Wednesday February 1, 2023
Hello Dear Reader,
After a couple of travel snafus and an overnight stay in a dingy motel in Fort Myers, Jamie and I arrived here at my elderly in-law’s vacant home on hurricane-devastated Captiva Island, Florida, last Friday afternoon. When we walked into the house, I cried. Strong emotions dominated my physical form and it was as though I was no longer consciously inhabiting the present moment.
There’s no denying the truth that it is emotional to see the devastation in this whole area and specifically in my in-law’s home. However, I have also set a resolute focus for myself this year: to dissolve what Eckhart Tolle calls the Pain Body.
My old pattern may have been for me to want to blame Jamie for what I was feeling—it’s all his fault that we’re here, and that I’m feeling what I’m feeling! But the reality is that I am responsible for my own choices, and I am responsible for what I am feeling.
Dissolving the Pain Body will involve not only the practice of digesting, metabolizing, and dissolving any, and all, old unprocessed emotions from past emotional wounds and trauma—so that there will be no Pain Body left to be triggered—but also a willingness to not project or blame anyone else for the feelings and emotions that arise within me.
This is in line with the perennial wisdom in the spiritual principle that says: I may not always have control over what happens to me in life, but I do get to control how I respond.
My intention with dissolving the Pain Body is to get to a place where, at times when new emotions may arise within, I can simply contain the emotions in the present moment; experiencing, digesting, metabolizing, and dissolving all present feelings and allowing them to pass—within 90 seconds according to the neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor as she writes in her book, My Stroke of Insight. The old Pain Body will no longer be there, to be triggered. Or at least it will have shrunk significantly. I’m trusting this will allow me to fully inhabit the present moment without being triggered by old emotional baggage that has accumulated over my nearly 56 years of living a human life.
The older we get, what often happens is that we carry around more and more old, un-processed emotional trauma. I want to inhabit the moment when I have completely dissolved the Pain Body and I get to experience the bliss of emotional freedom in being able to be fully present in each and every moment.
This kind of inner work takes time. Maybe that’s why we’re here as “spiritual beings having a human experience.”
~
When Jamie and I first arrived here on Captiva Island, once I was able to remind myself to breathe and to simply observe the emotions arising in my body, I felt more calm and peaceful and found my center again.
I also reminded myself to think about what are the essential human needs: food, water, shelter, warmth, rest. And while the house did not have water when we first arrived, we had brought bottled water and food, and I knew we could swim in the ocean to wash at least for the first few days, and use buckets of water from the neighbor’s hose to flush the toilets. So all of our most basic needs were met. (Although, as a good friend reminded me, I was also still jet lagged from recently returning from being with family in Australia—which helped me to cultivate some compassion for my emotional self.)
And I also laughed at myself when I remembered the ‘new’ version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
This still makes me chuckle. And while we are managing to survive without WiFi, we do still have spotty cellular service. So even the ‘new’ version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is somewhat being satisfied 😁
Much of the vegetation in this area was destroyed by hurricane Ian in September last year, but a few trees and other plants were spared. I’m also fascinated by how much wildlife is alive and thriving. There are a large variety of birds; sandpipers being some of my favorites—I just love how their little legs move them—and we just saw a spectacular congregation of about 20 ibises fly by, and yes, I did just Google on my iPhone ‘what do you call a flock of ibis.’ 😁 There are also so many lizards, fish, and yesterday we saw dolphins swim by—which always makes me feel lucky and count my blessings.
Glass tabletops on the outside deck shattered in the hurricane, littering the area with small shards of glass—it seemed as though there were as many particles of glass as there are stars in the night sky. This morning I spent a few hours digging the glass remnants out of the cracks between wood planks of the deck and vacuuming them up with a wet/dry shop vac, and there is still so much more to do. Many, many hours of work will need to be invested to restore this house to its former glory. But I remind myself of Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird, and how we can only take one step at a time.
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May sharing the truth of my experience be of benefit to you, and may we all continue to dream into being “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible.” ✨🌟💖🙏🕊️
Oh, Camilla. So moved by this. I feel emotion rising, too, at the thought of the random destruction in the hurricane's wake. And of course, had a laugh at the need for WIFI at the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. But, mostly, reading this, I feel an expansion, a greater connection to what's real, as you describe the ibises, the sandpipers, dolphins and lizards and how in the face of all this difficulty, life continues on, including you and Jamie getting this job done, especially while jet lagged.