Click Here To Feel Good

I love this quote and it’s so important to talk about this. With so much emphasis on positivity, higher frequency vibrations, manifestation express trains, energy shifting, and choosing our emotions, emotional and spiritual bypassing has become an epidemic. Having said that, I wholeheartedly believe in all the above. I have quoted sources here, such as Abraham Hicks and Dr. Joe Dispenza, whom I greatly love, who consistently teach these things. I have seen time and again how focusing and shifting my energy has proven deeply effective, as well as consciously deciding which thoughts and stories I will water and which mental alleyways I will not go down. This exists in zen practice too; watching all my thoughts and saying, “no thank you” to the ones that keep me locked in cycles of suffering. I am also a devotee of manifestation, and I have witnessed the results of having seen precise scenarios ultimately play out in my life, sometimes to startling detail. I work with a reiki healer who is also an astrologist. Our sessions include experiences you’d commit me for, and without a doubt my energies are lightened, cleansed, and balanced after we meet. I have taken reiki levels 1 and 2, and it’s a goal of mine to pursue it more in the future as a means to serve others. It’s done wonders for me, and my first energy work, way before I had any understanding of what it was, was maybe 20 years ago. I have never done any drugs and am petrified and uninterested in playing with my brain chemistry, though parts of me wish I was brave enough to try ayuhasca and ketamine. I believe in shamans, indigenous wisdom, and that god given natural plants have tremendous healing properties. We are meant to use nature to heal whether it’s plants, love, or stars, and I believe we exist in multiple timelines and realities, hence the ability to deeply feel into what Dr. Dispenza and other spiritual scientists call the quantum field. Knowing this and feeling into my highest future self that exists in that field has done wonders for my heart, faith, and energy. We are so much more vast than the limited stories we have accumulated have us believe, as vast as the cosmos we came from. I know I’m a spirit in a human body having a human experience. It’s a very complex and challenging incarnation humans have been designated to navigate, but so it is; how to maintain the mysticism and wonder of a spirit that so often gets hidden under the immense weight of human thoughts and feelings? No wonder people cling to taking the expressway out of feeling lost, confused, agitated, unworthy, sad, angry, and depleted (just some of the countless fun emotions humans are born to feel). In a culture of hyper activity and maniacal over achieving, I have also seen that there’s a lot of shaming towards people who don’t “simply commit to feeling better”. Like there’s something wrong with someone who can’t flip a switch to a better mood and energetic experience. Social media can be very toxic this way; using quotes to make people feel like failures, especially so that they’ll click the link in bio to purchase whatever classes, books, pills, and creams that will help them be their best selves. It’s manipulative marketing, a tactic as old as time and it’s a big problem in the spiritual community. People are desperate to feel better and it’s too easy to rope them in to anything that dangles the carrot of positive mindset. In short, positive mindset has become a product we are told we can simply click to acquire. Step right up, link in bio.
I have learned many things since beginning my true spiritual journey about 7 years ago, way before I had any idea what was shifting inside me. I couldn’t name it but I was feeling it. It was confusing, terrifying, and I was in a constant state of panic and anxiety. I later learned it’s called the dark night of the soul. It’s the soul emerging from the dark shroud it’s been trapped under. It’s a literal rebirth and we know that birth is messy, painful, and hard AF.
One of the most important things I have learned is that the hard parts of the rebirth, the most frightening and painful, cannot be skipped. There are no magic shortcuts, no fast passes to purchase to enter into Feeling Good Land. Sure, we can try this temporarily but we will always return to the shadows that are very real and needing of attention. If we ignore our pain then we are ignoring ourselves, and this is creating more harm. It’s choosing a different, more beautiful and successful child over the kid who makes you miserable. Neglecting the latter child won’t make the tantrums go away; they’ll likely get a lot louder and more violent the longer they are starved of care and attention. All children need love. Feeling good can become an addiction and a means of controlling an otherwise out of control internal experience. And it’s an addiction because after the good mood bubble bursts we are right back where we started, and so we reach for the good thing again while the bad thing waits for the high to end. It’s another cycle of escape, packaged in the shiny, socially acceptable wrapping of Good Vibes Only. Consumers beware. Toxic positivity is a crafty bitch. She knows what you want.
I deeply honor and celebrate the soul’s desire to feel free, magical, limitless, amazed, and in love with life. I truly feel this way very often and life is beautiful. For me, this incredible appreciation only gets richer the more I’m willing to do a deep dive down into my wounding and painful, deluded core beliefs. Things have to be dug out from the root to be replanted so as to be healthy and thriving. A Unhealthy infrastructure needs to be addressed and dealt with or true change can’t be made. There is a difference between desperately grabbing onto manifestation techniques and doing it from a conscious place of bold and sensitive awareness. This is one of the things I love about zen practice; it teaches grounding and rediscovering space so that I can make room for all the hard stuff. This leads to expansion and to finding my true roots, which then drives real felt shifts in energy. In a word, zen Buddhist practice has taught me safety, and this has been a springboard that makes me feel wonderfully alive and that anything is possible. A child that feels safe will be far more successful than a child who is too petrified and insecure to venture out. Becoming my own home base and touchstone has been transformative, and it’s been this coming home that keeps propelling me forward. The only way out is through, not around the back.
Therapy, mantras, meditation, reiki healing, Buddhist psychology and practice, building a relationship to my breath, as well as the right books/you tube videos/quotes have been some of the tools and techniques I use to keep returning home. Friendship, nature, and spiritual community, and my zen teachers have been crucial. We don’t get sick on our own and we can’t heal on our own. There are many ways to support ourselves in the courageous journey inward to the places we wish and pray we could avoid. It’s never too late. As adults we get to choose the difficult truths we face. We can choose our hard and life is full of these challenging choices. Please choose not to turn away from yourself in favor of the very understandable need to feel better right away. We can’t give pain a makeover. Yes, we are powerful energy shifters and manifestors. Yes! Let’s shift together from a place where we can plant and cultivate seeds of fearless honesty, self acceptance, and inclusion for all parts of our experience. It all belongs. It’s all a powerful teacher guiding us back through the dark forest to spiritual safety and homecoming. It’s the most worth it trip I’ve ever taken. Perhaps let’s reframe “positive mindset” into a loving mindset, an accepting mindset, an honest mindset. A mind that is elastic enough to welcome all our stories with open arms and a safe, warm heart. This is how we begin to build a new relationship to life.