There is a life beyond trauma

The inspiration for AWAKEN the joy within ™️

2020 the year of RELEASE

So I left off part 1 having returned back to Australia on Dec 1, 2016, having left abusive marriage #2 with nothing but a suitcase & the clothes on my back.

Penniless & living with my wonderful mum, I spent 15 months rebuilding & fearfully looking for a full-time job; facing 100s of rejections. At this stage pre- Shift I still believed my inner peace, security, worth & validity were tied to the stuff that happened to me; particularly the stuff I made happen through my logic & effort.

As you can imagine, with this belief I managed to deep dive into depression, confusion, hopelessness & shame with each failed attempt to get a full-time job & resume the task of independent adulting.

I finally did get a job, through ‘networking’ code for a prominent CIO of an international corporation who decided to use Linkedin as a dating app despite being a married man ‘of Faith’.

Thankfully I had a glimpse of my Wisdom at that moment & told him I don’t need romance, I need to get my CV in front of decision-makers in your organization.

So, from Feb 2018 to April 2019 I was finally in a fixed-term contract full-time job, I had moved into a super cute apartment & refurnished my life *outwardly*, but the real RENOVATION was about to begin.

We create our life through our thinking, ‘we are living in the feelings of our thinking at the moment “ Oh yeah right! I argued, so then please explain the bruises from being pushed, grabbed & hit; they weren’t bloody well imagined how dare you suggest my abuse was all in my head. Of course, my pain & suffering came from him & his abuse”.

What else would I feel except self-righteous indignation & anger?

This is what I thought & said in response to first being introduced to the core truth of the human experience as described by the Inside-out Paradigm (aka 3 Principles) by Sydney Banks.

I had been advocating for & supporting other women who were victims of DV & I was righteously outraged at men who abused.

I was a battle survivor & I now was on the warpath fighting injustice & defending against actual & perceived oppression with equal vitriol.

Both my ex-husbands were alive in my world through my thinking, they appeared so real in my head that they might as well have been sitting on the new lounge; neither of them had ever seen.

That was the first solid insight I had.

I was sitting on my 2 seater lounge, fully engrossed in the movie playing in my head replaying a stream of encounters with the ex, I was getting more & more agitated & upset with each imagined past conversation — then suddenly I had a kind of out of body awareness that I was holding a long gone conversation with him and projecting his appearance seated at the other end of the lounge; waiting for him to explain himself.

In a flash, I realized that he had never been in my home, never in Australia & the only way for him to be seated on my lounge is through my imagining him there.

I saw so clearly, that I was 100% causing my own disturbance at that moment, & if I was causing my own distress at that moment, then it was likely when actually in conversation with him that I might actually have caused my own distress.

I went from fully certain that he caused all my pain, to being open to the possibility that at some level I at the very least contributed to my suffering.

What this shift in awareness about my part in my suffering deepened & had me realize, was that it was the story in my head that had me walk into the unhealthy relationship & it was the story in my head that had kept me in the relationship long after I had physically left.

And I was done! Just like that, I simply stopped entertaining him in my head.

It’s like if you kept putting your hand on a hotplate & kept burning your hand, & for a time did not connect the pain with your actions; but then suddenly saw the connection, then you’d just stop.

Then with this torch of awareness, I began shining it on other areas of my life, other relationships & most importantly on how I saw myself.

What increasingly kept happening was that with each useless pattern of thinking dropped, I had more & more space & opportunity to just see what showed up in myself & with others.

I kept disproving to myself that I knew what was going to happen, I kept getting pleasantly surprised by what I found in the present moment with an open heart, rather than a closed mind.

The biggest realization was that I could be secure & at ease relinquishing my false belief that I had to be in control, much less that I had control at all.

My job finished in April 2019, I went to Morocco for 6 weeks confident that I would get another job quickly on my return.

I got back & set about job hunting & living off my savings keeping my recently rebuilt life afloat. Months kept passing with dwindling savings & no job in sight, I could see myself falling back into the fear thinking of 2017/2018 but things were different.

By this second round of unemployment I had a new understanding — that my suffering was thought created, not caused by the events. And that my ego thinking & intellect was not the source of control, that I did not need to logic out the solutions. That in fact, I couldn’t think my way out of this situation.

So I simply decided to stop worrying about the unknown future. Stop trying to lead from my head, but rather lead from my open heart. Open to whatever opportunity arose in the present moment & TRUST that each step is moving me forward.

What I saw repeatedly was the total waste of energy & time of worrying about imagined catastrophes; even feared imminent homelessness. When I surrendered my fear thinking, what arose was my ability to intuit opportunities for help & have the humility to accept that help.

What has happened in 2020 is that I released all attempts to predict or control my future, I was brought to the mat & forced by Covid lockdown to simply take one day, one moment at a time & rest easily in ‘wait & see’.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t restless with ego thinking.

I became hopeful & enthusiastic with heartful wisdom creativity.

2021 has become the year of open-hearted receiving of the abundant miracles arising in & around me.

Yes, shit still happens, I am still limping along financially but I am not scared. I still get sick, get sad, get pissed off, etc but it is not solid & doesn’t look real anymore, so I don’t freak out with my changing emotions & I don’t define the stuff in my life by my thought created emotions.

I have tapped into my innate JOY that doesn’t disappear due to the change in circumstances.

I am OK with not being OK at times & I know I don’t have to change a thing.

And, even more, amazing is that I am listening to my heart & taking action without all the second-guessing & pre-planning.

I am finally enjoying the process of living not worrying about the destination.