The Path To Liberation

A Model For Living A Spiritually Aware Life

Amyra Mah



CONTENTS


Note to Readers ...... 1

What Is Life About?...................................................................... 2
The Six Stages of Pain Processing .. 3
Stage 1: Trauma ... . 4
Stage 2: Grief .. 5
Stage 3: Pain Avoidance ... 5
Stage 4: Processing ... 9
Stage 5: Emergence . 11
Stage 6: Liberation .... 12
The Chart of The Six Stages of Pain Processing 13
Quick Reminders .... 13
About Amyra Mah ... 14

1
Note to Readers
The Path to Liberation is a model of Life, drawn from my own experiences
and based on my beliefs about how life works. It is a way for me to
understand the greater meaning of life, especially on a mental level since the
mind likes to understand things conceptually. I have found the model to be
consistently reliable as a tool for assessing where one is at in life, spiritually.
In no way am I touting it as the absolute truth; I hope it will help support your
growth, bring comfort in your healing, and inspire you to find your own truth.

The information in this ebook is based on several principles which I strongly
believe:

1. Everything that happens in our lives has a spiritual reason behind it. As we
learn each spiritual lesson, we move to a more awakened state.

2. There is no short-cut to healing emotional pains. The spiritual lesson must
be learnt and we can only accomplish this by doing the work ourselves.
Unprocessed pain traps us in a low level where nothing seems to move in
our lives until we learn that lesson.

3. We have the power to renew ourselves on every level of our being. We are
the cause of change as equally as we are of being stuck.

4. Beyond any pain is joy and love. To remember this experientially is the
reward for honest and responsible healing of our pains.

Why should we care about being spiritually aware?
My inner guidance tells me that we are at a pivotal point where we cannot
afford to remain asleep. Now, more than ever, it is essential for us to wake
up and shed our inauthentic selves. Becoming aware of our deepest pains
and taking the responsibility to process them may be terrifying, but it leads us
to liberation, wholeness and inner peace. This will raise the vibration of
humanity, and ultimately, align the world to a higher form of creation where
beauty, inspiration, joy and abundance replace hardship and struggles as the
status quo.
2
What Is Life About?

Life presents us with lesson after lesson, and this may be the very purpose of
our existence on the physical plane. Without spiritual awareness (i.e. being
aware of ourselves as spiritual beings), it is easy for us to become
overwhelmed by stresses that result from conditions that are actually here to
better our understanding of being human. Job stresses, discontent, domestic
disharmony, money problems, relationship issues . these are just symptoms
of our failure to grasp the opportunity to learn certain lessons that would
enrich our lives. Our pain often comes from feeling lost, not understanding
why, and a feeling of injustice.

When we move into a spiritually aware existence, we begin to open up our
senses to every experience we encounter in life. Life becomes an exciting
adventure, an intriguing game, where the journey is the end, full of delightful
surprises at every corner we turn. With every step of our journey, we greet
every interaction, every potential for pain, every devastating news with the
same spirit and open heart as those with which we greet happy events
knowing that within every experience lies a deeply powerful force waiting to
be embraced.

This ebook suggests a model to illustrate the process of moving from Pain to
Liberation. I hope it will give you some bearings on where you are in life -
whether it is about your place in the Universe, an awareness of where you are
generally in life, or regarding an issue.


3
The Six Stages of Pain Processing


TRAUMA




GRIEF



PAIN AVOIDANCE
Self-Blame
Projection
Suppression
Escape
Transference
Compensation



PROCESSING



EMERGENCE



LIBERATION

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Stage 1: Trauma
States: shock, threat, terror
Motivation: Survival

This is the point of trauma. The sword of destruction has been brought down
between you and something you held as very important in your life. Finding
out you have a serious illness. Being abandoned by someone you love or
betrayed by someone you trusted. Losing all your savings. Suffering verbal or
physical attacks. Theres a sense of violation of your trust, modesty or
security, and loss. It usually strikes unexpectedly, and thus, deepens the
trauma.

At this stage, theres a great deal of fear for your survival. You may even feel
as though you are being deprived of air. Theres an underlying sense of
desperation. You may feel as if the light has gone out suddenly and you
grapple to hold on to something.

This is a great opportunity to examine your loss, if you feel strong enough
(and most people whove taken some hard knocks in life are). Start by asking
yourself why the love, money or health is so important to you. Perhaps the
love or money was a substitute for a deeper yearning, or you took your body
for granted in the past. Doing this work is not easy, but the strength and
wisdom that can come out of it is worth it.

A trauma usually triggers a response that freezes the event, creating energy
blockages in your body. These blockages short-circuit the natural processing
so that we continue to re-live the event long after it had happened. People
who are spiritually advanced and highly experienced in self-processing may
immediately go to where the pain is and use a variety of techniques to move
the energy in that area. To do this, re-experience the trauma, in slow motion if
possible. Breathe deeply as you do so, and using your breath, consciously
release stuck energies from the area in your body where the pain is stored.


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For most people, however, going through the grief period (Stage II) may serve
to be more enlightening and lessen the chance of bypassing some important
lessons. This means allowing your feelings to evolve into the emotional states
under the Grief stage.


Stage 2: Grief
States: anxiety, depression, hopelessness, confusion,
sadness, shame, guilt
Motivation: Restoration

As the trauma settles into the body, it evolves from a sharp intensity to a
duller energy that spreads to wider areas. More often than not, however, the
distribution of pain in the body is uneven, making the us super-sensitive to
triggers.

A sense of longing and remorse is usually prevalent at this stage. Whereas in
the Trauma stage we are reacting out of survival instincts, here we do have
breathing space to review what has happened. The more logical part of our
brain is operating to analyse and make sense of it all, as we search for
answers to alleviate our pain.

The most responsible and wholesome step is to move to Stage IV:
Processing, which I call grieving with awareness.


Stage 3: Pain Avoidance (coping routes)
States: anger (Self-blame & Projection)
numbness, emptiness (Suppression)
addictions, over-indulgence (Escape)
self-harm, destruction, distraction (Transference)
eating disorders, gambling (Compensation)
Motivation: Fear

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This is the stage in which most people find themselves very quickly following
a trauma. Unfortunately, we often get stuck in this stage for a long time.

If unaware, we tend to employ a number of deflecting mechanisms to avoid
facing our pain:

Self-blame
When we blame ourselves, were not dealing with our issue from a high-
consciousness level. Blaming ourselves is an unconscious action to alleviate
our guilt for something we perceive as being our wrongdoing. It entails beating
ourselves up and often generates more guilty feelings. This kind of action gets
us nowhere. Sometimes a person who blames herself carries out acts to hurt
herself as a form of self-punishment.

Projection
This means blaming others for a perceived wrongdoing and failing to see our
role in having created that experience for our spiritual growth.

Self-blame and Projection have their places. To move through a trauma
healthily, sometimes it helps to express pain through a mixture of self-blame
and projection, and then taking responsibility by addressing why you have
created this experience.

I believe there is such a thing as projecting with awareness a kind of
chosen projection. We practise it consciously, knowing full well that were
simply using it as a vehicle to move through our pain. It is very different from
projecting without awareness, where we simply hurl our pain and dense
energies onto another party. In contrast, when we project with awareness, we
look for the energy to bounce back to ourselves to awaken us to a higher
truth, so that we can express that truth fully.

Self-blame can serve to give us a reference of the darker aspects in us that
will eventually bring out the lighter qualities of the lesson. It allows us a
chance to express remorse, which endows us with a humbling quality. Feel
the remorse fully instead of suppressing it.

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Suppression
When the pain becomes too much to bear, sometimes the body shuts down
its emotional outlet. The result is that the person becomes functional, yet not
quite in his body. There can be a sense of heaviness that hints of a deep
sadness and pain, a feeling of something boiling beneath the surface. Most of
the time, however, the person just feels empty and flat. It is important to know
that as long as your feelings are suppressed, whether consciously or not, you
cannot process the pain. It is an illusion that the pain will go away on its own
by your not looking at it. Sooner or later, you will have to confront it.

Begin by asking yourself, where is the pain stored in your body? Sometimes,
asking this question will trigger an instant awareness that gives you access to
your feelings. If not, do an exercise to consciously occupy every inch of your
body with your energy. Use your breath to direct your energy back into your
body: as you breathe in, see your energy coming back to you; as you breathe
out, ground and anchor the returning energy into your body. Bring your full
attention to this process. Be aware of all kinds of sensations in your body.

Escape
Numbing the pain by popping pills, drinking, bingeing, overworking and having
excessive sex is a common coping route. Instead of facing the problem at
hand, we opt for a quick fix to immediately take us away from the problem.
We think we can deal with it later, when time has healed the pain somewhat.
There is nothing wrong with this logic, except we run into the danger of getting
hooked on these things, so that we never get out of this temporary state.
That later may never come and we bury ourselves deeper and deeper in
denial as the years go by.

If someone close to you points out that you may have a problem with
addiction, seek professional help. Replace your addiction with something
healthier.

Transference
In some cases, when the emotional pain from a trauma becomes too much to
bear, the individual may carry out destructive acts on herself or/and others.
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Inflicting pain on our own body serves to distract us from feeling our emotional
pain, as the sharp surface pain drawn from a blade would immediately bring
all our senses to that one focal point in our flesh. As a result, that vague but
threatening emotional pain that had been bubbling beneath our senses is now
temporarily forgotten. This is one aspect of self-harm: the motivation to
distract the individual from feeling the unprocessed pains she is carrying.

Violent acts on others are also a way to distract the individual from her
emotional pain, transfering her focus to an external point.

Such destructive acts can pull one into a downward spiral of increasing
feelings of self-loathe, trapping the person in greater depression.

If you are already hurting yourself or others, or feel an inclination to do so,
take a step back from yourself. That is, imagine separating your higher energy
from your destructive self for a moment. Perceive through the eyes of your
higher energy and feel the strength within you. This pulls you out of the
destructive loop, enabling you to stop or reverse your actions. Then seek
professional help.

Transference can be productive, as when we use our anger to fuel us to act
on a worthy cause. For instance, the death of a child may drive a parent to set
up an organisation to help prevent similar incidents from occurring. A lot of
good things can come out of such endeavours. The danger is when we
havent processed our pain and we use the work to distract us from dealing
with our loss, so that years later we may find ourselves drained and empty
and eventually breaking down.

Compensation
An obsessive drive to change a certain area of ones life, triggered by a
subconscious need to reverse fate.

Certain types of eating disorders fall under this category. For example, a
woman whose husband has left her for another woman, and blaming her body
shape as the cause, may refuse to eat as a way to control the shape of her
body. This gives her back a certain sense of control to compensate for being
9
unable to control the situation that had brought on her trauma. She may
embark on having excessive plastic surgery to improve her appearance, and
as her obsession grows, to achieve her goal she may compromise her values,
such as selling herself or a loved one out to finance her obsession.

These are methods of coping with pain without dealing with the real issue.
What happens is, no matter how hard and fast she runs to get to her goal, she
will never get to a place of peace, but further and further away from herself.


Stage 4: Processing
States: pain, grief, sadness
Motivation: Responsibility

Processing is grieving with awareness. Most of the time, a person only gets
to this stage after spending years going around his pain before the coping
method got out of hand. Addictive behaviours can cause relationship
breakups. Anger can get one into trouble at work. Years of abusing the body
with drugs, alchohol and food can cause serious illnesses. All these things
can explode into another trauma and hence, bringing us back to the beginning
of the cycle. When these things happen, the individual is forced to assess
himself. With the right support, he can be guided to process his pain healthily
and turn the experience into a powerful learning.

For many people, however, they go through several cycles of Trauma - Grief -
Pain Avoidance before deciding to take responsibility to process their pain.

PROCESSING THE PAIN

Step 1 - Be Fully Aware of the Pain.

Recall the trauma and feel all the emotions associated with the loss: sadness,
anger, shame, insecurity, etc. This puts you right into the experience. After
doing this for a few moments, describe the pain. Intuitively feel the texture,
shape, colour, sound, sharpness, vibration, taste of it. This puts you in a
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position of an observer. After a few moments, go back to feeling the pain,
running through all the associated emotions. Keep alternating between being
in the pain and observing the pain, until the charge is considerably reduced.
Take as long as you need. Sometimes it works in no time at all, and
sometimes it takes many days. Do not rush the process. Remember, the pain
may be a very old one and is likely to have many layers to it.

What happens if you cant feel anything? There are ways to get in touch with
your feelings. One of the ways is to imagine filling every part of your body with
a special energy that activates your body and that fills you with intense
aliveness. Imagine this energy to be flowing from the very core of you the
part of you that is connected to the source of everything. You are merely
opening the gate within you and allowing this energy to flow outwards into
every part of your body.

Once you have occupied your body with your energy, you will have re-
established a connection to yourself and should be able to feel your emotions.
Now process your pain using the being in pain-observer technique
described above.

Step 2 - Release the pain..

On your outbreath, release the pain energy from your body. Imagine breathing
out pain. On your inbreath, imagine breathing in light energy into your body,
blasting the pain and loosening the pains grip within your body, so that when
you breathe out again there is more to be released. Keep on doing this until
you feel light and clear.

Step 3 - Transmute the pain..

Now that the pain has been substantially de-charged and we have taken the
top off the pain, we work to transmute the deeper emotions.

Use your mind to gather all your emotions and move them to the area of your
belly. Imagine that in your belly there is a cauldron of fire. This is your inner
flame, and it transmutes your negative emotions into positive energy. On your
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outbreath, feel/see/hear the emotions being transmuted in the fire. On your
inbreath, breathe in the transmuted energy into your being and feel its power
throughout your body. Keep breathing out and in this way, while consciously
going deeper and deeper into yourself, and exhuming every newly-exposed
pain energy as you get to them.

At any stage of processing, pains that were previously hidden may emerge to
be released. You may see faces of people with whom you have unfinished
business. You will witness the heartache, guilt, shame, self-disgust, remorse
as they are being brought out from your subconscious mind. As long as they
remain in your subconscious mind, they will continue to play out in ways that
are beyond your control and awareness. Now as you welcome these
emotions, you will feel an energy coming back to you energy that youve
been using to keep those pains at bay.

The transmutation of pain into a source of power will change your attitude
about pain, and life. Instead of avoiding facing pain, you will discover that
processing pain is hugely empowering. Welcome it. It will be your power and
your salvation. Think of pain as fuel for your inner fire, the raw material for the
generation of power.


Stage 5: Emergence
States: strength, compassion, forgiveness, self-honouring
Motivation: Moving On

When pain has been processed properly, adequately and responsibly, there
will be a dramatic shift in energy. You will suddenly feel lighter and calmer.
You begin to forgive and feel compassion towards those who have hurt you.
You are healed.

As you allow the healed you to emerge, your outlook in life changes to
become more positive. In response, the situations in your life change to
become more positive.

12
You may perceive a strong movement of energy in your life. This is a time of
excitement when new opportunities present themselves. Flow with this energy
and enjoy expressing your renewed self. When you do, you will find your
personality taking on a more extroverted, forward-looking flavour. You are
excited about your future and see new opportunities every day. You are
inspired, empowered, full of hope, and aware of having choices.

Although it may sound all good by now, at this stage there is a danger of self-
sabotage. The movement of energy may frighten you into taking a couple of
steps back and if youre not careful you might end right back into your familiar
coping method(s).

Decide to move on. Keep your vibration high by expressing gratitude for all
your blessings, particularly for your healing and the abundance that has come
as a result of it. Expand your perception of the size of your world until it
becomes borderless, filled with infinite possibilities.

Before the trauma, there was no fear, no pain. Only joy. Go further back from
the point of trauma and connect to the state of joy. Connecting to joy at this
stage will help elevate you to a higher vibration and towards the last stage:
Liberation.


Stage 6: Liberation
States: wholeness, love, gratitude
Motivation: Truth

Theres a sense of surrendering to the vastness of existence and you feel
content to be a watcher, admiring the unpredictability of events that unfold
around you. Theres a connection with pure energies that feels deep and
spiritual, which opens you up to greater experiences. The world seems perfect
despite its apparent flaws. Your heart is effortlessly filled with gratitude.

There is nothing to do at this stage. You have walked the tough path to
Liberation.
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Chart of The Six Stage of Pain Processing


1 2 3 4 5 6
Trauma Grief Pain Avoidance Processing Emergence Liberation


Shock Anxiety Anger Pain Strength Wholeness
Threat Depression Numbness Grief Compassion Love
Terror Hopelessness Addictions Sadness Forgiveness Gratitude
Confusion Emptiness Self-honoring
Sadness Over-indulgence
Shame Self-mutilation
Guilt Destruction
Distraction
Eating disorders
High risk-taking


Quick Reminders


Process your pain. Allow the pain to move through and out of you.

Use the chart to gauge where youre at on The Path. See suggestions under
the headings in the ebook to move through the various stages. The idea is to
be present to your pain so that it can be processed and you can then advance
towards Liberation.

Learn the spiritual lesson behind the pain.

Each cycle of The Path is created for one (set of) spiritual lesson(s). Most of
us, in our lifetime, are meant to go through a series of these cycles. With
every completed cycle (i.e. when the spiritual lesson has been learnt), we
advance to a higher consciousness.

Allow your healed self to emerge. Keep your vibrations high by expressing
gratitude.

Whichever stage you are at, do not judge yourself. Self-judgement breeds
guilt, which impedes healing and thereby create blocks. Accept that where
you are is the perfect place for you to be right now. This acceptance, this
14
recognition of perfection for what is, will open you up to an immense power to
heal and create.


About Amyra Mah

Amyra Mah is a spiritual coach, addiction therapist, intuitive counsellor who is
passionate about empowering people to rise to their magnificence. She
specialises in helping clients heal their emotional pains behind addictions,
depression, anxiety, and body image issues, and reconcile the internal
conflicts that drive them to self-abusive lifestyles. The techniques contained in
this ebook are adapted from her teachings in Body Renew, the personal
empowerment system she has created where body movements, breathwork
and imaginative skills are concurrently exercised for self-renewal. Amyra
conducts workshops, retreats, group programmes and private sessions for
those who wish to find their personal power, spiritual meaning and a profound
sense of comfort within. For inspirational articles, visit her blog at
www.UnusualWisdom.com.



















2006 Amyra Mah

Disclaimer
The information presented here is offered for informational purposes only, not to substitute,
replace or contra-indicate sound medical advice or medical care. This information is not
intended to diagnose or treat any medical illness; if you have medical concerns you are
advised to contact a licensed physician. The user of said information accepts all responsibility
for viewing and/or using this information.