Goodbye, Hurt & Pain

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON

To carry on the metaphor of how soap removes stains, the logical question is: “What works as soap to wash ugly feelings?” It is self-compassion and self-love.

Unpleasant feelings are equally as natural to life as the heavenly ones. Though uncomfortable, they benefit us and our relationships. We grow from engaging with them. When we embrace and understand our ugly feelings, we gain greater self-awareness, choice, and a return to inherent joy

Your Feelings Increase with Resistance and
Decrease with Embrace

When there's no one to resist and nothing to defend, our attention naturally goes where it's needed, similar to white blood cells automatically moving to an infection site.

Whatever shows up is welcome and absent of any evaluation as good or bad, even when it seems evasive or defensive. We follow the imagery because we trust the emotional system.

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN

Whenever you enjoy a happy experience, regardless of the reason, you can boost its sticking power in the same way: 1) imagine living the experience; 2) sense the one word of how you are feeling; 3) sense the energy of this feeling in your body, noticing its location, size, shape, color, texture, etc.; and 4) immerse yourself in it

rather than watching it, until it feels real. Next, sense one word of how it feels and find the specific location of this positive feeling in your body, its color, and its texture. Moving into this good energy and fully sensing it, you create new neurological imprints that light up the brain.

You can integrate any desirable feeling more deeply. First, you imagine living the experience