Re-Opening the Third Eye

Not so long ago, but long enough, I felt I could feel and hear things about people and situations that went beyond what one would call the usual senses. I fell into it in some ways, like the trip to Idaho and the crazy mountain woman who taught me to read tarot cards; but in other ways, it had been there as long as I knew, like communicating with my dead grandparents through dreams as a child.

At the time of my greatest openness, when I walked by someone who was in pain, I could feel it, even if I didn't know the person. It was as if there were a hole in my soul that others recognized and it called their emotions. Sometimes I would just get the wash of sadness and sometimes people I didn't know wanted to tell me about their deepest pain. It never felt strange or unnatural. It was the way I was.

Somewhere in the past 10 years or so, I feel I lost it. The hole closed up or was temporarily covered by cobwebs. I don't know. I blame my ex-husband, but that is a pretty easy out. The thing is during my relationship with him, I spent a lot of time trying to bend myself into the person he said he wanted. Unfortunately, just as I would make the last bend, what he wanted changed. It took me too long to figure out that it wasn't really me he wanted to change, it was just his easy way to not have to deal with his own issues. In the process, though, so many traits, behaviors, things that were ME were trampled. Some needed to be trampled or at least reworked. But some were just naive, open-hearted loving of life parts of myself that when described by my ex sounded like psychotic behavior.

Of course, I exaggerate. But, let me give you one example. I am a talker, you might have noticed. I used to get in trouble as a child for chatting with the winos (that's what we called them, pc or not) in the park. I didn't know fear of people. I was drawn to people energy, for better or worse. I talked to everyone, putting people at ease or intuiting their thoughts about a situation and commenting. It is a gift from my father that I treasure. For my ex, this was not acceptable, particularly if the person I was talking to was male. He accused me of flirting with everyone and worse. It turned out several years later that any male with whom I had spoken, in my ex's mind had been my lover. Interesting. Instead of thinking that my ex was just CRAZY, I tried to figure out what I had done to provoke this reaction in him. Since I have never really understood flirting, I didn't know how to modify my behavior in such a way that talking to me wouldn't be construed as flirting. So I learned to not talk to men, or worse, to feel self-conscious about talking to men whenever I had to talk to men. Not surprisingly, I became suspicious of all of my talking to people I didn't know. Pretty soon I was uncomfortable talking to anyone I didn't know. Was this the same person who used to make friends with homeless people?? Hardly.

This was one way that I started to distrust my instincts.

You can only imagine how the rest of the destructive relationship messed with my ability to trust my instincts.

Slowly but surely, the third eye was closed. Every time I looked through it, all I could do was blink and think to myself, is that really what I see?

In the process of rediscovering myself, I am trying to re-open the third eye; to begin to feel and sense more than see and hear. To analyze less and believe more. To trust myself and my instincts, but more importantly, to believe that I have instincts that are to be trusted and to clean the cobwebs out so that I can HEAR the voices from within and without that used to constantly whisper to me. I need to believe they are all still there just waiting for me to be willing to listen again, but sometimes I worry that they have found other people to listen.