Q: I am writing this email wondering what to say and how to verbalize what I am experiencing. I am currently on I am safe in this body and I am experiencing the depths of agony. It is so intense I feel like I am depressed and my mind says this is how you have always felt. I have been praying to turn over these thoughts however the experience of shame that I feel is what I have felt my entire life. Although the the physical and mental are not the primary cause it feels like in some way that I might need some neurotransmitter help.. These are the kind of thoughts that I intuit come from the emotional charge.. I have been willingly consistent with this process. I simply want to function without shame.. I have been sitting with this and my stomach is on fire.. I am not sure what my question is??? I am just reaching out...
A: This is a good time to get down on your knees and beg forgiveness from whatever God is for you. But not to get rid of "thoughts" - for these are effects of a deeper wound. Ask for assistance, for having this "feeling" taken from you, because after all the thinking and figuring out, and understanding, you still do not know what to "do about it".
Know that this -praying for help in having this feeling of shame taken from you - means you are going to first be required to feel it all fully, so you know what you are asking to be forgiven for from a point of felt-perception.
Unless we truly know how our shamefulness has impacted others - how it has hurt them - how they have felt because of it - unless we feel all this hurt - then our prayers for forgiveness are just empty words from the head. But when we feel the consequences of our actions - our prayer becomes a beckoning for help from our heart. Then we are getting real.
Know that the hurt you have caused to others - for which you now have "fire in your stomach" - which is now "indigestible" - which you can "no longer stomach" - know that this hurt is to be given up consciously through feeling it consciously. Stay on your knees until you mean it, until you know there is no where else to go but inward to the source, and until you realize the arrogance which brought you into the shame. When you pray this hard, feeling your condition this deeply, offering it up this humbly, which requires facing the arrogance squarely, then only is it taken - not a second before. Then the pretence is washed away and Presence restored.
So, this is not about reaching out...this is about reaching inward...with the heart. Let the heart give you the words for your prayer - not your head. If you truly allow yourself to feel your shame fully - the right neurotransmitters are automatically fired up - and the response of unconditional love is inevitable. If it is truly shame you feel - and if you are willing to feel the extent of it - then get down on your knees and get real.
