Everyone wants to ‘Tap In” the Positives.
Of course we do, the positives are the outcome we want. And no one wants to focus on the negative – but stay with me because when you truely understand the real skill of EFT you understand that the magic of EFT is being able to safely and effectively clear up the negative. Tapping with positive EFT is uplifting and inspiring – its just not the whole story.
The sky is always blue behind the clouds.
Its the blue sky that is permanent not the clouds. We are born into blue sky, we are born into love, joy and happiness. And then life throws it at us. Sometimes with our first breath. And still it is the blue sky that is there behind the clouds. EFT allows us to focus on the clouds and clear them away. Bringing in the positive without clearing up the negative is like putting a sheet of artificial blue in front of the clouds so that you don’t see them.
Let me give you an example. Two students were tapping together doing the ‘Writings on the Wall’ exercise on my EFT Level Two course. One of them had the limiting belief: “if you’re born without: you die without”. The two of them were tapping enthusiastically with words like: ‘I am a money magnet… my life is full of financial abundance… money is so natural and easy for me….”
I paused them and they looked at me with shining faces. I asked the one with the limiting belief to say “born without: die without” and saw her go straight back into it. She was feeling good with all the positive tapping but the limitation was still intact. So I asked her: ‘how did you learn that?’ and she told a little story.
When she was ten she loved hitting a ball against a wall with an old racquet and dreamed of joining the tennis club. However you only had to look at the cars parked outside to know what sort of people were members. She nagged and nagged as they walked home from school untill one day her mother stopped in exasperation and pointed at their run down house in their run-down street and said emphatically: ‘You are This. You are not That.’ and proudly: “we are born without and we’ll die without”
Now we got back to tapping and focused in on the details of the negative. We tapped for “Even though I picture that run down house….” and “Even though mother said ‘You are This’ I truely and deeply accept myself” We tapped on more of mother’s exact words and on the conclusions she made in childhood untill she felt compassion for her mother and said “I could walk into that tennis club now with my head held high” and when I tested her with her mother’s words she said it may have been so then and now it was just silly.
Opening up possibilities
To me the time to bring in the positive EFT is when we have cleared up the negative and new possibilities are opening up. Of course we can just leave it to our natural ‘blue sky’ to navigate through those possibilities or we can set an intention like programming our inner navigator. My friend Linda Wood says we all have a bunch of angels flying around just waiting for instructions but normally we are sending them mixed messages and they are confused as they pick up our doubts and fears as well as our intentions and wishes. EFT helps to clear up the signal.
I have a personal story too. For ten years I lived in a very small house, too small for visitors or even a dinner party. I stayed because I didnt know of anywhere else that I would want to live. I had no intention. So I did some tapping: for my doubts, fears and stuckness and then for my dream house. As I tapped I pictured a big, light kitchen with high ceilings and the sun pouring in through the windows; and a cosy sitting room with a fire place for winter evenings; a garden and space for an office. Guess what, one day I noticed a For Sale sign in a place I had never even considered. That is now my wonderful home and it is so like I had pictured.
Another time to bring in a positve is when a person just cannot allow any alternative outcome and the positive can open up a window of possibility. A friend who had been given a frightening diagnosis tapped for: “Even though that doctor said I’ll just have to live with this: What if I can be a medical miracle? What if I can see surprise and amazement in his eyes” The positive here is giving her the encouragement to work through the negatives, the many, many fears, losses and traumas thrown up by her diagnosis.
We can also use positive reassurance when things are just too overwhelming to focus on pain or painful memories. Sometimes it may take many sessions of gentle support and encouragement and all the time the tapping is working its magic. Eventually we can get to telling those difficult stories and cleaning up the details.
The positive helps, clearing the negative heals.
So do use positives with EFT but don’t expect positive suggestion or intention to be a substitute for cleaning up negatives. Remember the old expression ‘sweeping the dirt under the carpet’ ? Well EFT now enables us to clean up the dirt and to do that we need to look under the carpet and clean it up. Then we can imagine and intend that new carpet!
Wishing you every success,