Life wants to support you but first you need to be open to Life.
-Eckhart Tolle


Relief


Ahhhhh! Relief...how wonderful and amazing that sensation is.  Relief!  To be free of the intense pain after four days of it (thought it would drag  me back to the start of my journey and leave me on the curb) and to see the crisis semi-resolved (for now) inspires this wonderful sense of relief.

I am so, so grateful...and not just for the relief experience but for the pain and the crisis as well.  I am learning to be grateful for everything Life puts in front of me.  I truly am.  I really do not know what my future holds...it doesn't matter really nor do I know  what will unfold tomorrow...What is important is what I do with today...with this moment I am in. And that begins with accepting and allowing Life to flow through.

That pain was something that had to flow through me and it did.  When I didn't close up to it, resist it and I just recognized and allowed it to be what it was without creating story and drama around it (okay...I will admit, it was challenging not to do that lol) it ebbed and flowed with its intense message and then it was gone.  Once again the point was made: it is not what happens to us or around us that causes this idea of 'suffering'  but our resistance to it or our desire to cling to it.

Suffering

Eckhart Tolle describes suffering as "another level that lies on top of the pain". There is pain and on top of that is this mind made suffering that causes the majority of our so called 'problems' with Life. The mind will build story around everything and thoughts will grow and multiply the more we believe them.  Ego likes drama and it  creates it. When we buy into those thoughts or that drama ego gains control and it is able to drag us away from the moment like it so wants to do.  We become lost in the sense of 'suffering' when all we had to do was experience the pain or the life event as it passed through. We then may do the usual human thing...we react, we deny, we repress, suppress, avoid.  We numb and we shrivel up under the weight of something that could have been as light as air blowing through us or as cleansing as water flowing within us if we didn't get lost in our 'thinking' about it.

Energy Needs to Flow

Physical pain is an energy.  The emotional response to crisis is an energy.  Relief  and peace and joy and bliss that we experience in response to what is happening to us or around us  are energies as well. All energy is meant to flow through. What happens though...when the experience is something we judge as negative or undesirable... is that we resist and struggle against that energy.  We put up blocks and barriers or we stuff it down real good with a host of defense mechanisms.  When it is something we judge as positive...like this feeling of relief I am experiencing...we may try to cling to it, hold on to it instead of letting it go so it too can pass through.  either way...we don't let it go, we don't let it flow through us as it is meant to do.

Samskaras: Blocked Energy

In Sanskrit, this 'impression on the heart' created by blocked energy patterns that we do not allow to flow through us are called Samskaras. Michael Singer in the untethered soul writes:

Hence two kinds of experiences can occur that can block the heart.  You are either trying to push energies away because they bother you, or you are trying to keep energies close because you like them. In both cases you are not letting them pass, and you are wasting precious energy by blocking the  flow through resisting and clinging.

Suffering is created when we judge something as undesirable and we resist it , not allowing it to pass through. We then create damns and heavy iron doors so we don't have to 'experience' it.. The heart contracts and we have energy blocks within us that can cause even more 'suffering' in the long run.  Repressed, suppressed, denied emotional experiences stay within us and manifest later as disease or post traumatic stress.  Believe me, I know all about this one :)

What Happens When We Don't Let Go

Most disease is caused from this.  There is a wonderful documentary on Netflix entitled Heal and it speaks to this mind made idea of suffering as the root of most disease.  If our minds are the cause, then our minds are also the cure, are they not?  Do you not think it was ironic that after dealing with such a traumatic crisis last week that I had no real time  to process through because I had to be 'the strong one'...that physical pain entered my body to knock me down?  Life wanted me to hear something and I wasn't listening.  It spoke, I ignored and then it shouted with the  cardiac symptoms which I have gotten very good at ignoring.  Then when I still wouldn't listen it whacked me with something I couldn't ignore. Hmm!  That brought me back to the here and now, let me tell ya!

The point is we need to let all experiences pass through us without resisting or clinging.  Just let go.  We need to stay open to Life.  It wants so badly to support us.  Maybe we should let it by staying open.

All is well.

References


Heal. (2017) Netflix documentary https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/80220013

Singer, Michael ( 2007) the untethered soul. Oakland. New Harbinger

Tolle, Eckhart (n.d.)Eckhart Tolle Enjoying Every Moment Full Movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9o-l3t_FBw