The Untethered Soul

Flutes and peas

I once heard a metaphor about how we can think of ourselves as flutes designed to be open and clear and have life flow through us in order to create beautiful music. However, our thoughts and emotions from the past can become trapped within us and act as peas within that flute, blocking it up and preventing it from being played to its fullest potential.

The question is, how do we get rid of our peas?

Shutting down our hearts

It can be easy to set conditions for our happiness, and decide that if these are not met we need to shut down our hearts with regards to a particular person or situation. Unfortunately the suffering caused by this action is mostly our own, as we by doing so we dramatically reduce the amount of energy, or life breath, that can flow through us, and that never feels good.

The danger of shutting down

Depression can be described as a dark place that results from an almost complete lack of flow of vitality. Often this can be caused by repeated loses, or feeling helpless to the point where we can shut ourselves down entirely and turn our hearts off to avoid any further risk of loss. No wonder this is such a painful, deadening place to live from.

Clinging

At the other end of the spectrum, and what can get us into equal amounts of trouble, is clinging to conditions or people we believe we need to keep with us in order to be okay. This can also keep us clogged up and bound, preventing life from flowing and evolving.

Pushing at our Edges

In The Untethered Soul, the author Michael Singer talks about how our discomfort delineates our edges and how the things that bother us are the places where we need to push through most so that we can get beyond them. They are our clouds beyond which lie our silver linings and then the gleaming sun.

And once we get through the uncomfortable feelings without trying to push away, deny or cling to them, we can find at the other side that things are much more beautiful, free and simple than we ever imagined.

Allowing discomfort

It is possible to begin to clear old blocks by allowing difficult thoughts and emotions triggered by similar experiences in the present to flow through us without resistance. We can do this by leaning back into the seat of the soul, becoming the observer and allowing them to naturally pass, which they will, if we can remain open and give them a chance to.

The key here is not to expect them to feel good, because as the author says, if they felt bad coming in, they will feel bad coming out, but by remaining non-resistant, out they will come.

This mean that difficult experiences, past and present, are not turned into personalised suffering by bouncing them around inside our heads, grabbing hold of them, fighting with them, taking rash action that causes more undesirable repercussions and generally wrestling with them to such a degree that we become entirely identified with and lost within them.

Taking action is still allowed!

This is not to say that problems never arise or that action is never taken, but when we greet events that are happening now without the emotional baggage of the past, we are much more effective, much more calm and much more likely to find easy, harmonious solutions. Clearing our internal blocked energetic history allows us to be Emotionally Free or Untethered, and that does feel good, because we can begin to feel truly alive again.

Remaining open

Michael Singer describes how we can make a decision to never shut down our hearts, no matter what. We can allow even difficult experiences to come and go with an open heart, and in this way we can determine that our internal state remains one of peace as much as possible, come what may.

If we remain loving, no matter what, and it is very hard to feel bad! Try it out. Something that would normally make you shut someone or something out and yourself down, just stay open, stay in a loving space.

The soul is then untethered from any conditions we place on how the world or other people need to be in order to feel okay inside. Experiences come and go and can be observed without us automatically getting caught up in judging, resisting or attempting to manipulate the outcome to fit in with our fear-based needs, all of which take up enormous amounts of energy and stop the flow of life in the present moment.

Using Emotional Freedom Techniques as a pea-buster

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a tool tailor-made for clearing these types of blockages from the past. With EFT once the excess emotion is tapped away, the memory remains but the intensity does not, and hence we become far less reactive to similar experiences, should they recur. A clear energy system (or an open flute) is a healthy and a happy one.

EFT also helps to speed up the process of release.  Tapping on the meridian points sends energy through our systems to quickly and effectively clear these old blocks.  A perfect way to bust those peas!

So here’s to fewer peas, and more music for us all.