What Changed?

I was looking back at some of my old posts, from around 2016-18, and noticed a shocking level of anger and pain in them.  Very harsh communication toward people I know who really didn't deserve that tone.  A tone that really detracts from the message. 

What was going on then?  I recall that was a period of transition for me personally - a lot of good things but also a lot of stress, personal attacks and unprocessed anger and pain. It wasn't until very recently that I finally faced and processed all that festering anger and suffering, but by then it was mostly just unprocessed, there really wasn't anything acute.  In 2016-18 it was acute, and I didn't even realize it years later.  I'd go back and read my posts and it never hit me.

So what happened recently that's caused me to notice?  Because now I look at a lot of my communication and I was swimming in anger and reactive energy, which really took away from the strength of my message.  Sifting out all that anger and reaction, there are really good things here and a strong energy that comes out.

And if I look back in my daily life, yes, the anger, anxiety, reactive energy and unprocessed grief has greatly held back my spiritual and energetic process.  And it's only after I started processing it that really big "gifts" started coming online.  

But did I suddenly receive new gifts or were they always there and just clouded by this unprocessed emotional energy?  I test that 60% is new gifts and 40% is prior energy more aligned.  In that 60% I test that is "came online" as a result of my finally being able to process that grief, which allowed me to fully receive transmissions and build structures.  It's led to a massive amount of progress,

And this progress in turn has given me more resources to notice and address some of my long-standing emotional issues.  It's allowed me space to separate my true self from my expression and question some things.

Looking back at my past patterns, I was unconsciously and even consciously holding onto a lot of anger.  It was feeding me, energizing me.  It felt good.  It even gave me a community of shared anger.  

Sometimes anger is justified, but this was not me, not my true nature.  I'd been swimming in this for so long I had identified with it - and it goes way back, much further back than the late 2010s, so I really did think this was "just who I am" and had to manage it.  

Then something shifted.  I started facing the panic and anger and finally processing the ocean of grief from decades and prior lives. So much grief it would have been overwhelming to deal with before - and that's probably why I distracted myself with anger and reaction, I just wasn't ready and didn't know how to deal with it.

In my teens I was actually better at dealing with it, I wrote a lot of poetry and would go into "moody" periods.  I wasn't processing it or transmuting it, but I was in touch with the grief.  Instead of learning to process it, I pushed it away and distracted myself with work and "adulting," and when it came in I felt panic and pushed it away more.

I learned to face and process the panic, but not the grief.  And then the anger just became a security blanket that I thought was "just me" and I went on with life.  I actually was doing pretty well, finding all these breakthroughs and gifts and feeling pretty blessed, so what's the problem, right?

Then something shifted, and now I'm troubled by this style of expression, and what was underneath.  It's okay to feel anger, but to "be" angry is pretty toxic and heavily distracts from my message.

I feel really sorry for the harsh tone and hurtful communication. Yes, I saw things and I was “right,” but it’s pretty clear I was communicating only with the intent of proving the authenticity of my spiritual gifts instead of fully integrating them and communicating from the heart to be received and actually make a difference. And more painfully, I was hurting people who didn’t at all deserve it, and it wasn’t how I truly felt about them.  I saw their future suffering and saw a way out, but communicated in such a way that it would ensure they never changed and I could prove my gift and be right.  Nobody wins in that scenario.

It feels jarring now to revisit these posts and recall that cycle of anger and frustration. I didn’t go through life being angry at the world all the time, but it’s clear I wasn’t dealing with my pain and energy drains. I was fighting through my problems and fighting through my communication. And making life really hard for myself.

Ultimately it’s a waste of my gifts and a poor representation of the man I am. It’s worth a deeper inquiry into what changed between then and now that brought me out of that cycle. 

What brought me to the point where I could finally face my grief?  What brought me to the point where I could finally reject the anger patterns at an unconscious level, that the core "me" could finally say "that's not me" and throw it off?  

I think having a home in Florida, committing to it and using it as a pathway to deepening my spiritual practice was the key.  Having a house of my own is essential for me at a core level.  The Pensacola area moves at a much slower pace, which aligns with my natural rhythm, allows my mind to slow down, deepens presence and creates space for this kind of inquiry.  Even mundane things like yard work create space, more so than working out, which doesn't slow my mind.

And of course there's the fishing, which takes my mind off everything else, connects me to nature and the cycle of life and taps into my joy.

So this slowing of the mind, presence, creating long spaces of detachment from the everyday cycle, plus my continued commitment to spiritual work, brought me to that place where the panic came up and I could face it and go through it into the grief.  And the spiritual tools allowed me to finally not just face it but transmute it.  I wasn't just "moody," or just moving through it, I was transmuting the grief into the flow of life.

And with the energies unstuck and unblocked, things really start flowing.  And with the ocean of grief gone, there's nothing to block or distract, so the anger patterns just sit on their own.  And then they start looking ridiculous and I can feel how hurtful that communication can be.

Anger and anxiety are high-energy emotions, they tend to drown out more calm base state energies.  There's a good heart that gets drowned out by all that noise until you start identifying with the noise.  Then, free from those patterns, and free from the anger/grief trap, the quiet feels SOOOOOO good, like a long-lost friend. And that's the place where truly strong and effective spiritual communication comes from.

It's a process, and I'll have more to say as I revisit this, but it feels good to be myself, and to feel bad about the way I've been.  To better honor my gifts and the people who are called to receive them.