From Market Loss to Inner Peace

Healing Hidden War Consciousness

Jan 25, 2025

Have you ever discovered a hidden part of yourself through the most unexpected circumstances?

That’s what happened to me last month when the stock market brought up a layer of my inner world I had never encountered before. I hope sharing this personal story might shed light onto your own life experience and perhaps inspire a new exploration. Perhaps there are many of us who live with deeply embedded war consciousness.

What do I mean with war consciousness?

I describe it here as deep-seated, often irrational patterns that are rooted in deeply buried, traumatic war experiences. These unconscious memories could be held in our cells, our DNA, or possibly even in our shared collective consciousness.

And how might it show up?

It doesn’t only manifest as an exaggerated fear of loss, as it did for me. It can also express itself as a recurring expectation of conflict or competition, feeling threatened too easily, or a constant sense of scarcity. If you have noticed any of these common patterns in your own life, perhaps you too want to find a way to release them and possibly contribute to the collective pool of peace consciousness instead.

How it all happened

Since last summer my husband and I have been learning more about investing in the stock market in an attempt to grow our small nest egg into a more rewarding financial resource. Boy, doing your own trading can be highly emotional: addictive when things are going well and tumultuous when they’re not. Over the weeks around Christmas the market had been fluctuating erratically and our efforts to navigate this situation to our advantage - hoping to minimize losses during sell offs and capitalize on rebounds - had been quite stressful at times and yielded rather mixed results. At one point on a Friday evening, we finally decided to significantly reduce our exposure in expectation of another downturn on Monday. We went to bed with a sense of relief.

In spite of that, two days later, when I awoke at dawn on Sunday morning, I was instantly overtaken by feelings of dread and doom, my stomach churning as I thought about our stocks.

Inviting the Emotions

Over the years of having released many of my emotional patterns, I have learned to pay attention when intense emotions arise. Instead of trying to calm or distract myself, I now remember to welcome uncomfortable emotions with deep, intentional breaths. They often either dissolve when I allow them to flow through my body, or they lead me somewhere. On that day the emotions remained uncomfortably persistent without revealing anything, and so I decided to do an emotional alchemy process with myself.

(Emotional Alchemy is a healing process designed to uncover the roots of a dysfunctional pattern and also to unravel and release it. You can read more about it in my article on the power of Emotional Alchemy https://tommavonhaeften.substack.com/p/emotional-alchemy)

We always start with finding the resisted emotions (those we are afraid to feel and try to avoid), as well as the craved emotions (those we long for instead), which are both part of the dysfunctional pattern.

When I searched for the feelings I was resisting, I was surprised that the emotions coming up went way beyond losing money in our portfolio. They seemed linked to experiences of war and battle! At the most painful end I felt a panicky sense of irreversible loss, and the weight of regret over a decision that was leading to death, defeat, and possibly complete annihilation. There were fleeting images of troops advancing into a fatal trap, getting slaughtered. One moment I was one of the doomed soldiers, and the next moment I was the one responsible for the catastrophic decisions, having to watch the crushing defeat. A bit like Napoleon watching the downfall of his troops at Waterloo. Wow. I hadn’t expected anything like that.

The Stock Market and War Consciousness

Where did these emotionally loaded images come from? As these scenes unfolded, I suddenly remembered the language I recently heard listening to our investment trainers on the live calls: “Today's market was a bloodbath.” “In this market you can really get chopped up.” Could the stock market have reawakened old, unhealed war consciousness patterns within me from other lifetimes? Could other people have similar experiences? Might the market's unpredictability magnetically pull the unhealed layers in our collective consciousness to the surface, that are seeking transformation and release? If either was true, I could see an incredible potential: We could benefit from such difficult personal moments and use them to shift our collective global consciousness into a more peaceful direction! But first I needed to proceed with my process.

Craving Peace

When I explored the spectrum of craved emotion, I found above all I just longed to stay alive. But I also yearned for relief, for a possibility to recover and thrive, and the soothing sense of safety and peace.

After looking for the resisted and craved emotions we also look for the counterpart. Most often this is a person who is causing both these emotions. We include their emotions and energy, because they are part of the whole polarized pattern.

That morning the counterpart I found was not the enemy, because the enemy felt all the same emotions. The counterpart was the destructive force itself. Seeking to understand what was driving the destruction, I uncovered some foundational beliefs feeding the war consciousness.

Belief in the persistence of lack.

“There’s never enough of what I need.”

“There’s not enough for both of us.”

“What I need I must take away from you.”

“What I have right now may turn out to be not enough in the future, so I must hoard more of it.”

Expectation of loss.

“What I have right now could disappear or be taken away, so I have to hoard more of it.”

Fear of difference.

“I am only safe, if I eradicate those who threaten my beliefs, point of view or way of life.”

“Difference endangers my survival.”

Dissolving the Pattern

To dissolve the pattern, I felt and breathed into both resisted and craved emotions simultaneously. Slowly the two polarized groups of emotions began to neutralize each other and started to unravel the pattern. This alchemy always leads us to the more balanced, free, and eternal core of our being.

On that day, I spontaneously added a new technique called The Compassion Key, which facilitates a deep karmic release. (I may write more about this in the future.)

All of it led me to a soft state of stillness and spaciousness.

Ritual of Release

For the healing to anchor, I use a release ritual, which encapsulates the entire polarized pattern in an energy bubble. Normally, we call on the elements of fire, water, air or earth to help us. But when I held the gigantic bubble in my hands, the war consciousness in it hadn’t just played out here on earth, in our solar system or even our galaxy, but also on planets in other galaxies far beyond. While I love to think big, I decided to limit the clearing to our solar system, which felt plenty ambitious! The remaining polarized energy bubble was still filled with an incredibly huge amount of painful emotions. However, the elements of earth were no longer a match for this endeavor: I needed the sun to help me.

As I dropped the bubble onto the surface of the sun, it triggered countless explosions, big and small. Watching the fireworks I could sense everything in it burning away.

Expecting my process to be complete now, I was surprised that another experience began to unfold. The sun revealed itself as a recharge hub for light workers (not a name I had given myself in the past), and pulled my body inside. In there some invisible forces tapped into the grid of my body and slowly drew it apart. After a cleansing process that felt both meticulous and surreal, my body’s energetic structure turned into countless hollow channels of light which made me feel almost transparent.

And Afterwards?

The sensation in my body felt altered in an unfamiliar way, but the violent churning in my stomach was gone, and there was a profound sense of relief and peacefulness. And yes, the stock market felt no longer fraught with danger, and really hasn’t since, even during stretches of further sell offs.

War Consciousness in Daily Life

Obviously the stock market isn’t the only area where we might be playing out our old war consciousness. It seems there are other areas of our lives that are possibly permeated and affected by it as well. Here are just a few examples:

What first came to my mind are many efforts that are labeled: “War on … something”. From …drugs to …cancer or …poverty, we seem to be convinced that we have to battle against anything we don’t want. Curiously we have forgotten the fundamental law that governs human energy: What we fight against, we make bigger.

When it comes to our corporate culture, the major driver of our economic well being, we find some revealing language as well: Companies “conquer” the market, they “capture” a market share, “target” customers, employ a sales “force”, hire “head-hunters”, “destroy” the competition, pick their “battles”, and make a “killing”.

And closer to home, most of us see our own bodies as a constant battleground: our immune system has to “fight off” viruses or bacteria. Cancer cells can “invade: our organs or lymph nodes. Pathogens have to be “killed and eradicated”, and during the flu season we need to “fortify” our bodies. We “battle” against chronic diseases and when the blood flow to the heart gets blocked, we call it a heart “attack”.

I am sure there are other examples you can think of.

What can we do?

While all of these expressions do reflect our mainstream consciousness, that consciousness is not the problem. It is only the outcome of the collective sum of our individual mindsets. Any shift we hope for only ever happens in each of us individually. Each one of us can become aware of the situations when we instinctively fear attack or defeat. Each one of us can notice the moments when we habitually arm ourselves expecting to encounter an adversary. And each one of us can become aware of old painful patterns and be on the lookout for a new opening.

How do we know when there is an opening?

I have found that our old patterns are usually ready to be shifted or released when our emotions are stronger than usual. When we are significantly rattled or shaken by an experience, it tends to pull our hidden patterns to the surface. For me, the trigger was the stock market. For others, it might be an argument, a rejection, a loss or a health scare.

Whatever it is, here again are the basic steps you can take in such a moment:

Take deep breaths and feel the emotions that are there.
Allow the emotions you don’t want to feel to be there as well, and breathe them in.
Look for the emotions you yearn to feel.
Name those emotions and feel them if you can. Breathe into them.
Keep breathing into both polarized groups of emotions at the same time.
Watch your heart space.
Notice any change that’s happening in the core of your being.
Name the new quality that emerges and breathe into it.

I would love to hear if this approach has been helpful for you.

Tomma’s Substack

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