In my early twenties, I lived close to the beach of the southern ocean. One one of my walks I admired the big waves and marveled at their bountiful energy. I wondered why I didn't feel like this, why I often lacked the energy, motivation and enthusiasm.
Then I saw myself floating on top of a water and around me different sized balls. I seemed to be busy trying to push them down under the water. I looked under the surface and noticed many more balls there, they looked as if tied to the bottom of the ocean. But the rope was not very good and the balls kept getting loose. I used everything I had to keep as many balls under the surface, but as balls do, they kept escaping and popping back to the surface.
I was shown a metaphor of my own inner world. I did have lots of energy, but it was engaged with the unruly balls. At that time of course, I did not have the tools to resolve my situation, but I was on my way.
Very early on we learn that there are many emotions and feelings that we are just not supposed to feel, express or experience. The trouble is, they still happen. We are also too young and lack the tools and the skills to resolve the challenging issues. So what do we do, we store them in the unconscious. Our parents themselves did not have the skills or knowledge to teach us the resolutions. They taught us what they do, keep pushing them under the surface. Nice, polite and properly raised people just don't have certain kinds of feelings and emotions right.... And there are very few venues to express the multitudes of them.
And so we keep busy trying to control our balls under the surface of our conscious awareness. Not only does it require enormous amounts of our energy, but the unconscious parts also rule our lives from these unaware places. The stuck energy creates sickness in our bodies. These parts want to come up, come into our awareness, they want to be resolved and will keep stirring things up to let you know they are there.
And we wonder, why is our life not working. Why has it not turned out they way we would want it to be. Why are some themes keep repeating in our lives. We change relationships, we change jobs, we move to another place. Sooner or later, the unconscious parts will attract similar situations and people back into our lives.
We project the unconscious parts of ourselves on to the outer word, we attract people who mirror these unclaimed parts of ourselves. And because they are unconscious, we have no idea what they are or what they are up to. We feel fear. There is no safety in the outer or the inner world. Something can go wrong in our lives at any time, we fear, something can explode. And it often does.
p receiving confusing messages from the society. Cool and successful people do not feel any so called negative emotions. Only bad people feel rage, envy and revengeful things. Women of course, do not feel anger. We see images of people doing crazy things when overcome by anger, we see violence. And so we fear it, in ourselves and in others.
At the same time, we are inundated with images and stories that invoke just these kinds of emotions inside of us. Not only are they stirred up in our daily interactions with other people, but we keep watching horror and unjust stories on the news, on TV. They continue to stir our unconscious parts. But we are not to express them and this keeps us exhausted.
The journey back to self involves welcoming all these parts home. It involves learning how to accept them and release them. There is nothing fluffy about inviting them into our conscious awareness. It requires enormous amounts of courage. It requires honesty to look at what is really going on inside. It requires courage to stop blaming the world and others and to look at our own self.
And the reward? You are no longer tossed this way or that way by whatever comes your way. You gain the ability to choose for yourself how you want to experience your own life. And that sure is something.