Episode 38: Into The Vault

Join me on today's show when I dig into my "vault" of unaired segments from past episodes. Topics include "cheating birth," another mistake I made in my own healing journey, the power and requirement of self-determination, and a warning to not tear down one prison just to build another one. 

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Transcript

            Welcome to Episode 38. Today’s Topic is: Into The Vault.

            I’m not going into an actual vault. I’m going into my external hard drive, but ‘Into the Vault’ just had a cooler ring to it. Every show I’ve done to date has had to be cut for time because if I didn’t do that, some of my shows would be ninety minutes or longer. And a lot of the segments I had to cut, I really struggled with because I felt like they had value for someone out there listening and so what I would do is save those segments on my external hard drive just so I didn’t delete them by mistake. And a couple weeks ago, I was going through them and a friend was listening to them and she said, you ought to edit these together and make a show out of them. And I thought about it and lo and behold, I got a few emails from listeners asking me some questions that I had actually covered in some of these unaired segments. So I took that as sign that I would take my friend’s advice and turn them into a full show. So what follows in today’s show are unaired segments of past shows that finally will get to see the light of day and I hope you enjoy them and get something out of them. So into the vault we go…..

Alchemical transformation is a powerful journey and one that cannot be taken lightly. Some of you listening right now are already on that journey. Others know they must do it but don’t have a clue what they need or is required. And I’m here to tell you if you’re new to this type of deep healing work, it requires a lot from you that you never thought you needed or thought you could even begin to handle. And one of the biggest things it demands of you eventually, is being able to embrace your life in ways you have never experienced life. And that is often a terrorizing proposition, especially if you have been asleep for a long time, as I was, to what living and embracing Life means on all levels. 

We’ve all heard the term “cheating death,” right? Someone comes really close to death but somehow by the grace of God, they avoid it. And when that happens, death is avoided, at least for that moment, because eventually we all die. So cheating death tends to imply a fear or hesitation of death. “I almost met my maker. Whew, that was close.” Death is terrifying for a lot of people because what’s on the other side of it? What would I wake up to? What world would I exist in? And even if you have faith in a world beyond, there is often still that resistance to death. 

But when I was in the first few years of my own healing journey, I began to experience the opposite reflection of this idea. A true, genuine fear of life itself and what the investment in life on all levels demands or had demanded of me in the past. That sudden awareness made me very leery of embracing life itself moving forward. At that point in my healing, I’d spent a lot of time isolated, which is never a good thing, and while I’d always had an ability to ‘chew the marrow out of life,’ as the saying goes, that thought was now frightening to me. Life, back then, had become very tenuous and I was in an extremely fragile state for almost two straight years and that fragility had taken a massive toll on my body but had truly done a number on my psyche. 

I think a lot of you listening right now can relate to this. Because it’s a very common effect of going through either a serious illness or accident or years of upheaval in one’s world and perceiving Life as being dangerous business. One begins to feel, I know I did, that Life had betrayed me. Life had set me up and put me in a situation that had, as far as I was concerned, put me in a prison where my body and mind were no longer strong. And the longer this went on, the less confidence I had in being able to “do life”. So for a period of time, my life became very, very small, until I was navigating a world the size of a postage stamp. I became terrified of moving the wrong way and paying for it with some two-hour long muscle spasm I couldn’t control. Fear absolutely consumed me back then and I know that a lot of you can relate to what I’m saying. Instead of my inner core glowing hot with intention and purpose in lifting myself out of this nightmare, all that existed was a tiny candle flame no bigger than a pilot light in an oven. 

But one day, I knew I couldn’t maintain my existence like this. And it truly felt like a hovering existence where I wasn’t necessarily gaining any movement in my healing and I was stagnating and that concerned me because I grew weary of that stagnation. I wasn’t sure what I needed to come out of that stagnation and I think naively kept expecting all these various healers and such to be my trigger or inspiration for moving out of that stagnation. And I could not figure out the source of why that wasn’t happening. So as luck would have it, I started working with a new healer who was no-nonsense and seemed to understand me very well and was not afraid of pushing buttons and that’s what I needed, even though a lot of what she was asking of me made me extremely uncomfortable because I’d grown accustomed to my little cave-like existence and not expecting much of myself for a period of time. I want to stress that the demands she was making on me were not outside the scope of what I could do but I felt this penetrating resistance every single time I had an appointment with her. I ginned up a lot of anxiety prior to each of those appointments. And one day, she said, you must generate the ability to reignite that spark in you or you’re not going to spark the healing within process you say you want. And she was right.  But baked into that cake, was the realization that I had to gradually step back into life and also be unflinchingly open and willing – very important word there, willing, to roam around in the dark corners and do what it took to birth the truer reflection of who I was. And she compared it to a second birth where you can re-design your life moving forward. And it all sounded great on paper. But the more I thought about it, the more it terrified me. Where would that new birth lead to? Did I want to live or just not die? There’s a difference. Not wanting to die doesn’t carry the same energy as wanting to Live. But wanting to live and be reborn into a life that was healthier physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually carries an entirely different vibe. You have to be all in! And that means you have to dive into the darkest pools and come out and then dive back down and come back out and you have to do this many times. And with each cycle of that dive and coming back up, parts of you die and parts of you are reborn. And you agree to that intense process enough times and eventually you will be birthed into a different version of yourself that is a better representation of who you are. And you have to really want it and that means you have to be willing to deeply feel all the pain you’ve suppressed as well as all the joy that you’ve also suppressed because the pain wouldn’t allow the joy to rise to the surface. We may say our intention is to finally feel joy, peace and happiness but in order for that to become a reality, you have to release the weight of all that heavy pain you’ve been carrying around that has completely prevented you from embracing and internalizing joy, peace and happiness. The pain has been your barrier forever. So in order to manifest this joy, peace and happiness that I certainly wanted more than anything, I had to dive headfirst into every fear I’d ever had or been told to have, regardless of how terrified I was at that time. I had to break down my heart-wall which was terrifying, let me tell you. I put up that heart-wall for a very good reason and now I was being instructed to break it down brick by brick. This was way outside my comfort zone. And the internal resistance I had to this process - and not just the heart-wall process but many others – became so intense at times that “surrender or die” became my mantra. And I fought it. Hard. I would eventually make some progress but I would fight that surrender for the first 90 minutes or longer of a trauma release session. Until I became so exhausted from that fight, that I would surrender and it always led to something meaningful through that surrender. But getting to that point was like pushing through the greatest resistance to the birthing process. Like, no, no, no, I don’t want to do this. I’m terrified of the alchemical birth process. 

And that’s when I realized that instead of cheating death I was actively cheating birth. I was doing whatever I could to not go through that painful birthing process because, just like cheating death, what was on the other side? What would I wake up to? What world would I exist in? What would be required of me in that new world? And did I have what it took to birth or manifest that reality? Cheating birth when you are seeking an alchemical transformation of body, mind and spirit, is walking right up to the door of rebirth and rejecting it out of sheer terror, because what’s on the other side of it? The terror in cheating the alchemical birth is having to take a giant leap into the unknown – a place that is well named because you’ve never been there. So you come right up on it….the breakthrough….the release….the letting go and letting God in essence, and you slam the door shut. You revert right back into extreme panic because no matter whether it’s the soul being born into a physical body or the individual on the precipice of deep mental/emotional and spiritual transformation, both carry the same cosmic power and responsibility that is required to actualize that birth.  So it shows up in reluctance, fear, unease, restlessness, massive anxiety and resistance. 

But in my case and I think others deal with the same issue because it plays hand in hand with this process of resistance, every time I’d resist breaking through an old pattern or belief system or whatever, my physical body would respond to that resistant energy with more pain, more inflammation, more tightness, more numbness. So I began to clearly see the physical correlations to cheating birth. And I began to feel like I had no choice. I know people say you always have a choice. I don’t agree if you are committed to the path of intense healing. You have no choice but to do the things that terrify you but will lead to your eventual resurrection. I also learned that when you fully commit to the process of birth and then attempt to cheat birth, birth will always play to win and come at you from all sides to engage and move you forward in body, mind and spirit. You will get thousands of opportunities and situations that all mirror each other, with the intention that one of them will finally penetrate through your resistance and hand you the opportunity to grow and expand your awareness. And then through that awareness, you wake up into a newer reality each time. You give birth to the new you. And birth doesn’t have to be painful, but when you resist it, it’s hardcore pain that you bring on yourself via that resistance. You will be required to break through what you thought was the unbreakable. And whatever needs to break will be broken. It will shatter. And you have to agree to go through this repeatedly for as long as it takes until the process of doing it is no longer an arduous process. You gradually become tempered by this process on an alchemical level. Eventually when you stop cheating birth, you get into the swing of what birth requires and it becomes just another thing you do that you now understand leads to greater flexibility in your body as well as your mind and spirit. 

Growth is really tough when you aren’t even aware you need it. But when you finally get the hang of it, you’re not cheating the birthing process anymore. And you’re not cheating the death process either because after you do this process of down into the pit and back up and on and on, you fully understand that the pattern of death and rebirth and death and rebirth becomes second nature to you. And you also comprehend how that process changes you and begins to mold and design a better body, mind, spirit vehicle for you to operate within. Once you reach a place where you can really see how far you’ve come, you will recognize the value of all that hard work and become so attuned with the energy of death and rebirth, that you might look in the mirror one day and say, “My God, what took you so long?”

Yes, I made a lot of mistakes during my own healing. And if I could pass along advice to any of you who are knee deep in this process right now, it would be to give yourself the gift of taking some time off in between all the work that it requires. This type of intense healing work can be a completely consuming venture. And once you get into it and get used to what is expected, there’s this pattern that I had and others also who I was around where you want to keep riding that wave and you want to take advantage of everything and not miss out, so to speak. But I’m here to tell you that there must be times along your path where you stop and recalibrate and just “be” and not feel like you’re missing out or you’re losing ground. Because if you don’t take that time, you’ll become so deeply entrenched in the world of personal transformation, that nothing else exists in your life. And that is not healthy. You lose perspective. You become terribly myopic. All you talk about is your personal growth and on and on. So this obsessive quality emerges that doesn’t wear well long term and has a potent effect on anyone you’re living with or anyone you interact with on a daily basis. You don’t want to turn this into some kind of cult energy where you have to maintain whatever the cult demands of you. 

I know it’s not easy to back away for brief periods of time because once you get there, you kinda roost there. And after one year or more of doing this work, you can feel like if you don’t take advantage of every opportunity that you learn about and perhaps it really excites you, you’re not get where you need to be and that’s absolutely not true. You’ll get there (wherever ‘there’ is) when you get there and not a second later.

I agreed for a period of time to be led into a constant whirlwind of groups, conferences and retreats and this and that and you don’t miss it and you feel like you’ll be left out of something important. But I’m telling you right now, don’t be afraid to step away briefly and get your feet under you. Ground yourself. Get away from that energy so you can reflect on what you’re doing and have that space to determine whether you are on the right path or might need an adjustment. And you can’t have the inner dialogue with yourself, if you are always buried within the transformation community. And I say this especially if you are doing hardcore trauma release work and/or psychedelic therapy. If you don’t have the time to breathe and integrate those therapies in between, it becomes like an engine that gets overheated and then just stops and you don’t want that. I went through that experience, and it makes you feel discouraged and burnt out again and you don’t need that. So don’t invite that potential into your life. Take breaks when you need to. Don’t extend the breaks indefinitely but that probably won’t be an issue because by this point, you’ll be so attuned to doing the work that you don’t want to back away for too long. If you’re doing psychedelic therapy, it can sometimes be a weekly session or a monthly session depending on the substance and the dose you are consuming. And if you’re doing high dosesacred medicine therapy, not micro dosing, you need more time in between to integrate what you experience. You can’t rush that process. And if you try to rush it by doing it too soon after the last session, you’ll enter the next session with cloudy vision and a lot of confusion is created. It’s like a sewer backing up and you keep shoving more stuff down it and it’s overwhelmed by all the stuff without being able to release what came before. So if someone is forcing you to go, go, go or you are forcing yourself (which is really what I did because I was on this mission), take a moment and recalibrate. And don’t worry about falling backward. If you’ve been doing this work for more than one year, you need to take the time. 

And when you take that time, do not isolate. I know it’s hard not to do that because you’ve needed that isolation to do the work. But if you isolate during the time you take away from the intense parts, you will risk losing good people in your life who get tired of being pushed away by you. They are not on your healing schedule and they may miss you and want to go to lunch or have coffee and just reconnect, if even just for a few hours. And if these people mean something to you, I encourage you to accept the invitations and get out and about as much as you can and remember that there’s a world out there is still moving and shaking and it’s okay to dip your toe back into it every now and again. That respite also gives you the ability to take a breath and just enjoy whatever the excursion is. You’ll have plenty of time to venture back into the womb of your healing.  I read a quote on a greeting card attributed to nobody but it’s “Solitude is fine. But you have to have someone tell you that solitude is fine.” I framed that card and I walk by it every day to remind me. 

Part of this taking breaks is also taking breaks from the immersion into the books, the videos, the DVDs, the Zoom groups and more. You don’t have to ONLY watch videos on healing, trauma, psychedelics, mind/body healing, etc. You can watch a rom-com. You can watch an action thriller. You don’t have to only read books on meditation, healing, trauma, etc. You can read books just for fun. Yeah, fun. It’s okay to laugh even though everything feels like a weight on your back. It’s okay and I recommend it highly. Because I took the first two years plus of my healing journey very, very seriously. And I get that in the beginning it's all new and there’s tons to learn and on and on. Got it. But if you maintain seriousness and being solemn and carrying the armor of duty and servitude to your internal pain and eventual personal transformation for too long or with so much gusto that the friends who are beneficial to you and you should keep around will most likely vacate your premises because being around a buzzkill all the time is not conducive to lightness and joy. And since you are healing trauma to handle joy, you might want to occasionally treat yourself to a good time. I know it’s difficult. I know you don’t want to. But it's really okay. I had to force myself to do this after I’d turned off a lot of people in my tiny circle of friends. And I’m so happy I went to that barbeque and I’m so happy I sat around that bonfire and didn’t bleat on about healing or trauma or metaphysics. Just sat around the fire and chatted and enjoyed the company. 

People like to think they were healed, if they had a healing, by someone else. And they make the mistake of crediting that person with granting them their healing. That’s not true. Hippocrates was credited with the quote: “Before you heal someone, ask him if he's willing to give up the things that make him sick.” It’s the agreement of the one who needs healing to release from him or her whatever is blocking their eventual healing. And no healer can do that for you. And if a healer is telling you they can, they are not being honest with you. And they are allowing their own unhealed nature and tremendous ego to grossly overshadow YOUR responsibility and YOUR part in your own healing. You are the only one who can facilitate your own healing. Someone else can lead you down the right path, but YOU have to walk. They can’t walk it for you. You’d be surprised how many people don’t get that message. YOU and only YOU are putting in the hard work, maybe discovering other healing techniques on your own by doing your own research, becoming truly engaged and impassioned for the first time in your life with transforming your life. It’s YOUR internal fire that fuels your eventual healing. Remember that quote I mentioned, “A healer does not heal you. A healer is someone who holds space for you while you awaken your inner healer…so you can heal yourself.” Print that out and put it somewhere where you see it daily and drink it in. 

I understand completely that the notion of being your own healer is rejected by so many people. They’ve been led to believe their entire life that something or someone outside themselves has greater power than they do. This is the crux right here of the conundrum that people who seek to be healed have to come to grips with. First you have to accept that YOU do have the power to heal yourself and then you have to build the confidence and seek out the right people and situations that teach you how to do that. But they aren’t healing you. They are simply giving you the information, techniques, treatments, direction and space so you can take all that in and turn it into your transformation. Too many healers unfortunately play into the ego driven trap of being your savior which is a red flag for you to get away from them. I’ve seen this behavior so much in my life and when I’ve seen it in relationship to others who are drowning with healers who are pure ego and tried to warn them to run from the healer, they hedge and make excuses for sticking with them. And it never ends well. They never heal. They never resolve anything. In fact, they often become more confused and unable to chart their own course the longer they stay with the healer who isn’t really a healer. A good healer knows his or her power and also their limitations and is well acquainted with holding the space necessary for the client to come to their own understandings and knowings. Because an understanding or a knowing that is told to you is not the same as one that organically erupts inside you in that moment of clarity that sheds a strong light on whatever you have been battling with inside. That powerful, stopping in your shoes A ha! Moment. Knowing and knowledge that comes from one’s own inner voice is the best medicine and far surpasses anything any healer can give you. 

No healer can take away your pain unless you first connect to that pain and understand its origins. If you don’t, a healer may remove an aspect of that pain but they can’t dig up the root. That’s YOUR job. A healer can take away a part of it but then it will return if you don’t do the inner work to understand why you are manifesting it. And you might keep going back to the well, the healer, and ask please help me. And if the healer is a true healer, they will tell you to dig deeper and unearth the root of the root that is creating the branches of what you feel and understand as “pain” but is really something you have buried so deeply and ignored for so long that you have forgotten the seed from where it started. It’s YOUR job, NOT the healer, to do that excavation process. Healing by proxy never works nor does it last. I’ve seen this play out literally thousands of times my entire life. The patient shows up to the healer they trust and they lie there and wait for the healer to remove their problem. But it only takes the next trigger a day later or sooner or so for the pain or problem to re-emerge and then you’re right back to square one. 

            Healing requires self-determination on levels you’ve never been asked to experience or actualize in your life prior to doing this work. We all succeed or fail by our own determination. People may guide us and perform on our behalf such as a surgeon, but we are the determiners of our own journeys by how we handle or not handle the outcomes in our lives. The doctor can set your bone and they can do your surgery but they are not responsible for how you choose to take it from there. Your self-determination or lack thereof, will lead you to either success or failure. The talk therapist is not trying to talk you into not being depressed. He or she can talk all day long but they can’t make you happy. That’s your job. 

The payoff of true self-determination toward one’s healing cannot be overstated. It takes an enormous amount of self-determination to overcome an illness or situation that was overwhelming and then choose to use that experience to gain wisdom, insight, life knowledge, greater awareness and confidence or calmness compared to someone else who has zero self-determination, refuses to overcome their obstacles and sadly chooses the powerfully destructive energy of suicidal depression which leads nowhere. It’s in the overcoming of the obstacle and the growth from that overcoming, that has the most benefit. Because when you choose through your own determination that you are going to overcome and succeed and do whatever it takes for you to heal, no matter what that requires out of you, that decision changes you. And then the experience transforms you. You are no longer the one who was before. You are different and you are stronger in many ways. And you are more contained within yourself and your spirit. And hopefully, there is the cosmic grounding that is attained while also being connected to your own inner voice and connection to Spirit. 

I’m reminded of that Charles Bukowski quote: “What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.” That’s a gem of a quote to reflect what I said. How well you walk through the fire is based on how focused you are on self-determination. How well you navigate the flames is based on how willing you are to feel and take the heat that is required when you commit to a healing path. How well you will appreciate the heat instead of feeling victimized by it. How well you will handle it when you get burned and have to keep walking through the fire. How well you are able to utilize that fire to move you forward. To fire you up. To inflame your passion. To keep forging ahead even when it seems bleak and dark. Because in the end, it’s the fire that transform you. And that fire is what fuels self-determination. Self- determination is not made of water or air or wind. Although a little wind here and there helps fans the fire. I suppose self-determination has enough earth in it for the fire to sit on it and burn and the earth supplies the grounding that is necessary to harness your energy and direct it at your desired result. So the earth element supports the fire. And with that powerful combination, the individual is able to elevate themselves into places they never thought was possible. It was in the process of the overcoming of what felt impossible but was not, that they found themselves and learned what they were made of and that they had a power they never knew they had. And after they healed, they discovered that the same internal power that self-propelled them, when applied elsewhere in their life, with the same attention and dedication, garnered the same positive results. When you’re able to reach the point where this determined energy resonates within your own life on a daily basis, only then are you able to see how your self-determination born from great adversity, echoes its energy beyond whatever illness or situation required it.

“Don’t tear down the walls and build a prison with the bricks.” I’ve read variations on this quote but it’s a valuable piece of advice when you are healing and maybe working to renegotiate how you want to live your life moving forward. It’s very common to replace one prison with another if you are not consciously aware of your patterns which I hope you’re taking a hard look at throughout your healing journey. Because it’s your patterns and old beliefs that will drive you right back to the situations that got you sick. I was as guilty of it as anyone. When you have been through an often catastrophic healing crisis and had to manage your life differently and often be regimented in how you go about your life in regard to treatments, therapies, and more, it's very easy to create rigid structures in your daily life that become restrictive and don’t allow for ease of movement or spontaneity. Because there is this underlying need for many people, including myself, to take one way of being when you are healing and when you’re moving forward, create this insanely boxed in daily plan that does more harm than good. Or you move away from one obsessive focus that was killing your spirit and within months, you’re diving into a completely different obsessive focus that carry the identical characteristics but with a different flavor and backdrop. You might tear down the wall of working at a job that is making you literally ill and replace it with a volunteer job that you overcommit to. So you turn the volunteer job into the same energy as the other job you had to quit because it made you ill. You box yourself in, yet again. This is a pattern you must break and it’s not easy. I know that because I had to do it and nobody told me I had to do it. I just recognized one day that I was creating the same prisons and then feeling resentful and exhausted and so on but nobody was doing it to me but ME. It took me a while to really see it and agree to find out why I was doing this and then once I realized what it was, basically write out a declaration that states ‘I understand that I create the same obstacles in the creation of another commitment or responsibility that carries the identical energy that made me ill and I will not take part in that again.” But in order to effectively do this, you have to fully recognize the reason you are doing it. And it’s often a pattern that you unconsciously engaged in. And once you make the unconscious conscious, you stop blaming outside circumstances for bricking you in and you stop feeling that churning resentment against anyone for doing it do you. Before you can heal it, you have to acknowledge it and OWN it.  This can take time. Because you have to reflect on what your motivation is for tearing down one mindset just to imprison yourself in another. Are you still hearing the distant voices of one or both of your parents telling you who and what you were going to be and giving you no voice in that decision? I know someone who was a very good piano player and his parents encouraged his talent and then wanted him to exploit his talent by playing local concerts and the like. But he hated performing. Viscerally hated it. But he kept doing it because it pleased his parents and he wasn’t strong enough to chart his own course. His real love was gardening and he dreamed of having either a landscaping business or garden store. So he played the piano professionally and made good money and then he got sick after about twenty-five years. Did a lot of inner work healing and said, that’s it, no more professional gigs, on the road eight months of the year, I’m done. And he was. But he needed to make money and so what did he do? He agreed to teach piano lessons because it paid well and he was well sought after so he had no trouble attracting many eager young students who had equally eager and intense parents who were very demanding of him. And there he was making good money and he hated every second of it. The same way he hated playing piano in bands and being on the road. Because as long as a piano was involved, so too was the stress that had always dragged alongside that piano. So he tore down one impossible wall and built a prison with the bricks. And once he saw that and couldn’t stand it any longer, he quit teaching and he opened a small garden center in town and made a modest living but he didn’t care. He was happy and content for the first time in his life. I remember he said to me that he’d been looking for peace and contentment his whole life and it wasn’t until he gifted it to himself through following his true love and passion that he finally felt that internal churning and restlessness dissolve.  

That’s all for this week. Thank you for choosing to listen to this show. If you like this show, share this show or any other episode you like with someone right now who you feel needs to hear it. Check out the notes for this episode where you’ll see the links to find me on Instagram and X @laureldewey or thealchemyofnaturalhealing. On all the show notes, I’ve included the companies I support and have helped me in my healing process, so check that out and look for the discount codes. Looking forward to you joining me in two weeks where I’ll talk about “The Beauty Within The Healing.” Until then, remember that “Awareness is a demanding mistress. Once she wakes you up, she won’t let you go back to sleep.”