The Way Back
Regaining Trust and Faith After Being Hurt
By Liona Hotta
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The Body as the Gateway to Intuition.
In order to connect with our intuition, we first need to connect with our body, because the body is the receiver of our intuition. It is a finely tuned radar that picks up meaning, atmosphere, moods, intentions, and messages from our surroundings.
The mind is the perceiver, the analyzer, and the executor of the information we receive through the body.
It is well known that the same reality can be experienced by two different people in completely different ways. Because of this, what we call reality is always subjective. Reality is not only what we receive, but how we perceive what we receive.
So the body receives data, from the soul, from this realm, and perhaps from beyond it, through the conduit of intuition. The mind then interprets that data and gives instructions on how to respond, how to handle what is being experienced.
How the Mind Protects Us.
But the mind is never a completely objective analyzer. It interprets new information by comparing it to past conclusions it has already stored. Its primary role is to keep us safe, alive, and able to survive. It does this by collecting experiences, drawing conclusions from them, and acting according to those conclusions.
Because of this, each new event is identified and stored alongside similar events from the past, then approached accordingly. The mind quickly divides experience into categories such as good or bad, pleasant or uncomfortable, uplifting or depressing, positive or negative.
For example, imagine you were once in a monogamous relationship in which you expected loyalty, but your partner was unfaithful, and the relationship ended because of the pain that betrayal caused. Your mind may then continue to analyze future situations through the lens of that past experience. It may become alert to any behavior that suggests a current partner, or even a potential one, could also become disloyal.
In this sense, the mind is trying to protect you. It has registered the pain of the previous experience and now sends warnings about possible future hurt.
On one level, this is useful. It can help you recognize genuine red flags and make wiser choices. It is healthy to learn from experience.
But sometimes we begin punishing ourselves, and even new partners, because we have lost trust. Our present reality no longer sees the new person for who they are. Instead, we see them through the old mental file the mind has stored under the category of “partner”: painful, unsafe, untrustworthy, dangerous.
In the extreme case, the mind creates a simple equation: partner equals pain. And then, in order not to feel pain again, we reject opportunities for intimacy and closeness altogether.
This is where suffering begins.
When Protection Becomes Suffering.
Suffering is the result of the constant effort to prevent pain. When we live our lives trying to dodge pain at all costs, we create suffering.
Let me give an example.
My fairly new neighbors had a dog who cried whenever they were not at home. That meant all morning until they came back from work, sometimes at night when they worked night shifts, and on weekend nights when they went out. She cried almost constantly.
We shared a wall, so whenever she started crying, we heard her as though she were in one of our rooms.
For a while, I did not want to confront them about it. They had just moved in, and I thought perhaps the dog was still adjusting to the new home. I felt pity for her and for them. I also did not want my new neighbors to think badly of me, to see me as impatient or unwelcoming. But for me, working from home and sleeping early was becoming impossible.
You see, I was avoiding the conversation because I was afraid of being seen in an unloving way. My people pleasing mechanism appeared every time I thought about speaking to them. It would whisper, “This is not nice of you. This is not kind. What will they think of you?”
So instead of facing the reality that this situation was hurting me in the present, disturbing me, exhausting me, and preventing me from living normally, I stayed focused on the possible discomfort of confrontation. I suffered quietly in order to avoid the pain I imagined the confrontation would bring.
One night the dog cried until two in the morning. I finally heard my neighbor come home. Ten minutes later, I heard the door close again, and the dog started crying once more. The next day I had to wake up early, and I reached my limit. I looked out my bathroom window, which overlooks the alley leading to the houses, saw my neighbor leaving, and shouted, “Please don’t go. I can’t sleep.”
She replied, “I forgot something in the car. I’m coming right back. I’m not going anywhere.”
The following morning, I finally decided to end my suffering by facing my fear of confronting my neighbors.
It turned out they had no idea their dog was crying all that time. They heard her cry when they left and when they came back, but they assumed it was only for those few moments. They apologized and started leaving her at a relative’s house whenever they were away.
So I had to reach the point where my suffering became more unbearable than the fear and discomfort involved in confronting them.
We do this in many areas of life. We suffer when we avoid saying no. We suffer when we avoid setting boundaries. We suffer when we avoid difficult conversations, necessary decisions, or uncomfortable truths.
And yet, as long as we are alive, pain will always be part of life.
The Role of Faith.
So what allows us to keep opening to life after pain? What allows us to enter new relationships and truly enjoy them, despite the painful experiences we have already registered? What makes us give partnership, trust, or life itself another chance?
It is faith.
Faith is when we trust ourselves to choose differently, and more wisely, this time.
Faith is a higher vision of potential, of the unseen. It is the courageous step we take beyond past experience and beyond old conclusions.
Faith is a combination of inner knowing and trust. It is the recognition that there is something beyond what we currently perceive as reality, and the willingness to allow that possibility despite our previous experiences or present circumstances.
But faith also depends on how we experience ourselves within reality, whether we see ourselves only as victims of what happens to us, or as conscious participants in our own lives.
When we appear in life only as victims, we remain in a position where everything happens to us. Things are done to us. We are powerless, unable to respond, unable to grow, unable to change our circumstances.
But when we meet life as creators, or at least as responsible participants, something changes. Responsibility enters the picture. Not blame, but responsibility. We begin to see that even painful experiences can become part of our learning. We may have once chosen what was not right for us because we still had something to learn. And because we learned, we can now choose differently.
Whenever we grow, whenever we expand beyond our current size, we use faith. We use it to step beyond our comfort zone, beyond our old conclusions, beyond what we thought were our limits.
We expand through faith.
Faith and Wound Healing.
In order for faith to be strong enough to carry us toward a new and potentially beautiful experience after a painful one, we first need to tend to the wounds left by the past.
We need to see the past experience for what it was. We need to separate it from the present. We need to allow ourselves to feel the pain it caused.
When we allow pain to simply be, healing can begin.
Pain, on any level, is a call for attention. When part of the body aches, it is asking for attention, a change in posture, rest, care, or intervention. Attention helps the body heal.
Emotional pain asks for attention as well. It asks us to hold space for it. Emotional pain and trauma can be so difficult to face that it is natural to bypass them in an attempt to avoid the feelings attached to them.
But where do we feel emotional pain?
In the body.
Physical pain and emotional pain are both expressed in the body. The body is where we need to go when we want to heal. It is where we need to bring our attention so that we can truly meet the pain and move through it.
Everything that happens to us in this life is experienced through the body.
The answer is always to tune in to the body.
Even our ability to connect with higher realms, with spirit, with inner light, happens by going within, not by searching somewhere outside of ourselves. The answers to all our questions are within us.
Connecting to the body, connecting to the breath, connecting to spirit, connecting to our inner light, reconnecting to pain so it can heal, reconnecting to intuition, to self trust, and to reality itself, all of it begins in the body.
It is all there.
Closing.
So what allows us to be faithful, to trust, to believe, and to grow?
The ability to connect to our intuition.
And in order to connect to our intuition, we must first learn to return to the body.