My Personal Story - From Whole-mess to Wholeness!

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Michael Casteel, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

This is my personal and humbling story of awakening to wholeness. Yep, the raw, down and dirty account of my personal transformation from a life dominated by fear, shame, struggle and limitation to a profound AWAKENING experience that was followed by supreme clarity, deep peace, purpose, and the new found ability to be fully present to life, as it is.

In my twenties and early thirties, I could have been a poster boy for the positive thinking movement. I bought into “positive thinking,” hook, line and sinker and suffered from its many limitations. I bought all the latest pop psychology books, bragged about having the largest cassette tape library that included anyone who wrote on the subject of personal growth and positive thinking. I attended countless workshops and seminars. When someone asked me how I was doing, I would say, ”Great and getting better every day”. I never allowed myself to consciously feel angry, sad, afraid or lonely. Definitely, I was never bored!

Negative-uncomfortable feelings had no place in my life. At first glance, this kind of makes sense. Doesn’t it? I was also terribly out of balance. I wanted my life to be filled with only springtime thoughts and feelings and no winter, only bright sunshiny days with no dark cloudy ones, and all expanded emotions with no contracting ones.

I was in a massive state of denial. I chronically sabotaged myself in both work and relationships. I felt disconnected from life and God. I constantly sought distractions, both healthy and not so healthy ones, to help me stay up, positive and optimistic. After all, isn’t that what happiness is all about, I asked myself? I did not have the capacity to.

You may be wondering if I’m against positive thinking. No, I’m opposed to the false optimism and shallowness that it can often lead to when used as an attempt to hide from uncomfortable feelings and core pain. I’ve discovered that when we attempt to protect ourselves from experiencing the pain and difficult feelings of life, we close our hearts at the same time. We also find it difficult to be truly intimate with another and feel disconnected with life. “So let’s find something fun to do!” This was my strategy.

The message that I most want to communicate to you is that unfelt feelings do not go away by ignoring them or trying to cover them up. They go underground into the unconscious waiting for an opportunity to be experienced and resolved. Unfelt feelings are the root cause of all mental, physical, emotional and spiritual disease as well as our collective feelings of fear and separation. Whatever we feel, heals and what we resist, persists.

Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard, outdoor adventurer and founder the outdoor clothing manufacturer writes, “There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, ‘Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything’ and an optimist who says, ‘Don’t bother doing anything; it’s going to turn out fine.’ Either way, nothing happens.

Mr. Positive and Always-Optimistic-Me woke up one winter morning, looked at my heart broken and depressed self in the bathroom mirror and cried out, “Something is missing. What is wrong with me? What am I not seeing? There must be something more."

I felt like I’d lost my soul. This was a moment of great despair and great awakening. I heard in a clear, peaceful and somehow urgent voice. “You spend too much energy chasing after Spirit and not enough caring for your soul.” Whether it was a voice in my own head or Someone else, I didn’t know, but I took the message to heart.

This was the turning point for me. I stopped all chasing of Spirit or at least I attempted to stop. Instead, I felt compelled to get down to the business of caring for my soul. Although I didn’t fully know what that might look like or what was to be done, I intuitively knew two things:

I would have to slow down and stop running from the inner turmoil and anxiety that I had been desperately attempting to cover up with all of the activity and positive thinking.

I would need to find someone to help me finally face myself and work through the unresolved feelings from a physically and emotionally abusive childhood.

Throughout the years of “facing myself” I progressed, and I digressed. It often felt like moving one step forward at times, and then two steps back. Along the way I felt a deep calling to fully understand both spirituality and soulfulness and how they fit together.

Understanding, embodying, living, celebrating, teaching and being a disciple of this sacred union of Spirit and Soul within us is what I dedicate my life to in my SOULutions practice. My soul’s purpose is to ignite a fire in others to awaken to wholeness. In doing so, I care for my own soul.

The essence of this liberated life for me, is a consistent state of sober-joy. This includes regular experiences of bliss, along with, at times, a slightly broken heart, yet always free and always with twinge of AWE.