Take a look at your habits and you will see your pain. If your habits are less than loving to yourself or others, there is unhealed pain to face, feel and heal. Nothing will bring you true freedom from bad habits except acknowledging, facing and feeling your suppressed pain and fear.
Bad habits, such as smoking, drinking, drugging, overeating, irresponsible spending, gambling, all other addictive or compulsive behaviors, as well as less noticeable behaviors, such as telling white lies, trying to manipulate or control another’s behaviors to suit your needs or desires, worry, negative thinking or criticism, are other dysfunctional behaviors that occur due to harboring suppressed unhealed pain and fear.
One can deal with the problem at the level of the problem through using your mind’s will power – using mental strain and effort to control them. But, to go beyond this very limited way of healing, go straight to the root cause of these unhealthy behaviors, which is in the heart – facing the unhealed pain and fear from your past experiences.
Identify what is hiding there. You unconsciously pretend it’s not there. You want to avoid it. It seems easier to ignore and keep your mind preoccupied instead. But, this is a never ending battle of the mind. Freedom will never come from adjusting your mind-set alone. This forced effort may seem to help for a time, but keeps you in the unhealed stage of coping.
Trying to correct your distorted fear-based thoughts and behaviors without also correcting the cause of them is not true healing. They are just a symptom of what needs your attention. The underlying cause of your unhealthy thoughts and behaviors is your unhealed pain. It needs your awareness, love, compassion and forgiveness.
The Hope Technique gets you out of your mind’s thinking and connects you to the source of your diminished joy, love, peace and happiness. Put attention on the pain that is in your heart. Get out of the story your mind has created to bypass it. Feel instead of think. No talking, no reasoning, no mental planning, no goal setting. Just feel the pain which is the underlying cause of all imbalance and un-wellness. Do this a few minutes a day using the Hope Technique. This gets you out of the never-ending pattern of resisting the problem, focused on trying to fix (control) the problem (the symptom). Face, honor and accept a problem to get to the cause of it. This is what brings you freedom from your ego’s pain and fear and the many distortions it creates.
Jesus (Sept 15, 2015)
