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In this transmission, the book begins and the guides give it a title
The Flow Transmissions came in over a seven year period of my life. They are posted in the order of my notebooks but you are not required to read them in order. Find the posts that resonate. Read them in your own way. The full listing is here.
As you will see, The Flow Transmissions are a conversation. As the Guides messages flow in, I interrupt, question and argue with them. This is part of the process and I invite you to try it. Open your notebook. Pick up your pen. Close your eyes and listen. I wonder what The Flow will have to tell you. Author’s Notes at the end of the post1
Guidance for the age of anxiety (Living a joy-led life)
Begin here. This is it. Nothing is wrong.
Now we have chosen this title carefully as it maps you into the present moment and turns your attention toward alignment with what is here, and what will be here: the flow of moving energy, the flow of the wholeness - the good.
This is it, right here, right now. And Nothing is wrong - with this or with that or with you.
The Flow is the movement that moves without end. Constantly flowing, endlessly unfolding and all of it is blessed and all of it is good. Which is to say, again, that nothing is wrong. All is flowing as it will and as it should.
Nothing binds you to the past (or the future) but your attention. You are the binder of your experience. As such, awareness of where you are (you are here) is the first awareness. You are here. You are here. You are always here.
I ask: “What does it mean when you say: You are the binder of your experience?”
The guides respond:
And this is the teaching on Binding
Binding holds experience separate for your later re-turn, re-membrance and re-lease. And this is the way of healing. Re-turn. Re-membrance. Re-lease.
Binding holds a painful experience separate until the psyche (individual soul + mind) is ready to re-member and re-lease it. You bind experience and hold it separate, sealed away where it cannot hurt you. As such, binding is also re-naming. You take something out of the flow of ‘the good’ and re-name it as ‘bad’. This excludes it from blessing and by this separation, that part of the world is un-blessed — by you.
When you say, “This should not be here. This should not have happened,” this is condemned - by you. Yet, if you but look again, you will see that it DID happen - and because all that flows is blessed into the good, this too is good.
I ask: “How can you say that all that flows is blessed? So much is wrong with the world - nothing is working!” And the guides say:
Nothing is wrong with the world - only with your relationship to what is and what was. This is not to say that change should not happen. Change is the way of things. Notice what, in your perception, is ‘not working’ and choose a better way. Attend to that better way and that better way will flow. This is the evidence that everything is working.
You cannot change the circumstances of your experience until you understand their cause, which is the perception that what is happening should not be happening. All that happens happens as response to what happened before. All that unfolds, unfolds steadily, one thing leads to another.
When you argue with what is here, you argue with the response to what you are. Which is to say that, when you argue with what happens, in the present or in the past, you are saying, “I have a better idea than The Flow (the wholeness) of what should have been here.” You condemn what is here and demand that The Flow bring your better idea here and now.
When you argue with the past, you rename what actually happened from ‘real’ (it happened) to ‘unreal’ (it should have been different). Naming a thing as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ holds it separate from the flow. When this occurs, a thing that has ended is bound and renamed as a ‘problem’. When something is a problem, it bothers you. You turn and turn to look at it, asking: Are you still there, bad thing? Still there, dangerous and lurking. You should not be there. So I will keep an eye on you.
As you keep your eye on it, repeating, “This should not have happened,” the implication that something else should have happened instead increases. And what is that something else? Only you can say - because you are the binder. You are the one who named this as a ‘problem’.
Now, before we go further, we want to pause to bless all of this. There is nothing wrong with binding. It is a natural part of the human psyche’s work and it is good. We do not need to try to stop binding, we do not need to name binding as a problem and try to fix it.
That said, all bound energy is capable of unbinding, which is another word for healing or integration.
Binding is a response to something that is painful, harmful or unpleasant and cannot be addressed and integrated in present time. When you are a child, you cannot simply walk away from an angry parent. When you are an employee, you cannot simply walk away from the source of your income. So you bind the pain as a way of getting through it. You set the pain aside. Eventually, though, you must re-turn and re-lease the pain so that you can flow more freely through your now.
The way of unbinding is re-turn, remembrance and re-lease. And the way of re-lease is blessing.
And so we offer this teaching: Begin here. Where and when you are.
Begin here is a clear directive, which guides the attention back from the past, to the only place where it belongs: here, now, meeting this, the only reality.
In the past, you’ve bound your attention (energy) to the past, naming this bound energy as ‘wounds’ but, in truth, nothing binds your attention but itself. Which is to say that your attention binds your attention.
You imagine it into the present.
I say: Readers will not understand this. They will feel as if you are saying they imagined their experience.
Thank you. We will clarify.
When we say, “You imagine it into the present,” we mean that bound pain from the past will imagine itself into your present and reanimate. Bound pain is energy that could not be flowed in the past, was set aside and has called for your attention (and integration) ever since. Bound pain is conscious and it is always calling for healing.
I ask: What do you mean when you say that, “bound pain is conscious and it is always calling for healing”?
We mean that all is one wholeness and when any part of the wholeness is bound off and held as separate will seek to return to flow with the one wholeness. Just as water flows from raindrop to river to ocean.
Bound pain, which is held in the past, calls to be remembered in the present. When you sense its call, you turn to re-member it - which is normal and by design.
Re-membrance is a natural process. When it is time to remember and release, you sense the upswelling of emotion and allow it to flow. When you allow this, the bound pain is released and returned to the wholeness. When you do not allow this, you interrupt the integration process and the bound pain creates pain in the present. You hold back your tears. You pretend to be alright when you are not. You lash out at others. You hurt yourself.
This behavior is your natural response to the bound pain as it attempts to escape its binding but in order to release, it must be flowed. In your words, the bound pain must be experienced - momentarily - in the present.
It is never too late to release bound pain. You are capable of doing so at any age; and you will do so, naturally re-leasing the energy you have contained back to the flow - when you are ready.
I ask: When will I be ready?
When you are willing to feel now what you could not feel then.
By your attention to the past, you perceive a “wound”, and you bind yourself to it in the present. When you can’t stop thinking about it, can’t let it go of it, you are turning toward it. This is always an indication that healing is available. When healing is available, you are invited to the next steps: re-membrance and re-lease.
Re-membrance is simply a re-imagining of what happened. You watch the memory, letting it flow through the mind as it happened. You release the binding that ‘this should not have happened’’ for it is this binding which causes you pain: the thought that, ‘if this had not happened then I would be happier, stronger, more capable.’ Yet it is you who binds you to this story.
We release you. We release you. We release you from this story. You are free now from hurts and errors of your past.
When you imagine that you are bound by these painful experiences (wounds, regrets, mistakes) and keep turning toward them without blessing them, you stop the natural flow of healing. You turn back to re-member yet instead of re-membrance (which releases bound energy), you re-enforce the pain, thickening the binding, and naming them again as cause of your suffering in present time.
The simple principle here is this: Holding onto pain from the past creates suffering in the present.
Six years after this transmission flowed to me, I’d like to fill in some principles which I did not understand at the time.
Releasing bound pain can be a tearful, painful experience. Find an open-hearted witness: a trauma counselor, qualified healer, therapist or gentle friend to support you. Get yourself a journal and write out your experience (as I did) going through the steps of Re-turn and Re-membrance. Then, Re-lease it. Bless who you were. Forgive how it was. Give all of it, including yourself, to God (or to Love).
In the guides’ terms: Re-turning means facing what happened.
Re-membering means allowing the memory to flow, even when emotion starts to move. In this way, we re-member lost but not forgotten parts of ourselves back into wholeness. We re-member what was dis-membered by pain.
Re-leasing means allowing those emotions to move and to fully flow out. It was helpful to me to know, in advance, that once these big feelings move through, they move out. The pain doesn’t keep coming - it doesn’t last forever. In fact, often, the bound pain was more a momentary pinch - an “Ow” followed by a “Wow!” as pain burst through and was gone.
Returning, Remembering and Releasing is a clearing, cleansing process. If the pain returns at all, it is much quieter - an echo against the inside of a shell. Now, where we once felt bound pain, there is open space where restored feeling - including the full experience of joy - can flow.
Peace returns. We can hear again the call to our natural state, which is love, creativity and the easeful flow of quiet joy. For many, a second call follows: the wish to help others, to heal, uplift and support - and to build the better way that we know is possible… because we are living it.
Back to the guides’ message:
Re-turn is the natural flow of healing. Re-membrance naturally follows. No need to push yourself through these steps. You will know when you are called to re-turn, to re-member, to re-lease. These are natural things. These are easy things. You are made for this. All is as it should be.
The truth is: pain is a part of being alive. You have a body. The body experiences pain. There is no one who does not face challenges. No one who is never ill. Do not condemn these things and try to end them. Instead, meet the natural flow of living with welcome. How will I meet this? And this? And this?
Will I meet what comes toward me from fear or from curiosity, from welcome or condemnation, from defense or from love?
Nothing binds you but your own attention. Memories are no more than thought – imaginations of what was and is no longer. It takes courage to move through the pain to the light. This is the way. Remember and release.
This is the teaching for today.
We will come back and explain this more fully in dialogues to come. We will write it as you show up to receive and record it. As you show up, you will find it here to meet your listening. If you don’t show up, do not be concerned. You will observe that we are speaking it through other teachers. For you cannot miss this message.
This is the teaching at this time. This is the word of the flow – of God – and it is good. And you are good.
If you are enjoying The Flow Materials, I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment, like the posts - and by all means: Ask questions and share your own experiences in the comments.
As the guides have shown me, the more we engage with the work, the more the work expands in us and around us.
If you have the means and the impulse to become a paid subscriber, I thank you. Your monthly payments make it possible for me to do the work I love.
To all who read and share the post: Thank you!
Offerings
I want everything that I offer to say: You are welcome here.
As I bring The Flow Materials out of my journals and onto Substack, I re-encounter this work myself. Witnessing my questions - and my own fearful and bumbling relationship with the Guides, is humbling.
At the time of this transmissions, I still perceived the guides as separate from me. They seemed all-powerful wisdom keepers and I felt unworthy of the depth and provenance of their teachings.
Years later, I can witness the prescience and the provenance of these teachings. An entire body of research on somatic experience has emerged to support their claims on the effects of trauma - personal and collective. This validates the guides as a trustworthy resource, and adds confidence to my own work. It reminds me that we are all one interwoven field of resonance, and all evolving together.
You already have the wiring to dialogue with this field - and with the Guides. My intention in sharing this work is to support your ability to connect and to flow in your own way. Have fun. Engage. Argue. The Guides love answering questions - and so do I.
