Another patient—my friend we will call Robert—came in one day for a regular check-up. He said, “From now on I am going to live my life in radical self-love.” From my understanding of how old feelings must come to the surface to resolve, I knew that as soon as he committed to self-love, his bodymind would push all his self-loathing feelings to the surface of his awareness. After those unconscious feelings were experienced, which releases them, his wellspring of self-love would become fully accessible.
As soon as it was appropriate, I muscle tested him. I silently asked his high self if he knew that all the unconscious ways he did not currently love his self must come to the surface to be released? I got a strongly affirmative answer. When I silently asked if he wanted me to tell him what was going to happen, I received a very strong no! I asked the same question several times and his high self made it clear that he knew that his choices would evoke a strong reaction in his body, but he did not want me to tell that to him.
I figured that he might be tempted to forego the plan if he consciously knew how intense his bodily reaction would be, so I muscle tested to determine when he was going to hit the wall. I “got” that six weeks from now he was going to plunge into his healing crisis, so I scheduled him to come in then.
As soon as he came into my treatment room he blurted out, “I can’t find a single reason to love myself.” I told him about muscle-testing him six weeks earlier, and his not wanting to know the outcome beforehand.
Then I explained to him that: when a person commits to something—anything—the liver starts up taking all the energy he will need in order to complete that mission. Then the bladder system pushes all the fears to the surface to be experienced. The act of experiencing feelings that come up releases them. And all those self-loathing feelings stood in the way of Robert actually living in radical self-love, so his bodymind had to push them to the surface of his awareness for release.
Our old fears come up anytime we begin a "hero’s journey." They always do! Most people only think their feelings. They talk about them or act them out; but they don’t actually go inside and experience them. If we don’t feel the fears, the dark thoughts our brain is forced to generate build up until our fears become sixty-feet tall fire-breathing dragons. Unfelt fears effectively block our path and stop our hero’s journey just as it's getting started. If we feel the fears, they dissolve into nothingness, effectively slaying the dragons of our old myths.
I told Robert that he had already passed the point of no return. At this point the only way out was to proceed through the process he started—that he was past the worst of it. By six months from now, half the time when he checks in, he will love himself. Within a year he can honestly say, “I live my life in radical self-love.”
