Oh my goodness, it was so damn stuck! I tried to jank at it, tried using a hammer, but it wouldn’t budge.
I was taking apart the trampoline in our backyard, and the poles were stuck together and weren’t coming apart. I tried to force it, still nothing, and then I got frustrated.
Then my son said: “Maybe you should take a break?” He was using my words, not against me, but FOR me.
“Great idea,” I said. And we went inside to have a drink.
Then I forgot all about it. We were just chatting about something unrelated and then all of a sudden it hit me: WD-40!
And the poles slid right out.
Maybe you've noticed it in your life. A low-humming frustration underneath all the hard work you've done.
You know your patterns. You can name them mid-spiral. You've done the therapy, the breathwork, the somatic work. You've sat with your nervous system, tended to your inner child, untangled limiting beliefs.
And still you wonder: Why am I still here? Why am I still not healed?
There comes a point in your healing journey where the very tools that have gotten you this far, actually become part of the problem.
The result is that there is still a governor on how you live your life. You're still holding back. You still get stuck in the same patterns of over-thinking and you still get anxious.
And perhaps you even feel that you've not healed. It's not true, though. You have.
It's just that the perpetual healing makes it seem like you haven't.
At this point, though, your ego mind is using all those tools you've learnt to avoid letting go of control.
To avoid trust.
And your brain has become highly adept at and creative with it.
The tools you've been using were never designed to address the deepest layer. And without meaning to, they can actually reinforce the very thing that keeps you from fully stepping into your free-spirited self.
This is not a failure of the tools. Nor is it a failure of you or proof that it’s not for you, after all. You've just reached the edge of what these tools were built to do.
This subconscious unwillingness to let go of control gets triggered the moment your body registers something is out of your hands.
Things like other people's opinions, posting on social media, public speaking, not knowing or understanding something, learning something new, not knowing if something likes you back or not, etc.
But in a way, these are just distractions from a deeper level of letting go of control: surrendering to all the good you want and desire. Connection. Intimacy. Joy. Carefreeness. Abundance without having to work hard for it. Rest and relaxation.
This unwillingness to let go of control is not your fault. It has become your default.
It will keep you in this never-ending cycle of wanting, working hard at eliminating any blocks, but never quite getting there. Even if it leads to external success.
You can't think your way out of this. You cannot heal your way out of this. You can't control your way into what you want most, because it requires the very thing your mind-body-emotion system is designed to prevent: letting go of control.
To let go, requires a different set of principles.
You see, all of your limiting beliefs, your pain, your limitations… It's all the result of the illusion of separation.
Most personal development work, even the deeper stuff, is still operating within the illusion. It's trying to fix the self, improve the self, heal the self. And all of that reinforces the separation.
The limiting belief isn't in you. It's the belief that there is a you that is fundamentally apart from everything it wants.
From love, from abundance, from connection and intimacy, from joy.
And from that perspective of separation, it makes sense. We've all had experiences where that separation was painful, dangerous to our sense of survival. Of course you grip tightly when you believe you are all alone, that everyone is against you, that good things don't come naturally to you. Of course you tighten that grip when you have to earn or protect or manage your way to what you want and desire.
So the question isn't "how do I release this limiting belief". That would still be the separate self working on itself.
The answer is simple, but it isn’t easy: It's separating from the separation.
And it's important to note here that we don't want to bypass the pain. You can't "separate" from something that you have tabooed or suppressed. Bypassing would say "There is no self, so there is no pain."
But that pain was real, the need for healing was real, and at some point you are ready for the next step: to see that all of it was a construct.
So first you need to uncover and feel into the Doom Loop™: how you learnt to relate to the Unknown. The moment something is beyond your control.
The natural inclination here is to analyze the doom loop, but that's not what's needed here. It's to learn to observe it. That's the first step of separation.
Next, you learn to recognize the YOU who believes in all of the limiting beliefs, in the pain. The YOU who is desperately trying to avoid the limiting beliefs it constructed itself in a never ending loop. And to realize you are separate from that YOU.
And then separate from the impossibility, the inferiority, and the scarcity that that YOU clung on to for safety (however painful that might have felt).
As you separate yourself from the separation, you enter what I call the Waiting Room. A place where there's nothing to do but to await nudges, to let your intuition guide you, to take inspired action when it lands.
The Waiting Room is not empty. It only feels that way at first, because the mind keeps reaching for something to do.
But underneath the reaching, something else is there. Something that has been waiting a long time to be remembered.
Your free-spirited self.
The one who existed before the separation took hold. Before the world taught her it wasn't safe to be fully herself.
She didn't go anywhere. She's been there the whole time, underneath everything that got layered on top.
And you don't look for her. You don't heal your way back to her. You simply stop maintaining the distance. And then she re-emerges:
Oh. This is who I actually am.
That recognition is what becomes possible when the tools fall away and the separation is finally seen for what it is.
Just an old story you no longer have to live inside.The Miracle Year program is the WD-40 you need to get unstuck. To separate yourself from the version of you that is stuck in perpetual healing mode and remember who you truly are.
So you can start living from your free spirited self.
You can check out my invitation to join the Miracle Year right here: https://www.throwittotheu.com/miracle-year. Or you can send me an email directly to start a conversation:
And if you aren’t ready yet, come join the community where we regularly do Tea Time With The U and spill the tea on living free.
Love, Femke