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There are two choices to life’s pain\u00a0and suffering: open to it or shut down. The healthy choice seems to be the obvious one.\u00a0Bring it closer.\u00a0But how do you hold it all when the pain of the world is just too much?<\/span><\/p>\n Pisces rules the principle of connection, of unity, oneness.<\/strong> We are\u00a0all connected in ways that we often don’t realize, and while some of us are more empathic than others, like a ripple traveling\u00a0a lake all the suffering of the world will eventually\u00a0reach the edges of our shore.\u00a0The\u00a0emotional magnitude of that varies\u00a0depending on how sensitive we are to the\u00a0ripples, how much we buffer our self with\u00a0escapist activities\/substances, how much we’ve worked and healed our\u00a0issues.<\/p>\n Sensitivity, empathy and\u00a0compassion gives us each,\u00a0by\u00a0degree, more or less resonance with the world’s suffering, allowing us to meet it, and our self, with a level of heart-centered grace. \u00a0We can be the witness, process it so\u00a0that it doesn’t compromise our own life happiness,\u00a0and let it go and go about our life, maybe having been softened and more opened for having pulled the suffering a little closer.\u00a0However, sometimes the world clobbers us, rendering its pain as our own.\u00a0So what is happening there?\u00a0Essentially, our unhealed issues make us more vulnerable to\u00a0those of\u00a0the world.<\/strong> That’s why, instead of a painful news item or story touching our shore of our life\u00a0and\u00a0then going back out to sea, it amplifies what is already within us\u00a0because it\u00a0resonates in a very specific\u00a0way to our own unhealed story.\u00a0Say\u00a0a\u00a0news\u00a0story rocks us,\u00a0but\u00a0not our\u00a0partner. They go about their life, but we’re emotionally disturbed\u00a0for days.\u00a0It’s as if there’s a frequency\u00a0we amplify\u00a0because only we have that frequency.\u00a0That’s how the world’s suffering\u00a0ends up either shutting us down, making us feel crazy\/depressed\/anxious, or being a catalyst for facing our own pain. For instance:<\/p>\n -A news story about a child that loses their\u00a0mother hooks into your\u00a0feelings of abandonment by mother.<\/p>\n -A story about a black child losing his life hooks into your feelings\u00a0of racial injustice you suffered as a minority.<\/p>\n -A movie about immigrants suffering hooks into your story of hardships faced as\u00a0an immigrant.<\/p>\n Of course, identifying with others suffering can be very heart opening and humanizing. It is part of our human experience. None of the above is a problem until it is compromising your life happiness. You can feel anything… and gently hold it all in compassion… but if you are weeks’ on end in a rage, worked up, unable to sleep, it’s a problem.<\/p>\n Chiron is the asteroid that sensitizes us to suffering, injustice, unfairness and victimization. Chiron is in Pisces, amplifying\u00a0this phenomenon of identifying with\u00a0victims of injustices we may\u00a0not know personally, but with whom we feel their pain deeply… because we are all connected.<\/strong> The popularity of the Netflix documentary\u00a0The Making of a Murderer<\/em>\u00a0is a\u00a0prime\u00a0example. If you’re unfamiliar, in a (no spoiler alert) nutshell, a man is wrongly accused of a crime he didn’t commit,\u00a0serves time, is\u00a0exonerated years later, only to be again accused of a similar crime via\u00a0similarly murky facts and dubious investigative techniques. It is a very confusing, very sad story.\u00a0There are a lot of “hooks” to hook\u00a0into your own personal story of pain, because should you have any story about\u00a0suffering abuse at the hands of others, you will likely find a way in, here. For instance: “power corrupts”, “power is always abused”, “the\u00a0poor have no power”, “life is not fair”, “people suffer for things that\u00a0they didn’t do”, “I am a victim”, “don’t\u00a0trust the police,” “I am helpless to the powers that be…” \u00a0to name\u00a0just a few.\u00a0Watching a few episodes\u00a0myself, all my hooks began rolling like movie credits. Add to this, I am empathic- I feel others feelings as my own. It turned into\u00a0real exercise in understanding how I deal with empathic overload, and the origins of my own wounds.<\/p>\n Movies, news stories, scrolling through Facebook, sharing your neighbor’s burdens… there are so many invitations lately to invite suffering closer to your heart,\u00a0but it’s often hard to know how to\u00a0do that in a way that doesn’t trigger extreme emotions, and then how to take care when they do?\u00a0With EFT\/MR<\/a>, I’ve learned to use triggers to\u00a0see that they are pointing me to a hurt\u00a0that needs attention. If I’m amplifying someone else’s suffering,\u00a0I’ve\u00a0got some more internal healing to do.<\/strong>\u00a0For instance, watching\u00a0Making<\/em>, at a certain point I felt “trapped in the movie,\u00a0held captive by others’ problems and suffering,\u00a0unable to leave or walk away.” Using EFT\/MR I went to the inner child that felt that way at a point in time and worked with her directly. After that, my nervous system relaxed, and I felt free. I also learned that because I’m so empathic I need to give myself permission to walk out\u00a0of\u00a0other people’s movies- whether it’s on a projector or in real life!<\/p>\n There are so many tools out there, ways\u00a0of\u00a0helping\u00a0your\u00a0heart\u00a0open wider instead of shutting down in fear. There are\u00a0people who can help you to embrace your suffering, and that of the world, without getting caught in a web of illusion and crazy-making. There’s so much to be\u00a0hopeful about in this\u00a0Chiron (and Neptune) in Pisces time\u00a0– isn’t it marvelously inspiring to ride the wave of so many people getting involved with\u00a0wanting to help ease the suffering of those we may not know?<\/strong>\u00a0 It certainly makes me feel less alone. As we\u00a0collectively become more empathic to the suffering of Everyone, empathy is no longer just a genius\/novel\u00a0idea written in a book\u00a0about\u00a0a few, but something we witness in everyday interaction. But if we’re feeling outraged\/angry\/depressed, we need to remember what every activist learns, eventually:\u00a0On an ultimate level you\u00a0can’t heal or effect change around what’s\u00a0out there until you heal what’s inside here.\u00a0As the saying goes:\u00a0If you want to\u00a0heal the world,\u00a0heal your self, first. There’s no better time to do that than right now.<\/p>\n Chiron is in Pisces until February 18, 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n image: weeper statue, Paris cemetary<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are two choices to life’s pain and suffering: open to it or shut down. The healthy choice seems to be the obvious one. Bring it closer. But how do you hold it all when the pain of the world is just too much? Pisces rules the principle of connection, of unity, oneness. We are all connected in ways […]<\/p>\n<\/p>\n