“The more we focus on our limiting beliefs, the more powerful they become… you can reprogram your limiting beliefs to something more positive…”
I was on my way to rehab on a wonderfully brisk day (Houston was finally being wrapped in the arms of fall even though it was already almost Thanksgiving) and I made a discovery that was born out of a feeling I had a few days before. I had been faced with the fear that I wouldn’t fully recover, which sent me into a tailspin of despondency. Would I be able to walk normally again? Would I be able to return to my salsa dance lessons? Would my arm ever have all of its strength back or would it always feel like a dissociated appendage? Would I ever have the energy to get back to my business: my Reiki and massage, my books, my life coaching? Could I still be a good mom to my boys? Would I be able to reconnect again with the love of my life?
For a few days, that fear kept rolling around in my head like a bowling ball, with me as its target. I was a lone bowling pin, unstable and wavering, waiting to be knocked down into the chute, only to be lifted up again to be knocked down again…and again…and again. Would I ever be able to escape that loop of constant “mind chatter” that fed my fear? Never mind that I had just written the chapter “Never Give Up!” or that I always tried to remind myself to “surrender and let go,” to release my fears to the universe. Never mind that I had received countless inner messages that I would fully recover. But my body didn’t seem to be progressing; in fact, I felt like I was regressing at times.
But then I had my revelation, and it was this… I was actually preventing my full recovery because of my “limiting beliefs.” Can you believe that? Me, who couldn’t wait to recover so I could get on with my life. Me, who had so much to do, so many plans that didn’t include being sick for the rest of my life or even another few months. So where were these fears coming from? What did this resistance to my healing represent? While I pondered these questions, my first thought was that by recovering, I would have to be independent and responsible again, and although I desperately wanted that, it was a scary prospect since for the past 1 ½ years, I’d been relying on my mom for support. But then an image came to mind about a dream that I had several times in past years and I feel that it had everything to do with my fear.
I was on a 3×3 platform high, high above a body of water… a large lake… the ocean… I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I was petrified of falling. I was so high in the sky. THE SKY! In mythological or religious contexts, the sky is associated with the masculine principle – as the heavenly Father, or Zeus/Jupiter as the God over the heavens or Apollo as the Sun God. Native Americans hold reverent Father Sky in creation myths. In Ancient Egypt, Horus is the ruler of the sky. In China, Tian (meaning sky or heavens) is one of the oldest Chinese terms for the cosmos and a key concept in Chinese mythology and religion, relating to the masculine element.
Another view of Father Sky is that the principle is associated with the right side of the body, which is the analytical masculine side. And of course, it goes without saying, then, that Mother Earth would be associated with the left side, the feminine side. Sound familiar? As Carl G. Jung said, “Heaven is masculine, but earth is feminine. Therefore, God has his throne in heaven while Wisdom has hers on the earth.” [i]
Mother Earth represents one’s nurturing side that houses the creative force. Ideas that manifest into material form in outer reality are all seeds within the inner realm of spiritual and mental creation, that is, the feminine unconscious part of your psyche, where intuition sparks. Within this domain of the “great mysteries of life,” all things exist. It can be likened to the ocean, the GreatOcean of our subconscious. Looking at the ocean, we only see the surface. But below are the great mysteries and unknowns. The deep recesses of the ocean represent the deep recesses of our subconscious that exist in their unmanifested forms waiting to be discovered so that they can become reality – our Truths.
So why was I so fearful of falling into the waters of the unconscious, to activate my feminine side? After all, I am female! But as you know from my story, I’d been basking in the sun’s rays of the masculine for a long time and I guess I became very comfortable in that high position where I could exert power, authority and dominion over my life. I was ambitious, analytical and aggressive, and I had a strong will. I was somewhat emotionally distant, somewhat aloof, having trouble getting too close to people intimately because my heart was closed. To fall into the water, where emotions and intuition reign, and where I had no control due to the “unknowingness” of what could bubble up to the surface – wouldn’t that leap have been the plunge to a death of sorts? To be thrust out of my comfort zone where I could direct all aspects of my life into a place where I was no longer in the driver’s seat?
I began to see how this dream, though from the past, had such a significance in my current circumstances. I began to make the association of taking the plunge into the depths as a means for me to find that balance between the masculine and feminine, to “becoming whole within myself” as I said in the chapter “My Story.” By becoming whole and thus speaking from my authentic voice, I COULD direct my life but from a very different standpoint. Instead of living my life from “with-OUT,” as I always had, from the outer reality of the tangible physical world, where the masculine rules, I could live my life from “within,” from my feminine essence where creativity and intuition radiate outward, and from where self love is born. And from this place of pure love, I could reach out to others with that same love. My stroke was a way to open my heart, allowing the Divine presence within to permeate my life and surround others with its warm glow of love and compassion.
So into the depths of the GreatOcean I have fallen. I’m not going to let my limiting beliefs overcome me. I have a purpose in life, as we all do. As I recover, I wish to help others in their recovery from their calamities, showing them the treasures they are receiving from their experience, and how destructive their limiting beliefs can be in realizing these gifts. They can prevent you from reaching your highest potential, from realizing what your mission is on Earth. Your life loses its richness because you aren’t able to perceive it correctly. You begin to see life through the filters of these beliefs, which are a result of words, thoughts and experiences that you internalize as your Truths… telling you that you aren’t good enough or worthy, or that you don’t deserve anything, or that you aren’t lovable or incapable of loving. According to Don Miguel Ruiz, the Toltec Shaman and author of The Four Agreements, “You see everything is about belief. What we believe rules our existence, rules our life.” These false truths that we internalize can ravage our life until we extinguish their hold on us and replace them with ones that empower us instead.
@2013 Erica Tucci Excerpt from Radiant Survivor: How to Shine and Thrive through Recovery from Stroke, Cancer, Abuse, Addiction and Other Life-Altering Experiences.
[1] Dr. Carl G. Jung, Collected Works of C. G. Jung (Princeton University Press, 1958). Vol. 11, pp. 447-448
