AMA with AMA: Answering ONE question!
How can you feel relief when it seems so far away?
Dear Kula Diaries,
Today I decided to answer one question… and one question only. I’ve been finding the feeling of relief in my own heart lately, which means that sometimes I need to accept that saying less is sometimes saying more. This particular question really struck me — because it honed in on something important about my own personal resolution to, ‘stop trying so hard’. Is it easy for me to find the feeling of relief? To be honest, not always. However, if I make a conscious effort to cultivate that feeling, I can find it. I’ve been using my morning walks as a place to talk out loud (the deer probably thing I’m nuts!) and allow myself to find feelings of satisfaction, gratitude, love, abundance and contentment.
But — what if those feelings seem like an impossibility? What if your current life situation is so unthinkable that even the thought of relief is nearly unreachable?
That’s what our questioner was curious about — and it’s a really important part of the discussion of creating anything in your life. Abraham Hicks often says, “You can’t get there from there”, and what they mean by that is that if you are currently experiencing a feeling that is so far removed from the feeling that you are wanting… you simply cannot make the giant leap between the two feelings. Instead, as I mentioned in my abundance-themed post… this is a gradual climb with a manageable altitude gain.
My best advice for anybody who is in the process of their own self-discovery journey is this: start where you are. Take tiny, gradual steps in a slightly better feeling direction. Trust your own heart and take time to listen to your breathing and notice the small miracles of life. When you can find a way to be still — the answers will arrive.
As always, please remember that I am not a therapist. These are my words, opinions, and advice. Please use curiosity while reading them and take what works for you, and feel free to ditch anything that doesn’t. Above all things — trust yourself more than anybody else (including me).
Without further adieu… let’s get to our ONE question!
Dear AMA,
I’ve been thinking about your “relief realization.” I can see how it would apply when things are going well. Can you help me understand how someone can feel relief when things aren’t great? I am reading a memoir about someone who navigates psych wards, foster care, PTSD, and more. She’s a published author now - but I am thinking about how someone could feel ‘relief’ when they don’t know where their next meal is coming from or if they’ll have to sleep in their car again. This is not coming from a place of critique - it’s genuine curiosity!
This is such an important question — and I’m so glad you asked it! One of the things that I really try to include in my writing is an acknowledgement that each person on this planet is in a unique and different situation — and nothing is as simple as telling somebody else to, ‘be abundant’ or ‘just be happy’. There are some moments in life where a feeling like that is simply not possible. At the point in my life where I am writing The Kula Diaries and sharing my own personal journey, the feeling of relief is absolutely easier for me to find than it was about a decade ago.
I’ve mentioned this before, but at the lowest point in my life — I was in the midst of a divorce and simultaneously suffering severe PTSD and recurrent nightmares from picking up body parts (literally) off railroad tracks. On a ‘good’ night, I only cried for an hour… instead of four. If somebody had told me to feel relieved — I would have had some very choice words for them. If somebody had told me to feel grateful for my life, I would have told them about the last person I cleaned up off the railroad tracks… and asked how I could possibly feel grateful for that. The truth was, I could not. There was simply no way for me to get to a conscious feeling of relief from where I was.
The other piece of this ‘puzzle’ is the level of conscious presence that a person has cultivated in their life. If you are 100% identified with the thoughts in your mind as true, you will likely be unable to experience any relief at all. A person who believes everything in their own mind does not yet have the self-awareness to choose thoughts… instead, they are their thoughts, which means that their life is being shaped entirely by the thoughts in their mind. In a place like that, everything is very terrifying and real. There is no room for escape or relief. When I was at this point in my life, I did find relief, although it wasn’t a conscious act like it is now. I did not choose my thoughts deliberately, because my thoughts simply ‘happened’ to me. Instead, I found relief through things like walking outside…going to therapy, lying on the floor with my eyes closed and breathing (although I didn’t realize this was essentially meditation), reading, and listening to music. It was in those little moments where I had access to better feeling ideas and thoughts that would, ultimately, help me climb out of deep unconscious existence into the light.
The lowest moment of my life — when relief seemed like a pipe dream — led me to discover meditation. I sat with my eyes closed and focused on my breathing for just a few minutes per day. I allowed myself to be present in the moment — I started to teach myself how to become the observer of my own thoughts, rather than believing everything that they ‘told’ me. As you meditate, you are simply here in this moment — which means that all of the ‘worries’ about what might happen are placed on pause temporarily. This tiny pause is a miraculous moment, because it sends a strong signal out into the world that you are open to receiving new ideas that are more in alignment with what you really want to create in your life. Meditation, for many people, is the first rung on a ladder — a ladder of energy that you start to climb as you make the journey from where you are, to where you want to go.
As you begin a consistent meditation practice — something changes… and maybe you experience an idea… or a little moment of hope… or a brief lull in brain activity. Without consciously searching for the feeling of relief… you are still finding relief in the present moment when you pause your thoughts, even for a tiny bit. These miniature gaps of space are the openings for something new to arrive. I can’t say what that will be for anybody else — but, for me, once I had started meditating and I started noticing that I was feeling slightly more hopeful… I started writing, which was something that I hadn’t done in a long time. It took me years to get to the place where I am now. And yes, it is much easier for me to find the feeling of relief in my current place in life… I always have food and a bed available to me, and a challenging day usually has something to do with navigating the stress of running my own business. That being said, I don’t want to minimize anybody’s stress by saying, ‘There are so many people with it worse than you, so you shouldn’t feel how you are feeling.” I don’t invalidate my own struggles now because I had it worse a few years ago. And, I also don’t look back and feel sorry for the version of me with PTSD who was suffering greatly — because that is the person who had to exist in order for me to get to where I am. The pain that I experienced during that time in my life was the fuel for my own spiritual journey. We are each on our own, unique, path — and each segment of life contains new challenges and opportunities for growth. This cycle of suffering and awakening, is indeed, the nature of how our own conscious wakes up within us. It is a painful process — and sometimes it is downright horrible — but ultimately, that pain can be transmuted into the most intense and impactful good.
I’m not sure of the exact story of the author of your book, but my best guess is that, somewhere along the way, the pain that she experienced in her life led her to a moment where she experienced some type of an ‘awakening’ to her own internal radiance and power. I don’t know if meditation was involved — but I do believe that her pain was likely the catalyst for a lot of the things that she now does to make an impact on the world around her. I can say that if I knew this person when they were going through the lowest point of their life — telling them to, ‘feel relieved’, is not what I would have done. What would be the right approach? Probably hugging them… or listening to them… or loving them. Compassion towards other human is relief — a connection over a shared bond of beingness that we can experience with another person is a gift.
Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you.” Relief starts with finding our own aliveness in the present moment from exactly where we are. This can mean finding acceptance — even in a place that we do not want to be. As you sink deeply, however, into the present moment — you will start to sense something more about who you are… a depth of your existence that goes far beyond anything on the ‘surface’ of life… far beyond our thoughts and ideas of who we are. This is a place of discovering the love that resides within each of us — and extends in to the furthest reaches of the universe. Pain is often the way in which learn to see this truth. Once we see it, however, there is no going back — and the knowing of what really matters has a way of opening the door for goodness to begin to flow. We start to feel a little bit of hope… we start to climb up… and one day, we find ourselves helping others to do the same.
Thank you all so much for being here!
I’m so appreciative of your support and kindness. On my walks in the morning, as I have mentioned many times before, I intentionally spend a decent portion of my time talking out loud to myself — because this helps me get out of my head and into a place of genuine love, gratitude and appreciation. My thinking brain has a definite preference to want to spend time worrying or being fearful — and it is a constant practice to come back to this feeling of gratitude and abundance … over and over. In fact, I see this as the most important part of my job.
Sometimes, when my brain feels particularly lizard-like and wants to worry about every possible thing that could ever go wrong in the entire universe, it helps me to recite a poem. In particular, I have a specific mantra that I always start with. I decided to add to that mantra today to share with all of you — please feel free to use this poem as you see fit… memorize it and recite it… whatever helps you to disrupt the cycle of over-thinking the things that do not allow us to bloom fully into the infinite beings we are.
Abundance flows Easily It comes to me So effortlessly In surprising ways It is a gift I am open to Receiving it In this moment I feel my lungs breathe I notice my heart I feel the ease There is nothing I have to become I'm whole as I am I've already won I can relax A human, being No more trying My life is freeing And as the love I always know I trust the path I feel the flow.
Sending you all so much love today!
This is the memoir: https://www.eminietfeld.com/books
I just came across this video (via Brendan Leonard's Semi-Rad newsletter) and it felt relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJAMyrF7bPc