As a newborn infant, our energy field is clear and sparkly. Our consciousness is wide open. To develop a sense of self we need reference points and we take them from the environment we were born into.
We take on the beliefs and attitudes of our parents until we choose to change them. We develop our first self-image from the environment we were born into. Self-image is like a container from where we live. It contains our beliefs, attitudes, thoughts and feelings. Importantly, our early enviroments shaped the beliefs and attitudes we have about our selves.
As children, we push trauma and pain that is too much to handle into ourselves via chakras. Our energy system, once luminous can become grey, sludged and scarred.
If we experienced emotions and painful events that were just too much to handle in childhood, we shoved them down into ourselves and in order to be safe made a contract with ourself limiting our natural expression in some way.
Children are ego-centric and interpret their world with them at its center. They attribute parental arguments to themself as being at fault, or emotional and physical abuse as they are at fault. We can get stuck in automatic emotional reactions and behaviors. If they have made an agreement that limits expression of themselves, they lose a part of soul which cannot be expressed due to the constricted agreement. This soul part, in shaman terms, goes to rest in the lower world.
Pain and fear experienced in childhood and in life can diminish our dreams, desires, expectation and imagination.
Many people change the beliefs and self-image they took on in childhood as they grow, get out into the world and meet other people who they take note of and are influenced by. If a belief and agreement is buried too deep, they may be constricted by it for life.
If soul loss is great enough, someone may feel flat, hollow or a sense of ‘not being fully here’. Some of the agreements I have discovered for clients are “I am insignificant”, “I do not deserve love”, “ I am unworthy”, “I deserve to be punished”.
These are pretty big underlying beliefs and agreements.
Some people are stuck in their past, held by trauma and painful events. Chakra illumination, one shamanic method, helps release the old story some one is stuck in. The memory of it is still present but it feels distant and matter of fact without the emotional pangs. People feel lighter and released after, able to live differently without the baggage of that event, able to make new choices.
Talking constantly of the old story only helps dig its ruts deeper. Yet, some people would never talk of an old story because they are held in shame by it and live life from an underlying base of shame, which affects all the choices they make.
Soul retrieval is a process that helps to locate aspects of soul, and retrieve them from the lower world. This vital process is one of my specialties, people feel more present and vital, fuller in self and joyful after.
Emotions shoved down go into the physical body, into our organs. As a reiki master, I saw organs full of anger and pain and shame as I did reiki with people.
From the physical, they are shoved into the light body, the subconscious and unconscious. For me, the subconscious is the lower world and the unconscious borders it.