Welcome to the one heart podcast. I’m your host, Brooke Snow, and I’m so grateful you are here.
Have you ever felt like you were walking on eggshells in a relationship? We all know the feeling… we don’t want to rock the boat and create chaos and drama, but we also doubt the possibility of experiencing authentic joy here as well because something is being suppressed. It’s the elephant in the room that keeps us from feeling free to just be ourself. So we play safe. We play small. We make sure we don’t tip into the direction of getting triggered, but we also aren’t free to tip in the direction of play and joy. We have a very small range of what is tolerable. While we may fool ourselves into thinking this is what it takes to keep things “good” in the relationship, this narrow range is more like a prison than a safe zone. And it’s not just our relationship with others that can operate here, but also our relationship with ourself. Yes, you can walk on eggshells with yourself! In this episode we are going to talk about how to expand our range of emotion, because life is so much richer when we can open up the range of what can be felt and experienced.
Before we begin, I invite you to join me in a short three breath meditation. Breathe is one of the fastest and easiest ways to begin this process of expanding.
A month ago I flew across the country to Boston, to join a circle of women in ceremony for Beltane. In case you aren’t familiar, Beltane is the midpoint between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. For the past year I have loved celebrating the wheel of the year, Mother Nature’s turn of the seasons and doing so in ceremony has been such an enriching and meaningful way for me to connect with the divine feminine. I have been gathering with these women online each month for the New Moon, but this was a special extra ceremony held in person so I jumped at the opportunity to be in nature with these women in real life, even if it meant spontaneously flying across the county at the drop of a hat.
There are some things that are just not possible in a virtual experience. And this ceremony most definitely needed to be held in person. There were experiences we were able to have together that were magnified by being in nature and in the presence of such amazing women from so many backgrounds. Growing up in Utah, my circle of women has always been very homogenous, and this group of women was the exact opposite. There were women from all over the country from different religious backgrounds, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, different beliefs, and career paths. It was so beautiful to gather together in all our diversity and yet be unified in our love for Mother Nature and the Divine Feminine.
I really had no idea what to expect. We were told to dress in black and to be prepared to get messy and wild. I deeply love and trust our guide, Sarah Jenks, who is an Ordained Priestess, so I went into the experience with confidence that whatever happened I would be held and taken care of.
This ceremony was unlike any other I have ever done. There was a big bonfire, and loud drums beating as if it was a call from the wild primal parts of mother nature herself. We were dressed in black and were invited to put black paint on our faces. In the beginning there was dancing and then an invitation to explore rage by screaming out any of our suppressed anger many of us had likely built up over a lifetime. Having had my own screaming sessions in breath work classes and my own solitude in nature, I was already willing to open myself up to these deep shadow parts of myself.
In my breath work classes, however, I had been in the dark with a sleep mask on. Even though I had heard other people screaming, I didn’t see them. This ceremony was different. We were in broad daylight and here I was witnessing the pain and trauma and grief and betrayal that these women had carried with them and seeing it unfold right before my eyes.
Everyone and everything indeed is connected. I cannot witness the pain of another person without it surfacing and touching something inside of me. Every person has buried anger or rage inside somewhere but we rarely show it to each other, let alone strangers. As such we often suffer alone with the crazy belief that we’re the only one feeling this way so we suppress it or fear it and shut ourselves off from those feelings in shame that it reveals our unworthiness or could lead to our rejection from our tribe if anyone knew what we had so expertly learned to bury within.
At the ceremony we screamed into the fire. We cried. I have enough trauma from just the past few years to have an idea of what I was screaming about, but even still, I know there was rage that was coming up for me that was so old I had forgotten what it was even about.
The ceremony progressed into individual women voicing what was holding them back in their life right now. I think what surprised me the most was to know just how diverse we were and yet to see the exact same challenges pop up over and over again. Women feeling burned out, tired of the mental load, overwhelmed from caring for everyone else, people pleasing, keeping up an image, pressure to conform, not having a voice, not being seen or heard, feeling unworthy and not good enough, having to override your own desires or intuition to not rock the boat, on and on… it was all the same stuff. I realized these challenges are very much a part of the human life and not at all unique to my own culture experience. I’ll say it a thousand times over, but having a safe space to release the anger and rage is some of the most deeply healing work I have ever done. There’s a reason that this rage is often referred to as sacred rage. After an entire lifetime of judging the dark shadow side of my emotional experience, there is the most expansive and liberating feeling to finally give space for its expression with no judgement. It is indescribable.
After everyone had a moment to be seen and heard and express their own challenges, Sarah Jenks then invited us all to lay down on the earth and then guided us in an amazing meditation. I don’t remember a thing about the meditation, because I was so struck by this feeling of overwhelming bliss and peace and a single word that kept repeating over and over in my mind.
Range.
R-a-n-g-e.
What I felt laying there on the earth, right next to the dirt and rocks and moss, and an entire universe of life supporting me was absolute bliss. It was a joy and expansiveness that I have only experienced a few other times before.
So what does range mean?
For me, I was struck with the range of emotion. To go from an experience of sacred rage to so quickly feeling estatic bliss is a massive range of emotion. We don’t typically travel the extremes of the emotional spectrum that quickly in daily life. If I’m angry at home, it takes me time just to get to neutral, let alone to feel joyful. Most times I count it a win if I get to neutral in the same day.
But even more than that, I was most struck with this idea of range in how our willingness to go to the depths IS what expands our capacity to feel the heights.
Megan Watterson in her book, Mary Magdalene Revealed so poetically states that farther up is further in. Farther up is further in. If we want to ascend we have to be willing to go deeper inside ourselves. Or put another way, she explains that the way to ascend, is actually to descend.
We must learn how to descend into the depths of our humanity. To confront our wounded parts. To make peace with them and to love them. This is what paradoxically leads us to peace and transcendence.
When we live a life judging our emotions or wounded parts, when we ignore or suppress our shadow self, what happens to us is the opposite of expansive range. Instead of gaining access to joy and bliss our emotional experience of life is narrowed. It’s like trying to live in a safety zone where we don’t veer too far into depths but by so doing we’re also limiting the heights. We may think we have joy, but in my own lived experience I can say my experience of love and joy AFTER being willing to love and accept the depths of emotion and all my wounded parts is so much higher and holier. It’s in a whole new dimension.
The reason for this expanded love and joy comes from no longer rejecting parts of myself. I therefore have more wholeness. Love and joy felt from a place of wholeness is different than love and joy felt from a place where you still judge and reject yourself or others. If you’re in a state of judging anyone you’re not in a state of wholeness. You’re in a state of separateness. This is why Jesus so beautifully teaches about oneness prior to inviting us to love God with our WHOLE selves and love our neighbor as ourself.
The principle of oneness is the ticket to the highest expression of love you can experience.
I was never taught how to do this. Instead I learned to judge my human nature as evil or bad. I was conditioned by the world to be sweet and compliant. If I feel anger or let alone expressed it, I was judged by others and most certainly judged myself. I would go into a suffering state of separation and exile myself from love as a form of punishment for my unworthiness. But it doesn’t have to be this way. After all, this self judgement has never ever proven to work for me or anyone else. Shame and judgement and exiling and burying the shadows does not do what we think it will do. There is a better way.
As we’ve already explored in previous lessons, there are safe and healthy ways to express the depths of emotion. As you learn to do this, you expand your range.
As you learn to love and accept all parts of who you are, you experience love from a higher level because it’s coming from wholeness. Your range expands.
And finally, as you learn to do this, you also increase in your capacity to offer this same love and acceptance to those around you as well because it’s all connected.
I am still very much a student at this process. But I can tell you that it works and that it is the most deeply healing work I have ever done.
This morning as I was walking the trail behind my house, I passed a group of women from my neighborhood and church. A year ago seeing these women would have struck fear through my entire body at the assumption that they must surely judge me and pity me for questioning religion and worse yet, sharing my journey and questions publicly. Today, I saw them and my body was calm. I felt love for myself, and love for them as well. I didn’t see them with a label that divided us. I simply saw them as my human sisters. We passed and exchanged greetings and went on our merry way.
Old Brooke would have walked home lit up in shame, certain of the gossip that would happen among the group at my expense. But this morning, healed Brooke walked home peacefully without worrying about gossip. It shows me that the experience of my reality has a whole lot less to do with what others think of me and more to do with what I think of myself. Whether it’s neighbors, parents, in-laws, friends, or strangers, we all have someone we assume doesn’t love and accept us. While this may be true, what it actually reveals is that we don’t love and accept ourselves. The world is a mirror.
As above, so below.
As within, so without.
This is the law of correspondence and one of the most powerful laws for understanding and changing your life.
Robert Edward Grant has repeatedly said, “The world is not a challenging place because people hate each other, the world is a challenging place because people hate themselves.”
I have lived the truth of this statement. I most definitely rejected and judged parts of who I am. I have judged my body, I have judged my emotions, I judged my desires and hopes and dreams, I judged my questions, I have judged my non conformity, I have judged and judged and judged.
We project this self judgement onto other people and we think that others are judging us. We think others are judging our body, when really it is us who is judging our body. We think others are judging our life choices, when really it is a part of us who is judging our life choices. We think others don’t accept us. When really it is us that doesn’t accept a part of ourself.
When you do the healing work of loving and accepting yourself the projections evaporate and you no longer perceive this message coming from other people. Instead you just see people as they are without your own story of self judgement reflecting back at you. There may still be some who judge you, but you now have discernment to see that their opinions come from their own wounded projections and not yours. You no longer need their love and approval because you already have it from the one person you really need it from. Yourself.
There is so much conflict happening in the world right now. I mourn with the many souls who have been lost in the Middle East. I mourn with the people who are suffering here in my own country. I mourn with those who are suffering in marginalized groups. The world is so divided. You may feel powerless to do anything for the suffering in the world. And yet, the most powerful way to heal this division is to heal it in yourself. You can absolutely do something about the division inside of you. When you heal yourself there is one less projection of division that is broadcasted out into the world.
This is the power of healing our emotions and wounded parts.
This is what it means to love ourselves without condition.
We don’t reserve our love only for the parts of us we think deserve it, or the parts we think the outside world can handle and tolerate. We love all of our parts. We love the parts that are angry and rejected. We love the parts of us that are sad and depressed. We love the parts that have been secretly hiding or hurting for so so long. We love the parts who have made terrible mistakes. We honor the depths of our emotions through healthy expression and in doing so we expand our range. We gain access to higher realms of love and joy simply because we are becoming more whole, because our whole selves are welcome at the table. And yes, this is how you heal the world. You do this for you. And you model it for those around you. One by one there is a ripple effect until what we see in the outside world begins to match the love we have cultivated on the inside.
Expand your range. Be willing to go to the depths so you can expand into the heights as well.
Descend to ascend.
Expand your range.
Having experienced life both from a narrow range as well as an expanded one, I can say there is no way I ever want to go back to the narrow range of life. It’s like experiencing the world in high definition color and being asked if you want to go back to the black and white version of life. Black and white feels sterile and lacking soul when you have tasted the full range of the world of color.
After having experienced both, I can say that the world of color feels real and the world of black and does not.
There’s something profoundly enhanced about your life experience when you live it with your whole self. When all parts of you are loved and welcome your senses have higher capacity. You hear more, see more, taste more, feel more, smell more. You’re more present because ALL OF YOU is present.
From the black and white world of judgement and shame that divides me and others into separation, I can love and accept each part of me back into wholeness, one by one, and as I do a little more color returns to my world, then a little more and a little more, until there is no stark black and white division but hues and gradients coloring my world into the most spectacular vision to behold.
I don’t think I ever realized how limited my range of life had been before from living so fractured. To have some parts of me I rejected or condemned or buried, narrowed my range of life. It numbed my senses and my ability to be present. The journey back to self is the greatest treasure hunt of this life. Unconditional love is how you get there.
Expand your range, dear one.
Expand your range.
Love and accept all parts of who you are without judgement and watch the color come into your life. Watch how healing your inner world heals the outer world as well.
The light in me honors the light in you.
Namaste.
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This episode is part of a new course I’m teaching on the Co Create app called “Reclamation of feeling”. And although you can surely benefit from the lessons shared for free here on the podcast, I would love to invite you into a deeper experience of the course on the app, complete with guided meditations to integrate these principles and exercises as well as the opportunity to submit questions and be part of our community. If you aren’t yet subscribed to the app, I would love to invite you to a free one month trial, simply use the code OneHeart30 for 30 days free at brookesnow.com/app.
The light in me honors the light in you. Namaste.
SHOWNOTES:
Use code ONEHEART30 to get 30 days free on the Co Create App and gain access to the guided meditations and Q&A that accompanies this Reclamation of Feeling course.
