We Contract Or Expand As A Physical Response To Feeling Safe Or Threatened

On the Earth plane, relationships are primarily experienced as physical. The emotional sensations of happiness, sadness, guilt, jealously, anger, fear and love are physical phenomena that require the secretion of specific hormones. For example, there is adrenaline to express fear, cortisol to produce anger, and serotonin to make you happy. Without these chemicals these emotions cannot occur. The cells of the body speak to us through the language of emotions. It is through emotions that the body tells us how we are dealing with certain situations, with others and ourselves. There are only two basic responses that our emotional and physical bodies can have to any given experience. Although the physical body and the body of emotions are inseparable, I have made this distinction to clarify the effect that emotions have on the body. The two responses are contraction and expansion.

Contraction is the physical response to not feeling safe. Most human beings constantly assess the area around them and ask themselves: “How safe am I here?” Just being with a person who appears superior or more powerful than you are can have a strong impact on you and your behavior. Your whole being knows this. You must have noticed that whenever you feel insecure in some way your body pulls inward, breathing becomes shallow, or you become cold. This contraction takes place in every cell of the body. Your cellular structure contracts if you feel judged or criticized by someone and thereby lets you know that it doesn’t feel safe. Because you don’t feel safe, you are not likely to open up to that person in fear of being hurt or put down.

Expansion, on the other hand, takes place when you feel safe and accepted. In a peaceful, beautiful environment, such as the top of a mountain, near a fresh water stream, or by the sea, you become naturally relaxed. The cells of your body don’t need to ‘hold their breath’ and be tight to protect themselves. They can breathe fully and give up their light, their energies. They will tell you that you are safe in this environment. Here nobody dislikes you or sees you in a negative way. You feel expanded and free, free to be yourself without pretense and without having to play a specific role. All the masks you are used to wearing to hide or protect yourself are removed and you show your real you. You feel alive. Yet you know you cannot stay in this world of expansion forever and must return to what you call the real world, back to contraction.

Human relationships can bring out our worst fears and insecurities. We are afraid of each other because we have spent lifetimes making each other afraid. Your world can be very scary if you perceive it this way. This point was once beautifully described by Albert Einstein in response to a journalist who asked something to this effect: “Dr. Einstein, you are recognized around the world as one of the most bonafide geniuses of our century, maybe of human history. Your scope of thinking has covered the workings of the universe from the tiny atom to the cosmos. You have seen your discoveries both evolve and enrich, and also mutilate and destroy the human life you so highly value. What, in your opinion, is the most important question facing humanity today?”

Characteristically, Einstein stared off into space for a moment, and then looked down at the ground in front of him. Finally he looked back at the reporter and replied:

“I think the most important question facing humanity is: ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves. For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly – and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process. If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially ‘playing dice with the universe’, then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning. But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives.”

In response to this challenge, each day it is up to you whether you withdraw your energies from the world and pretend that, in such a mode of contraction, you are safe, or alternatively, expand and extend your energy into all of life. The first choice leaves you with jittery, nervous cells that are ever vigilant to a possible assault; the other choice allows you to feel safe regardless of what happens around you. When you withdraw your energies from others, you do this only because of pain and fear of pain. Your body’s cells contract and none of the cellular energies of love and light are available to you. For example, heart cells that have contracted cause physical and emotional pain, love is absent at such times.

A closed, contracted heart is the true reason for heart trouble. An aching heart is a purely physical phenomenon, not a psychological one. Whereas fear can grip the body, it cannot touch consciousness. It is important to remind ourselves that the emotional body is not separate from the physical body. Emotions are merely there to inform us what the cells are going through. A broken heart is one that believes it cannot feel safe again, and thus remains closed and contracted. Heart disease is the body’s attempt to mend the broken heart by throwing the withdrawn and contracted feelings out in the open. Some people understand what is happening and begin to open their hearts; others don’t and die from a broken, contracted heart. The latter ones remained stuck in their belief that others had hurt them and that this had caused them to withdraw their love. Those, however, who see beyond the illusion of pain, can move on and discover that they are responsible for creating their own reality and can therefore change it.

It is time to create a new cellular message, one that allows the cells of your body to extend to an area they don’t need to be afraid of. There is no real safety in contraction. All that it can offer you is a false sense of security. You can easily change your body’s response by replacing this outdated belief system (of feeling safe through contraction) with the belief that expansion will make you safe. Whenever you feel frightened or insecure, instead of holding your breath, you can decide to breathe more fully. This allows you to expand with your breath. Your whole body expands when you expand with your breath. Your chest extends with each intake of breath and your spine straightens. Even your heart expands. An expanded heart is an open heart, one that is capable of sharing love. Giving love can never hurt you, only withdrawing it does. The only reason we contract when we confront difficult situations or challenging people is because we are not conscious of our contraction. If you become conscious of your tendency toward contraction, you are highly unlikely to continue falling into this trap repeatedly.

You can practice expansion with all your relationships. If your partner, for example, walks in and tells you: “Sit down, we have to talk”, do you expand or contract? Or, if you hear that you haven’t been accepted for the job you applied for, do you expand or contract? Does being stuck in a traffic jam make you expand or contract? It is not in your hands to change anything about these situations but you certainly can do something about your response to them. Know that safety cannot come from outside, it is an inside job. You are always safe because you are God, the universe; you are one with everything, so there is nothing you need to be afraid of and nothing that can harm you. You have agreed to everything that happens to you, for your own good. If it doesn’t feel that way, it is only because deep down you want to give yourself the opportunity to change your (false) belief that safety lies in contraction. There will be threats to your sense of safety only for as long as you believe you need to safeguard yourself. Once you expand into the difficult moments of your life, they become less threatening and they vanish altogether.

One thing that can help you in the practice of expansion is regular meditation. Sitting in a quiet place with your eyes closed produces a feeling of safety, which allows your cells to relax and be at ease and to open their energies to you. Knowing that every day there is a time of safety helps them to be open and free. This will make it easier for you to extend into those situations that you cannot change. Extension always brings love whereas contraction adds to your fear.

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This is an excerpt from my book LIFTING THE VEIL OF DUALITY