“As quickly as I enable the Universe to exchange my fear-based beliefs with new perceptions, I obtain a miracle.” ~Gabby Bernstein
As I used to be packing up my mom’s nursing residence room after her demise, I discovered a bit of heart-shaped stone that had the phrase “serenity” on it. I took it again to California with me and I maintain it regularly. It’s heavy, stable, and soothing, and it jogs my memory of her.
I like the burden of that little stone.
After we’re grieving, heavy issues are comforting. It’s not stunning that after we wish to launch stress, many individuals go for a mud bathtub. (Mud has weight, bringing a sense of heaviness to the physique.) Equally, weighted blankets scale back anxiousness and assist us calm down and go to sleep.
Due to our tradition’s excessive give attention to analytical thought, many people dismiss the highly effective knowledge and therapeutic qualities of a easy embodied, felt sense… like the sensation of heavy.
That’s unlucky as a result of felt sense is the supply of our instinct.
We might stroll right into a good friend’s residence and spot that it feels “peaceable” or “darkish.” We’d stroll away from a dialog and really feel “lit up” or “flat”. A brand new undertaking at work might really feel “too small” or “caught” or “over our heads” or “flowing.” We might understand that it’s time for us to be “greater” in our lives, or alternatively, “smaller.” Or we’ll inform our pals, “I have to let go” or “I would like to maneuver on.”
These are all examples of metaphor—the sensory, intuitive language of our proper cerebral hemisphere. The fitting hemisphere is the a part of our mind that seeks intimacy with the world. It doesn’t sit again and analyze issues from a secure distance; it understands the world by getting up shut and private.
It feels its method.
Metaphor can also be how we obtain larger understanding. It’s how Spirit, the Divine, larger consciousness, or no matter you name that realm of upper knowledge, speaks to us.
Consciously or not, metaphor is how we be taught, develop, and heal.
My First Expertise with the Therapeutic Energy of Metaphor
Once I was in my late twenties, I used to be concerned in a head-on collision on the freeway. Driving down the street at sixty miles per hour, a automobile crossed the middle line and hit us head on.
I knew my again was damaged. My legs had been lifeless—I couldn’t transfer them. I had no feeling from the waist down, and the ache was excruciating.
After a few agonizing hours, I used to be lastly airlifted to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota the place the medical doctors informed me I’d damaged T-12 and displaced my spinal twine by 40 levels. I’d want surgical procedure to fuse my backbone again collectively, and so they gave me lower than 5 % probability of ever strolling once more.
In different phrases, I used to be in huge f$%^&# hassle.
However one thing else occurred that night time. A nurse within the emergency room came visiting to me and whispered in my ear, “Think about you’re floating on a cloud.”
So I closed my eyes and imagined myself floating on a cloud… which, in fact, required that my physique be LIGHT. Within the following days, I targeted on floating and being as LIGHT as potential.
And right here’s what occurred: I finally not solely regained my capability to stroll, however one 12 months after I left the Mayo Clinic, performed soccer (albeit poorly, lol). Immediately, no one would ever guess that my backbone is fused collectively or that I’d been in such a horrible accident.
Discover how LIGHTNESS is a really completely different power from the HEAVINESS of my little heart-shaped stone.
We want completely different qualities at completely different occasions for various conditions and circumstances.
Regardless of our tradition’s excessive give attention to reaching and producing, our greatest work and our greatest lives don’t reply properly to pushing. Attempt as we would, it’s laborious to pressure one thing to occur that’s not in alignment with Divine knowledge. (Identical to it’s laborious to push a ship up a flowing river.)
The apple tree doesn’t attempt to pressure its fruit to ripen when it’s not prepared. It permits its pure life cycle to unfold, and its fruit is harvested when it’s time.
So, too, with people. Therapeutic, development, perception, artistic breakthroughs come to us after we’re aligned with the felt sense of upper knowledge.
Proper now… are you in a time of constructing? A time of harvest? A time of exploring? Or research? A time of relaxation? A time to be open? A time to be light? A time to let go? A time to face agency and maintain your floor? A time of expansiveness?
You is likely to be questioning what to do in regards to the problem you’re having together with your son. Or how you can heal the digestive points you’ve been experiencing. Or how you can lastly have a sense of peace and satisfaction with life. Or how you can lose these ten further kilos.
In my work, these questions are answered by the sensation qualities of metaphor.
To find the metaphor you want proper now, do this…
1. Take a second to pause and focus in your breath. Shift your consideration to your personal internal understanding and picture there’s a spacious discipline of very clever power right here with you. You might be way more than your bodily physique. You’re additionally way more than your considering thoughts.
2. Then, let a easy picture spontaneously come to thoughts. Don’t spend any time occupied with it. We’re working with metaphor; any picture will just do fantastic. Or you possibly can open {a magazine} and select the primary picture you see. Or ask a good friend to offer you a picture. (However once more, don’t enable your good friend to spend time considering about it or looking for the ‘proper’ picture for you. Simply have them select a random picture.)
3. No matter easy picture you provide you with—cliff, tree, pencil, ant, duck, ocean—is a metaphor and it has knowledge for you.
4. Don’t create a narrative in regards to the picture. As an alternative, maintain your considering thoughts out of it and solely discover two or three major qualities.
5. Write down these two to a few major qualities. Bear in mind to maintain them easy: STURDY, CLEAR, EXPANSIVE, BIG, TINY, GENTLE, LIGHT, STRONG, DEFINED, FLOW, SPACIOUS, and so forth. For instance, your picture is likely to be a STURDY home or a TINY blueberry or an EXPANSIVE discipline.
6. These two to a few qualities got here to you for a motive. They’re bringing the perception, therapeutic, development, and energetic shift that you simply want proper now. Take a second and write down why you assume you obtained these explicit qualities.
In the event you bought one thing SMALL or TINY like a blueberry or a silver coin—what does TINY imply for you? Maybe you’ve been ‘too huge’ on the planet or taken on too many tasks? Do you’re feeling strung out with too many issues to do? Have you ever been WAY too concerned in your daughter’s marriage or have you ever been giving your good friend undesirable recommendation? SMALL is telling you to drag again. Be SMALLER.
In the event you bought one thing SOLID and STURDY—how are the qualities of SOLID and STURDY useful for you proper now? Are there conditions in your life the place it’s good to maintain your boundaries? The place it’s good to be stronger?
In the event you bought one thing BIG—are there presents and capacities about your self that you simply haven’t owned? BIG is telling you that you simply’re greater than you assume you might be.
In the event you bought one thing EXPANSIVE (just like the sky or discipline or the ocean)—it’s usually about acknowledging that one thing in your life is past you. No matter-it-is is greater than you’ll be able to know.
—
For the previous few weeks, my metaphoric picture has been nurturing soup. Each time I examine in with myself about what I ought to do subsequent, I get a picture of being soup and having fun with its sensory succulence.
I’d been in REST mode since my mom died—taking day out to grieve, discover my very own voice once more, and collect myself again collectively. However with this picture of soup, I’m sensing artistic motion beneath the floor. It feels juicy, wealthy, and nurturing.
It additionally feels unhurried. The juicy richness of the soup isn’t needing to accomplish something proper now. It’s simply being the richness.
No matter major sensory high quality confirmed up for you is a directional pointer. It’s your very clever North star. Comply with it and also you’ll heal, connect with your personal deep understanding, and expertise miracles far past what you possibly can create by yourself.