On a recent trip to Colorado, my daughter, Millie, tripped and fell into a bed of sticker burrs. Fortunately, I was able to remove most of them with my hand. When I tried pulling the last two remaining burrs out with a tweezer, Millie felt pain and dramatically pulled her hand away from me with refusal. I attempted everything to get her to give me her hand so that I could remove the thorns; everything besides holding her down. After a few days, I gave up the battle and the thorns took up residence below her skin. Millie protected herself from feeling the thorns by not using her left hand for many days. As long as she didn’t have to feel the pain of the thorns, she was content with them residing in her hand forever.
Millie’s way of protecting herself from the physical pain of the thorns reminds me of how we all do something similar with our emotional inner thorns. Michael A. Singer writes about these thorns in his book, “The Untethered Soul.” Like my 7-year-old daughter protected herself from feeling the pain emanating from her outer thorns, we protect ourselves from feeling the pain of our inner thorns.
We are all walking around with these hidden inner thorns that we are struggling with and trying to shield from situations that will cause us to feel pain.
These thorns are impressions inside us that arise from experiences that caused us emotional discomfort such as grief, fear, and sadness. Michael A. Singer calls these thorns “unfinished energy patterns of the past” that lie dormant in our hearts and are forgotten about until they are touched or triggered by a situation that reminds us of the circumstances that caused the thorn or pattern. These patterns end up running our lives, because we plan life around protecting our inner thorns from being felt and we don’t even realize we are doing this until we take the time to observe and become aware.
This is the reason why people tend to avoid certain life experiences; they fear that they will feel the flare up of pain from those buried thorns.
These thorns come to surface in our lives in many ways. People may have inner thorns from abandonement, infidelity, alcoholic parents, bullying….and the list goes on and on. Have you ever had that friend or partner that seemed to be so sensitive about everything? Maybe that person is you. A very emotionally sensitive person has MANY inner thorns that are being triggered. Yes, it’s okay to accept that you or someone else is sensitive, but it is not okay to refrain from not doing the work to change. The patterns will camp out in your heart until you choose to release them. Most people push the pain away and bury them deep inside in hopes to never see it again. When you do this, the pain will still show up in your life on certain occasions. If you allow yourself to feel the pain and let it run through you, freedom from the pattern reappearing will occur. I know you are wondering “How is this possible?” It takes hard work and consistency. Most people start the process by going to a therapy session or doing a few meditations and then quit, because they feel momentarily better. It takes more than that. I suggest you try the following techniques for letting go of those inner thorns:
AWARENESS: Become aware of your emotions when your thorn is being touched. This is your moment of being triggered. Notice how the emotion feels and where you are feeling it in your body. When you stop and step back to observe, you separate yourself and feel less attached to the feeling.
Write: When your energy pattern gets triggered, write about the first time you felt this pain. This will help you see that your current situation is different or maybe it will help you see that it is very similar and it’s time for you to break the pattern and make different choices in your life.
Release: Visualize your energy patterns moving out of your heart and into the universe and feel the feeling of release. Imagine the thorns breaking and disintegrating. Write down the pattern and tear it up or burn it. Use your intuition to guide you on what will work for you.
Reprogram: Get into a meditative state, imagine yourself back in the past, and use visualization to create what you needed in your life to prevent this pattern from materializing. For example: if you have an energy pattern of not feeling good enough to succeed at something because your parents never showed you they believed you could do anything you set your mind to, then imagine a scenario of your parents giving you what you needed as a kid in order to feel their faith in your abilities. Listen to your heart and visualize what you need to change to reprogram the past. Create a different ending! This may seem silly, but your body and brain can’t tell the difference between what you are imagining and what happens in your outer reality. It’s all the same. If you imagine a new past a few times a week, then your body and brain begin to act differently. Try it!
The most important thing to remember when trying to get rid of your inner thorns is that when you have a pattern that has been there for many years, it will take a lot of commitment to let it go.
You must set strong intentions for releasing and letting go of these patterns that limit you in life. Stay strong in what kind of life you want to create. Also, you must know that there will always be something to work on within yourself. This is what life is about-learning and growing through our challenges. You are capable of growing and transforming into the person you want to be! It’s all about how committed you are and what you believe about yourself.
BELIEVE and YOU WILL ACHIEVE!
xoxo
Sharon
Release Your Inner Thorns