Dear Friends,
One of the books I’m reading now is Light Emerging: The Journey of Personal Healing, by Barbara Brennan. Barbara Brennan is a former NASA research scientist who has spent over thirty years researching and working with the human energy field. She founded the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, where students learn hands-on energy healing and personal transformation.
I’ve read this book before in bits and pieces, flipping to the sections that appeal to me at the time, but this time I’m reading it from the beginning. I read and took notes on the first chapter, and then I just sat with the information for a week, processing it and letting it seep into my consciousness. What I’m sharing with you is my interpretation of and thoughts about part of the chapter.
The ultimate message of the chapter is that all pain, fear, and dissatisfaction in our life comes from the false belief that each of us is separate from everyone else and separate from God. When we feel separate, we feel fear. When we feel fear, we separate ourselves from others.
How to reverse this vicious cycle to create more and more pleasure and clarity in our lives is what this book is about. The key is love and connectedness to all there is…When we are connected to the universal God and the individual God within, we are completely safe and free.
One of the things Barbara talks about in the first chapter is how we create a mask self. She says that when we are born, we are very connected to our core essence, the truth of who we are. At some point early in our childhood, something happens to convince us that we are unlovable as we are and that we have to try to be lovable. For me, this happened when I was a baby and my parents divorced. I felt it strongly again when I was thirteen and my dad moved away. Although I didn’t understand it consciously at the time, in both those instances I thought I had done something wrong and wasn’t lovable enough to make my dad stay. It isn’t logical, but feelings aren’t often logical, are they? Barbara points out in her book that often our wounds are imaginary and based on our perception of an event. Once we realize events in our lives that led us to feel unlovable, we can reframe them from an adult perspective and come to a new conclusion. That’s part of the journey of personal healing.
We are also taught as we are corrected by our parents and people around us who are trying to keep us safe, that we cannot rely upon or trust our natural instincts. We are taught that some of our nature is good (like obeying), and some is bad (like acting out anger and frustration). We create a mask self to cover up the parts of us that we are taught are bad in order to present ourselves as a lovable “good” person. This gradually distances us from our true self as we grow up and continually try to fit in with other people’s ideas of what a good, lovable person is and deny the part of us that doesn’t fit in. However, as we bury negative feelings inside of us, we also reduce our ability to feel positive feelings, to feel our creativity, and to heal ourselves. We begin to feel dull and lose faith in ourselves and our life. I know I have felt this in my own life. Have you? The way to feel our joy again is to connect with our core self, and the way Barbara says to do that is to “go through our defense system, [and] clear the negative feelings and imagined pain around the original wound.”
This chapter explains in detail many deep concepts, so it’s impossible to sum it up in a single paragraph. Barbara is also very positive with how she presents her ideas. She works with and channels her Spirit Guides as well, and they lead her to the positive reason for everything that could be considered negative, which is what I have found in my own work with my Spirit Guides. She talks about the positive reason for the “original wound”, the positive reasons for creating a mask self, and the amazing power we all have to heal ourselves and connect to incredible joy and creativity.
One of the reminders she has at the end of the chapter is that we are all “wounded healers”. Sometimes we hide the full expression of who we are, whether that is the extent of our hurt or anger, or the extent of our joy and passion, because we fear going beyond what is considered “normal”. Barbara reminds us that we are united in carrying this same feeling, the same wanting for love and acceptance, and that we all can appreciate each other more deeply when we have this understanding. The same pain in me is in you. The same joy in me is in you. I can express who I am because what I feel you also feel, whether you express it or not. You can express who you are because what you feel is what I also feel, whether I express it or not. It’s all about understanding and connecting to ourselves and to others. I wrote about this idea in my article, Feeling the Connection.
What are your thoughts about this? How are you going beyond what you previously thought about yourself, life, and what is possible in order to express your true self?
Much Love,
Melanie Jade
