Being Present In The Eye Of The Storm
Sometimes when we’re in love, or angry, jealous, scared, or even excited, we might also feel flooded by our emotions and hormones. At times, this can be so powerful that we might feel completely overwhelmed.
It is in these precise moments that we should remember to pause for a moment, and connect to ourselves and our intuitive wisdom. We should do that in order to better understand how to handle the emotional floods, how and what we should communicate with our environment, as well as how to contain the powerful emotional shifts.
This feeling of being flooded by emotions and sensations reminds me a lot of being at sea, and seeing a great wave in front of me. I can choose to simply surf it, and by doing so, I can merge with it, and feel the magic of becoming one with the powerful wave.
At times, great waves can be so scary that we might forget to breathe. If that happens, as the wave comes, we take in a mouthful of water, feel helpless, and as though we are in a great struggle against the sea.
Our inner sea and the great blue sea are more alike than you might think.
In both of them, we can see many shades and colours. They both shift a lot, they ebb and flow, and they’re always changing. In both seas, when we find ourselves facing big waves, we have the same choices to make: We can dive right in, surf on the wave’s surface, or struggle and resist the wave.
How do you face your emotional waves?
Sometimes, we find ourselves fearing the fear, feeling angry with the anger, and resisting our resistance.
It’s as though we are trying to speak to the wave with human words and just expect it to be able to understand us and pause for a bit, so we could swim in peace.
1st Gateway: Acceptance through Conscious Breathing
The way to connect to our intuition is through first accepting the situation for what it is.
Accepting that this is the present situation.
That we feel flooded and overwhelmed by emotions.
That this experience is difficult.
That it’s hard for us to breathe.
That whatever is happening in our reality is not what we’ve hoped for or wanted to happen.
For us to reach this acceptance, we need to be willing to consciously breathe.
To consciously breathe even now, as you are reading these words and they remind you of situations from your past experience. And also, to breathe this way whenever you are faced with the wave itself.
2nd Gateway: Diving Inwards Into The Sensations Of The Body
Our body is like the ocean itself, it encompasses the emotional waves inside of it. The body encourages us to learn how to swim with the wave, how to dive into it, and how to flow with it.
With the right intention, we are able to dive into the sensations we feel in our body, deep under the waves. We dive by allowing ourselves to be aware of our sensations, through letting them be and being present with them. If we find areas in our body where The sensations feel more intense, we can soften it by directing our breath to these areas and stay present with them using our breath.
When we dive inwards through the gateway of the bodily sensations, we can accept the changes we experience, so we accept reality. We allow ourselves to simply BE – without resistance or struggle.
3rd Gateway: Diving Into the Unknown
When we dive into the body, the emotions and sensations we face can feel more powerful!
Our instincts might scream at us: “run away”. We might simply want to continue with the reactions we’re used to (to block, suppress, resist).
I’d like to invite you to do this instead: try to fall in love with what you don’t know.
Right now, you might think to yourself: “but I don’t know how to dive into the body”. You might feel like the terrain of your consciousness is foreign and uncharted.
It might be terrifying, to “simply” feel, without a narrative, without holding on, without the drama. To just feel, just sense.
As you dive deeper into these unknown areas of your experience, you’ll meet and get to know more and more aspects of who you really are. You will eventually realize that they are all you. All these waves you experience are you, all the shades and colours you notice, the various forms of sensation and emotion are all you.
4th Gateway: Falling In Love With The Calm.
Once you’ve dived inwards long enough, being present with the breath and the body, at some point that you can’t anticipate, the storm will suddenly clear out and will be replaced by a feeling of calm.
I can promise you that, because of the experience I have with how the human consciousness operates.
The ocean is made up of layer on top layer, and the waves are simply the top layer. The deeper we dive into the ocean, the quieter it gets, the more still it gets. Just like with the ocean, the same happens when we dive into our consciousness. The emotional turbulence eventually dissipates, as we surrender into the unknown.
What we discover next is blissful inner peace, calm and full of wisdom.
When we get there, to this calm, we know what’s right for us right now.
Our inner wise-woman or wise-man is born.
Suddenly we discover we can listen to our intuition and see things in a different light
We discover new creativity,
New opportunities,
Deeper and wider breath.
