The Fertile Void

Blame & projection serve as defence mechanisms against feeling the feelings we don’t want to feel.

By blaming, our mind has employed a strategy to keep us safe from feeling discomfort.

The first emotions we feel, we often know well, and they are at the top.

To drop below that, we may find another emotion, i.e hurt often being under anger, or fear being under frustration, etc.

Sometimes we never make it past the initial reactive feelings when triggered, and we attribute it all to the fault of the person or situation.

This is because it’s surface, we are conscious of it, we can see it, like a wave on the ocean.

Yet what moved the wave? What currents were in motion under the wave?

Now we are under the surface.

Into the unconscious.

Into the body.

Into sensation.

Here we may find in more painful feelings; that we are trying to protect ourselves from feeling : rejection, abandonment, unworthiness, bad etc.

We don’t want to feel these. These are too painful.

Yet, they are feelings that have been there all along, waiting to be felt once we are big and strong enough to feel them.

The person or situation has simply activated latent energy. When the trigger comes, if we can stop and drop, and become curious at the moment as to what lies at the bottom of our ocean, we can begin to liberate these energies that need to live themselves out.

‘Shoulds’ lock them into our system. We are arguing with reality and this closes the heart.

We can purge emotion from our system and thaw out of emotional numbness.

When the heart opens pain does indeed come out. And what comes in is a deep love & intimacy with the world.

So in the aftermath of a trigger (or during if you can hang in there) try asking in a mindful space:

What is the feeling I don’t want to feel?

What am I trying to keep out?

Then stay.

Stay with the sensation, the emotion, be intimate with it and see what you find.

It may not be what you thought.

When something moves out, it creates space for something new and fresh to come in.

Fertile ground.

It’s this fertile ground we explore in Somatic Sensing.

Little by little, with support, with empathy, with kindness, with compassion.