We cannot begin any healing journey without a willingness to heal. Without our willingness to do whatever it takes to heal, we will not begin the journey of healing and evolving our being.

Doing whatever it takes means that we are ready and willing to feel, learn about and take full responsibility for our own feelings – our own pain, fear, anger, hurt, — our  aloneness, loneliness, disappointment, depression, sense of safety, worth, lovability and joy.

Willingness means that we are ready to become aware of creating our own feelings with our thoughts, beliefs and actions. It means we are willing to face whatever it is we fear in order to heal the beliefs causing the fear.

Willingness means that we choose to be courageous and face our demons – the shadow side of ourselves about which we do not want others to know about. It means that we are ready to move out of denial about the pain we are in, ready to stop hiding from ourselves.

Willingness means that we are ready to become aware of how much we want control over our pain, over others, and over the outcome of things. Until we are ready to see, without judgment, how deeply we want to control everything, and all the obvious and subtle ways we try to have control, we cannot choose to be open.

Willingness means that we are ready to ask for help from a spiritual source of strength, and from others who can bring us love to help us heal. It means that we are ready to acknowledge that we cannot find our safety without spiritual guidance – that we are ready to invite Spirit into our heart to nurture and guide us. It means that we have embraced the journey, the sacred privilege of learning about love in this world.

We cannot move into the next step of our healing process — in which the intent is to learn about what we are thinking or doing to cause our pain — until we are willing to move out of denial regarding our inner turmoil.

As long as we are in denial about our emotional pain (or feelings of being stuck!), we will not recognize that we have inner angst and may not be motivated to learn about it.

This denial is actually one of the ways we are protecting against pain. We may not be willing to move out of denial until loving ourselves and others becomes more important than avoiding our pain.

Willingness means that you pay attention to the physical sensations within your body. You cannot know if you are believing or behaving in ways that are hurting you if you are not willing to feel what is going on within your body.

Feelings of pain, anger, anxiety, hurt, fear, and loneliness are physical sensations that occur within the body. When you numb your body with substances or shut out your inner experience with manipulations and activities, you can’t fully know what it is that you are feeling.

We put ourselves on a new path toward our own wholeness when we become willing to feel our pain and learn from it…  Happy travels :).