The Lesson Many Spiritual Teachers Avoid: Facing Suffering

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough Podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Bestselling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough Podcast.

So today we're going to be talking about an aspect of spiritual recovery that many spiritual teachers shy away from.

When we are thinking about healing from things like narcissistic abuse or childhood trauma,

Many of us get stuck in the mental field.

We get stuck in the mental field because our brain is designed to run away from forest fires rather than towards them.

And if we can,

For a moment,

Imagine that emotional pain and cesspools of painful memories are equivalent to forest fires,

Then we understand how within our being,

At an automatic level,

At a subconscious level,

At a neurological level,

The mind is going to run away from that pain.

How does it do that?

The mind suppresses,

The mind rationalizes,

The mind denies,

And the mind develops coping strategies to help with the negative emotions the pain of the past brings up.

This is a wonderful design and very beneficial if we were all still wandering through jungles and forests and needed to run quickly from predators like saber-toothed tigers.

The fight or flight system is a beautiful design.

It is designed to allow us to fight an attacker or to flee an attacker.

The problem is that when it comes to trauma that we can't escape,

As in the case of living with a narcissist or having a narcissistic parent,

You can't run.

You're dependent and you can't fight them.

You're stuck.

So your mind comes up with other responses to deal with this chronic stress.

And therefore,

Because we can't escape the stress,

We are sitting in it.

We're baking in it and we can't escape it.

So how do we then deal with stress that we can't escape?

We freeze.

We numb out.

We dissociate.

Or we learn to fawn,

Which is figuring out what other people need,

Which requires that we let go of our own needs,

Which means I have to know how you feel,

Which means I don't know how I feel.

I don't even care how I feel.

It's completely off my psychological radar.

I care how you feel.

I have to care how you feel because this is the way I will survive.

Now,

The other aspect of healing that,

In my opinion,

Many spiritual teachers don't teach is this idea that the mind is dualistic.

You will hear that in spiritual classes and spiritual teachings,

That the mind is more subconscious than it is conscious.

But I think those of us who consider ourselves truth seekers,

Those of us who consider ourselves as people who are lightworkers or healers or guides,

Those of us who feel an inner calling to personal development work,

To healing from the past,

Those of us who know that our childhood homes were not the best and follow the work of those who teach about abandonment issues and insecure attachment issues,

Neglect,

Adult children of alcoholic issues,

All of these issues dovetail beautifully when we are thinking about and talking about the path to enlightenment.

Because what we need to understand is that when we were children,

We were in a hypnotic brainwave state.

Like,

I'm not joking.

Let that sink in.

Between the ages of zero and seven,

You were in a trance-like state.

None of us escape this hypnotic brainwave state.

Now,

That means that whatever I experienced from the ages of zero to seven,

I believed.

Now,

It gets really complicated,

But at the same time,

It's very simplistic.

And if we can develop awareness around this very intricate design and how simple it is to wound a child and to become emotionally,

Psychologically,

Mentally,

Vibrationally,

And even physiologically stuck at an earlier stage of development by seeing it,

By calling it out,

By diving nose-first into it,

Then we can shift it.

What I believed between the ages of zero and seven have become subconscious patterns of thought.

Now,

They have become neurological pathways.

If you understand thought as energy,

You must understand that neurons are energy and that neurons that fire together,

Wire together.

So that means that you could have a brain that has thought a thought over and over and over,

And through repetition,

Observation,

And consistency,

Has learned to believe what you have experienced.

And so,

For instance,

If I have a mother who is cold and stoic and is unable to meet me where I am,

I feel,

Which is energy,

Isolated.

I feel unworthy of love.

Now,

These feelings of unworthiness,

They don't go away.

They're reinforced.

When I wake up in the morning and I hope that mommy is excited to see me,

And instead I've met or I am met with a feeling of disgust or I feel like a burden or I feel like a nuisance.

Now,

This isn't a one-time experience.

This is over and over and over and over.

I develop neurological pathways that literally sound like I am bad,

I am no good,

I am worthless.

Nothing ever works out for me.

Life is painful.

I need to shut down.

My feelings don't matter.

When this is our inner dialogue,

We don't always recognize the neurological consequences of that dialogue.

And that's why when I coach people,

When I coach those who are recovering from alcoholism or an addiction,

When I coach people who are struggling with narcissistic abuse and codependency and abandonment issues,

I really try to drive home this point that you literally have a brain that has a program that is running on loop.

The reason I do that is to help people disidentify from the program.

We are not our programs.

We are not the mind.

And unfortunately,

Many of us identify with our minds.

And by the way,

Isn't that what narcissists do?

Narcissists believe everything that runs through their mind.

Every impulse,

Every feeling,

And every emotion.

Their lack of self-awareness is off the charts.

Their inability to separate from the mind is significant.

And that's why it is so important that if you are here,

If you gravitate towards my work,

If you resonate with what I share,

You must understand the illusion that the narcissist is under is real for them.

And if you are not careful,

You will be sucked into their world of illusions.

You will be sucked into their mind.

And so what is it that so many spiritual teachers shy away from?

I totally appreciate the value of someone teaching me or instructing me to drop the mind.

I totally appreciate the wisdom of those who say,

Eh,

Don't pay attention to your thoughts.

I totally get it.

And in a perfect world,

That would be simple to do.

It would be simple to say,

Wow,

My mind is the result of 3D identity experiences.

I identified myself as unworthy as a child.

In the background of my mind,

I have believed this rhetoric,

Not my fault.

It's really nonsense that I'm not enough.

And the rhetoric and the negative ego identification beyond these physical 3D experiences,

There I am.

I am so much more than the thoughts in my head.

I am not the experiences that happened to me when I was a small child,

Nor am I the false beliefs the inner child within me believed while going through those experiences.

I'm none of that.

And considering levels of consciousness,

If you can imagine our child's consciousness being level one consciousness,

Or ground floor consciousness,

And our journey on the path to enlightenment is to keep elevating our consciousness,

To keep pressing those buttons up,

Floor two,

Floor three,

Floor four,

And so on.

And I feel like the benefit of being in a toxic relationship is the ability to be able to see that I'm actually in a toxic relationship.

And when I am in a toxic relationship,

I might be stuck on floor four.

I might be stuck there for a while.

I've had clients that have been in relationships for six months,

And those who have been in toxic relationships for 40 years,

Unaware that they were unaware,

Unaware that they have the ability to observe the way their mind thinks.

And this is a very powerful spiritual tool.

Metacognition is a spiritual tool,

The ability to think and to observe the way one thinks.

It's becoming the observer of the one who is doing the observing.

Fabulous.

And so when you are in a toxic relationship,

It is very important that you see it for what it is.

And one of the reasons that I continue to talk about codependency,

Which brings the adult child of an alcoholic or the adult child of a narcissistic home,

Right to the point,

This is why you are codependent.

This is why you remain in one way relationships.

This is why you don't set boundaries.

This is why you're afraid to say no.

And so rather than drop the mind,

I need my clients to look at the mind because the only way to transcend the mind is to accept what the mind has done,

To accept the ego identity,

To accept the illusion,

And to eventually understand that it has all been an illusion.

This is not you.

This is your program manifesting in the 3D world.

And as we begin to understand codependency,

As we begin to understand the consequences of being in a narcissistic relationship,

Which by the way is the benefit of learning about narcissism.

If you are learning about narcissism because you want to become self-righteous,

You want to be able to point the finger at your sister and or your mother and talk about it on Facebook about how wronged you have been by these family members,

You are stuck.

The benefit of learning about narcissism is so that you can see the reflection,

So that you can see how your ego has identified with this situation,

How maybe you have actually sat at the table with the narcissist and drank their Kool-Aid,

How you have absorbed their faulty perceptions of you,

How you have falsely identified with the narcissist in so much as you have been trying to heal the narcissist,

Change the narcissist,

Or be what the narcissist wants you to be,

Which is ego identification.

You're part of this ego construct,

Whether you realize it or not.

The benefit of learning about narcissism is so that you can see where you're stuck.

It's not so that you can take up this self-righteous sword and go and mark them up on Facebook and talk about them within your social group and say,

Oh yeah,

He's a narcissist and she's a narcissist,

Unless of course you are learning about this for your own spiritual development.

It is not about saying this person is wrong and I am right or I am the victim of this person,

Although by definition you are,

Because narcissists are predator type personalities,

They will spiritually drain you.

If we were talking about the light and the dark,

We would be talking about an energy being that is in the dark,

That is living in the cave,

That believes the illusions in their mind and their ego defense mechanisms,

And through love bombing and through flattery and sometimes through sob stories,

Lures people into this cave and therefore will,

They will,

Dim your light over time.

As long as you remain in this paradigm,

You remain stuck.

Your ego gets caught up with the narcissist's ego.

The true benefit of learning about narcissism and codependency,

Attachment trauma and alike,

Toxic relationships,

Is not so that you can feel like this person was wrong and you were right,

It's so that you can learn and benefit from your own shadows.

You can learn from these relationships because they help identify and clarify where you are spiritually stuck.

I believe that the path to enlightenment must include the ability to understand the mind and to observe the mind.

Once I understand my mind and I understand the madness,

The neurosis,

The pathology of my mind,

It is then that I'm able to separate from my mind and understand that there is an observer within and higher,

There is one who can observe the observer within.

If I'm able to do that,

Then I am able to leave behind that which no longer serves me.

If I'm super lucky and if my intention and my heart is pointed in the right direction,

Then I know that forgiveness is a part of this journey,

That letting go and that forgiving those who have harmed me,

Getting to a Christ consciousness where Christ says,

Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.

That would be akin to you saying to every person who your ego has believed has wounded you,

I get it.

You were part of my subconscious reality.

You were a mirror to the wounds within me.

It is not your fault that you're wounded.

It is not my fault that I'm wounded.

It just is the nature of reality.

As it is below,

So shall it is above.

As I become or as you become more and more conscious of what is below and what lurks in the subconscious mind,

That which within you is dark,

You bring it to the light or you bring light to it.

The path to enlightenment must include looking at the mind,

Observing the mind.

The difference is when you are doing this work and you're doing it consciously is that you no longer identify with the mind.

You no longer say this should be a part of my mind and it shouldn't.

It just is.

I shouldn't be in a relationship with a narcissist,

But you are and that's okay.

You shouldn't be codependent,

But you are and that's okay.

These things happened in your childhood and we have to surrender to it.

Saying that it's okay that these things happened isn't the same as saying that these people get a pass.

As much as it is I must accept what I cannot change,

These things happened and it's my job on the spiritual path to become nonresistant to that which is to become nonresistant to the sensations that happen in my body as a memory is recalled rather than to push it away or to grab a bottle and drink those sensations away or to beat myself up because I have this anxiety or the suffering related to this memory.

No,

It means that I embrace it all.

I accept how I feel.

I don't push away or push against the thoughts that I'm feeling,

But I stay conscious that I am not my thoughts,

That I am not my sensations.

One of the anchoring thoughts that I've relied on in my life is I'm enough.

I'm enough even if I'm not perfect,

Even if at one point during the day I reveal a part of myself that is non-flattering or unflattering,

I'm still enough and I am grateful that this aspect of my personality has revealed itself to me so that I can surrender to it and as I surrender to it I find the power to dissolve it and to shift it and if I don't push against it then I can get to the next level of consciousness.

So our goal as we heal from trauma is to not so much drop the mind as much as it is to accept the mind and to accept the maya and to accept the neurosis of the mind or the pathological thinking.

Just accept it.

Don't attach to it.

Don't push it away and remember that you are not your thoughts and you are not your mind.

As we heal from childhood trauma,

As we become aware of narcissistic relationships,

We become aware that these relationships are showing us where we are stuck in this cave of ego identification and in that awareness is the ability to shift,

To let go and to dissolve the ego identification,

The need to prove someone wrong,

The need to be right,

The need to say you are a narcissist and I am the one that you took advantage of rather than saying that or once we acknowledge that or once we become aware that that is our consciousness at that point,

That is our level of awareness at the moment.

In that we accept and we surrender and we get to the next level of consciousness which is I am non-resistant to these experiences.

It could be no other way and I am willing to continue to thrive in consciousness and to move towards the light and to heal that which is revealed in these relationships.

So I am willing to look at my mind.

I am willing to feel or experience the sensations in my body and to observe the madness of my mind and therefore the attachments of my mind and when you can observe your attachments,

You are also observing your suffering and you are not pushing against the suffering.

Your understanding,

Human suffering has to do with attachments and ego identifications which has to do with rationalization and justifications for why you are where you are.

And so I say on the path to enlightenment,

Embrace it all,

Embrace everything.

Look around you and accept exactly where you are and that's tough because your mind doesn't want to accept where you are and then your mind might want to blame someone else for why you are where you are.

Try to just accept where you are,

Surrender completely to where you are,

Try not to identify or attach to your emotions but allow your emotions to come up whether it's frustration,

Empowerlessness,

Then watch the thoughts that come up and ask yourself if those are empowering thoughts or disempowering thoughts and if you can do this long enough,

If you can go into the stillness within,

If you cannot attach to your thoughts,

Your guidance will.

.

.

If you can get quiet,

If you cannot engage with other people for a while,

If you can get in the habit of being the observer,

If you can get in the habit of being still and silent,

Not engaging,

Really get quiet,

Then in time what will happen is you will be able to hear your inner guidance like nothing before and that is my hope for you.

Namaste.

Until next time,

Bye for now.