About a century and a half ago, a farming family in Venezuela was digging in their cornfield. They wanted to create a small well in one corner, so they had to dig much deeper than they’d normally go for ploughing.
While digging, everyone heard the youngest son scream. They thought maybe a wild animal, but it was worse. The pit they had just dug was quickly filling up with a foul-smelling black liquid. In a few minutes, instead of water they were hoping for, the entire pit was filled with that filthy stuff. They all sat in agony. Their only source of income, this farm, had been destroyed by what felt like a demon’s black blood.
Fifty years later, the Arabs discovered the same filthy black liquid under the earth in their land. But by then, internal combustion engines running on gasoline and diesel were all over the world, propelling cars and all sorts of machines.
The same filthy black liquid that the Venezuelan family believed had destroyed them, that same crude oil enabled the Arabs to amass riches beyond comprehension.
And the main reason for their wealth is simple. By the time the Arabs discovered oil, the world had already learned how to use that liquid as fuel to run cars, trains, and airplanes. The secret of Arab wealth was that they were sitting on a giant reservoir of something that fuels the world.
Your Pain, Your Reservoir
Do you suffer from anxiety or panic? Do you get depressed? Do you feel waves of melancholy, sadness, or resentment for no obvious reason?
If the answer is yes, you are sitting on the same kind of reservoir the Arabs were sitting on. Your past pain is your fossil fuel. The bigger the reservoir, the higher the possibility of amassing inner riches. But as with the Arabs, it only becomes wealth if you have a way to transform it. If you know how to turn that pain into the fuel of growth.
The Vicious Circle
Unresolved, trapped emotional energy lives in us, lodged in our system. When that energy surfaces, all it wants is one thing. To create more of itself. More pain, in any form, whether fear, sadness, anger, or resentment, either inside you or spread out to others.
Each time that energy takes over, you end up with a little more added to the reservoir of pain. It is this energy that is like the gunpowder in your system. It is this trapped energy that becomes negative energy, attracting more negativity inside you and around you.
Transforming Trapped Emotional Energy
There are three keys to transforming trapped emotional energy into creative energy.
First, when this energy rises inside you, allow it to be there. Experience the experience of having this energy. Feel how it feels.
Second, do not convert feeling into thinking.
Third, do not spread it to others. If you sense the desire to spread it, return the focus to how that energy feels in your body.
If you allow the energy of past pain inside you without converting it into thought, and instead focus on how it feels, a part of that energy will be processed. You’ll feel as if you suddenly got a shot of energy. Your body may want to move, run, walk fast, stretch, shake. It will find some way to release through your body.
And that tiny bit of released energy is no longer trapped. It returns to you as creative energy.
Think of it this way. If your car’s fuel tank holds 60 litres, a few litres are used up as fuel to take you further in life. Each time there’s such an episode, and if you follow those three keys, a chunk of that energy gets transformed.
That’s how you transform the gunpowder. That’s how you turn the negative energy trapped in your system into fuel to grow.
The bigger the reservoir of your trapped energy, the more fossil fuel you’ve got.
A Practice
As you move through daily life, notice any sign of what we normally call negativity inside you. It could be restlessness, fear, worry, sadness, anger, resentment.
- See if there is an actual reason for you to feel what you feel, or whether that feeling is out of proportion and out of place in the current situation.
- If those feelings are out of proportion or out of place, chances are that the fossil fuel inside you is surfacing and trying to take you over.
- Take a pause. Focus on how that feels in you. Don’t let it convert into thoughts. Stay in the feeling. Experience the experience of having that feeling.
- Stay with that feeling without creating stories around it. If it feels overwhelming and crying comes, let it come. If you feel like you want to break walls, go for a run, walk, dance, shake, work out.
- Let that feeling be converted into physical expression through your body. Your body is the internal combustion engine that transforms trapped pain into creative energy.