I admit it, Halloween is one of my favorite times of year.
I love everything about the fall season and Halloween is an essential part.
The pumpkins, dressing up in costumes, the neighborhood decorations, the trick-or-treating, all of that.
Do you consider yourself a sensitive person or an empath?
If so I am targeting this question to you.
How do you feel about horror movies or true crime stories?
I noticed yesterday that #1 on Netflix currently is the true life story of a man who kills his wife and their children. Yikes!
The most popular genre of podcasts are true crime and horror.
It really made me wonder why now during a time of great turmoil, anxiety and yes, pain, why now are people wanting to experience even more of these emotions from a distance.
To understand this, I went back to my mentor Eckart Tolle (via his books) for some answers.
In his book, A New Earth, Eckart Tolle says “The greater part of most people’s thinking is involuntary, automatic, and repetitive. It is no more than a kind of mental static and fulfills no real purpose.”
In our body there are systems that are automatic / unconscious. We don’t have to ask our bodies to breathe, our pupils to dilate, or our heart to beat.
If you’ve ever tried to meditate, you know about this first hand. Thoughts just come, much like breath.
Thinking is very similar to breathing in that although breath is automatically regulated by our bodies, we can change or control our breathing when we focus on it. The same goes for our thinking. Although our thoughts do come and go, we can focus on changing our thoughts.
Like conscious breathing, conscious thinking can have amazing health benefits.
The practice of bringing both of these systems into awareness or consciousness will help kick in our parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest phase vs sympathetic nervous system which is the “fight or flight” many of us are in for most of our days)- creating a greater sense of relaxation and peace.
Great power comes from bringing awareness to the now and to the fact that the unconscious mind only makes up your superficial reality, it is based on past programming from way back to when we were babies. How we were treated, the stories people told us about ourselves and the world around us that we unconsciously internalized as “truth”.
The pain-body is the part of this unconscious mind that is the part of us where we store all of our emotional pain from traumatic experiences, abusive relationships, etc. Imagine that this pain-body has grown so strong throughout our lives that it became as if it were an entity in itself. The pain-body must be fed to stay strong and powerful. Like the law of attraction states, like attracts like and the pain-body unconsciously is always seeking out more painful and traumatic experiences to keep its energy.
Fortunately, there is a very simple solution to begin to lessen the power of the pain-body and that is AWARENESS. By simply becoming aware and present when you feel the pain-body reaching for more negativity, you can put a stop to it instantly.
This brings me back to my original question “why do we like to be scared?"
Why is watching violence or listening to podcasts about violence entertaining to us?”
Based on Eckart Tolle’s theory, I would pose that the pain-body is the part of us that is unconsciously seeking out these programs. Notice the word “programs” is used for television episodes- not a coincidence that they are part of our unconscious programming - but that’s a story for a whole other blog.
I’m not suggesting that you stop watching or listening to these types of stories entirely. Instead what I suggest is that you bring your awareness to how you are feeling in the moments in which you are desiring to experience these things and more importantly, how you are feeling while you are watching/ listening. How does your body feel?
Remember that we are energetic beings with a very measurable vibration. Do you feel like these programs are in vibrational alignment of how you’d like to feel? Do you feel your best, worst, or somewhere in between? Tune into your body and sense do you feel lighter, more joy and higher vibrations or a denser, heavier vibration?
We cannot control much in our lives. The content that we ingest through our reading, podcast listening and television / movie watching we can 100% control.
I invite you to become aware of these external choices and how they are making you feel.
Blessed Samhain and Happy Halloween
Alyse Faith Shyne, LMT
Owner + Founder