Iceberg - ricknotesricknotes

We sail through life as if we are the Titanic. We are on our maiden voyage. We enjoy the food, the music, the dancing, the romance. Our culture tells us we can have it all. Occasionally we encounter a spell of bad weather, things don’t go quite the way we want them to, we may experience aches, pains, “accidents”, and other disturbances to the way we want life to be, but we press on. We have little interest in looking deeply into the waters to see what might be there, and when we do we see only our own reflection.

We engage in the latest and best marketed practices to address whatever might ail us. And if interest grows we may engage in spiritual explorations, take workshops, and develop a spiritual practice. The new age makes it sound so easy to manifest all that we dream of, and to be spiritually adept. Occasionally we feel lost, or depressed, or burned out, or empty, or we get the odd signal from the depth of our being or body that something isn’t quite right, but we press on with our voyage, repress the emotions that might be arising, and take the latest workshop or therapy.

And then it happens, we encounter the iceberg. Sometimes we nudge gently into the ice with our motors running, and paying no attention, we increase speed and run full on into the iceberg.

We created this iceberg. Through life’s challenges, we froze part of ourselves. The biggest freezings came when we were little and we faced a traumatic or difficult situation we couldn’t deal with. Our mammalian responses of fight or flight were often not an option, so we froze. And we didn’t have a way to go back and unfreeze ourselves. The freezing kept us safe, we were no longer in contact with what had been so traumatic, or in touch with our raw, powerful emotional response to what had occurred. So we could keep the Titanic sailing.

If we engage with the iceberg, it is with the part of it that is above the water. The part that we can identify with our thinking, conscious mind and memory. We have numerous systems and therapies for exploring and resolving this part of the iceberg, and they work quite well. Once we have “dealt” with the above water part of the iceberg, we turn away from it and try to get the Titanic sailing again. We often develop elaborate medical and metaphysical explanations of why we are the way we are, little knowing that the huge part of the iceberg below the water has halted the Titanic in it’s tracks and is calling for our attention.

How do we know when we are stuck on the iceberg? It is often indicated by repeating patterns of symptoms or experiences. And we often have strong emotional responses, disproportionate to the situation at hand. The emotional responses, physical and mental symptoms, life situations are often all expressions of the iceberg, floating just below our consciousness.

Sometimes we begin to look beneath the surface and thaw some ice. Unfortunately this often leads to more intense physical symptoms, as our bodies begin to release the frozen tension and trauma trapped within; and very intense, frightening, “negative” emotions arise. If we are “spiritual” we respond to the intense negative emotions, and tell ourselves it isn’t spiritual to feel this way, so we abandon the process of thawing the iceberg. Or a few memories may surface and we get an inkling of how “messy” and disturbing the material frozen in the ice is, and we put off doing any more thawing. As a result our spiritual lives, our relationships, our future all remain “on hold”, stuck on the iceberg. The Titanic is sinking.

However, what is frozen in the ice is our salvation. If we engage if an effective process to thaw the places in our bodies that hold the trauma, and truly resolve the associated intense emotions, we can set ourselves free from the past, from the repeating patterns, from the recurring physical ailments, and from the emotional rollercoaster. We can set sail anew, no longer deluded about being “unsinkable”, but open to the depths of the ocean.