“Life is meant to be experienced in our bodies as feelings without labels, rather through the stories created in the mind.” – from Perfect: A Path to Love, Forgiveness & Transformation

Science shows us that truly feeling an emotion is a quick, nearly immediate experience; it usually takes no longer than 90 seconds. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a well-known neuroscientist who was able to heal from severe brain damage, teaches us what this 90 second barrier means in her book, My Stroke of Insight: That once our 90 seconds are up, it’s up to us.

As I understand it, everything from that point forward is just a story. “Moment by moment,” she writes, “I make the choice to either hook into my neurocircuitry or move back into the present moment, allowing that reaction to melt away into fleeting physiology.” Again, she mentions that it’s a choice.

As I see it, the choice is between creating a story or not. And here’s why this is so important: When we’re in a story, we think we’re feeling the same thing over and over, but in truth, we’re not feeling it at all; we’re thinking it instead. Because we don’t feel or acknowledge the sensations that accompany emotions, we can’t release the emotions themselves. Often, in an attempt to understand our emotions with logic, we create stories about what everything means. “He said that, which means he thinks this about me.” “I suffered in that way, which means I am like this.”

The best way to let a story go is to not create one in the first place. Take the 90 seconds to truly feel and acknowledge the sensations and then let them go.

But like everyone, I get caught up in my stories sometimes. When the story begins to play, it is important to notice where you feel it in your body so you can begin to release the emotions so they don’t become trapped and potentially manifest as pain or sickness.

For example, when I think back to the negative comments I heard throughout my life, I ask myself: Where do I feel it? I used to feel it as a heaviness that sat on my chest like a giant elephant. I’ve learned to acknowledge the sensations or feelings by squeezing it back, breathing into it and releasing it.

Now, whenever I feel a contracted energy in my body, I view it as a blessing. It is my body’s way of saying that there is a negative contracted energy that needs to be healed. I view it as a healing opportunity. I then take the time to truly acknowledge the sensations in my body, breathe into it and then let it go.

From a larger perspective, we are experience significant contractions on a global scale: from the pandemic that has enveloped the planet, the racial violence that separates us, and the fires and hurricanes that have devastated the earth. I believe these contracted energies are the Universe’s way of saying it is time to heal. No matter how painful these experiences may seem, it is being brought to our awareness and attention so we can begin the healing process.  It is time to heal our relationships and the planet.

Please pray for the planet so we may all be healed.

Copyright © Judi Miller 2020

Like everyone, I get caught up in my stories sometimes. For most of my life, I felt different; like I didn’t belong. I repeated the story that I was different over and over again until I believed it to be true.

The story I created around being different followed me throughout my life. And it affected many things. In my marriage, I felt that because of my cultural, religious and racial differences, I could never be truly loved by my husband’s family; that I would never fit in. And the thoughts that accompanied them were agonizing. They caused me to behave in ways that were ultimately not in my own best interest, and I could see the negative results rippling out through my life, but I didn’t know how to stop thinking them. In part, I didn’t know how to stop thinking them because by thinking them, I could avoid actually feeling them. And in part, I didn’t know how to stop thinking them because I had convinced myself that they were true.

Stories like thoughts are not always true and they can create blocks in our energetic field that distort the way we see the world. The first step to dissolving these blocks is to become aware of them.

In my new book Perfect, I describe a scene where I was interacting with my recently deceased mother-in-law.

I was lying in bed during one of these swells when I began to develop a strange sensation that I wasn’t just thinking about Miriam; I was communicating with her directly. As soon as I recognized this, a giant movie screen appeared before my eyes. I suddenly saw dozens of interactions between me and my husband’s family flash by in an instant. The rapid progression of scenes jolted me to attention, and then just as suddenly, the movie screen disappeared. The scenes themselves were rather mundane, but the message they held for me was clear: That I had made myself different from the rest of the family, clinging to how I had been judged and wronged, and building an iron barrier around my heart to close it off and protect myself from the world. I knew without a doubt that this visual and emotional message had come directly from Miriam.

She had not misunderstood me or tried to change me. And she certainly had not judged me. To the contrary, I was the one who had judged the situation; by assuming that no one could accept me for my differences. I had tried to protect myself from the negativity I perceived in her, and as a result I had not received the positivity she had offered. She took me to get my nails done and bought me flowy, feminine blouses because those were the things she loved and she was trying to share them with me. She wasn’t trying to reject me; she was trying to embrace me with the things she held most dear. In all the years that I had known her, I had never seen this. It was all my projection because what we project is mirrored back to us, and what we see is therefore just the reflection of ourselves.

 I lay awake with my breath still caught in my throat, knowing that like many of the healings and downloads I had received in recent months, this experience would mark me forever. I began to cry uncontrollably as I felt the gratitude for what she had taught me, not in life but in death. I missed Miriam terribly, yet I knew that she had given me the greatest gift she could give; one that would forever be imprinted on my heart. I continued to sob and as I fell asleep, the download arrived: Love is never too late, even in death.

Our stories and thoughts are not always true and can distort the way we see the world and experience events.

We are bombarded with billions of bits of information every second. Our attention acts like a giant filter that allows in whatever we are focused on in any given moment.

As we continue to play our negative stories over and over again, we attract more of it into our awareness like giant magnets. And what we project is mirrored back to us. What we see is therefore just the reflection of ourselves and the stories, labels and judgements that we’ve accumulated along the way.

The first step to dissolving these negative patterns is to become aware of them.

What are you ready to let go of?

Copyright © Judi Miller 2020