When love arises, it clears anything unlike itself. All fears, worries, false beliefs rise from the subconscious. Feelings of turmoil surface when fearful emotions and self-sabotaging thoughts start to arise in your awareness. Emotional pain can be acute causing you to use behavioural strategies to avoid difficult thoughts and emotions.

Set your intention to become aware of the avoidance strategies you employ to suppress feelings. It may be unhealthy habits such as overeating or food obsession, overspending on clothes, accessories or household items. Dependence on harmful substances such as drugs and alcohol are often used to mask emotional pain. Control issues such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or escapism into fantasy are attempts to numb the feeling body. Whatever your avoidance strategy, it affects your behaviour and those around you. Perhaps you are not aware you are using avoidance strategies. In many cases addiction is used to avoid your inner truth. Addiction is not the root of the problem, it is a symptom. The stronger the addiction is, the greater the pain beneath it. Guilt and shame compound addictions. Identifying with your habit or addiction strengthens its hold over you to the point where you are not even aware of it. Ask a trusted friend to help you identify your avoidance habits. Deeper issues such as substance abuse require the guidance of a professional. Once you see your avoidance strategy, set your intention to break the habit. Know that it is a learned behaviour pattern, it is not who you truly are. It is a temporary mask to cover the real you.

As fears come into your awareness, it takes vast amounts of energy to avoid them. Through ego, you use all kinds of distraction to avoid seeing truth. You want to avoid painful feelings arising from your past. Each time you identify with shame or guilt, you lock up the feelings energising them. Memories charged by fear, anger, or guilt have been shut in the emotional closet for too long. With positive intention and commitment to creating a new reality, avoidance habits rise into your awareness. When a feeling reaches the universal field of awareness, it can no longer operate in you through unconscious habits. You receive an inner nudge when you are reaching for another slice of cake or pouring one more glass of wine. At this point you can no longer blame your habit; you have an opportunity to make a choice to align with your intention for healing. You can ignore your behaviour or use the prompt to sit with arising feelings. Choose the present moment to overcome fear, expand your vision and create a new reality.

When you commit to being present, feelings associated with the past can be felt and released. Each time you acknowledge your avoidance mode, its grip weakens. Whether you feel attachment or guilt to the behaviour pattern, remain present to the feeling. Distracting yourself from the feeling only serves to strengthen it. To dissolve difficult feelings of guilt, shame, jealousy or anger, allow it to be present in this moment. Through your presence, these feelings can be absorbed by the universal field of awareness and transformed into free-flowing energy.

Collette O’Mahony

An extract from my book In Quest of Love

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