Welcoming Fear, Anger, Jealousy, Grief
Posted by otryba | Filed under Uncategorized
In many cultures we are taught to divide our experience in good and bad, high and low and to disconnect from a whole range of what we are already experiencing. Certain felt states are desirable, others are shameful and guilt-ridden. The devastation that we wreak upon external ecologies are simply reflections of the devastation wrought upon the ecology of our own human spirit. The false dichotomy of “high/low” shatters the world into a forest of splinters that feeds very little.
In indigenous cultures with intact initiatory and wisdom traditions, initiates learn that “high/low” is a false dichotomy. The warrior learns to weep. The heights are not divorced from the depths. The eagle does not fly without the termite surrendering the wood back to the mouths of those who, in turn, feed the eagle.
The premise of every modern political, religious, economic, medical, “therapeutic” racket out there is that “we are going to take you from the low to the high.” i.e. “we’ve got an escape hatch to your current experience.”
When we embrace what we rejected as “low,” we discover that the “high” we have been seeking IS just as alienated as the “low” from what I AM from the beginning; not the self we imagined ourselves to be, innocently, as the defense we developed to survive as babes in disconnective culture.
To discover true, living relationship begins with the courage to sit with our own, personal, EMBODIED textures of self-disconnection. What is it that you are experiencing that you have been taught, from generation to generation, to NOT experience, to avoid? What is the cost of actually EXPERIENCING them? Of Feeling them? What taboos would you violate to simply welcome, for example, your Fear, Anger, Jealousy and Grief without reflexively acting OUT OF them? Who taught you NOT to experience them? Why?
“Fear, anger, jealousy, rage,” these are the labels we affix to all that we most willingly act OUT OF, yet refuse to venture INTO. Notice how many cultures have a taboo around EXPERIENCING the texture of a whole panoply of experiences we are already EXPERIENCING. “Fear, anger, jealousy, rage,” these are the names we put on the dimensions of our experience which we so hurriedly, as if in a panic, learn to suppress (by pretending to be “spiritual” and thus “above” these low human emotions, and thus at perpetual “self-war”), repress (by stifling the feeling yet feeling profound shame & guilt for having even felt it momentarily and having to hold it at bay) or express (by generating pain and drama in the lives of those around us, especially the ones closest to us), but dare not simply FEEL, as many of us were taught not to feel these from our very first day.
Would you like the quick path beyond fear? Dare to FEEL it! Because fear FELT isn’t fear. Fear, anger, jealousy, grief are the resistance to what you’re already feeling, they are the named doorways that shut us out from the HEART of our experience. You MAY open them! You may walk through the wall of taboos of every racket in your culture. Only YOUR permission is needed. Next time you feel Fear, Anger, Jealousy or Grief arise, WELCOME THEM! Know that each is a doorway to your FELT, i.e. LIVED experience!
©2009 Olivier Tryba - I welcome your sharing this post in part or in its entirety, with attribution and a link back to this site. Hit the “SHARE THIS” button below to link it to your social network or share via e-mail. Thank you.
Tags: Anger, Ant, Eagle, Expression, Fear, Feeling, Grief, Indigenous culture, Jealousy, Repression, Self-Alienation, Suppression, Warrior, Warriors Cry
December 12th, 2009 at 3:19 am
First of all Olivier, I was so looking forward to another post as an opportunity to explore, so thank you for this!
“What is it that you are experiencing that you have been taught, from generation to generation, to NOT experience, to avoid? What is the cost of actually EXPERIENCING them? Of Feeling them?”
My first initial reaction to the questions above was “What good would that do?” We’re taught to label these strong emotions as “negative” due largely to the fact that they don’t feel good. We all want to feel better don’t we?!
Granted there’s healthy fear that’s allowed us to evolve as a species; and unhealthy, illusory fear, manufactured by those that seek to help or save us. With the flow of information, ideas, and beliefs running through the stream of consciousness “out there” there are an overwhelming number of choices to decide with every action. Particularly and especially if we’ve “expanded our consciousness” to include the idea that every thought, every deed impacts the entire world. Well, it’s enough to make me want to get in bed and pull the covers over my head! What an enormous responsibility to take on if I am willing to be 100% responsible for my life and my choices . FEELING the fear that an action taken or thought I created out of the ethers could potentially, inadvertently harm anything does frighten me. I know it’s just a concept and I can change the thought and yet wouldn’t that be “denying reality?” FEELING the shame of my confusion here.
To be honest, what I haven’t wanted to FEEL is the true terror of the uncertainty of who I AM. There’s so little structure in uncertainty. Everyone seems to be looking from a different perspective sharing their viewpoint. Questioning, questioning, questioning …. trying to come up with some certainty, some illusion of safety, some safety net, some scaffolding to live by. Some may feel an exhilirating freedom in the Unknown Mystery of not knowing who that face is in the mirror each morning and I admit, some mornings I do. And yet the underlying terror remains when I face Life head on, seemingly alone, heady with all the risky choices to make. My heart has compassion for this seemingly “self-pitying” object in the mirror who has learned the adaptive ways of disconnection all too well and who wants to scream - LEAVE ME ALONE - LET ME BE.
The question remains though …. can I just Be with and FEEL Life without an answer? I guess I can, I’m still here.
Pat
December 12th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Kind of in response to Pat and in general…
When it comes to fear, it’s really very simple and mechanical. Fear can only exist when two beliefs are held:
1) the world is a big scary place full of danger
2) I, the individual, am incompetent… and therefore incapable of acting effectively in that big scary world.
There’s no reason to fear the unknown unless you believe that unknown is filled with big scary things that will hurt you AND you’re incapable of dealing with whatever may come your way.
In our culture, these beliefs are deep-rooted… for many reasons… mostly created and perpetuated by governments and religions, but that’s for another day.
My interpretation what Olivier is saying is…
Certainly, some emotions feel like shit. And, in a general sense, we all want to feel good. But, avoidance is what ultimately causes us to feel more of those “negative” emotions… because, the pain of disconnection from our ~I~ is more painful than anything else.
I actually had this talk with my little brother and some friends the other day. Emotions are emotions… they’re neither “good” or “bad” in and of themselves. They just are. It’s how we choose to perceive them and what we choose to believe about them that makes them “good” or “bad”.
And, certainly, one can reach a point where the illusions of this world have less impact on his/her emotional state… as a result of natural maturity.
However, most religious and spiritual teachings try to fake this state of being… through disconnection.
In the end, it’s simple… to be fully connected, IF you experience an emotion, you should always express it. Rather than try to suppress or repress it in order to feel or appear more “enlightened”. And, through that process of continual expression, you’ll reach a state of emotional maturity where you “act out” of your emotions less… and, instead, recognize, feel, and appreciate your emotions… while continuing to act toward your highest values.
And, a natural result is a more healthy conceptual relationship to the world around you (i.e. it’s NOT as big and scary as you think)… and a release of your conceptual identifications of I that limit you (i.e. you ARE the most powerful being in existence… so, yes, you ARE competent and capable).
It’s important to note that your conceptions of the world and of self… the ones that allow fear to exist… are exactly that… concepts. Which means YOU, with the help of others, created them… and, you can change them to whatever you choose… or let go of them all together and experience the world and your “self” anew in each moment.
December 12th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Pat,
Thanks for commenting from the heart of your experience. I love how you put this: “To be honest, what I haven’t wanted to FEEL is the true terror of the uncertainty of who I AM. There’s so little structure in uncertainty. Everyone seems to be looking from a different perspective sharing their viewpoint. Questioning, questioning, questioning …. trying to come up with some certainty, some illusion of safety, some safety net, some scaffolding to live by. Some may feel an exhilirating freedom in the Unknown Mystery of not knowing who that face is in the mirror each morning and I admit, some mornings I do. And yet the underlying terror remains when I face Life head on, seemingly alone, heady with all the risky choices to make.”
Yes, this is getting to the heart of the matter, isn’t it? And, what you’ve left unspoken here is death; the death of fictions, the death of the person writing this, the death of the person reading this, and the death of the fiction of death as separate from Life itself where, whether you’re seated at the table or laying on the plate, the feast is served continually, impersonally.
So who is this “person” that arises as a construct of self-protection from the very thing that is being felt, that is being experienced? How does it become convinced that it needs to arise in order to protect itself from “the terror of uncertainty”? And is our fear of the Unknown simply a projection of our fear of what we know all too well and hope to continue repressing but, after many years of such effort, realize amounts to suppressing the essence of our hedonic vitality?
What about the SUBJECT in the mirror, that one that doesn’t surrender to all of our objectifying?
December 12th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Hey John!
Thanks for visiting and commenting. I’ll write more posts to contextualize what I’m sharing at Deep Freedom Now at a deeper level.
In modern psychology and self-help, there is a fascination with our beliefs, and with good cause. But fear, as a fundamental relationship to Existence, is NOT a belief, but preceeds belief. It is what I call an Embodied Premise.
Consider for a moment when you feel fear at a mild level. Perhaps it’s a social situation, meeting certain people, certain conversations, a walk in the woods at night. Go into the FEELING. Fear is something we all experience and there are aspects of the feeling that can perhaps be pointed to with words that are more instructive, that point to the experience more skillfully than “fear.” “Unwelcome” is one, for example. We could say, on an intellectual level, that the opposite of fear is trust, right? But what is the experiential quality of trust? Welcome is one of them. If you feel profoundly welcome in a place, or simply within your experience, there’s trust. If your experience is welcome, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it’s uncertain, even when it’s embarassing, saddening or a whole host of felt experiences that we typically avoid, then there’s a level of trust that’s possible. Not certainty, trust. Uncertainty is always there, because we operate with limited senses in a multi-factorial world. But we can learn to trust in our experience as something that is worthy of our attention IN ITS ENTIRETY, something profoundly worthwhile, something ’sacred’ in a very core sense without reference to external religious beliefs, etc.
This is NOT how, with most Western upbringings and decades of daily self-alienation through schooling, we relate to our experience. We, as innocent babes, quickly learn that our experience as developing human beings is divided into two parts: the acceptable part and the unacceptable part. When children express the normal stress of development to caregivers who are already experiencing levels of stress beyond their capacity to deal, parents either attack the children or isolate them, rather than connecting with them, experiencing the child’s stress as their own, and then self-regulating their own stress and, consequently the child’s, modeling adaptive self-regulation for the child to experience on their own and freeing them for the next developmental step. So, if caregivers are not able to accommodate the child’s normal stress of developing capacities and structures that overwhelm the child’s own capacity to self-regulate and, instead, attack or isolate the child as a perceived “stress-generator,” the developing child quickly begins to perceive its own normal, healthy stress response as a further source of stress. The result is altered development. Instead of the child developing into its full, biological potential with the support of maternal and primary relationships that are supportive of the child’s full expression, the child’s development modulates and alters in response to maternal and primary relationships that are now perceived as threats. So, John, this is not simply a matter of “belief” but happens long before one develops belief; it’s actually the very SHAPE of welcome or unwelcome that we grow into as beings who more fully or less completely express our human potential at a neuromuscular level.
This is why most self-help methodologies don’t and can’t address the interruption and diversion of our human development; because it is NOT cognitive or belief-based, it is a primary relationship to one’s own experience, and EMBODIED premise.
What I have discovered is that profound, authentic transformation IS possible AND requires surrendering the whole self-manipulative relationship to self that we encoded from our parents. It is NOT a matter of making yourself into some better idea of yourself: you are NOT an idea. It IS a matter of beginning to ALLOW the entirety of your experience to be integrated and welcomed by your consciousness, instead of being censored to accommodate some false image of self, no matter how lofty the vocabulary or methods used to rehash the same fundamental Embodied Premise that “you are not enough without something else.”
And part of this is by NOT expressing what you feel, thus generating more external drama and perpetuating patterns of disconnective “intimacy” inherited from early childhood, educational institutions, etc. Nor is it about suppressing or repressing. It is about FEELING within and claiming conscious ownership of one’s entire experience without trying to manipulate the world to make us feel better. It is about practicing the radical art of getting better at FEELING rather than they typical and infinite ways to try to manipulate oneself and/ or the world in order to feel better. This doesn’t mean not expressing real needs or desires. Do. If necessary. But we can abandon the illusion that people’s purpose on earth is to make us feel better. It isn’t.
I hope these distinctions serve your journey John into Deep Freedom and Connection to the experience you are having right now. Thanks for engaging.
December 12th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Thanks for the response!
I think we’re using a different language to express the same thing. You mention beliefs and how fear is not belief-based. To clarify, I’m not using the standard definition of belief. A belief simply is a mental construct… a concept. That’s important to the understanding… because most people have a much different view of what a belief is. It is nothing more than a concept… an accepted identification of existence… and, from that perspective, we can say that everything we “know”… we really only “believe” because as scientists know all too well… any “fact” of reality can only be, at most 80% certain. That’s why our identifications of existence are constantly being upgraded. So, when I say belief that is what I mean.
Now, that said…
When you say a child perceives his caregivers as attacking or isolating him/her… that insight is a belief… a concept… a mental construction that you give the name “unwelcome”. It is from that concept or belief that fear is generated.
Consider this…
As you mentioned, we operate based on the limited nature of our five senses… those sense provide the raw data… the sensations we experience. Those sensations are sent to the brain where they are integrated into percepts. Most people don’t fully recognize that our eyes don’t see the world as objects… our brain does. Meaning, all our eyes (and ear, nose, mouth, etc.) see is billions of individual sensations. Our brain integrates those sensations into objects… percepts… so, we see the world as trees, grass, etc. Then, as we experience more of the world, we abstract away from percepts to create concepts. A concept is an abstraction away from the specifics of the individual percept we’re experiencing… the tree… to a range of characteristics that allow us to group the various individual trees we’ve experienced into a single concept… tree… using a range of characteristics.
From this our conceptual world is born. And, with time, we create a mental map… built on concepts… of both our inner and outer world… so that when we close our eyes we still see.
And, it’s this mental map that gives us the ability to choose. We can close our eyes and using the mental constructs we have of ourselves and our world, we can act out possible scenarios to see how the actions we could take in a given moment might play out. And, this gives us the ability to choose which action we take.
This is the very specific and mechanical nature of human consciousness.
Now, our mental map of our self and our world is, again, made up of concepts… which, again, are really just beliefs. The key is that, of course, our identifications of existence… our beliefs/concepts can be inaccurate… that is, not how the world actually exists.
When our caregivers attack our isolate us as children… we develop deep-rooted beliefs that the world is a dangerous place… I mean, if the people we care about most are willing to attack us… who says Joe Blow won’t. So, our identifications of the world take on an over-arching theme… the world is dangerous. Same happens with our identification of self… the them being… we are incompetent… in the multitude of ways one can be incompetent (physically, intellectually, socially, etc.).
These two beliefs, specifically, generate the bulk of the fear we experience.
The point is… these beliefs are inaccurate… the world isn’t a big scary place… and, we aren’t incompetent. Thus, fear is a self-created illusion that we can choose to simply move forward from by taking a hard look at what we believe about our self and our world… and re-contextualizing those beliefs…
Or, better yet, as you advocate… by letting going of the idea of mental construction all together and moving into the experience of each moment without belief… i.e. without projecting our concepts/abstractions onto our current experience. To experience each individual tree as unique and wonderful… and, in time, each human being the same… including one’s self.
December 12th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Thank you for your response John, it stirred up all sorts of energies within.
Feeling excited in your willingness to engage in the dialogue and respond. I could engage and respond to your thoughtful reply and, hopefully, leave you with or realize for “myself” more heady ideas and tips on how simple life is if you look at it this way or that way, and yet it just seems more of the same.
I think, therefore I AM or I feel, therefore I AM. Either way I AM.
In reading Olivier’s post anew this afternoon, I accept his invitation to journey Inward and FEEL the potential gifts inherent in ALL the emotions. Who knows what opening the doorway will lead to? Who knows what will feel?
In answering from my head your question, “What is it that you are experiencing that you have been taught, from generation to generation, to NOT experience, to avoid?
I’m seeing that I was modeled, most often, the ways of repression. Whether by natural tendency or what I was taught, the feeling most avoided I would describe as “helplessness”. Most definitely the sense was, it is NOT ok to cry. Yes, the resistance to this feeling of helplessness is shame and then even more feelings of shame for feeling shame. Think girl, think … and fast because you’re not going to survive here if you don’t!
In asking my heart, “What is it that you are experiencing that you have been taught, from generation to generation, to NOT experience, to avoid?”,
I feel a powerful energy arising from an area around my belly button that swirls up to my throat, pauses and then spins around in my head, leaving me feeling confused and light headed. A feeling akin to being on the downward slope of a roller coaster ….. heart in your throat and mind knowwhere to be found!
The trap in words, concepts, writing and even language is that it ensnares feelings in the web of mind. Words can be wholely inadequate for conveying feelings sometimes. Some moments only a wink, a smile, a hug, a touch a nod, a bow, tears, or silence will do.
I get enamored with words when that is the only means of connection ….. and I prefer the experience of aliveness that only being in close proximity can provide.
Olivier, my heart, too, is committed to discovering ways that will allow for the sustainability of a relationship to Self and All of Life that will bear fruit. My heart yearns to thrive and not only survive. ‘Being’ with pain and feeling compassion can be beautiful also …. much gratitude for the gentle invitation to the HEART.
December 12th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Pat,
So tender! So beautiful!
I am the honeybear,
spun in that swirl!
December 13th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Welcoming these emotions. How beatuiful. It’s taken a while, but I do now.
To answer your question, O, anger is my forbidden emotion. Really, I was taught the necessity of reining in all strong emotion, but anger is the one that is dangerous. Also desire, and all the strong emotions desire calls in.
The piece I wrote at my blog and FB yesterday expressed another layer of discovery of my grief and my gratitude for all that lies on the other side of that passage of feeling. I do welcome feelings now, all of them, even fear. I recognize it, and I can embrace what it’s wanting to tell me. i really welcome anger when it shows up. That is such a breakthrough for me. I know nobody is gonna die that doesn’t deserve to die. Sekhmet will rage till she’s done and then she lies down to sleep, and wakes up as Het-heru, goddess of abundance and sex.
This next is for Pat, woman to woman. We are blessed with a great helper in living through our emotions. We have a womb. The womb is made to carry and it carries the trauma and wounding of generations. We women use our wombs to hide our pain, and that of our culture and families, and if it stays there it will make us sick.
But the womb is also made for birthing, transforming, and allowing new life to emerge. It is simple to remember how to feel through our wombs, cleanse, and be reborn. It’s a great service to all beings on the planet when women remember. That fear that we may harm someone with our thoughts and feelings– the womb handles that too.
(Women do this on behalf of men as well, and men have their own process, involving their psychic womb, and working with the feminine. Perhaps O will write more about his experience of this one day. I’d love to understand more about the mysteries of men. I have forgotten my lives as a man ;o).
Yes, we have overburdened wombs and broken hearts. One of my struggles with opening my heart was that the pain I’d sealed off in there hurt so bad when I opened. My reflex was to shut down again. It took a lot of strength and the support of loving community for me to have the courage to allow that feeling to happen. (Hearts are made for radiating not holding, so there are a lot of sick people whose hearts are sealed with pain.) When I learned about womb wisdom, I was strengthened. Emotionally things began to work right. The womb releases what I can handle at that time, with awareness. One day I discovered what Olivier said: the pain moves fast and transforms quickly when I feel it. Oh, what a relief! What happens next: the opening and emergence of infinite wonders of grace!
This doesn’t make any sense, it sounds crazy, which makes me know it is true.
I love to come here and read O’s writing, and share the path into each other’s deep freedom. We were never meant to do this work alone, not the grieving, the feeling, the pain, and equally, even more important, we are not meant to do the celebrating, loving, feasting and blissing alone either!
I have it through the grapevine that many more friends read these posts than comment.
many blessings
*****
December 14th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Dear Carla,
Thank you for sharing from these depths of your experience. So beautiful, so rich.
You wrote: “One of my struggles with opening my heart was that the pain I’d sealed off in there hurt so bad when I opened. My reflex was to shut down again. It took a lot of strength and the support of loving community for me to have the courage to allow that feeling to happen. (Hearts are made for radiating not holding, so there are a lot of sick people whose hearts are sealed with pain.)”
I also experienced profound pain when my heart opened and still experience discomfort at times when I open to my experience. I notice how reflexively I am conditioned to react to certain flavors of what arises and DO something about them, or simply isolate into the shame of what I’m feeling. Opening to the pain, opening to the experience, the awkwardness and even to my avoidance, allows this Beingness to grow into something truly new, truly fresh. I’ve learned to ALLOW the discomfort and grow comfortable with it.
MY EXPERIENCE IS MY FRIEND, NOT MY ENEMY.
And, YES, Carla, as you say, we are not made to do this alone. And yet there is an element that can ONLY be done alone, in the wilderness of one’s heart.
When we become open to the discomfort of our OWN experience, and our conditioned reactions to ourselves (is it any surprise that auto-immune disorders have become epidemic?), we learn to STAY connected through the discomfort.
The same is true of community. If we are honest, to come into relationship, beyond the initial novelty and romance, involves the rub of persistent and often growing discomfort. Are we willing to BE with each other, to simply BE with each other WITH and THROUGH the discomfort that arises if we remain in each other’s company for longer than the novelty? Are we willing to venture THROUGH the discomfort all the way through to the vital connection that is not hidden “behind” it, but in the very thick of it, and which blossoms from the rich humus and palpable texture of the RUB of us?
December 14th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Oh Olivier I’m so excited you touched upon this!!
“Are we willing to BE with each other, to simply BE with each other WITH and THROUGH the discomfort that arises if we remain in each other’s company for longer than the novelty?”
Spending a week with you during your/our course and following only your initial invitation to come “Empty as a simple clean teacup” I experienced the most marvelous sensations. I tasted unknown foods, drank unknown drinks, heard unknown ideas, moved in unknown ways ….. always emptying every notion of a past “i” that doesn’t like this or that. Being Empty, allowing the NEW experience to arise and digest itself ….. oh my it was so much fun! The only uncomfortable momentary experiences were when i overindulged and immediately felt the desire to Empty and come clean anew.
Yes, the experiences were novel and yet the movements of eating, drinking, walking, talking, looking, hearing, sleeping were of the ordinary variety that take place every day, day after day. What if ‘i’ were the seeming void of the Empty teacup “simply” (certainly not “easily” sometimes!) willing to BE the space where looking, hearing, tasting, moving, feeling happens?
What if “you” occur as an unpredictable, unknown Happening? What if I don’t “think” you into existence at all? Perhaps what may occur is a natural, ever new experience.
December 14th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
our conditioned reactions to ourselves (is it any surprise that auto-immune disorders have become epidemic?)
I like that. Well said, O.
Equally beautiful is the “wilderness of the heart”. I am doing some bushwacking, trailblazing, getting-lost-so-I-can-find-myself trekking through the wilderness of my heart these days, and I am in solitude, though not in isolation. Even when I must work alone, someone’s watching out for me, somewhere on the planet, or the ethers.
Now you remind me of the wilderness of relationship. It’s wilderness to powers of 10! A funhouse mirror of expectations to infinity! You know what they say about having sex with all your partner’s past sex partners? Any relationship is like that from the board room to the dining room to the bed room. We are all in relationship with everyone that person ever knew, especially the traumatic ones! It might be helpful to remember that, so I don’t take it all personally, because I am also as likely to be reacting to someone in my past as to the person in front of me! I am very curious to begin the practice of being “willing to venture THROUGH the discomfort all the way through to the vital connection”.
Humus. I am reminded of my worm bin. I love my earthworms.
December 14th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Dear Pat,
Who “you” are is the one who is arising in my experience. To the degree that I am willing, simply willing, to be with THIS experience, to this measure I can be with “you.” It is not two.
Yes, as you point out, this emptying is the magic, isn’t it? Because the Past is dead, even the Present is dead. By the time we perceive it, it is already past. But Life itself is pouring over the Lip of the Unknown. We are that which is pouring over and that which brings its lips to taste it. Am I willing to drink it in and be drunken in and let it all through, completely, to drink anew?
The old refrain was “Know Thyself” and we went on compiling manufactured certainties.
I tell you, “Not-know Yourself and Bring The Lips of Your Entire Being to Taste Again!”
December 15th, 2009 at 7:06 am
Who “you” are is the one who is arising in my experience. To the degree that I am willing, simply willing, to be with THIS experience, to this measure I can be with “you.” It is not two.
O, thank you. this begins to answer my question that I could not quite ask earlier, of being in relationship with someone who is still hooked into drama. Being in judgment of that person is the greatest threat to my presence. and finding myself on the defensive is the second greatest threat.
I can release my past, their past, and put my lips to the flowing now.
My best training is to put my lips to the flowing now of me.
The mind’s has a very small role to play here, it’s natural role as an organ of perception and awareness’
bottoms up!
February 1st, 2010 at 2:08 am
“Fear(*) is the mind killer, it is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear(*) and permit it to pass over and through me.
When the fear(*) has passed I will turn to see it’s path
There will be nothing……. only I will remain!!!!!!!
(*) also of course anger, jealousy & grief.
February 1st, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Jeff, I like it. Fear is an artifact of the mind, which has no substance or reality of its own. Your prescription is a moment by moment reminder of who “I” am liberated from fear.
The other emotions: anger, jealousy, grief, they are anchored in the body. They have gifts for us in their expression. If they are not felt, acknowledged, allowed to move through, then a whole lot of energy gets used in pretending, stuffing, and repeating patterns.
Fear may hook itself into one of these others and keep them in place, festering. So letting the fear evaporate helps us meet these other emotions directly, richly, fragrantly.
Do you believe it is possible to be happy, no matter what? Is happiness a state of mind, complementary to fear, anchored in the body and having links into emotional states such as pleasure, ecstacy, contentment, desire.
Love and Fear are commonly known as the great opposites, the ultimate choice. But what do we know of either without their emotional flowering?
February 7th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Hello Jeff,
Thanks for engaging and thanks for joining the adventure on Feb 20th & 21st.
What is obliterated? What is left after total obliteration?
What is fear? Where is it?
To me it’s so fascinating how language creates realities that only have reality in language, and then the body gets trained to submit to linguistic reality, instead of language clearly, articulately, and beautifully describing our experience. So there are language structures such as “Fear is…” that create the impression that there is some objective object called “fear” and that we can describe it and come to conclusions about it. But where is it? Where is this object called “fear”? Nowhere to be found because fear is not an object. We experience Life in its ever-sinuous, ever-transforming variety of flavors, contractions and expansions. And then we learn that, as we are little ones innocently experiencing and expressing, that some of our expressions and experiences trigger our parents’ joy and delight, and others trigger their anxiety, their “fear,” and all of the little labels that pop up like “stay out!” signs around a construction zone. The verb of our incessant experiencing gets objectified into a static noun that we can draw conclusions about in any which way we damn well please, especially if it please the “powers” (parental, educational, governmental - i.e. whoever can steal your cookies and hurt you too). We learn that fear is not love and all kinds of nonsense where language is simply pointing to language.
But if we dare to venture into our Experience, there is no clear line between fear and ecstasy, passion and hatred, etc. The river flows incessantly and in unison through rapids, eddies and shoals. We are this river. We are not our own enemies. Our experience is not our enemy. Fear does not simply pass, it IS passing, as we are, as all flavors and experiences are. When we dare to TASTE ALL of Life, we get the thrill of that taste in passing. This is the miracle of being human: we are set up to savor that taste in passing, and each of us does it in unique ways.
The greatest fear is to FEEL fear. Open yourself to fear and tell me if fear is still there. Open your musculature, your breath, your chest. Welcome fear and fear is ecstasy. As is hatred, rage, grief. We are not our enemies. Our experience is not our enemy. Most of these labels we use, “fear, anger, jealousy, grief” and the conclusions we reach about these “emotions,” simply point to our resistance to truly FEEL: we get trained to suppress, repress or express. But to FEEL is different: it is the willingness to experience this moment and to allow it to fade away too. Our experience is so beautiful and fleeting that we cannot even catch the hair of it, but we remain with the sensation of it in our entire being when we FEEL it, and surrender even that feeling (as noun) to feel again.
As you point out, when fear passes and I turn to see it’s path THERE IS NOTHING because it is not an object. My experience is not an object. I am not an object. I can neither disappear nor remain. I am passing ITSELF. I am one way that PASSING plays at having a face, a body, a life.