Feel Deeply, Love Deeply
My journey back to myself has taught me so many things. Without a doubt, I can say that my self-study has taught me more than I could learn in school or from books. I came to understand the meaning behind Know Thyself.
Without knowing yourself, you navigate this planet so differently than when you know yourself deeply. And it’s such a weird experience, because we all think that we know who we are. At least, I thought I knew.
My journey started with sitting with my pain, my heartbreak. The next step was self-study. The pain came with a message. Then I came to understand my patterns. My fears, cravings and addictions lying underneath these patterns. I learned how to break them, how to react differently, how to take action, even with a lot of fear.
I let go of my marriage and my job, because when you are getting to know yourself better, you will also understand why your whole life doesn’t make sense anymore. Certain friendships and beliefs, I let them go. It has been a very painful process, because you are letting go of parts of yourself that you thought belonged to you. The death of the old self, die before you die, ego death, as they call it in spirituality.
One thing that didn’t die, even though I tried to let go of it and heal that part of me, was my ability to feel deeply, to feel other people’s pain, to feel the pain of the world. My whole life, I have been that person who cries when other people cry, who suffers when other people are suffering.
Some spiritual practices I found online made me question myself even more, because they always talk about raising your vibration and positive affirmations. Mostly, it’s not about becoming the best version of yourself to help the world, but about manifesting something that you don’t really need. These people left me confused, because for a highly sensitive person who is drowning in the suffering of others, it’s super difficult, or maybe even impossible, to raise their vibration and use the light and love method, as is so easily promoted in these circles.
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They also talk a lot about life being an illusion, a game. For a second, I thought, if that’s true, then I don’t have to worry about all those people who are suffering. Of course, that didn’t help me at all, because that implied that there was something wrong with me for feeling and loving this deeply.
The moment I understood that my sensitivity was not another pattern I needed to heal, I cried. Of course I cried. I always cry:
sometimes even when I see my daughters, my cats, a beautiful sunset, the moon and the stars. I always have a reason to cry.
That doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with me. I have fully embraced that part of me, knowing that I don’t need to fix it, that it’s actually a gift. Through my emotions, I can connect more deeply to the Divine. So whenever I feel these kinds of emotions, instead of judging them or pushing them away, I welcome them, feeling more connected than ever.
It even made more sense, because on my awakening journey, I’m discovering a new layer each time, leading me closer to the Divine and to the feeling of oneness with the whole planet. So of course I feel other people’s suffering if we are all one.
The things I did heal? My loneliness, my endless need for validation and my anxiety, which came from not knowing myself and pushing that part of me away. On top of that, I have learned that boundaries are very important when you care a lot about the world. I stopped carrying the world, but I didn’t stop caring about it.
In a world where we were taught to numb ourselves and hide from our emotions, where people who feel a lot are labelled as highly sensitive people, as if it were something to be cured, it’s difficult to find your way. But when you finally accept yourself fully and see that it’s not something to be fixed, but actually your superpower, you can finally relax and just be.
Feel deeply, love deeply, because you already know what pain feels like. You don’t have to be scared of heartbreak. It may bring you closer to yourself.
