Change Your Mind with EFT: the Basics – Online
EFT, the Emotional Freedom Techniques
by Angela Treat Lyon
Chapters 1-3
Table of Contents
1. What is EFT?
2: The Letter
3: The Idea
4: Jump Right In
5: Illustrations of Tapping Points
6: Navigate to Wholeness
7: Questions
8: Define the Issue
9: Reversal
10: The Sequence
11: I Accept Myself
12: I Choose
13: The Beginning
REMEMBER THIS:
Uncomfortable emotions = a disrupted energy system
plus incorrect/unaligned thinking
Chapter 1
What Is EFT?
The system of EFT, the Emotional Freedom Techniques, is based on the premise that the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system, plus unaligned/incorrect thinking.
The Process: EFT is a short, easily memorizable, easily applied process for making dynamic, positive change in your life.
The process itself is a simple combination of the use of either silent or spoken statements combined with the stimulation of specific energetic points on the body (points also used in acupuncture).
(Go HERE for the illustrated tapping points – you can go there after you close this page out, and use it to remind yourself of each point and how to use it in the sequence of tapping.)
This stimulation can change, dislodge and dispel unwanted, blocking and disrupted energy; and allows the body’s natural energy flow to once again resume in a natural way.
You tap, or stimulate, points on the meridians of the mind/body system, as you focus on, or tune in to, problems, issues or even new choices.
During this process, the energy that has been formerly tangled up within you is transformed: it has either been released from the body, or has shifted its form to free-flowing energy now usable by your system.
Who can use EFT?
EFT can be used by, on, or for adults, children, babies … and believe it or not, on plants and animals, both tame and wild. You can tap for others who are near and far. Your can use it on yourself, friends, family, business associates and clients. I’ve even used it on my computers!
EFT is almost too good. It is elegant, dynamic and superbly effective in the majority of cases.
What do you use it for?
In its combination of psychology and energy, EFT can be used to address problems in just about any area of our lives: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, relational, financial, sexual, recreational, and more.
Isn’t this a little … you know … woo-woo?
I invite you to suspend your past ideas and disbelief here—I don’t want you slamming the book down screaming, “this is woo-woo! Not for me!”
If someone has given this book to you or you have picked it up because you’ve tried everything you know without success, and you’re willing to try just about anything new to get over the pain that’s ruling your life—whatever form that pain might take—then honor yourself long enough to keep reading and giving EFT a try before you really do put it down.
Thanks—I know you’ll be happy that you did! Sometimes it takes more courage to buck old belief systems to heal yourself than it does to actually do the work.
Body/mind
Just as wave and particle, explicit and implicit, are two aspects of the same thing, manifest and unmanifest, body and mind are now understood to be two aspects of the same thing.
Did you know that, in the past, it was assumed that the mind and the body were separate units?
No one was really sure where the mind was. (They still aren’t!)
In the early 14 and 15th centuries, it was ‘common knowledge’ that the mind was in the belly.
In other times and cultures, the mind was believed to reside in the heart, or the liver, or the spleen…or even outside the body!
Now it is more widely believed that we are embodied within integrated body/mind/spirit systems. It is also pretty commonly recognized by those in ‘higher learning’ that the energy in the body plays a massively important role in our physical/mental/emotional makeup:
Mental and emotional blockages can impede
physical functioning.
Physical and emotional blockages can impede
mental functioning.
Physical and mental blockages can impede
emotional functioning.
Clues
When there is a blockage or disruption somewhere in your body’s energy system, a clue will come to the surface in one system or the other to let you know there is something wrong: symptoms, messages, red flags to which you need to pay attention in order to:
1. know there is a block,
2. be able to clear it away or shift it, and
3. make a new choice about it.
What it all boils down to is that if there is a blockage, or disruption,
in the energy system, whether physical, emotional, mental or spiritual,
our ability to live a full life will be impeded.
Thus, the inference is that all any symptom means is that there is a disruption in the energy system of the mind/body. When you see any symptom, you then know there is a disruption. This is really important to grasp, and is the very foundation of the work you will do using EFT.
Your symptoms can vary immensely—from almost imperceptible to life-threatening, and from acne to cancer to a mild tickle in the throat, a pounding heart, sweating, clammy palms, a headache,a tiny twitch, or an itch.
Disruption can manifest as fear of heights, a phobia of spiders, water or open spaces.
Disruption can show up as a tendency to get cold, to feel depressed, to fall asleep or fidget, addictions or negative tendencies or beliefs.
Disruption can manifest in perpetual conditions like always being broke, experiencing rotten relationships, and being accident prone.
But now, instead of being stuck with life-long problems and the dilemma of dealing with them, you can use EFT to help yourself get free from restriction, pain, discomfort, upset or dissatisfaction.
This is real freedom.
Starting upwards
Since I like to start with what I prefer to create in my life, first, and move through the obstacles as I travel down that road—rather than always focusing on what’s wrong in my life—I’m going to give you a list here of what you can use EFT to create in your own life.
Maybe you might want to move towards some of the things on the list, yourself.
EFT can help you expand:
specific health aspects
general health
physical comfort
public speaking ability
sport performance abilities
dance, singing, & other performance activities
ability to learn
self-esteem
improvement for people in permanently
compromised physical, mental or emotional states
improved ability to communicate
improve relationships of all kinds
the ability to receive and create prosperity
the ability to handle and increase wealth
improve business and marketing
and much more.
Here are some of the problems from which thousands of people of all ages all over the world have gained relief:
EFT can help you relieve:
headaches & migraines
chronic pain
traumatic memories of:
war, rape, abuse or molestation
fears and phobias
depression
limiting beliefs, emotions or habits
anger, rage, tension
chronic negative attitude
weight gain/weight loss
nail-biting
anxiety and despair
fear of public speaking
performance anxiety
self-doubt and self-hatred
confusion and foggy mind
all kinds of cravings and addictions
many kinds of physical illness
chronic pain and illnesses
nightmares
fear of dentistry
and so much more there isn’t room here.
Big/small
Using EFT, it’s possible to rapidly clear blockages from your body’s energy system, producing greater comfort, peace and pleasure in your life. The disruption can be minuscule, simple, enormous or complex.
EFT can be used to address any of them. Notice I say “address.” As far as I know at this writing, no one at this point claims to have had 100% success with clearing all problems with EFT. Maybe one day we will—I hope so.
As EFT practitioners, we are encouraged to say that EFT’s success rate has been conservatively estimated at 20 to 60%.
However, in my own use of EFT on myself, clients and groups (and for the majority of other practitioners and EFT Masters who use EFT on a regular basis), I’ve experienced a very much higher rate than that—more like 90%.
EFT enables you to neutralize and/or clear blockages from your energy system. This clearing results in your body’s ability to return—as much as is possible—to its natural state of ease and health.
Remember: whatever the symptom,
it simply indicates a disruption
in the energy system of the mind/body.
Who can benefit from EFT?
As I mentioned earlier, adults, children and babies, plants and animals, tame and wild, near and far, as well as ocean and land masses, and weather systems.
EXAMPLE: A huge group of people gathered by an online self-improvement guru guy concentrated and tapped on a hurricane that was rapidly moving north, from the Gulf of Mexico into the coast of the Us. They tapped on the coast being free and clear of the storm, and other phrases.
The storm made an out of character turn, swerving back south and east, and missed the area the people were tapping on, with only mild storm winds being experienced there instead of a disastrous hurricane force storm.
I invite you to keep an open mind and decide to have a load of fun while you’re experimenting with EFT—remember that this isn’t a dress rehearsal—this is LIFE!
Make it as good as you can while you can! Exploration with EFT is a journey, an amazing, great experiment! With each passing year, we have a better idea of what EFT is capable of, yet there is so much more we still have to learn.
Use EFT on everything,
and see what results you can get!
On the following pages in this book are illustrations showing what happens on an energetic level when you are traumatized, when you use EFT tapping to get relief, and finally, after tapping.
I’ve added pages to the ends of some of the chapters so you can use them for your notes. It’s my hope that you’ll feel free to write, underline, scribble, dog-ear or otherwise mark up and make this book totally personal as you make EFT, one of the most powerful self-help systems ever, your very own for the rest of your life.
Remember to dream up and choose a life you’d prefer to have—
and focus on that as you go along.
Chapter 2
The Letter that Started It All
The email
I’m including here the letter I sent to Gary Craig, because it shows the amazing results I got from my first uses of EFT. Maybe it will inspire you to try for similar ones, as well.
When I sent it, I had no intention that anyone else would ever read it, and assumed that he had so much correspondence that it’d probably take him ten years to get to even read it, and that would be that when he did. I had no idea that he was as up on his correspondence as he was.
He called me within a couple days of my sending it! Since I wasn’t in, he left a message—asking for permission to use my email in his website newsletter! As a still slightly star-struck newcomer to EFT, imagine my surprise to find a message from him on my machine!
It was 11 at night his time when I called him back. He was a little groggy, about to fall asleep. I had thought it was 10 pm, which is late but acceptable in my book. I realized as soon as I heard his voice that it was too late. Uh-oh. Oh well, here we go, I thought. But he was very nice, and we talked for a couple minutes and signed off. In that brief few moments, he hit on something that shook my tree big-time.
A newbie! Huh!
He asked me how long I had been using EFT, and I told him that I’d been using it only a month or so. “Oh,” he said, “you’re a newbie!”
Insulted!
Feeling how I did about myself (not good!) at that point in my life, I took his comment as an insult—that I wasn’t good enough, that I was “only” a newbie.
I didn’t get it right away that those were my own critical inner voices, and that, in order to feel better about what he’d said—and myself—all I had to do was use EFT to tap on what I had heard!
Instead, I felt insulted, and took what he said personally. Nor did I know at the time how much he loved to hear from newbies and values the results they got. I was therefore surprised when I saw my email in his newsletter.
So here’s the note I sent him (and not to worry, I have long-since tapped on taking things personally!). You will read later on in this book about the ‘writing on our walls’, or what I call personal scripting. The first part below is Gary’s note to the newsletter recipients, talking about my letter.
“Newbie uses EFT on depression, allergic reactions and more”
Hi Everyone,
In recent times I have been corresponding with Angela Treat Lyon, an EFT newbie living in New Zealand. As you can tell from her letter below, she has been diligently using EFT on herself with remarkable success on a wide variety of issues.
At the end she details some of her healthy self-realizations which, of course, are typical of the cognitive shifts and belief changes that come about with EFT.
This letter should be particularly useful for EFTers to give to skeptical newbies. It provides impressive evidence of EFT’s possibilities and carries additional weight because it comes from another newbie—a peer, if you will.
Hugs, Gary Craig
❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
(My letter to Gary)
Gary— August 2002
First I want to say how grateful I am that you have found (evolved, discovered, hit upon—???) the EFT process. It has been an absolutely amazing journey over the past month that I have been using the technique—I can tell you my life has changed so radically it blows me away—my attitude is so great even I notice it! After almost 40 years of depression that’s a big one—
Training background
I’m an American artist living in Gore, New Zealand, currently in the position of the first Artist in Residence for the town’s Art Gallery. I’ve spent a lifetime in the realm of art, developing my sculpture and painting to the point that I finally can say what I feel through them.
(Note: As of this editing, it is 2021: I am now in California, after living for 16 years in Hawaii.)
I am also an ordained minister and life coach, and I have trained in the metaphysical and healing arts, from rebirthing and past life regression to hypnotherapy, Druid Dreaming and channeling to Filipino psychic surgery, esoteric HUNA and other ethnic studies; Reiki, Holographic Repatterning, Brain Balancing and Neural Integration and NLP. I’m a trained Master in the Avatar courses, and have as well multiple other various communication and mediation skills and systems.
I mention all this in order to say that, in all my life, with all the various disciplines and modalities I’ve studied, esoteric or not, EFT is the one technique I have gotten the very most out of in the very shortest time. I am completely awestruck. So I thought I’d write and tell you about a few very striking breakthroughs I have experienced in only the past 3 weeks.
The dentist
1) I’ve had some of the most horrendous experiences imaginable at the dentist—from experiencing the shock of having had the wrong tooth pulled out to multiple root canals done all at once with ineffective novacain, to sexual molestation in the chair when I was a young teen. Needless to say, it’s been a bit of a struggle to get myself to the dentist for anything at all.
I lost a filling 2 years ago. I finally made up my mind to have it taken care of last week. That’s how bad it was—I just DID NOT want to go. I couldn’t get to sleep the night before I was to go—lying in bed sweating, heart beating, not able to breathe—in such a state of panic, in fact, that I forgot about EFT, which I had been assiduously applying to every other aspect of my life for the last 3 weeks since I had learned about it.
Finally, at 3 a.m., my mind cleared enough that I remembered EFT, and I did about five rounds of tapping: “even though: I can’t remember what to say, I don’t know what to say, I’m panicking, I can’t sleep, and I’m never safe in the world, etc.” After that last one, which seemed like the core of the issue, I slept soundly and got up at 8 the next morning with no feeling of having lost hours of sleep and energy to panic whatsoever.
Intention
Everything went well until the dentist appeared with The Long Needle. My heart flew out of my mouth and ran out down the street, with my mind right after it—I was a quivering blob of jelly in the chair, mindless and just knowing I was about to die.
All my being knew was that here was a man who was traumatizing and attacking me, and I was trapped in this chair. My mouth was frozen open with a constricted gag at the back of my throat. My hand-hold was so tight on the arms of the chair I was surprised I didn’t break them off.
But—this time I remembered there was something I could do— even though that was all I knew, because I once again couldn’t remember what to do or say.
I thrashed about with what was left of my mind until finally, in desperation, I said quite loudly (internally that is), “I can’t remember what to say, you do it.”
And it did. Whatever IT is, it did it. In 2 seconds flat, I was calm as could be, my mind was back, serene and calm, and my heart had returned to its normal place within my chest, at a normal heart rate.
I was astounded. From that moment on, the rest of the visit was fine—no more trauma, no more pain or even perceived about-to-be pain. At all.
GC COMMENT: This is a first class example of doing EFT with intention only (no physical tapping). This can be a very useful tool in some circumstances. Please note below the important cognitive shift that accompanied this “round” of EFT.
And what is really cool is that the perceived trauma and attack ideas were gone, replaced with a complete reframe, that “this man is actually doing me a service.”
Allergic reaction
2) Another experience concerns massive allergic reaction. I had a near-fatal bout with heavy metals in 1996 that took several years to work itself out.
The cleansing process was intense and very painful. It eventually included the purging of substances from vaccinations and environmental poisons that I had been exposed to over the years, as well as the metals (cadmium, mostly—I was told it was from second hand smoke—my parents smoked like chimneys).
My kidneys took a beating, as did my liver and adrenal glands. As a consequence, I still break out in terrible rashes if I eat or even smell certain substances or foods (like tomatoes, potatoes, or wheat, modern perfumes, hairspray, solvents, polishes, enamel paints or gasoline fumes….).
This time, I had eaten wheat. It was an ingredient in a soup a friend had made. In the middle of the night I awoke to swollen, burning, histamine-filled, rash-covered hands.
The rash itches so terribly that it MUST be scratched, or insanity is soon to follow. But then, if I scratch enough to relieve the itch, it suddenly stings like crazy, even bleeds, and the next day the hands and/or feet are swollen to the point of being balloons affixed to the ends of the arms/legs, useless and painful for a minimum of three days.
This time, remembering my dentist experience, I was prepared!
I tapped, “even though I am having this reaction, I….” and so on. It only took about 6 quick rounds before I could actually feel the swelling start to go down. I did about 10 rounds in all, and after I covered some lingering stuff, the swelling went down. The itching completely subsided, and I went right back to sleep.
Paint fumes
3) Today as I was painting our front door with enamel paint, the swelling and itching tried to come, and I immediately started tapping, saying, “even though I’m painting with this enamel paint and am afraid I will react, I ….” and within about a minute all the swelling and itching were gone.
This is such a fabulous thing. I can’t tell you the hours I have spent dealing with hands and feet too swollen to even think about using them, much less wanting to feel them. I’ve suffered through hours of crying and frustration and pain. Having to avoid favorite foods, having to ask friends to not to use wheat, sugar, dairy, etc. in any food they gave me. Having to avoid fumes and paints and such. I’d even lost a friend because her perfume was so strong it literally made me choke—I gagged every time I was around her. Bummer.
The feeling of helpless/hopeless has left me!
Having this amazing tool doesn’t mean not be careful, by any means, but it does mean I can deal with what comes to me.
The feeling of helpless/hopeless has left, the life-long depression has almost gone, the hatred for my life is gone, and there is a new horizon in front of me where before, there was darkness and an angry, sad, constricted future.
Forgetting the process
When I first started using EFT, my mind was so foggy that I couldn’t remember much of the protocol past the first stage of tapping on the hand. I’d get to the end of it, and then forget what I was doing. Eventually I just tapped on my chest with the even-though statements.
Finally I figured out that I could tap for remembering the statements!
That alone was enough—it got me present and dealing with whatever issue it was, and it also allowed me to go deeper and deeper to get at the yeah-buts.
Accepting myself
EFT has allowed me to really—REALLY—accept myself. ME, just as I am, here and now—no-one else’s opinion matters. I had to fight with it—I didn’t want to accept myself, I couldn’t, I hated myself, I hated myself hating myself, and so on—but at the end a wave of something light and soft went through me and all that fight was gone.
And the constant fogginess is being replaced with clarity. That alone would be worth the whole thing. After years of people telling me I ought to take meds for the depression, now I can say I’m so very glad I didn’t.
What’s happening now: when I get to the end of a hard issue, there is a new thing that happens. Here’s a good one to illustrate:
Family pain
Tonight I was looking at how I’ve hidden out behind my artwork since I was a kid. I realized it was because I felt unimportant to my family. I think I most likely started hiding behind it to give myself something to do, something in which to be involved and be able to say I’m busy when I wanted to be left alone (and too hurt to ask for inclusion), and something to say, ‘hey look at this, aren’t I good? Aren’t I important to you? Don’t you love me?’
Hard to admit that to myself. When I realized that I thought that I was of no importance to them I cried and cried. Then I tapped on it—only the chest points—I couldn’t get myself to do the full round—but it only took two rounds of “even though I’m devastated that I’m of no importance to my family” to go from a 10 to a 0.
At the end of the session I finally got to the place where I could say, hey! I’m bloody 56 years old! Do I really need their approval????? NO!!!
Freedom
Now here’s what is new: when I got to zero, there was such a lightness and calm sense of space and possibility inside and all around me that I laid there just feeling it. It was an expansion, a fillingness, a lightness, a NEWness that I had never felt before.
THIS is what I have been waiting for—for how long?
THIS is what freedom is: a completely new awareness of self and possibility in self that had never before existed for me, or been available—a brand new state of mind.
I believe it really is true what Harry Palmer, the creator of the Avatar courses, says:
All possibilities of reality
exist simultaneously.
Imagine what we can be, do and have when we realize that we truly are creating our reality, our experience, at every moment, with every choice.
Imagine how easy it really is to slip from one reality to the next, just by making the choice to choose, to be present, and to converse with what is happening inside ourselves at the very moment we would ordinarily slip into Old Pattern. Awesome.
EFT is awesome. I bless you and thank you for it every day.
Love to you –
Angela Treat Lyon
❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
So there you are. This is where the Book Adventure all started!
Chapter 3
The Idea
Energy work
As I understand it, a person who works with energy or does energy therapy bases his work on the idea that the essence of everything in the universe is energy—including the energy systems of our bodies.
Energy work is based on the premise that the universe is like a hologram. Every part of a hologram contains the essence of the whole of the entire hologram. If one part of the hologram shifts, the rest of the hologram moves to accommodate that shift. That way:
If you change your perceptions,
you change your whole world.
The pond/the mind
Let’s say you’re standing at the side of a pond. There are some big rocks out in the middle, sticking up out of the water. Some nice trees on them, even a little beach around one of them. Pretty, isn’t it?
It’s a still day, the water is so smooth it’s like glass. You throw a pebble, watch the ripples. They go all the way out to the rocks and the little sandy beach. You watch as they hit the rocks and sand. As they come reflecting back to you, they criss-cross each other and become a nest of tangled wavelets till finally, exhausted, they smooth out, and the water is quiet again.
I like to be very simplistic. I like to compare our minds with that pond. As children, our minds were like that pond: smooth, so-far unfettered, available for massive input.
Events, experiences and information are poured upon/into that mind/pond every day from even before birth. Each element of sand or stone in that pond can be compared to a unit of information, or an experience.
Little bit little bit
One little grain at a time, those elements build up under the water, some just lying there, calm as you please. Some stick to others until they grow into great hulking boulders that stick up from the surface and make it known they are definitely there and not to be argued with.
Some are more friendly, and lie as solid foundations upon which to safely rest. Islands form, with white sandy beaches, trees and picnic spots.
Other places are muddy quagmires near parts of the pond’s border, shallow at the edge but becoming deep in places, sticky, slimy, full of reeds and debris from storms, and unsafe to go near. You can’t see them but you know they’re there.
Ripples
You throw in another pebble. It falls to the bottom, and stays there. Its ripples ring out and out and out upon the water, and finally reach the rocks and sandy shore of that little beach.
Each experience we have is like that pebble. It impacts us, falls to the bottom of our mind. That’s that, another experience. Fact. The ripples go freely out and out and out into our mind, until they hit any obstacles.
The nature of the ripples demand that they transform in any of several different ways after hitting the obstacle: they might integrate with the energy of the obstacle; they’re aggravated into bigger ripples; or are de-energized, neutralized, and disappear. If the obstacle is removed, the energy of that ripple will continue out unhindered.
Life goes on
As your life progresses, your mind—your pond—your inner environment—grows as well. Eventually, you might have a mountain of pain right in the middle of your pond, depending on how you have received and perceived each foundational pebble.
You might also have islands that are fantastic oases where you can go for safety, calm, relaxation, or R and R; and there can be deep places to swim, relax, and access Inner Knowing.
There will be quagmires and swamps of confusion and misguided thinking, and there will be deep holes of fright or depression, where you might fall in and feel like you’ll never get out.
There may be cliffs of despair and long roads around the pond that could go absolutely nowhere.
There may be a dry section, a part that looks like moonscape, where it seems life cannot exist at all. Or great thick fogs that come as blessed relief to too much thinking. Forests, fields, beaches, hills, rivers and streams will appear all around your mind/pond. How rich minds can be!
Beliefs
What if you had a belief that, ‘I can’t do anything right?’
Where did that belief come from? How does it affect your everyday life, your relationships and ability to function in the world?
It’s a common theory in energy work that beliefs like that are like the rocks at the bottom of that still mind/pond. When good things come to you, they get deflected off your beliefs—those rocks. Because they are deflected off the rocks, you then don’t get to experience having those good things because they’re pushed away from you before you can see/hear/smell/feel/taste them.
Not only that, but the surface of the pond may be so stirred up by your internal weather—your intensity of feeling, like a raging storm or a long, dreary rain—that you can’t focus or see straight.
These rocks, or limiting beliefs, these enormous swirls of energy, act as blocks against the good things that come to you.
Not only that, but they act as magnets that can attract and pull in even more energy just like them as well. So not only do you not get the Goods, but you accumulate the Bads, too! Gross! Who needs that?
A Couch Cowgirl
Let’s say that one day, when I’m five years old, my dad comes home from work. He’s tired and grumpy from a long day at a job he hates and the hour-long train ride and 20-minute drive back home.
He sees me riding the back of the old living room couch. To me, it’s a horse! The pretty embroidered hand-made throw rug with all those little round mirrors sewn onto it that he got from the Far East when he was fighting in WWII is crumpled up under me like an old horse-blanket.
My little red felt cowboy hat is thrown back in the wind of my imagination, my hand is waving in the desert air, and I’m screaming, “Eeeeehaa!” I’m in a free zone of delight. My cheeks are flushed with the pleasure of the ride. The creaking of the old wooden joints sound to me like the romantic creaking of old, worn leather, saddle and harness.
My Dad comes in and barks at me, “Get off there! That couch is too old to take all your weight like that! It’ll break! And what is this stupid thing you’re shrieking? Be quiet for once, like a little girl ought to be! Get off there right now—can’t you do anything right?”
Pebbles become mountains
Remember: every word, every experience, is a pebble thrown into that mind/pond. The thrill of the ride atop the old couch, the cry of the wild cowgirl imagining herself far out in the wilderness under a blazing desert sky, the mirrored blanket beneath, the creaking saddle—
As well as—her father’s anger and enormous 6’2” tall presence, the fear of doing something wrong, his accusations that she is too heavy (this was not the only time he implied I was ‘too heavy’—when we drove over small local bridges he’d point to the tonnage limit sign and tell me I should probably get out since I was over-limit—he thought it was hilariously funny), his fear that she will break the couch, be stupid, not do anything right, never being quiet or at ease or a “proper” little girl—whew!—each of these elements come to make up the elements of her mind/pond.
Where do they go?
Some—and I’d venture a guess that it’s most—of these pebbles fall to the bottom and stay lodged as firm foundations.
But there are some that are so energized that they seek out others just like them and zip right off to be with and stick right to them.
Some creep around to the muddy part of the edges and slip in with the other slimy particles. Some rush out to stick onto the enormous rock right smack in the middle.
Some simply rush around and cause a lot of confusion and an inability to stay present.
Pain
I really don’t remember the majority of my experience as a child. I spent most of my time in a pillow-world of my own creation, not wanting to have much to do with anyone or anything.
I lived in a mist, a fog, a fantasy land occupied by me and me only. I knew somehow that if I was fully awake, aware and present in the Now that I would feel overwhelming pain. I simply did not want to feel at all.
I look back at my childhood and yes, there are distinct memories. Times of great fun and hilarity, affection, and acceptance.
Some with people floating in and out; sharp points here and there; and long spans where there is only a white, feathery nothingness.
Some very long, very bleak, black times. I padded my mind with nothingness in order not to feel the pain of being. Of feeling different, of feeling grossly out of place.
Comparisons
Some might argue that I had relatively little pain in comparison to the sufferings of others. This is probably true—but how can you judge one person’s pain, either quantitatively or qualitatively, against another’s?
It’s an entirely subjective experience. A tiny hurt to you might be an enormous chasm of terrible hurt to me, so awful that I might think ending it all would be the only possible way out.
Maybe you can relate to this: my hurt came from the spoken word—especially if shouted—a perception of being unwelcome, and a lack of affectionate touch. Feeling really overpowered and overwhelmed by people.
Other people’s hurts come from physical and/or sexual abuse, mental neglect, spiritual emptiness, a thwarting of life purpose, religious rigidity, violence, torture, war—how can I list them all here? There are as many forms of hurt out there as there are people—maybe more.
Reactions
And, as you know, there are as many reactions to pain. My own first reaction to perceived threat used to be to freeze, go within and retreat—and not just slightly, but very completely.
It took weeks, sometimes months, to come on out again after a hurtful incident. I seemed to function on the outside, but inside I felt dead, stopped in my tracks. I would spend hours chewing on all the reasons why I was so hurt, mentally telling the person who I perceived had Done Me Wrong how I felt and what I was going to do to them.
In reality, I never did—I would have had neither the courage, nor the actual inclination. In truth, I didn’t really want to hurt anyone—it just isn’t part of my nature to do so. Like anyone else, all I really wanted was acknowledgment, affection, and appreciation.
The truth
From as far back as I can recall, I felt overwhelmed, overpowered, helpless, and powerless. And hopeless.
What I never admitted to myself on any conscious level was that I felt simultaneously deeply and explosively enraged about how I felt. I didn’t have a clue what to do, or even if there was anything I could do. The world seemed to be solid in its ways, and I thought I just had to go along as best I could.
Blame
By the time I was a teenager, I blamed my parents (and of course my older brothers, teachers, schools….) for everything that I thought was wrong in my life, in our family, in the world. I had the tough and strong act down.
I became cynical and rude, training myself to use the dirtiest, nastiest curse words I could find, and combing the dictionary for words so I could appear clever. Nothing I uttered was positive or life-affirming. My poor parents were appalled by the things I said.
I tried hard to be ‘one of the guys,’ because it obviously wasn’t ‘it’ to be a girl. Being a girl meant being a slave in the kitchen, and being ‘nice.’ I very definitely did not feel nice.
I knew of no way to ameliorate my perceived pain of the simple fact of being alive, and I thought I had only myself to depend on. I struggled to get by.
Mistake after mistake. I experimented with cigarettes, boys, drugs, alcohol, religion, metaphysics, healing processes and mind-training—but at the end of the day I was still unhappy. Depressed. Broke. Broken.
I look back and really wonder what would my life have been like if I had known about self-help methods and systems like Avatar, Holographic Repatterning, or EFT?
The point
So now I do know about these programs, processes and tools. I can heal some of those hurts. I can be present, and I can monitor and shift my attitudes, beliefs and behavior so I can feel comfortable and happy.
For the first time since I can remember, I am not depressed.
For the first time since I can remember, I KNOW I CAN.
That simple. I had always had an underlying fear that I couldn’t do ‘it’—whatever that meant—’it’ was so huge it was too scary to really look into.
Now, after having found and used EFT, those feelings are gone, and in their place there is peace. This is a revelation, a miracle, to be out from under that pressure. I can even—gasp!—say I’m happy!
Holographic Universe
I was rereading an older book recently called Creativity in Business, by Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers. It was written in 1986, and is still crisply relevant. They speak about the concept of how very important it is to simply be ourselves, and about delving into our deepest, most creative, energizing, empowered sources. I call it The Deep Self .
They also speak about thinking of the universe as a hologram, and how our perceptions form our personal experience of the world. How our thoughts have a primary effect on what we experience as our world, and that what is contained in our minds is manifested on the ‘outside’ of us as the world.
Meaning that the universe and its seeming solidity is actually a mental construct.
“Truly,” as the sages say,
“The world is as you see it,
and your inner creative ability is
powerful indeed.”
Jump!
So. Are you ready to take your own Quantum Leap? Are you ready to commit to, and actively choose a more fun, easier, more pleasurable way of life? Because I’m going to show you how to jump right in and win.
❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
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