We talk about issues because we talk about healing.

VortexHealing® addresses where we are hurt, where we feel in isolation. As we talk about different issues in this series, we can observe how things begin to overlap, how issues are not so neatly categorized.

For example, heartbreak is when the heart is overwhelmed. It's trying to process too many things at once— some kind of hurt, rejection or loss. And it's just too much. It gets overwhelmed, and it can't do it anymore. So it breaks. That’s my definition of heartbreak. So in order to deal with that overwhelm, you have to look at what's really going on.

Where does that really land if something leaves a hole in your heart? What is that hole about? Is it about the loss? Is it about the anger? Is it about the part of you that feels separate, or in lack, or rejected? And then bring love to it in whatever form that love takes. VortexHealing® is a huge expression of that love.

Any addiction is a way to try to avoid or manage our pain. In Chinese medicine, the lungs are described as holding unprocessed grief or sadness. So when one gives up smoking, not only do they have to deal with the physical addiction, but all of that suppressed sadness tends to come out.

That's what makes it difficult. I think all of our addictions are a way of trying to manage some kind of pain, and we're all in pain. So, how do you deal with it in a positive way? You have to see it. There has to be some space in there. 

We talk about how our issues create identity, and you have to recognize that it's something that's going on in the system. It's happening to you, it's your experience. That experience is always valid, but it's not the truth of what you are. What you really are is greater than that. 

We are an expression of divine love.

For whatever reason, divine love has a play where it goes into this game of being an individual, being hurt and hurting others. That seems to be the dance that we play in. And so this is where we live. And when that happens to us, we work on it. We bring love to that pain. We work on it, we recognize it. We let it go. And then there's more freedom. 

I'm going to suggest we all know what love is because we are made of love. Even if you think you don’t know what love is, you must know, because you know you're in lack of it. You know, something's missing, that something's wrong. That means that on a fundamental level, you know there's something more than this pain you're dealing with, no matter who you are. If you're not experiencing love in your life, you know something's wrong because you have a deeper understanding of what love is.

We are a divine expression, and we are loved. So bringing personal love happens when that divine love comes through and interacts on a personal level. We experience a personal love, but love with a capital L is really divine expression. If you're someone who feels that they've never experienced love, you might not have experienced the kind of love that you're looking for. But you know enough by having an understanding of your true nature of what it is, which means you can always come back there.

Gratitude practices are really important because they bring your awareness back where it's strayed. Our issues are very distracting. They keep us in a story that we're not loved and no one appreciates us, or whatever story is being generated. A practice of reminding yourself that there are things to be grateful for is a very good starting point to remember. But to really be free, you're going to have to tackle that issue. 

Self-love, isn't something you do. It's not a verb so much as it is a state of being.

When you work on your issues and you get them out of the way, and you're not distracted by your jealousy or your shame or your heartbreak, and you're just being... that's self-love. You don't have to manage it or do anything. You can just be. 

This is easier said than done because we live a life, and we experience loss and all of that. But that is our true nature. That's our true nature. And so we have a way of working on our issues so that we can see that more clearly and experience that more directly. And it's almost like a goal that you're moving towards.

Do you remember that comedian Gallagher? He was the one who smashed the watermelons. He had a joke that I thought was hysterical. He talked about New York a lot, and I live in New York. He would talk about construction and how there's construction everywhere. And he'd say, “I can't wait until the day that New York is finished.”

I thought that was hysterical, being a New Yorker. But I sometimes quote that in class, because we're all waiting for the day that we're “finished”. We're never finished. I think an important thing to remember is that that self love is already there. Clearing the decks of our issues is just so that we can experience it more directly.

There will always be work to do.

And at the same time, we are already complete. We are already whole, we are already in integrity. Remembering that is self-love. At the end of the day, that is where we all go, and that's the awakening as well.

In awakening, the idea is that you've woken up out of a dream. That's what our issues are. You have this experience of being in separation. It’s dramatic, juicy and heartbreaking— it's all of that. But then you realize that all of that was happening, but that's not what I really am.

Let’s say you go to sleep tonight, and you have a dream that you're a kangaroo. It's a very real dream. It's very dramatic and you have a predator who's chasing you and whatever else is going on. And then you wake up, right? It's not that you were a kangaroo and then were magically transformed into who you are now. It's that you had a dream that you were a kangaroo. 

So we awaken out of our issues. We have this experience that we are anxious, that we are angry. And the conditioning is real, but the experience of self is not. And when we awaken, we let go of that, even though that stuff may still be going on, we know that that's not the truth of what we are.

You are awakening out of the illusion of what you thought you were. What we think we are is our issues, and the idea identities that get created. We can awaken out of that and have a deeper realization. 

I don't think we can talk ourselves out of our issues. It's like making the bed when you're in it.

That will get you to a certain place. Sometimes the personality needs therapy to function. I have someone that I think really could benefit from that, I will absolutely suggest that they do that. To be honest with you, I would have benefited from therapy in certain periods of my life. But then the step beyond that is to recognize that you're not those issues. 

When we started the issue series, I opened with shame, because I feel like that is so fundamental. Shame is kind of a way where we don't feel worthy of being loved. Shame masks itself in many different ways. Very often, women are trying to be perfect so that we can look worthy, and men have their own ways of experiencing and expressing shame.

Shame is sort of a fundamental, underlying issue that holds a lot of other stuff together. Self-worth is an expression of that.

In every issue we talk about, self-worth comes into play and it's something that we keep revisiting.

People don’t like to talk about shame. It's almost dirty in a way— like you've done something bad. But self-worth is so core, because there's always going to be some way we feel in lack and lacking, because we're in form and we're experiencing separation. That's just the game. And when we feel separate from the divine and everything around us, then there's going to be something in us that feels less than. A lot of our other issues are ways that we manage and experience that kind of self-worth. 

So it can be a great grounding point when you're working on an issue, whether you’re working on loneliness, anxiety, jealousy, or something else. What is the core of the issue? Very often you're going to come back to some kind of expression of self-worth. We think that if we can just fix it... if we just tweak this or get this, or act better, behave differently, that's going to make it all go away. It doesn't seem to be the case.

You have to really find the love in it.