by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys
Have you ever received a massage and found it challenging to release control of parts of your body to the person working on you? I’m often subconsciously trying to anticipate and move things for them. Particularly my hands which I use a lot in my work, and find hard to pull my awareness out of them enough to let someone else move them. Though I prefer to think of it in other terms, it includes an unconscious lack of trust on some level.
There are certainly life situations when I am conscious of wondering who and what to place my trust in. It is easy to project fears outward and say I have to be careful because there are people who I really shouldn’t place my trust in. Receiving a massage from someone I have worked with often doesn’t seem to be a place where this serves me, but it shows up even there.
This week I had the chance to practice trusting people around me at a much deeper level. I was in surgery, having something unhealthy removed from my face. Local anesthetic alleviates the sharp pain, but not the sensations of pushing or pulling, the ability to see if I open my eyes, or the ability to hear the doctor’s commentary as he instructs the resident he is working with. It also becomes clear that my body knows what is happening even without direct any sensory/mental information.
Lying there with my eyes closed I focus on my grounding, calming the fear arising in my third chakra and slowly am able to let go of the mental tracking of all the things going on so close to my sense of self. Having moved through the fears of possible pain, I was still up against my ability to trust my surgeon and Spirit, that it would all come out ok. I could feel how hard it is for me to feel supported and held by Spirit under extraordinary circumstances, to release my well-being to another. So while the medical team did their thing I worked on the inside to ground and stay present.
Later, having finished and gone home, after such large pieces of trusting, I found myself resisting my beloved in much smaller things. She was coming from a loving, concerned, space, but I unconsciously pushed her away, resisting what she was offering with my attitude if not my words. I was pained to have done this with the person I most want to be open and receive from. At the end of a long day, however, I had reached a quota of some sort for trusting the world around me to be benevolent and competent. It had little to do with her, it was just one more time I had to open and trust, and part of me balked.
I’ve been thinking about why that would be. What does it mean that I have trouble trusting the world or others to the extent that I do sometimes? I’ve come across old pictures from previous operations when I was a child, more when I was an infant. I’ve felt the imprint of my mother’s mistrust during my birth. There are likely some past life experiences in play as well.
It is easy to go through all this and say, well of course it makes sense. But there is always an inner component, isn’t there? Having done the archeology I come back to myself and ask what don’t I trust in myself, or in Spirit. What part of me expects that negative things might happen *this time*? Where am I not feeling held enough by the universe to trust that those I draw to me are competent and benevolent? What deep part of me at times mistrusts even those I love most?
I have to move beyond the story of how I got here, the logical history that justifies my fear. Beyond the guilt about having put myself there to begin with, having created the lesion, and called in the doctors etc. All of it. I was there on the table practicing being present, trusting them to do their job well. And they did.
When I fearfully mistrust others I’m most deeply not trusting myself as a spiritual being to be ok. Mistrusting that my being can recognize who to work with and who to walk away from, that Spirit will not to put me in situations that aren’t right for me, even if they are uncomfortable. Although this was a fairly extreme situation it was a powerful place to practice feeling held and supported by the world; to let go of the fear which cuts me off and puts me in isolation. When I roll up inside perhaps I feel safer, yet I also loose connection to Life and any sense of support and being held.
At home, moving through another healing process, I am cultivating trust in my body to heal itself. The old fears come in waves and my body will freak out if I let it. I ground and run my energy, staying present with myself until a sense of trust and solidity arises. Once I relax it is easier to open to my beloved and receive her loving attention and support. It’s also easier for my beloved to support me when I’ve opened to myself again.
(© 9/2015)
