Learning From My Experiences With Pain, and Finding the Path to Love (II)
How interacting with others on their healing journey gave me profound insights about myself, the misunderstandings I had with pain, and transforming pain experiences into love experiences.
Hi, and welcome to my Substack page. My name is Wilco, Substack is a space for me to share my life experiences. Offering practical solutions to overcome challenges in life. This is a series about learning through pain or through love. Choosing the hard way or the loving way. And what makes the difference between the two? During my life, I have experienced both, and this is a second reflection of my experiences.
Learning About Pain Through the Eyes of Others on Their Healing Journey
Fast forward to the end of 2021. All my former friends left behind me, as well as my job, switching to a plant-based lifestyle, HMI 66 Days, and following the Mother Wound & Father Wound program brought me a connection with inspiring people during their healing journey. In my old life, probably 95% of my friends and relatives were men. I didn´t really notice this until COVID took root in society. At the end of 2020 women doing personal healing work took their place more and more. The basic macho talk, false masculinity, and being tough that I´d been used to for most of my life were replaced by Divine Feminine energy, unconditional love, talking about emotions, pain, and the healing journey. A change in vocabulary that I wasn´t familiar with to learn from. And a very profound change, that helped me to look at my own pains.
¨If you´re a woman or a man, we all have both feminine and masculine energy, there´s no link to gender. The feminine relating to the body and emotions, and the masculine relating to the mental and spiritual aspects. The way this is alive within you is unique for everyone. I didn´t know anything about this until I started healing childhood trauma. What I´ve uncovered so far about balancing both energies has helped me to enter experiences more naturally, and bringing out the best of myself no matter the situation I´m in.¨
During chats, the topic of accessing pain, and the difficulties that come along with that, came up frequently. Sharing experiences with each other, I started asking myself how this was with me. What had felt the most natural until then, was just to clear the pain whenever it came up. Why struggle if there are more easy options available, right? Comparing myself with others always leads to a false impression though, because we are all unique in our own ways. It´s a false mind trap, that brings all kinds of inner dialogues and solutions that aren´t mine to think about in the first place. With difficulties accessing pain, all my mind told me about was, ¨Nah, that´s not me.¨ Finding out shortly afterward that this was not the case at all. Resistance and triggers are a big indicator for the mind to avoid confrontations and giving up the ego self. I know now, that whenever something resisting comes up, it´s a clue to open up the closet and see what´s hiding behind the door.
A Challenging Journey, Watching My Old Life´s Movie, and Facing the Shadow
In the meantime, the tension within the family was heating up. Not so much in terms of conflict, but more in witnessing what was going on inside the house. It became more clear than ever that I had to leave. The gap I felt through the years had become too big, I no longer wanted to associate myself with this way of living. And so I left, the day after Christmas. Two weeks after leaving my family, I went to Spain. With my last money, I booked a plane ticket, a place to stay for the first week, and a PCR test. The last was a gamble, all or nothing, that it would be in my favor. No plan, just stepping into the plane and moving. Without money, I was on the street after one week. That´s a story for some other time.
In the months following, my old life started to catch up with me. Staying at a beach for 3 months, living 6 months in solitude in the mountains, and witnessing others on their healing journey turned my world upside down. During walks, while singing random notes, during eating or meditations, and randomly during the day memories started to come up. Although I was familiar with this, it was different this time. The memories came in waves of at least 30 minutes uninterrupted, rapidly following up on each other, like a movie. Even with my eyes wide open, it demanded my full attention. What became clear to me was that the choices I´d made before had led me where I was. And only I could do something to change it.
All major aspects of my life, the people that played a role in it, and my own role passed by. In a short time, I became aware of the vastness of wounding and trauma, all stuffed away beneath the layers I had already peeled off. Childhood memories showed the marks that narcissistic abuse had left on me. The most confronting though was witnessing where I had taken over the behaviors of my parents. Where I used to point to others, silently or out loud, I realized that I was doing the same. Projecting my wounds onto others, just like my parents did. Nothing major or extreme, rather subtle and small things that had slipped in throughout the years and had become normalized behavior. Nourishing myself with green juices and healthy foods helped me to look straight at what came up for me to see.
A New Understanding of Pain, by Experiencing Pain Tolerance
During a parasite cleanse and shortly afterward, physical symptoms in my body became heavier. All kinds of digestive and gut issues came to the surface. Things I wasn´t familiar with, I used to see myself as a very healthy person. Yet, this was only so on the surface level. Beneath the surface a lot of pain was stored, all the pain I had tolerated since childhood. My body had adjusted itself over time, to protect me from breakdown. At the same time, my level of pain tolerance had become so high that I was able to ignore it completely.
My brain had created shortcuts to relate pain to physical symptoms. Every time a symptom came up, my brain presented short-term solutions. Of course, none of them worked in the long run. Going through the candida cleanse protocol - right now, while I’m writing this - teaches me, like with following energy healing programs, that the underlying issues are emotional. Doing a candida cleanse is very helpful in accessing emotions and letting them come to the surface. Learning the language my body speaks gives me an understanding of where the pain is pointing. Which makes it possible for me to release it for good. With every part released, experiencing self-love takes its place. I can tell you, that´s worth every second of your time.
Turns Out That I Didn´t Know Shit About Language, or Pain
Lately, I´ve been looking into the history of words and what they actually mean. Just out of interest, because a lot of commonly used language started to sound like word soup to me. In talking with people for whom English is a second language (just like me), misunderstandings happen. They were leaving me with the question of what they meant with what they were saying. Despite speaking the language so fluently and easily, I never truly learned the underlying basics. How the language is structured, the grammar, and especially the meaning of root words, were foreign to me.
A new fascination for me to dive into, seeing that I had used English (and language in general) in a homogenized way. As most people else do, repeating the same things over and over, without really thinking about it. The same with pain, the homogenized version that it is normal to suffer from pain. Based on what was normalized at home, school, church, and society. The deeper I go, the more eye-opening it becomes. Without someone pointing this out clearly, as Liana Shanti did for me, I kept tolerating pain over and over.
¨Speaking a language is one thing, understanding the meaning behind it is something entirely different.¨
All Great Discoveries Happen By Accident
This is a quote that someone shared with me, a couple of weeks ago when I posted about making some new food discoveries. The first memory that I had, was my mother telling me years ago that ‘I wasn’t planned’. It had occupied my mind for a couple of years as if my parents didn’t want me. I’ve felt that I wasn’t a part of my family throughout my teenage years and early adulthood, this was like salt in the wounds. In November of 2021, during a conversation, she explained that I was 12 days late, and out of nowhere I came out of her womb in the middle of the night. No time for a midwife to receive me, and in record time I showed myself, dropping in my father´s arms. Totally unplanned, there I was. A valuable insight to release aspects of my life that my mind identified itself with.
As instant as with my birth, certain things come naturally to me. No plan, effort, or preparation is needed. Life simply attracts me when I´m in the moment. Starting with zero experience up front, and poof, it´s there. Language, cooking, coaching, learning about the mind-body connection, and driving a motorcycle, once I step into it all goes in a natural flow. Taking the first action does the trick. The deeper learning comes afterward. A Master turning into a Novice by being curious. So it goes with pain, the further I go, the more I understand what my body is telling me. And the less painful situations I walk into.
Transforming Learning From Pain Into Choosing Self-Love
My body is my teacher, the Master who allows me to do anything without effort and with ease. My mind is the student, the Novice learning about pain and other stuff, following the guidance of my body. The more my mind surrenders itself into a role as observer and witness, the more painful experiences are being replaced by loving experiences. The mind trying to identify itself to anything that is not me, brings up resistance with every confrontation I need to face. Observing as a student to learn more about this helps me to let it go, and surrender to my body´s natural wisdom.
Learning from my mind is learning through pain, learning from my body is learning through love. Love is an experience, and I don´t settle for anything less. At a young age, I already deeply knew, that the body can heal itself. It has driven me toward where I am now. The picture I hold of myself is a fully healed body, mind, and soul. Mastering my well-being gives me a reason to stand up every morning. I might bump into little accidents along my way, but what I know for sure is that my body guides me through it. Bringing lots of little discoveries that enrich my life experience. Even if my mind tries to block the way.
Key takeaways for you to keep in mind
The people who show up in your life bring valuable insights about yourself. They can serve as a mirror, showing you where you can look deeper at yourself. Comparing yourself with others is a mind trap and leads to stress, anxiety, overwhelm, denial, and bypassing. Observing what the mind suggests is one of the first steps to pain relief.
Resistance to something you have to face can lead to avoidance of the confrontation. Opening the door to see what´s hiding behind it helps to let go of parts that you´re not. It sets you free of old limitations, and allows you to experience pain as pain, and not as something to run away from or fight.
Your body is a very powerful gift, able to process everything that comes your way at once. Your mind can only process a few snippets of information and wants an answer, explanation, or understanding for all of them. Becoming a student of your body, what it tells you, and what it needs to thrive, helps you to become the master of your own well-being.
Toxin overload is at a very high level in today´s world, with air quality, soil depletion, toxic chemicals and heavy metals, and processed foods, to name a few. Detoxification is necessary to keep a healthy body. Doing a juice fast, parasite cleanses, or candida cleanses helps you detoxify the body from toxin overload. And relieves you from an overloaded mind, helps you to access and express emotions, and releases old pains.
Playing with language is a fun way to break free from the homogenized world. Putting a question mark behind something you thought you understood and looking for the deeper meanings is a profound way to look at your life with a new pair of eyes. It helps you to see where you had it wrong and automatically take actions based on normalized or false assumptions. Try it yourself!
This is the end of part II of this series about learning through pain and finding the path of love. There are more to follow. Thank you for reading, I´m grateful to have you here. Subscribe to receive updates and to read the next parts of this series.
What’s your angle of approach when resistance pops up?
What have you accidentally discovered about yourself that you didn´t know you could do before?
What practices help you to get out of your mind and into your body?
Leave a comment below.