Release, and its survival value

Abandoning our bellies, our lower bodies, might seem to have survival value.

Deepen awareness into our body’s center, actually feel what’s going on there — are you kidding? We’re dead if we do.

We’re also dead if we don’t: If we abandon our bellies, then we cut ourselves off from our core vitality. We zombify. We float somewhere above the planet’s surface. We give up our ground.

Still, because so much trauma has been stored in our lower bodies, our bellies, our self-preservation might seem to depend on shutting the door and walking away.

Yes, stored behind that door is the experience of abuse. And also the knowledge of who we are.

The experience of abuse: Those more powerful than us declaring, and enacting, that who we are is wrong, sinful, evil, not worthy of expression or existence.

The knowledge of who we are: I’ll trust that discovery to you.

I can tell you some really good news, though: The dead-if-we-do, dead-if-we-don’t conundrum is an illusion, however convincing it might seem to be.

The memories — whether past-life actualities or this-life experiences relayed as image, metaphor, and story — code sensations that were too intense to live through … then. They store themselves in our bodies under cover of denial, draining our precious life force.

The truth, I believe, is this: As we release the antique hurts, fears, and rages that have been moldering in storage, we come all the more alive.

Such release allows us to distinguish: That was then, this is now.

Such release brings freedom.

Freedom from limitation.

Freedom to be present. To innovate.

Freedom to express ourselves calmly and creatively in the midst of enormous change, both before and after the signal year 2012.

Freedom to respond intuitively and adaptively to the challenges that are occurring … now.

That’s what I call survival value.

So what does release look like?

What does grounding look like?