Wisdom, If You Like
As people who have been traveling and
noticing life’s path began to notice that they had never fully met themselves
in life or dealt with these feelings or, for that matter, their own
immortality, because they had always been encouraged to withdraw from what was
predetermined to be unpleasant or painful and label that as bad or wrong. What
they discovered was that the very thought of unpleasant now acted as keeper
of the keys¾they were their own jailer.
I have been told by many, if not by most,
that opening to their deeper and supposedly darker feelings has allowed them to
begin to open to what has made life difficult for them. This process of simply
having their feelings has allowed them to begin to understand what anger is,
what fear is, and more importantly what they are not, and most importantly how
they actually fit into their lives.
Imagine
That: A Place For My Fear And My Anger In My Life
Almost to a person, they begin to
understand that life begins to open when we begin to recognize the enormity
of our own opposition to those things that were really intended as God’s
gifts. As painful or as scary as life
becomes, the mind's imagined fearfulness is so much more discomforting than
reality ever thought of being.
Many begin to make
friends with their feelings. They meet
these deeper sometimes darker life markers … feelings … as gently and as
quietly and softly as possible; to investigate into it; not how to think about
it but just investigate into them to see what is there and what the
experience(s) truly are. They experience
not just the physical pain but also all the suffering the mind and the body can
construe.
This is the task
in life, to move past the predetermined fear structure out into the world and
have the life we were intended to have.
173 On
Creation And Spiritual Awakening And Acumen
EXPERIENCE has
taught us that finally we can step out into the
world and experience life on life’s terms.
That seems to be what is called for at this juncture, and doing it knowing
full well that we don’t know and that we can’t imagine all that is, even though
we are intrinsically part of all that is.
A part of things that we can’t even imagine, in places we could not
conceive of, and in conditions that are beyond us.
But there it is, the answer, just sitting
there, staring back at us. Not the one
we expected, but an answer nonetheless.
But An Answer
Nonetheless
To take the time
to look beneath the anger you will discover frustration perhaps, and the
reasons why the frustration is being generated¾blocked
or unfulfilled desires, wants and wishes is the nature of the journey and the
source of wisdom. By looking deeper past the frustration to a sense of great
sadness (possibly) that just seems to linger under all and seems to colour the
sense of all you are experiencing and then looking deeper still to a place well
beneath the frustration and the sadness, you may find an immense pool of love
just waiting for you to draw upon.
To begin to
examine all these states of mind, the ones that hold us prisoner, can become a
fascinating journey. It is necessary to
penetrate through and into each state of mind, into each sensation of the body,
and to experience it fully so that we no longer have some strange aversion to
it. The mystique of it can be seen simply as the morning mist constantly
changing, always moving and changing its form; floating in the vast spaciousness
of our own mind.
Many who have spent their whole life withdrawing
from almost everything, because they have an automatic label that says “bad”,
come to see that by withdrawing they have never gone beyond their fear and
their own need to control everything.
Their whole life has been a juggling act; always trying to keep one ball
in the air, and that they were never really grounded in their life in the first
place.
As we begin to cut the ties that fear exhorts in
our lives we naturally move forward and more fully into their life. We can move
into the next moment, whatever it may hold for us, without resistance or
struggle, in an openhearted fashion and with a love that becomes a legacy of
wisdom and understanding for those who follow in their footsteps.
Ironically, I have found that those people I have
worked with who have been in the greatest pain are those who tended to go
deepest into the exploration of what has kept them bound up in their fear and
resistance. Now not everyone who is in
deep pain goes exploring, they generally do not, but the rule of thumb is, those
who had the most and have developed the willingness to go exploring will go the
farthest. In the true
exploration of life’s pain, those who go into the search see how shallow their
philosophies or imaginings have been, how self-serving and self indulgent. They
usually see this as they come right to the edge and peer over into the focus of
their own investigation of their life and discomfort.
Pain is a teacher and for those who attempted to
notice, almost to a person, they discovered that pain acted like a fierce and
loving teacher that reminded them again and again to go beyond themselves and
their own preconceived notions, to go into a deeper investigation, and to begin
to let this moment be as it is, to observe what arises in the fullness of what’s
next that needs to be addressed.
Life
On Life’s Terms
Everything
Is Exactly The Way It Is Supposed To Be
Exercise
Hedgehogs
There is an old, old story that tells the tale of two hedgehogs
(non-chocolate variety) who had to spend a winter together alone in a
cave. It was a particularly bitter
winter, I might add.
These two had to huddle together for warmth, but, and this is a big but,
their very design seemed to prevent them from gaining much benefit from being
together. They found that their spines
stuck into each other. So no matter how hard they tried to solve their problem
of staying warm by huddling, it didn’t seem to want to work out as planned. So
they stepped back, moved apart for a space in time and examined things at a
distance.
First they noticed that their spines were of unequal length.
Next they noticed that their tactile sensitivities were different, one
had more tender sensitive skin.
So this forced a process known as experimentation and observation¾The Scientific Method, moving here moving there, back and forth until
they found the ideal distance where they could maximize their gain and minimize
their pain. They found a distance that
provided maximum obtainable warmth with minimum amount of “itch and bitch”. In other
words, they weren’t sticking each other with their stuff. Difficult but not impossible to do.
Moral To The Story Is:
Each of us needs time alone and time with others. We need relationships and we need
solitude. Each of us needs a particular
percentage of each, a special and unique balance in order to develop and
fulfill ourselves most completely.
So Ask Yourself
1)
Are you balanced or unbalanced at the moment? How so?
2)
Do you have the correct
“for-you” percentage of each?
3)
Was there a time in your life
when you were better balanced then you are now?
4)
What happened to change all
this?
5)
What efforts have you made recently to correct this lack of balance
between “hedgehogs”?
6)
What “in you” makes this hard to do? (Resistance)
Axioms Of Change
1)
Each one of us holds beliefs, some conscious and some
unconscious. Our behaviour is shaped far
more by our unconscious beliefs then by our conscious ones.
2)
Most of our unconscious beliefs were formed early on in
our lives - before age three - and are strongly influenced by our culture, the
one we grew up in.
3)
Among these unconscious belief structures are some
structures that contribute to conditions of hurt and pain - non peace - within
us, such as states of fear, hurt, distrust and hostility just to name a few.
4)
It is normal for any of us to exhibit strong resistance
to even recognizing any evidence or experience that challenges the legitimacy
or the adequacy of our unconscious beliefs.
5)
Despite the resistance, unconscious beliefs can be
changed.
