In the night, I woke and my eyes instantly snapped open.

I had a thought and a realization simultaneously. The thought was that I had just come out of something: A dream? But that wasn’t it and I couldn’t remember a dream. The realization was a certain memory being the root of self worth issue.

This memory. I haven’t thought of in years, I don’t even know when I thought of it last. But this realization was a ‘knowing.’ A certain and undoubted awareness.

In my post two weeks ago, I told you I had a meditation breakthrough. This is what I was referring too, but it was too soon to share. I was practicing the beginnings of meditation technique that Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about in his book. The first step, all you do for a week is practice ‘induction.’ This is simply the awareness of your body in space, and the slow but simple process of acknowledging each part of you that you occupy in space. That’s it. It is also, coincidentally, the first step with going into hypnosis (which I have been learning about). By moving through this, you just alter your brain waves to be out of beta – the general, waking, thinking brain wave, into a calmer brainwave such as alpha (then theta).

So, I tried this before bedtime. I woke in the night and this was what I woke to, at about 3am.

The memory: I was 5. A girl in the class had a birthday party and everyone in the class was invited except for me and one boy. My mom was there to pick me up after school. My mom and I, and this boy and his mom, watched the entire class being led down the street holding hands to this girls house. This boy was considered ‘hyper.’ And me… my mom was told I was so shy and quiet that they didn’t think I would have fun.

My mom would tell me years later that she had been so mad (and sad) on my behalf. My mom said she wasn’t sure that I was really aware of what was going on at the time. She worried that since she talked about it, that maybe it made me feel attached to the memory.

I have a very vague memory if it, but when it was discussed, I would not associate my feelings with it. I felt more empathy for my mom watching her little girl be left out and I felt like I related to that more and felt that sadness. The mama bear protective feelings. So maybe my 5 year old self did hold on to that more than I realized. But I also know, that my 5 year old brain is a lot different than my brain now. Having this memory wake me up in my sleep, has made me assess it, and understand how beliefs are imprinted on us from early experiences. Beliefs about ourselves, good or bad, which we can carry and never really know how we acquired them in the first place. And then when we do know, we can remove those beliefs. We can understand it for what it was.

I think this experience was quite cool actually. Fascinating how it came up and how I woke up. Something I hadn’t thought of in years.

Sending Love,

Devon