Healing the Memory of the Heart with the Light of Consciousness

I was just on a coaching call with Tancie Trail, a very gifted and intuitive life coach, and she was discussing a concept called “negative filtering,” in which someone allows a single negative event to color one’s entire experience.

I listened, thinking, “I don’t do that”.

Normally, I think positively, even in the face of apparently negative situations.

Then, she remarked that negative filtering often affects creative people when their work is criticized, and my heart stirred with a new realization.

Bingo.

I remembered a time when I was writing plays and I had submitted my work to a playwriting contest. I made it to one of the final rounds, but then I received a rejection letter.

I still remember the deep feelings of pain and rejection I experienced as I read the letter, and those feelings flooded back into my heart in the present moment, along with a voice that clearly said, “You’re not good enough.”

It was crystal clear.

I thought I had overcome that feeling inside myself a while ago, and I have come far in this regard, but there it was, a messy little ball of self-rejection that still remained lodged in my heart.

I first encountered this message that had been buried deep in my subconscious as I started to let go of the outer layers of defensiveness that I had built around me throughout my youth, in the forms of cockiness, emotional detachment and critical judgment of others.

As I allowed these defenses to drop, I saw that I was afraid for others to see “me,” or at least the “me” that I thought I was at that time.

The “me” that I was afraid to reveal was an old conception of myself that I had been conditioned to believe, growing up as an African-American—that I was somehow less than others, that I was a second class citizen, that I was “not good enough.”

Now you don’t have to be African-American to get this program of not being good enough—in fact, so many of us from all different backgrounds have this particular program. Mine was just instilled in me from my conditioning as a black male growing up in America in the 70’s and 80’s.

In my own work in Hermetic Philosophy, I have developed a deeper sense of who I am, in the most profound sense, beyond race, or any other outward sense of identity.

And I have learned to communicate from that deeper, more essential part of myself to shine the light of awareness on the old program of “I’m not good enough” that lurks within me.

But I felt it anew as Tancie touched a new layer of myself with her words.

It made itself apparent, and I was able to see why I have hesitated in moving forward on some of my personal projects, like writing a book proposal for a new book that I am working on.

It is because I fear the same pain of rejection that I felt when I didn’t win the playwriting contest.

I fear being confronted with the feeling of “I’m not good enough.”

So, I was avoiding the situation altogether by procrastinating.

What’s amazing is that so many people try to conquer procrastination by trying to overcome the procrastination itself.

But what is usually behind procrastination (and many other seemingly “practical” life issues)? Some deeper limiting emotional pain or psychological belief, or a mix of the two, as in my case.

So, by bringing this pain and this limiting belief into my consciousness, I can see that it is untrue in the present moment.

My Essence can observe the “I’m not good enough” message, and see it for what it is, just an old message that came from the outside.

It has nothing to do with who I really am.

So, look out for my next book, coming soon. Time to work on the book proposal!