Never hide from yourself. Ever. Feel everything that comes your way to the fullest extent. Become present to your life. These are the thoughts that are resonating with me this morning. In some ways I view my journals and this blog as being only this, reminders to simply feel, feel my way forward in every aspect of my life with certainty that none of this is wrong or harmful to what I truly am.
So many times we can get lost in the warp and woof of the lives we are weaving, and we forget the simply things. Truth is always simple. Truth is always the simplest derivative of any perceived situation. As an example, I had a really lackluster day yesterday. I was casting my mind around constantly looking for something that would act as a panacea for the way that I was feeling. I was feeling overwhelmed by responsibility, by all the things that my current circumstances are handing me, by all the niggling details of my life, and worse, by a complete lack of energy to deal with it all. What I discovered is that the Truth of the situation was very simple. I felt trapped by life.
Now... life cannot trap anyone. There are choices always. No matter what seems to be occurring, choices exist. Even on the level of life-or-death situations, there are always choices. The base instinct is flight or fight. Our very instinct shows us a choice. In our everyday life, choices also exist. I am not trapped by business concerns. I am not trapped by money concerns. I am not trapped by love concerns. When a feeling of entrapment arises, there are only really two choices. Am I going to be present in this, or am I going to try to escape from this through some method? That is the base choice. Everything else stems from that choice.
To hide is to bury. One either buries oneself, either by not admitting that a certain emotion or situation is occurring or by running from the situation as if it will simply resolve itself, or one becomes present. Those are the two choices. The choice for the first buries whatever emotion one is feeling. It relegates the emotion to a dark part of the mind that then can become unconscious. Eventually, this feeling has to surface. It may do it through self-sabotage of some type or through seemingly disconnected states of floating depression, angst, or anxiety. When I speak of darkness in the soul, it is all of these buried emotions and beliefs that need the light of consciousness to be brought to them. It really is as simple as this.
To remain present in a situation entails courage to really honestly look at the situation and oneself. The mind will, therefore, not project hidden fears or desires (which is simply fear in a pleasant form) onto a situation, and the situation can, therefore, be seen in reality... in a real context, rather than in a projected context awash in a sea of expectation and hidden belief structures. One then brings the totality of being to whatever it is that one is facing at the current time... Now...
This allows the mind to detect lies, half-truths, and projections. The emotion is not buried, and the mind remains free to act in the situation. It is not inhibited by some former belief or state of mind or limitation of memory. It is free to act as the situation dictates.
When I brought presence to the day yesterday, and really began feeling what I was feeling without judging the feeling as being one way or another, help began to arrive. I received encouragement, real help (discovering what the situation really entailed), and proof, yet again, of my oneness with everyone. There were no real "earth-shattering" understandings, but there was real relief from my mental state, which I find this morning was all I really needed anyway. And yes... strangely enough, all that energy that was being used to "fight" the situation mentally was freed up to give me energy this morning to really begin finding solutions. I was able to simply acknowledge the feelings, accept the fact that some of the things I am facing are not what I desire, and feel the way I am feeling without condemnation of myself or anyone else involved in the situation. It is simply a situation... nothing more, nothing less. None of it can effect my true nature in any way, shape, or form.
My review lesson from A Course in Miracles yesterday was this, "Only my condemnation can injure me." Think of the ramifications of this. Only my own judgment of any situation, person, or thing can injure me. Only my own judgment! What does it injure? The mind, my mind. What governs my experience of the world? The mind, my mind. That is all. I give meaning to things. Things never have an arbitrary meaning. Meaning is always derived at through the level of the mind. I may feel a certain way, but it is the mind that attaches the meaning "shitty" or "grand" or "pleasurable" or "fucked up". The feeling is the feeling. The thought provides the meaning. What is... is the feeling. What is not... is my meaning that I attach to that particular thing.
What is... always occurs. What is not... is completely under my control. So why would I hide from "what is" and focus on "what is not"? That is the entire question of the spiritual journey. It is how to get real with the real, to not resist "what is"... the suchness of the moment. Who I am is always in tune with "what is". There is no conflict there. Only this structure of thought, belief, opinion, and resistance is at odds with anything... and I am finding that it is at odds with everything. It is this that is the ego. The ego is the thought structure... or more concisely, identification with the thought structure as being really me... instead of the actuality of Me generating the thought structure. It is letting the cart pull the horse if I let the thought structure govern the process. That will never work... the cart... nor the horse will ever get anywhere.
I seriously feel sometimes that the whole of the spiritual journey is me desperately trying to take a bag off my head that I put on my head in the first place. Maybe I am a spiritual double-bagger. It is as silly as that. Just take the fucking bag off, and you will be able to see where you really are.
I look at the thought structure as being a painting on the inside of this bag... it can be dark or light or painted with nice fluffy clouds with a little lemon-yellow sun. I can explore the inside of the bag constantly... see all the little brushstrokes, the type of paint, the roughness of the paper (I chose paper, because I don't want to smother completely inside my plastic bag). Or... I can simply take the bag off my head and look at the clouds floating by, feel the warmth of the sun on my face, see the birds, etc.
Just like this example, life does not conform to the painting that we have of life. The painting on the inside of the bag is still-life... it is dead. It doesn't move, and nothing happens in it. This is the thought structure... the ego... the beliefs we hold about life, because it is all we can see. Life, meanwhile, goes on unhindered, whether or not we know it. To see it and participate in it, I simply have to take the bag off my head.
Becoming present to my life, choosing consciously at every moment what I want to be, and abiding in that "I Am" are certain to remove the bag.
No comments:
Post a Comment