community, willing to see what they see, hear what they hear and know what they know, and be willing to express it out loud so that we can hear our higher SELF calling out that we are in protection mode and actually shutting down what is right there on the edge of our awareness as the invitation to become MORE.

I want to thank Chris for his comment, it has been an invitation for me to move deeper into the space of opening the ‘safe’ inside myself!

Until the next time!