We hear and read about many powerful and insightful teachers that come from all walks of life, who inspire us to want to become enlightened, whilst they are living extraordinary lives and are highly committed to their own personal journey. They tend to shake our foundations of who we think we are, as they stimulate us with stories and examples of their own lives that get us to truly question what is real in our life.

Over time I have personally observed many people in audiences get really inspired by what is said by teachers. They become highly motivated by the thought of change and by examples of potential possibility but few actually leave with an understanding of how to obtain this kind of inspired change and how to obtain this kind of incredible freedom from within. Although I cannot offer you directly through this article the wholesome, expansive, experiential experience of attending a change workshop, I can definitely offer you some understanding and awareness of how you can add a very powerful tool to your own toolbox and move yourself further towards enlightenment.

I recently met with a friend that was experiencing some issues around her partner in their relationship. We quickly identified that the issue actually began with her mother and it went back, right back to her childhood. Little time had gone by and she was having some realisations about how the pain she felt around her mother was effecting her whole life and how it had threatened her life a few years ago, in the form of cancer in her body. As we continued to talk about it, she was joining the dots and gaining some significant leverage to want to change this behaviour and these patterns, (and she definitely wanted it sooner than later). She immediately looked to me with extreme pain in her face asked me…“how do I do that”. I responded with out any hesitation. You need to access this issue at the core. This of course was the issue she had with her mother. I said you need to write her a letter, you don’t need to send it, but you do need to connect with your feelings and express them fully in the letter, and do it for yourself.

Over the next couple of days I was in contact with her again, as I was aware of how vulnerable she was feeling at the time that I had left her. It can be a little overwhelming when we gain some significant insight into our lives, that in turn effects so many other aspects of our life. In particularly when we were not even previously aware of the kind of impact it was having..

She responded by saying that she had had a go at the letter but had a lot of resistance writing the letter, as she was fearful of what might come up. On discussing it a little further we were able to establish what her resistance was about. It was the fear of the anger she was actually feeling towards her mother. She was concerned that if the anger surfaced, it could be even more damaging towards her relationship with her mother. After feeling assured that underneath the anger there will be some deep sadness, that the anger is only a protection for her true feelings, she was then able to continue with enormous success and resolve.

I have enormous respect for my friend and who she is and what I clearly learnt from this communication with her was how difficult it can be for someone who has not had some experience with expressing their emotions in a positive way, to shift emotions through the process of letter writing. I clearly recognised in that moment how important it is to know the steps of how to write letters, to bring about meaningful resolve in our lives.

What I also realised is that this experience gave me great insight into the sensitivity, the preciousness and the skill that is required to write letters and obtain absolute resolve and completion around issues. From this discussion with her I realised that it’s not what you do, but its HOW you do it. What I mean is, that in my 20 years of intense travel around the globe, in my searching for tools for myself to personally enlighten my own life and in the last 8 years of supporting other people to move past old pain and wounds, I have found letter writing to be one of the most powerful tools for healing. Not only for your initial stages of your journey of healing but also for the more subtle issues that the more developed, conscious person will be able to access. Because no matter where you are at in your journey, you will still have unconscious issues and a powerful way to identify what is real, is to write letters. So I thought I would spell it out in a simple and practical way for your ease and healing.

1. Get support from someone to help you get clear on the issue you are dealing with at its core level. If you know the issue already, then begin writing from there.
2. Make sure that you have some uninterrupted time with no phones or people wanting you. Mornings are a good time as we generally start the day by being a little more inward. Generally this means that we are a little more connected to our feelings and have less scattered thoughts from our day.
3. Get some space where you can feel your feelings with out worrying about people hearing you.
4. Start the letter with either Dear…( the person’s name that you are writing to)… then go straight to.. “what I am feeling right now is”………. and just continue writing your letter from there…or if you have no name to direct it to, just start with… “What I am feeling right now is”……….
5. Always write about your feelings and express these feelings in the letter, as well as the reason why you are feeling them. An analytical story will be just that, from your head and filled with reason and it will bring around little, if any resolve, of the actual issue at hand.
6. Allow your pen to flow with the feelings, even if it does not make sense at times. If you have to put any thought into it, you will find it can slow the process down.

Other tips to consider are: 

• There is no size of letter that is right, it is best to just express it all. Generally speaking, up to a page might be enough but continue with as much as feels right for you.
• Never send the letter, or allow the person you are writing the letter to see it, unless you have some guidance from a qualified person to do so. To really resolve a matter, you will find that true resolve happens inside of you, not with the other person. If we are looking for resolve in the other person, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment.
• If emotions present themselves, have some tissues handy and continue writing about your feelings, allow them to keep flowing. You don’t need to stop and read over the letter. Just keep writing.
• Be aware of conditioning! Most of us at some stage in our lives have been told by our parents that we need to be strong in life and hold it all together. To not cry and not be emotional. This is often seen as a sign of weakness. This type of conditioning is generally more true for men, and it was certainly personally true for me. Although my parents never actually said this with their words, they communicated it with their actions by suppressing their own feelings. For me, none of the males in my family discussed their feelings, hence, I learnt by example and I suppressed my feelings in a huge way. Now I believe there is nothing more beautiful than to feel your feelings and to express them in the moment, rather than hold them back for some latter time or push them down and bury them away.
• When writing letters of this nature, often I find that the letter brings me clarity. I don’t always have emotions come up to the surface but I always find some clarity about an issue, which helps me understand myself better and gain more confidence, compassion and empathy for myself and others.
• Music can be a great catalyst to access emotions. Obviously an appropriate choice is necessary and I have found that something that is gentle & easy listening, really works.

The how to do it is the key, although I give my friend a lot of credit for being very connected to her feelings and emotions. It is a whole different skill to be able to write freely. You need to be able to disengage mentally and allow the unconscious to come from the heart and express itself purely through your feelings with out the mind interfering or sabotaging the truth. In turn, you allow yourself to go into the pain and express the painful emotions in a constructive way.

 Once this pain is expressed in its entirety, allowing the emotions to shift completely, it actually shifts on an energetic level within the body. If you break the word emotion down it is: (e- motion - ‘e’ for energy -  “in motion’). That is what emotion actually is. At times this shift can bring about total and absolute resolve and other times it can be just another part of the onion. Just another layer that we need to pull back in order to get to the next, with each layer bringing about a greater sense of freedom. One thing for certain is this. We feel “lighter” with each layer and that’s really what enlightenment is all about, lightening the load.

All teachers of enlightenment that I have come across that look at the whole body holistically, all tend to acknowledge in their own way, the importance of being connected to your feelings. Most of them either suggest; that you observe and acknowledge the emotions and allow them to flow, or that you go into them and pursue what they actually have to say to you.

In my own personal experience of working with many thousands of people and really looking into my own life emotionally,  I have found that accelerating your journey to enlightenment is to not only acknowledge the emotions and feelings & express them when they’re present, but it is to enhance your skills of awareness and develop your insight to recognize when something or someone is triggering a feeling in you.

By expressing these emotions completely , clearing them out of your body and bringing about resolve to issues in your life, it will impact your life on many levels. You’ll begin to find that you will feel safer to develop intimacy and you will be willing to share more of yourself in your personal relationships and that all of your relationships in general will begin to flow easier in your life. You will find you have more energy in your life to pursue your dreams and your confidence will automatically begin to develop in all areas of your life. You don’t tend to get ‘real’ confidence from something you do outside of yourself, you get ‘real’ confidence by knowing who you really are from the inside.

I encourage you to learn the art of letter writing and release those fears and hurts so that you can truly allow your true light to come through you in all that you do, just like the enlightened ones tell us to do.