Well, I saw "Julie and Julia" the other day on SKY and was inspired to continue to blog despite the silence from you, my audience.
The topic for today is Daily Awareness. I've been caught out a bit lately with buying into some messages that my pernicious wilful ego puts out - it just won't give up! So I give the messages credence and next thing you know I feel down, I don't sleep well, I'm lonely, I'm starting to think of down-scaling my hopes and dreams. I puzzle over this new state of things, trying to work out what's wrong, and how it can be fixed. Do I need to move? Start a new job? Meet someone? Buy more things? What is it that needs changing?
Then I go to see my brother one day and I feel a connection and have a real conversation and I walk off a couple of hours later feeling stimulated and cheerful.
So this is a wakeup call for me. I already knew that the thoughts of not being enough, of being inadequate, of being ridiculous, stupid, not nice-looking, of falling behind, missing out, being side-lined, never 'making it' - all these thoughts I knew already weren't true. But because this realization about these thoughts was relatively new, it needed care and attention. Just like a young plant. It's above the ground and green and growing but it needed more water and sunlight and protection from the wind than an adult plant did.
I need to keep a look-out, in short. This is a bit of work but isn't it glorious work? Self-realization is clear and clean when it's allowed to be there.
As Sailor Bob said, "What's wrong with right now?"
If anything's wrong, I firmly believe it's because we're conceiving it thus. Death itself, if trusted and embraced, is not 'wrong'. It may require some adjustments - but it's a part of our journey. And there will be lots of little deaths before that - both ego-based and just in the natural order, as one moment moves into another, as the material scene in front of us constantly changes, even as I sit here fixed on my chair at my computer. There are new sounds coming in from outside, new conversations starting up around me. It's also like balancing on a big log in a river. I have to keep looking at my feet and the direction of the wind and the water. Fortunately at night I go to sleep and let the Self take over!
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Enlightenment thanks to Gina Lake
I was talking about self-realization and how things weren't stable for me after it occurred. I had thought that once it came it stayed. That turned out not to be the case. So it was getting over the confusion and disappointment.... Gina's writing helped a lot with that. She explained that people whose conditioning had been chronic and acute often slipped back into the old ways after they were 'self-realized'. And it all depended on Grace too. Let's call the over-riding intelligent universal force God. So what God had 'planned' was what would happen. This is a challenge to comprehend when you think that there is no time, only eternity: Maybe God's plan is all happening now. Anyway, I don't comprehend that, and here I am working out my own self-realization issues and seeing if in the process I hook up with others in cyberspace.
What Gina says in Radical Happiness is that people's experience after s-r is can differ. As well as all the wonderful things that happen some more challenging things often happen to people. They may get ill as their body adjusts; they may boast about being s-r'd and fall back into ego; they may get disoriented and wonder what to do because the old ideas and activities don't fit anymore: "We are nobody with nowhere to go" and "we [ego-self] often go through a period of emptiness and mourning" because we thought that things would actually resolve forever upon s-r but they usually don't; remaining conditioning comes up for people to be dealt with, and there may a lot of external changes to make too.
Gina says it can two years and often a lot longer to become stabilized.
For me it's been just over two years so that is OK but I don't like the sound of "often a lot longer"! So I have determination that it won't take that long, although of course I don't know and ultimately I will need to have acceptance of how things are. Meanwhile I trust that I will nourish my s-r and keep the ego in perspective: Primarily be determined to do so rather than take what might seem the easy way out and bail (I always wondered what Jesus meant when he said 'The man who takes up the plough and then allows it to fall is not worthy of the kingdom of God" - well now I know!); but also do things such as allow my samskaras, my conditioning to be there even if it hurts a lot, without letting it take root; put the effort into things instead of being lazy, for example, go for a walk when my heart says I need to but my ego says 'ah don't bother, what does it matter!'; just notice in a disinterested way if my ego does take over; and be very very brave.
Lindy :)
What Gina says in Radical Happiness is that people's experience after s-r is can differ. As well as all the wonderful things that happen some more challenging things often happen to people. They may get ill as their body adjusts; they may boast about being s-r'd and fall back into ego; they may get disoriented and wonder what to do because the old ideas and activities don't fit anymore: "We are nobody with nowhere to go" and "we [ego-self] often go through a period of emptiness and mourning" because we thought that things would actually resolve forever upon s-r but they usually don't; remaining conditioning comes up for people to be dealt with, and there may a lot of external changes to make too.
Gina says it can two years and often a lot longer to become stabilized.
For me it's been just over two years so that is OK but I don't like the sound of "often a lot longer"! So I have determination that it won't take that long, although of course I don't know and ultimately I will need to have acceptance of how things are. Meanwhile I trust that I will nourish my s-r and keep the ego in perspective: Primarily be determined to do so rather than take what might seem the easy way out and bail (I always wondered what Jesus meant when he said 'The man who takes up the plough and then allows it to fall is not worthy of the kingdom of God" - well now I know!); but also do things such as allow my samskaras, my conditioning to be there even if it hurts a lot, without letting it take root; put the effort into things instead of being lazy, for example, go for a walk when my heart says I need to but my ego says 'ah don't bother, what does it matter!'; just notice in a disinterested way if my ego does take over; and be very very brave.
Lindy :)
Monday, February 22, 2010
Self-realization
My obsession if you could call it that used to be about the attainment of a deep and constant state of self-realization. I was sure it existed but I couldn’t find it! Then after a long long search, I actually did finally ‘find’ it! It happened after I read The untethered soul by Michael Singer and Right here right now by John Wheeler, and as well talked on the phone with Bob Adamson in Australia. He said to me You can’t actually get out of it and it was like Ohhhhhhh! but very quietly, and not instantly but as soon as I hung up the phone. (There had been a long period before that when I was having more and more insights and unloading and unloading the baggage – I had a lot!) I had thought self-realization meant everything always being wonderful but quickly discovered that that was idealistic. Mad really when I think about it now! But I can understand why I thought that because there’s a lot of writing out there about permanent bliss, amazing states, etc. What I did feel was completely at home in myself: Safe somehow, and aware in myself of which of my thoughts were true and which were just conditioning replaying itself. My problems didn’t disappear but they didn’t seem like problems anymore. There was much more to it and I wrote it all down over six months or so and in doing so created what I hope will be a good description of self-realization. I want to test this description in my research to make as sure as I can that it is valid. You can take part in this research by cutting and pasting this link into your browser:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=BMN_2fI7MQbvITBu3kAdioVA_3d_3d
Now I come to my main reason for this blog. Afterwards, I retained the essence of my experience – it was as if I had been watching a TV screen which I was dimly aware had all over it the sun shining gently on it, and suddenly I switched perception and saw the pattern the sun made as well the TV programme playing in the background - but I often lost the feelings of peace and enjoyment that accompanied it. For two years I was puzzling about it – where was my self-realization! All that work! Had it been a dream – but it wasn’t, I knew that; so what on earth was happening! – then I read one of Gina Lake’s books in which she discusses the ‘afterwards’, and I understood. Phew! The upshot is that I would like to meet up with others in similar positions and exchange ideas and news.
Blog me back!
Lindy :)
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=BMN_2fI7MQbvITBu3kAdioVA_3d_3d
Now I come to my main reason for this blog. Afterwards, I retained the essence of my experience – it was as if I had been watching a TV screen which I was dimly aware had all over it the sun shining gently on it, and suddenly I switched perception and saw the pattern the sun made as well the TV programme playing in the background - but I often lost the feelings of peace and enjoyment that accompanied it. For two years I was puzzling about it – where was my self-realization! All that work! Had it been a dream – but it wasn’t, I knew that; so what on earth was happening! – then I read one of Gina Lake’s books in which she discusses the ‘afterwards’, and I understood. Phew! The upshot is that I would like to meet up with others in similar positions and exchange ideas and news.
Blog me back!
Lindy :)
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