Welcome to Module Three
Getting to Neutral: Negotiating Space, Bodies, and Communication
Our bodies carry history—the history of our experiences from this lifetime, the histories of our ancestors, and the histories of any social groups that we are born into, because of this history none of us are operating from a completely neutral state. In community and social spaces, these histories and tender spots may become triggered.
From a spiritual perspective, we are all one. From a human perspective, we all have our unique energetic blueprints. Coming to a place of healing social relations means that we must hold both of these truths side by side—we are all unique expressions of the one. Until we come to a place where we bring our unconscious wounds into consciousness, come out of the illusion of separation, and take responsibility for our actions and the actions of our ancestors by making amends and offering energetic reparations for those whom our ancestors and/or social groups have wronged, we will continue to enact pain on ourselves and each other.
In this module, we will discuss pain bodies, shadow self, and energetic weather. We will also have an opportunity to dive into the practices of feel and process and the reactivity chain.
PAIN BODIES
A pain body is simply any dense emotion or vibration living in the body that is not fully acknowledged and witnessed. It is an energetic open wound and continues to live in the body until it is processed and released. Our reason for stuffing these emotions down often dates back to childhood traumas when we were vulnerable and unsafe and didn’t have the awareness or tools to healthily process what was happening to us.
COLLECTIVE PAIN BODIES
Sometimes our pain bodies are inherited. They can be intergenerational and/or karmic, meaning that they have been passed down to us through our lineage, social groups, or through other lifetimes. One of the pressing questions of this historical moment is how do we each become more accountable to facing our pain bodies and bringing them into consciousness in order to work through them, not just for ourselves, but for each other? We owe it to ourselves and to each other to be brave enough to learn from and listen to our pain bodies so that we can collectively heal.
SHADOW SELF
Our Shadow Self consists of all of the qualities about ourselves that we have disowned and banished because we judge and perceive these qualities to be “bad.” We might have been told that these qualities are “bad” by family or society. We might have watched others be punished or judged for them. We might be scared of how powerful these parts of ourselves feel. Whatever the reason, these are the less “polished” aspects of ourselves that we keep out of sight behind the masks we wear and show others. Our Shadow Self is simply a “wrong turn” of our Soul Qualities, when these qualities are operating through a logic of fear rather than love.
ENERGETIC WEATHER
As we do this work it’s important to remember that emotions are not “good” or “bad,” they just are. Emotions are the body’s attempt to communicate that something is not in alignment with our heart and the truth of who we are. And some emotions are very strong and powerful. Emotions are simply energy moving through us. Just like a storm coming from across the lake. When we are in our Awareness Body we can recognize that whatever we are currently experiencing will not last forever, and we begin to be more skilled at navigating the storms and knowing that regardless of what is happening in the outer realm, the core of who we are is love.
