Mind Chatter

So today I had allergies, and, funny as this might sound I thought there might be something in me, that I wasn’t aware of, that was causing it. And while there is strong evidence for the connection between the emotional and physical (See this Google search on “emotional connection physical ailments”), I unfortunately was left to have a dribbling nose the rest of the day. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t find something interesting, however.

To find it, I did a meditation to go to my shadow. The “shadow” is just a metaphorical construct that you can go visit in your imagination that houses all the feelings you deny as being a part of yourself. That’s why I went there (in my mind) today – I can find the root causes of various feelings, things I never even thought were the cause. You can buy the meditation I used to first visit my shadow by clicking here. It is one of the best ways I’ve found to have an instant, enriching, informative inner adventure. The meditation itself is by Mark Ivar Myhre. He’s got lots of great tools for healing yourself emotionally. Check his website out at: http://www.emotional-times.com/

Today, I found what I interpret to be a metaphor for mind chatter:

The Mind Chatterers and their attacking snakes (and my Explorer going “oh no go away snakes!”)

My Shadow showed me to a room where I had a vague sense of what was there. The only thing I could clearly distinguish to visualize was a purple ball of energy in the middle of the room. So I was like, “well, I’ll just take this and see what happens.” Immediately after I did, I started visualizing what you see above. A number of stoic, thinking parts of myself were standing in a large circle around me, talking incessantly about if it was right of me to have taken the ball of energy. As they were lost in this talk, a hoard of snakes kept advancing on me from all sides. I noticed also that the talk of the thinkers and the snakes were connected.

This led me to the conclusion that when you start thinking incessantly, and get lost in thoughts, it can be like a hoard of snakes is also advancing on the acting part of you – the one who actually gets things done and moves around and explores the shadow. And I’m not talking about daydream thoughts – but rather the kind of torrent of thoughts you get when worried. “Well what if this, what if that, or maybe this, no this…” and on and on without end.

So if you’re wondering about practical application, I’d say this: Thinking about things is great and all, but just be careful about the effect it’s having on you. What’s it doing to you? Is it shutting down your ability to act, attacking you? If so, it might be helpful to stand up to those thoughts, find some way to get them to stand down. Or just act regardless of what they have to say.

P.S. I concluded in my Shadow by leading the mind chatterers out of their room. At first I was going to keep the snakes sealed away, but they complained saying that the snakes were their friends. So I let them keep them on the condition that if they tried to attack me or anyone else inside me, I would burn them up with fire. They agreed and so we all left the shadow, and then I exited the meditation. Fun times!

Giving in the Inner World

So, I ran into a giving, nurturing part of me today, and the part of me who wants to understand things asked the guy to explain how giving works on an inner level. I thought I’d share what I learned for anyone who wants to explore their own inner world.

As I understand it, it works like this:
Any “item” that’s visualized can be imbued with certain feelings – love, courage, even stuff like negativity. The item, imbued with these feelings, can be given to other parts of you. Once received, the given part of yourself can “use” the item, and in doing so, gain access to the feeling it was imbued with.

I’ll give a couple of examples. Say that you imagine that a nurturing part of yourself makes a dish of food for another part of yourself, and this was done with a feeling of love. That other part of you receives that feeling from the food.

Or, the item could be a sword. A sword can represent confidence in something. So if something in you has a close connection to the feeling of justice, they can probably “make” a sword of justice, which can be used by inner warriors to fight for just causes.

It works in the same fashion as a metaphor. In fact, you could say items ARE metaphors. The food is a metaphor for the love a part of yourself wants to share. The sword is a metaphor for a sense of confidence that you utilize when fighting for something. Any imagined item can be imbued with meaning.

And remember that inside of you, metaphors are dynamic. They can change as your feelings change. And as your inner world changes.

The same is true for any aspect of the inner world. A landscape can represent an emotional state. A character can represent a certain part of yourself, perspective, or way of approaching the world. And substances, like water, or items, like swords, can represent a certain feeling.

We experience this day-to-day as well. It’s sort of like how you can see a word, like “love”, and it can evoke a little bit of the feeling of love in you, just reading the word. Or see a painting and get a feeling from it. Or see a present and think of the person who gave it to you.

The idea is that what you visualize as your inner world becomes more clear when you let the things you see represent the feelings that are there inside of you NOW. Knowing a little bit about how this works will let you better navigate that inner world, and test how those dynamics work. I find that as one develops one’s own system that makes sense to them, it begins to seem more and more familiar to the system of meaning we already use, constantly.

Anyway, to those who use this info to explore themselves, enjoy the adventure!

A Note about “Visions”

Aside

The other day I said I had a “vision” – I wanted to clarify what I meant. I do not mean I had some kind of hallucination, and fell down randomly and maybe frothed at the mouth a little. No, the kind of “vision” I had is a completely ordinary thing that everybody does all the time. If I were to ask you how you were feeling right now, and, instead of telling me “fine”, told me “I feel like I’m standing on a beach on a bright, calm day”, you just told me your vision of how you’re feeling. Whatever you envision yourself to feel like is a vision, at least according to me.

So why do I pursue visions of things? Sometimes, to really get at the root of things, you need to sit down, close your eyes, and let the image emerge: the subtle details of it, and the changes over time. And this simple process is key to getting to the heart of emotional issues, especially those bothering you that moment. Because once you see what things are really like, you can start to question it and change it around.