In a discussion on Healing Trauma, the subject of talk therapy came up. While I’m not a psychologist, I can see the value of related therapies in digesting difficult experiences. Being able to talk it out with someone accepting can be valuable. That may be all it takes.

However, if the issue has any depth, talking it out will only resolve it for the mind. If we don’t heal the deeper energetic source, that experience will come around again and shadow our life.

Similarly, if there is a need to keep talking about it, the source or driver hasn’t been resolved. If we don’t explore the emotional energy behind it, we can find ourselves avoiding by investing in a story and perhaps mental obsession. This may satisfy the mind and reinforce our ego sense but it doesn’t heal.

The mind doesn’t like to have an emotional tone without some explanation. Yet when we’re purifying, there may not be an obvious reason for an emotion coming up. It’s simply there. If you notice, mind will be inclined to make a story about it. The more you give the story attention, the more it will expand. Just recognize that this is the mind wanting things to be OK. Don’t take it seriously. It doesn’t point to the actual source. Instead, look to the emotions behind the story. This is what is driving the experience and seeking resolution.

The simple idea is that these emotions are incomplete experiences, unprocessed residues from the past. All we need to do is allow them to be experienced and they can complete. This often takes just a few seconds of real allowing.

Sometimes, there can be a boogeyman under the bed quality to them – a fear of the honest experience. The fear is because when we were young, we didn’t know how to deal with it. As adults, some emotions can be intense but are really not that bad. Nothing we haven’t handled before. Once we allow a few, it gets much easier. The fear of the experience was greater than the experience itself. Then we just need a willingness to feel.

If it’s an appropriate time, consider a rising experience to be an invitation to allow the emotions to be there. Because something wasn’t resolved in the past, we have often repeated the experience. It may have been reinforced or further suppressed. This leads to the experience of healing being like peeling layers of an onion.

See if you can feel what is “behind” the emotion. We may find an energetic charge or other layers of emotion to peel off.

Some people experience the origin of a trauma but this isn’t necessary to let it go. We just have to be with the feeling itself as it arises. Some of them will be ancient.

Once we process the experience, that burden is lifted, we free the energy we were using to suppress it, and the general tone of our life rises.

Every so often, a completion can be like taking a load off our back or shoulders along with a more visceral relief.

Remarkably, deep healing can relieve not just the present but our past as well. When we release a deep contraction, it may be in a more universal way, beyond the constraints of time. We can release back into past lives or ancestors. Certainly we’ll escape our future repeats.

I don’t recommend you look for stuff to heal. This takes you into a loop of constantly trying to fix yourself. It’s better to deal with things as they arise in life. It’s easier to heal when it’s time for the experience.

Just noticing here and there how we’re responding to day-to-day experiences is enough. The idea is improving quality of life, not fixing anything.

It takes time, patience, and practice to get to know how we contract or grasp at things and to develop effective release strategies.