I have continued to contemplate my experiences since my last blog where I talked about turning inwards and focusing on the aspects of my external world that are incongruent with my internal world and then making changes to find harmony. For clarity, and so I don’t have to type in a paragraph every time I wish to refer to this internal/external tool I will call it the Centred Awareness Technique or CAT for short. So much has happened since then and as I continue to learn, study, teach and grow I am constantly reminded how connected everything is and how through clarity I have access to everything I need right now. This access of course includes knowledge, wisdom and understanding. At the time of my last blog I was unsure how this new information would integrate and shape the foundations of what I already understood, such as the fear versus love place and healing in general. What I came to realize was that this new tool I developed was actually just the extension or the next step of the “Love Place.” Before I can explain and clarify what I mean by that I need to first paint a picture of the human experience and exactly how the love place benefits our daily, short and long term lives.

            Each person at their core is their True Self, you can call it divinity, the higher self, enlightenment, god within etc. but this core is perfectly intact and no matter what life has thrown us, this core stays perfectly whole and beautiful. As we grow, have life experiences and find our selves hurt, betrayed and violated we grow a wall of anger, shame, guilt, sorrow, grief; basically a wall of pain around this true self.

Every creature on this planet has the instinct to avoid pain; this can mean physical, emotional and even mental pain. In order to avoid feeling our pain we develop a myriad of beliefs, definitions, behaviours, defence mechanisms, addictions, patterns and ingrained dynamics that we play out. All of these things can be triggered into action, without our direct awareness of what is actually happening, in response to present situations that we perceive are similar to past situations that initially created the pain. These present situations not only hold the potential for new pain in our eyes, but they also hold the ability to remind us of our past and so make us feel the pain we are trying to avoid.

This dynamic of avoiding pain is the basis of our “fear place” and why it never benefits us when we make decisions and react to situations from this place. When we re-act out of avoidance and fear, we are basing our decisions on information from the past, this information rarely actually has anything to do with the current moment and the situation we find ourselves in. Keeping that in mind how can we expect an outcome that we want or need, that is helpful and beneficial to all involved, if we aren’t making our decisions based on all the information we have access to about our current situation? We can’t, and often in fact we create the exact opposite outcome of what we want. Unfortunately this alternate and opposite outcome often causes us more pain, which not only adds to our previous pain but also reaffirms the beliefs and dynamics that caused the alternate outcome in the first place. Can anyone see a circular downward pattern here?

A really simple example of this is someone who attributes the lack of love in their life to how they look. In this example, we will call her Susan, Susan is overweight and believes that this extra weight is the reason she can’t find love in her life; this leads her to eat. The food does two things for her, one it momentarily provides a loving relationship and two it stuffs down her feelings of loneliness, shame, isolation and despair. This leads to her never loosing weight and when she doesn’t loose weight she eats. Cyclical cycle.

So what can break the cycle? In one simple word ‘Awareness.’ When we shine light on, illuminating and bringing understanding to what we are doing and why, we can make different choices leading to what we really want. In other words when we realize something isn’t working we can choose to do something else that does work. In order to create this change however we need to come from a different place within ourselves; in other words, we can no longer operate from our fear place or we will just be repeating all our negative patterns that cause us pain. This is where the love place comes in. In the blog A New Chapter you learnt how to make a map of your fear and love places so you could tell the difference. Then in the blog Love Encompassing you learnt tools and techniques to help you stop the downward cycle of the fear place and embody your love place. Now we will look at how and why this will benefit you and then take it to the next level.

In essence our love place allows us to embody our true self, when we are unable to exist 100% in our true self due to pain and the various defences and dynamics we’ve created, our love place becomes like our road map to our own natural wellness. Referring back to blog Footsteps to Natural Wellness we learnt that Natural Wellness is when we are at our most balanced and grounded, it is our ideal state. This means that we are truly living in the moment, connected to our bodies, emotions, clear positive creative mind and spirit. It is when we are guided by trust, truth, love, and intuitive urges that continually manifest our best destinies. We are completely joyous, whole, free and inspired. Energy flows and peaks outwards in a limitless cascade and opens our hearts in a radiant profusion of love. This ‘ideal state’ or ‘natural wellness’ is the complete embodiment of the true self.

When we are in our love place it allows us to see things from a different perspective, one of peace, conscious awareness, clarity and non-judgment. In our love place we bring ourselves forward into the present moment allowing us to see the truth of, and in, our present situation as well as allowing us to recognize what aspects of our past are being triggered and which dynamics jump into action to stop the pain. In other words it presents us with all the information, to allow us to make conscious choices that more often then not actually benefit us and create for us what we want and need. Granted there are times that in order to move forward we need to heal, change, re-form, forgive or let go of something before we can make a new choice and begin to embody our true self, what the love place will give you is the ability to discern what you need in each moment and situation.

Wishing the very best to all in every situation, 

Charlotte Brammer