Align! Module Four Self-Study Curriculum

Align! Week Four Self-Study Vocabulary/Concepts: Ego Energetic Weather Pain Bodies Feel & Process Reading: “Ego: The Current State of Humanity” and “The Core of Ego,” excerpts from Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth

Ego: The Ego is who we think we are. Our personality, our job, our roles/hats, our social and societal identities, even our name. Before we begin to wake up to our Divine nature and realize that we are connected to everyone and everything—that we are infinite, that we are energy—our Ego calls the shots. Ego is mostly learned patterning and programming from our family, culture, and society that dictates to us who we are on more levels than we can fathom.

As we begin to spend more time connecting with our Awareness Body, we are able to begin observing our Ego self with more distance and curiosity. This can often lead to a sense of looking at ourselves for the first time and truly seeing ourselves. As we witness our mind patterns, our behaviors, our quirks, each moment is an opportunity to ask ourselves, is this an authentic or learned part of me? The more we engage in these self-reflective practices,

the less rigid the Ego becomes and the more malleable our behaviors.

For instance, we might find ourselves becoming more compassionate with ourselves and others. We might find it easier to apologize and take accountability for our missteps. We might find ourselves walking away from parts of ourselves that we have outgrown, even if this includes interests and passions that used to fulfill us. We might even find ourselves taking up new interests and passions that we had never considered before. Overall, we generally find ourselves less held back by Ego fear as we wake up to the truth of who we really are.

On the way to getting here, however, Ego will often rear its head and become louder before it calms down and takes a backseat to the Heart. It likes being in control. It is afraid to give up control. The more you can act as a compassionate witness to your lingering Ego pieces, the more gentle they will become.

One key way of doing this is by not trying to fight the Ego—what we resist persists. We are not trying to eradicate Ego, we are just trying to right size it and allow it to service the Heart. The Ego helps us to safely navigate the 3D world. We want to befriend it, understand it, and to put it at ease when it becomes activated.

Understanding Pain Bodies: A pain body is simply any dense emotion or vibration that is not fully acknowledged and witnessed in our energy field. It continues to live in the body until it is processed and released. Our reason for stuffing these emotions down often dates back to childhood traumas when we were vulnerable and unsafe and didn’t have the awareness or tools to healthily process what was happening to us.

As we age, we continue this practice because it’s hardwired into the body as what feels “safe.” But the truth is that we ARE safe, most of

the time— our fear responses are simply lying to us in most circumstances. By learning how to witness and sit with—even to befriend and send some gratitude and compassion into our pain bodies—we allow for the possibility of overriding our hardwired fear responses and to move into more Heart-centered living.

And we want this, right? We want to grow into trusting ourselves and trusting that we can handle what the body is asking us to acknowledge. We owe it to ourselves and to our bodies to learn to listen. Our pain bodies will keep getting louder and louder until we do. They will continue to want to feed.

Collective Pain Bodies: Our pain bodies can also be inherited.

These pain bodies are intergenerational and/or karmic, meaning that they have been passed down to us through our lineage, or through other lifetimes. They can also be connected to the social identities connected to the bodies that we are living in in this life expression. Many of us are being called to do healing work on ourselves right now to help transmute density out of the collective field, to break ancestral patterns, and to bring more light into the earth plane as we shift from 3D to 5D. These pain bodies teach us that the cure is in the wound. As we come to heal our wounds, we often gain a clearer understanding of our Soul Purpose in this lifetime. As we learn how to heal ourselves we often begin to hold space for others for their healing journeys. The more work we do to heal any inherited pain bodies, individual or collective, the more open-hearted we become.

Understanding our Emotions: It’s important to remember that emotions are not “good” or “bad,” they just are. They are the body’s attempt to communicate that something is not in alignment with our heart and the truth of who we are. When we are able to witness and get curious about what the material is beneath our triggers and reactions, we allow ourselves an opportunity to bring them into

awareness and override our hardwired responses to uncomfortable and challenging life experiences. We also begin to repair our relationship with our bodies and emotions by showing that we are trustworthy and capable of listening and honoring our inner needs so that our “protector parts” that have been developed from years of not being able to meet our own needs are able to see that we are now taking responsibility for ourselves.

Because our unworthiness stories are rooted in fears of being unlovable, “bad,” or “not enough” (which is also “too much”), when we experience emotions that are not readily recognized as “happy” we stuff them down because we are afraid of what we will find out about ourselves. Our “pain bodies” are simply a result of all the accumulated excess of unprocessed, low, dense vibrations in the body. By bringing them into the light they lose their power over us (fear →love). The more we begin to live in 5D, or heart-based consciousness, the less time we spend in activated pain bodies, and the more compassion we can send others when we see them acting out old pain bodies on us.

As we release these old stories and vibrations from the body, we also free up space for higher vibrations and our Destination Vibrations. If we don’t do this essential work then we will have a “wobbly” vibration—we may be able to manifest and attract what we want for a little while, but the presence of those lower vibrations will ultimately lead us to lose those things, or at the very least make for a very tumultuous ride. When we purge these vibrations from the body we energetically “uplevel” without the low, dense undertones. This allows the things we are working with in our Destination Vibration to materialize more quickly.

We can do this through conscious and unconscious pathways, or through body, mind, spirit, and Heart. Journaling, self-observation and reflection, and asking ourselves questions about where these blockages are stemming from engage the analytical mind and teach

us how to begin to choose a different way to respond. This is a way to heal the parts of ourselves that are operating in 3D. We can also work more energetically by bringing in 5D tools to do this work. Body Scanning allows us to simply be with whatever is arising in our body, and to recognize any sensations for what they are—vibrations. Mantras and Pranayama allow us to energetically work with these denser vibrations and blockages by skillfully shifting the energetic landscape of our field. Practices like the Violet Flame and the Sacred Heart Cave allow us increased access to our own hearts and our connection with Divine, so that we can more easily decipher when we are acting out of Ego and old stories, and when we are acting in alignment with our highest and greatest good.

Ideally, we are using a combination of tools that are working together to clear 3D and 5D aspects of ourselves. The more we practice, the more our fields learn how good it feels to live in alignment with our inner truth, and the less time we will spend living in our pain bodies or tolerating situations that no longer serve us.

Practices: Processing and Releasing Pain Bodies: Take some time to journal about how these pain bodies manifest in your life: •

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What are my triggers, or in Eckhart Tolle’s terms, my “pain bodies”?

When and how do they get activated?

Where do they live in my body? What do they feel like?

In truth, these “pain bodies” are just fragmented parts that we have banished outside of our I-concept, and labeled as “bad.” When we begin to get beneath the behaviors and patterns, we can begin to

befriend these pain bodies and send them compassion. Once you have identified some of your more notorious pain bodies, consider asking them some questions: • • •

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What is it that you are trying to protect me from?

What is that you need to feel safe right now?

See if you can add some levity to your pain bodies. Consider giving them a name, or a personality. This can help to make them more identifiable and manageable.

As they arise, see if you can check in with yourself and ask, “is it true that I am unsafe right now?” If the answer is that you are safe, kindly thank them for trying to keep you safe, and then remind them that you are the adult in the room actively vouching for your needs. They can rest and relax now.

Feel and Process: The “Feel and Process” method is a way of intentionally working with body scanning as we are triggered. This method builds upon the body scanning techniques we have been doing to bring direct awareness to our pain bodies and strong emotions as they arise within the body. It provides a working tool to process emotional turbulence in real time.

When we allow for the energetic weather to flow through us, witnessing and honoring its presence as an attempt to communicate that something is out of alignment, we allow for the possibility of releasing the vibration with ease. One way to consider it is that the quicker we process it, the quicker it leaves our field. The longer we repress it, the longer it stays (sometimes years—or generations).

From a 5D perspective, Feel and Process allows us to transmute and alchemize discordant vibrations in the field by stepping out of linear time and rewriting the energetic record of the original wound. In Shamanic practices this is called “soul retrieval,” where we go in and recover fragmented soul parts that have gotten lost in translation from traumatic circumstances. From a vibrational perspective, the

trauma creates discordant energy in the field and some of our prana (energy) becomes frozen in the energetic record of the event, so that we no longer have full access to our prana. The longer we go in life without processing these discordant vibrations, the louder and denser our pain bodies get, and the less access we have to our prana—which is another way to say our Soul! This is true on the collective scale, too, and manifests as intergenerational and compounded trauma.

Feel and Process allows us to bear witness to our younger selves and show up for ourselves in the way that we needed to at the moment of a traumatic event, but were not able to. It allows us to metabolize the trauma by slowing down a triggered fear state and simply being with what is activated to understand the root cause.

Feel & Process Steps: •

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Feel in Body (Physical Body): Physically scan the body to notice sensations, note their qualities and where they are living Acknowledge (Mental Body): Recognize any accompanying mind stories, limiting belief systems, or self-judgment. Notice if there are any old memories this emotion is attached to.

Accept (Emotional Body): Witness and honor the emotion and what it is trying to communicate. Get the data without merging with it. Grieve and allow any old, repressed emotions and memories to move through you.

Act (Prana Body): Get curious. Ask what you needed in the context of your original memory to feel safe. Then: 1. Watch yourself decide to do and say what you needed in that moment, knowing that there are no repercussions.

2. Notice how it feels in your body to respond in alignment with what you needed rather than acting from your fear response.

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3. Once you have rewritten this memory, turn attention to the more recent trigger and ask yourself how you can meet that same need in the current situation.

4. Watch yourself do and say what you need to stay aligned, rather than playing out an old fear response.

5. Notice how it feels in your body to respond in a way that honors your truth and personal needs.

Release (Awareness Body): As you witness these wounds from a more conscious perspective—observing and rewriting your responses—you begin to allow them to release from your field, neutralizing the charge.

*These steps are theoretical. The practice is MUCH messier. There are emotions that feel too overwhelming and that we don’t want to accept. Sometimes we can’t process in the current moment. Witness what you can, then get curious and return later when you have more capacity to work through the discomfort.

Mantra: Continue with the mantras that we’ve been working with this week to purify, clear, and call in prosperity and abundance. This week we will add the Vishnu mantra which is for Sovereignty and Self-Liberation.

Vishnu Mantra For the God Within (Liberation):

Om Namo Bhagavataye Vasudevaya Pronunciation: Om Namo Bah-Ga-Va-Taye Va-Su-DayVaya Further Reading:

Parts Work: An Illustrated Guide to Your Inner Life, by Tom Holmes, Ph.D with Lauri Holmes, MSW, illustrations by Sharon Eckstein, MFA

Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body, Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. with Ann Frederick

Self-Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness and Healing Your Inner Child Using IFS, A New Cutting-Edge Psychotherapy, Jay Earley, Ph.D.