I have recently been down with the flu, still slowly recovering after almost 2 weeks of aches, pains, congestion and other symptoms. Seeing as there is a website that exists where there are hundreds of recordings explaining the human condition/existence/experience, recorded by a woman with an exceptional ability to communicate with matter beyond words, I decided to investigate.
I listened to multiple recordings, to not only understand, but also make the best of my time with the flu. The most recent recording I listened to was “Nose: Mucousy Sneeze - What Matters in Matter”. This recording was explaining how the build up of mucous is the result of suppressed emotional reactions towards self/others over time. By ‘others’ I specifically mean people that are closer, like friends, family, relationships, some colleagues – anyone that has a greater impact or influence in one’s life.
In the recording, it was explained how when we react to others, the trigger that causes the reaction is usually something that we are actually doing ourselves, to ourselves or to others. In this way, we do not have to face that part of ourselves, because we instead project it on to another. And then we judge it, so in a round about way, we are judging ourselves through others, thus creating an emotional reaction which we cannot change or solve because we have not taken responsibility for it as we have put it on someone else.
Then there are those parts of us that know exactly what we are doing. When we have negative, spiteful and/or judgmental thoughts about others, and then we look at ourselves and think “what kind of a monster am I?!” And in this case, we judge ourselves directly. This self-judgment leads to emotional reactions which build up over time, almost taking our breath away from us as we fill up with those emotional reactions about ourselves and those closest to us. This creates huge internal distractions from anything good or beneficial about ourselves, and from really seeing our strengths and potential, and therefore these parts of ourselves go un- or under-developed.
The mucous is our body’s way of expelling all the emotional build up. The flu is like a back-log of our body’s processing of the constant bombardment we put on It with our mind’s participation. In fact, the body is constantly and continuously in a position of stress, fatigue, aches and pains as it tries to keep up, and when we get a cold it is like the body saying: “till here no further”.
After learning all of this, I looked at my recent past, and at aaaaaallllllll of the reactions I was having towards myself and others…. And it was a lot. It’s amazing how the process of doing self-forgiveness is quite an exceptional technique for breaking through the bullshit, like projection, and allows one to see their self-responsibility within a given situation.
For example: I was at home visiting my parents, getting worked up about several things as the weather is quite inhospitable here, and most of the family was also sick. I was in a moment of having several different issues seemingly pulling at my attention, like watching my father out in a blizzard shoveling while he is still sick, wanting to help him but knowing I am also still recovering from the flu, and feeling quite guilty but at the same time knowing neither of us should be out there. That guilt I felt was quite extensive and stayed with me as several other things in that moments also triggered me, and I began to react towards others.
I reacted towards one by feeling they were asking too much of me in this moment, and saw that person as ‘needy’ because I was fully absorbed by my own internal reality. I also reacted to someone within impatience, feeling like they were asking me to explain myself too much in a moment where I was processing some information for myself as I was making decisions in real time. At the same time, I was going into a ‘rushed’ experienced triggered by a child that was in pain and whom I realized I was responsible for in that moment as everyone else happened to be out. So, within this I projected ‘needy’, ‘impatience’, ‘guilt’ and ‘rushed’ all onto others in my environment (and then of course amplified the guilt by judging myself for going into all these reactions about the people in my environment), which means that in some way, on some level, I am living all of these things within and towards myself.
This does not mean that those in my environment are without responsibility, but it means that my ability to direct the situation with each one was tainted by my reactions, and I was not able to direct it all effectively. It also means that within all of these reactions, I blinded myself to the ‘good’, ‘beneficial’ qualities I was living in those moments:
- I communicated clearly with the one I judged as ‘needy’, explaining my situation and why I could not always be available.
- I did not over-exert myself while sick to go out into the winter weather because I saw it could be consequential to my body, and I made the choice to honour my health and my body by staying in, instead of going into the guilt and exerting myself too much. I lived a past realization that I cannot control or be responsible for everyone’s choices by trying to fix everything and be everything for everyone.
- I effectively processed information and made decisions with the child to the best of my ability in the moment and did what I thought was best for the child despite some inexperience with children that are sick.
- Even though I experienced an explosion of impatience with someone in my world, I saw it and pushed myself to communicate with that person what was going on with me, why I reacted in that way, and made sure they understood all that I was going through so as not to take it personally.
- Afterwards, I took measures to calm myself and my body as it was in quite a tense and emotional state, by writing this blog, playing relaxing music, drinking calming tea, taking a hot bath with aromatherapy and Epsom salts.
In blogs to come, I will look into how I live ‘guilt’, ‘rushed’, ‘impatience’ and ‘needy’ within and towards myself.
If you read this far, thanks for reading, and I hope my experience and research will assist and support you if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.