Shifting Perspectives
My Gallbladder Teacher
I’d like to share what this whole experience of getting my gallbladder removed has taught me so far. Though, I know that there’s more to come, I can feel it and where I’m at right now with it. I can feel there’s not a lot of energy in my voice compared to how it used to be and my diaphragm, my abdomen, is going through healing right now. There’s not that force in my diaphragm that will push out the air to make the words stronger. We don’t know too much about the gallbladder, until something happens. This is what I found on the web: “Your gallbladder is a small pear-shaped organ located under your liver that stores and releases bile. Bile is the fluid your liver produces that helps digest fats in the food you eat.” So how can we live without that? The medical establishment will say that the gallbladder is an almost useless organ and that you don’t really need it. I don’t know if I really buy that. Then again, I’m not a doctor. It seems like every single organ including our appendix has some purpose or it wouldn’t be created.
Years ago, I started getting acid reflux symptoms. Acid reflux is supposed to be a result of eating the wrong foods, or you’re drinking alcohol, or whatever, and I was cutting out all those things and it would still show up. Well, I started to look at the emotional connection behind it. For me, there was an idea or a thought or a belief that I needed to let go of or speak and I couldn’t do either. It really makes sense how our upbringing, our childhood, our conditioning all plays a part. There was a part of me that froze and self-sabotaged. When I thought about flirting with this girl and I wanted to say something, I froze. Flight. Fight. Freeze. If someone was threatening me, I froze. That was that energy that was going on in my esophagus and I couldn’t speak. I know that inside of all that, there’s this fear of losing love. So, sometimes I would not say or do anything for fear of losing something. It may have been that somebody would have judged me if I had said something. A lot of times, if I’d said something, people would be thankful that I’d said something. I didn’t have that in my consciousness to be aware of.
So, I would have this acid reflux and it’d be really painful. Finally, I said what I needed to say. It was really hard and it took a lot of courage to say something. I did eventually say what I needed to say and the acid reflux went away, or so I thought. Then, I had very similar symptoms and it was so painful in my solar plexus. Then, also on the opposite side of my back, I would get this really painful, dull, aching pain and it was so excruciating. Hour after hour, I had this pain. I took charcoal and baking soda and apple cider vinegar and all kinds of other remedies. Believe me, I’ve tried it, and it would not go away. I couldn’t stand still. I walked around and couldn’t let it go. I had to stick my finger down my throat about 50 times, so I could throw up and get some pressure off of my belly. My belly was getting bloated. My belly was coming out so far from the bloatedness that it was so painful. I finally went to the hospital and they said I needed to get my gallbladder removed. I said, “Why can’t we remove those gallstones?” What the doctor told me was that one of them was about the size of a strawberry or a large cherry and was too big to pull out and it was much easier to pull out the entire gallbladder. I was in so much pain I didn’t want any possibility of going through another 15 plus hours of this excruciating pain. I was ready to stick a needle in my stomach to relieve the pressure. That’s how painful it was. No amount of cleansing or apple cider vinegar or anything was going to let go of that. I made the decision and I’m really happy with that.
Now that the gallbladder was removed from my body, I wanted to learn more about the metaphysical “Why” and the related insights. The nutrition part of it is that I ate pretty well. Every once in a while, I’d go and sabotage myself. I’d have a burger with some cheese on it and some fries and a beer and maybe I’d have some dessert. But, my body’s not used to eating that way. When I have a burger, I’d think, “Well, now that I’m having a burger, I might as well have a beer too. Well, now that I have a burger and a beer, I might as well have some chocolate mousse.” It’s like I completely did this whole thing in one whole shot. It’s like it was a form of punishment or self-sabotage. I know that I’ve done it in other ways too.
Here’s some metaphysical insights that I found about the gallbladder: Anger and resentment. I even get emotional talking about it. Anger. Resentment. Rejection. Hardening. I was a 12-year old kid when my dad was killed and I hardened. I was playing next door and the cops (two of my Uncles were Orange County Sheriffs) were at my house and I was notified that my dad was killed. One of my Uncles said “Don’t cry. You’re the man of the house now.” I was completely hardened. I felt this rejection and it’s not that my mother was rejecting me. I felt her not knowing what to do and her not knowing how to emotionally nurture us with tenderness, with no fault of her own. And yet, it was there. I know that’s part of it, that anger and resentment and rejection and hardening and self-sabotage. I knew all along that I sabotaged myself.
When I look back at my younger self, I think, “Oh, that’s so painful to see myself as a little boy and have to go through that.” I hope that you can do that for yourself. Spend some time having a lot of compassion for feeling the need to be hard, “I had to be what I had to be and I had to get strong.” Spend some time with what you really needed was compassion, tenderness and nurturing. It seemed like I was in the world by myself, trying to go through every day by myself and my friends are always trying to do the best and trying to help me out. I kept everyone at an arm’s distance. If you’ve done something like that, there’s so much compassion for you and that people have been trying to get into your life and get into your heart. Sometimes, we keep people at an arm’s distance, so that we don’t get hurt anymore.
I’m sure that was part of the whole thing and now that I look at it right here, right now. The gallbladder. There is a purpose to the gallbladder and part of that purpose is to let you know about the hardening in your life and those are the gallstones and the bile. The gallbladder accumulates bile, which is what breaks things down. This is the storage container that breaks things down and makes things softer and not so hard. How do I work with this without the gallbladder? Well, now it’s all a different form softening. This is all you need to take care of yourself, to love yourself and support yourself. Without the body needing to show you what’s going on there, you’re going to have to be on top of this, you’re going to have to not only be really aware of your nutrition and not sabotaging yourself through things that taste really good, but also emotionally to make sure that you keep on on this path of softening.
I looked up the antonyms to these emotions. The antonym of anger is joy. The antonym of resentment is contentment. The antonym of rejection is softening. The antonym of self-sabotage is self-love. I’ve been showing up that way. The anger and resentment and rejection and harming isn’t my self-image these days. I definitely have softened and have more softening to do. I’m definitely not as resentful as I used to be and not as angry as I used to be. There were these little tendrils though. A little piece was still in there that I could definitely feel the anger. I could definitely feel little flakes of resentment, little flakes of rejection. It’s not a large percentage of who I am now. Maybe, it’s there so I can really connect with other people that are going through that. Who knows? It’s definitely not my self-image. Then again, enough so that I can remember that and feel that and have compassion for that. I hate to think that I’ve done some kind of spiritual bypass, that I’ve totally disconnected with that and don’t feel it. I can still feel it still inside of me. I hope that I keep going through my life with that balance of knowing who I once was and then who I am now…until I don’t need it anymore.
What I’m saying is this. I accept the reality that I am in currently. Emotions. Healing. Enjoying the empathetic connection with others, by keeping my awareness on the pulse of my heart and memory of who I once was. Being able to connect with other human beings, sharing tears of compassion with them. Knowing full well that there is evolution happening and in some reality of consciousness, there is not the experience of suffering and compassion is not a known feeling anymore. Band-aids aren’t available because cuts don’t happen anymore. I have a deep, deep feeling that once I fully let go of the vestiges of my former pains, that I will exist in a different reality. A reality of peace and Oneness. It is beautiful…as well. I take comfort in knowing that I am there now also.
The other thing that I’m learning from this is my friends. The friends that have shown up and the ones that haven’t. The ones that have, I didn’t even know they were my friends. Some of my friends touch me so deeply. I look at all the love and support that I have and it really says, “Good job, good job. You weren’t that person before. You faked being a nice person in the past and you had this mask on, and now you’re an authentic person that people enjoy, that people appreciate.” I look at that and I know it’s on the edge of being egoic or bragging. Though, you know what? I invite you to look at yourself in such a radical way that you would see what an awesome person you are. Maybe you’re not an awesome person yet. At least, look at yourself with compassion (not pity). What really helped me was, I came across some old communications from old relationships and old friends and what they said about me. I looked in there and I was honest with it. I invite you to be honest, really honest with yourself. Now, be honest in a way that your soul will be honest with you. We all hold back on this and say “Oh, I’m nothing and I’m not that nice, so I’ve got some work to do.” The way that your soul looks at you is in a completely different way. That’s what I’m choosing to do, is to allow my soul to speak for me, to speak for who I am. There’s always more work to do (until there isn’t). I can definitely feel that, I can definitely feel like there’s another version and version and version of myself that’s going to be experienced before my body dies.
Right now, I’m going to take this time right now to really appreciate myself, and I invite you to do the same thing. Again, if you can’t see yourself as a person that everybody really loves and enjoys, then take the time to be compassionate with yourself, that you’re going through something that I also went through. This other part is the ancestral and genetic elements of this whole gallbladder experience. I was reminded by a family member that my mom had her gallbladder removed. And the family member said, “So it’s genetic.” I don’t really go for that whole, “Blame it on genes,” kind of thing. Genes have consciousness within them too. Better said would be that they are consciousness. So, there’s something even behind the genes.
I started to wonder, “Would my mom have those feelings of anger and rejection and resentment?” Oh, yeah. If I knew her mother and her father, would they have those feelings of anger and rejection and resentment and hardening and self-sabotage? Oh yes. Yes, they did. I know that they did. I saw them as a kid and as an adult. I loved them as my grandparents, and I know that was there. Where did they get that from? It was genetic. Another word would be “ancestral”. Even though there might be some pieces of this that have healed and I’ve become a different image of myself, still there’s this…“everything is energy”. There’s also the ancestral lineage that was passed down from my mother’s womb, from her mother’s womb, from her mother’s mother’s womb…energetically. What I needed to be really honest with is that I’m doing the work on this more than anyone else in my family line ever has. Stuff is going to come up and the emotions of that are going to come up. I’m the right person for this, and it’s not for everybody. It’s something for me to look at directly with love, compassion and kindness. To realize that this is not only the healing for me from my childhood, (maybe I’ve healed a lot of it) and something else. What I believe is happening is that once I start to heal this in such a way that it’s not a majority of myself, that it’s become a minority of myself, I open up the gates for my ancestor’s healing to flow through me. I always felt like that’s what was happening. Once it’s the majority, of our own clearing or healing process, that you open up the gates for other people and your ancestors to say, “Hey, take this one, too, yeah. Take this one, too, yeah. Okay. Feed that in there. If you’ve got an open channel, I want to pass this one too.” It’s an interesting theory to know that there’s even more reason why this is happening and why I’m doing this work. Thank you Gallbladder.