Once you learn that it's okay to feel inner disturbances, and that they can no longer disturb your seat of consciousness, you will be free.
Micheal Singer
Easy to Get Disturbed
Side note: I am really sick of my lazy fingers not keeping up with my mind leading me to make silly typos...like these 'e' before 'i' mistakes I am making all the time in words like 'expereince'...see did it again...experience...lol and I often do the opposite for words like receive and perceive. I also struggle with 'because'...creating some strange word jumble with it. 'The' is an annoying problem too...I tend to type 'teh'...and then because I do not have spell check on this, I have to go back afterwards and correct all my 'teh' typos. Do you know how many times a person uses 'the' in a 500 + word entry? A lot. Just thought I would pass that on...as we continue to speak of how the outer world disturbs our inner lol
Speaking of disturbances, are you sick of me talking about this dilemna I am experiencing brought on by this push to make a change?
Well I am starting to believe Life, the teacher, lined up the lessons beautifully for all of us. There is definitely a lesson here that I am meant to learn and that I am meant to share.
Caught in Rubble?
All this stuff ( life circumstance and challenge) piled up outside me...like rubble from a wreckage. I find myself thinking that I am disturbed because some of this rubble has landed on my left leg entrapping me in it. At the same time I hear a faint voice underneath the wreckage saying, "Help! Help!"
That voice makes me feel more uncomfortable than the leg does. I don't want to deal with it. So I reach for the saw to cut off my limb, just so I can get away. Then before I get my trembling hand around the handle of the saw, something deep within spurs me to read untethered soul again.
Reminder of the Truth
I am reminded, once again, of this wise truth within me...It is like:
"Aha!I am finding myself "stuck" now so I can release whatever that is under the rubble trying to get my attention. Cutting my limb off to avoid the discomfort of some buried crap is a ridiculous idea. It is only going to cause more pain and disability. It is not going to free me. "
"If I really want to be free of this so called suffering once and for all...I need to pick away at the rubble while I am here so that my leg, as well as the trapped energy/emotion/trauma...whatever...can be released. Sawing my darn leg off, running ( hopping) away, and trying to change what is happening 'out there' is not going to save me from discomfort for long. In fact, it will only compound the problem. I will be hopping around in intense pain, bleeding all over the place...and that voice will still be there getting louder and louder annoying me until I set it free. Life will keep piling up the circumstances until I release what needs to be released whether I am standing on one or two legs."
The problem will be back the moment the external situation [the change or in the case of this example...the cutting off of the leg to run from the voice in the rubble]fails to protect you from what is inside. page 84
Running Away Into Change Could Compound the Problem
I know that is a pretty drastic way of looking at it but that is what we do, isn't it, to run from painful feelings that are being stimulated by some outside disturbance? We put all our energy into "doing" things to control or change our outside experience just so we do not have to deal with the pain we stuffed. We manipulate things to prevent us from having to deal with the inner cries should they make so much as a whimper in their attempt to be heard. We blame Life for our being stuck in our suffering. We blame the rubble of circumstance and we do whatever we can so that we can run from it or numb from it, rather than embrace it as a learning opportunity. We are even willing to cut off parts of who we are so we do not have to deal with these inner problems.
Hmmm! I felt "stuck" in the circumstances Life had recently handed me. I had this intense need to get away from it all or at least part of it...not so much because these circumstances were weighing heavily on me as they were in the here and now but because they were somehow activating some unhealed crap buried inside me that I didn't want to deal with.
They were touching my stuff and I didn't want my stuff touched.
I felt I had to stop my stuff from getting touched in the way it was getting touched. I was debating over the need to make some drastic life changes that I knew there would be no going back from. Making these changes in my external life seemed like the thing to do. This decision would be deemed logical and supported by many others. It represents the way our society tends to think today.
Yet...the wise part of me knew ...as reminded by Singer... that this change would require alot of effort, a lot of pain and alot of suffering for others...all so "my stuff " would not get touched. I was willing to take such drastic measures in a fruitless attempt to protect some inner crap, I didn't want in me in the first place. I would have compounded the so called 'problem', the suffering tenfold...just like sawing off a leg...when all I had to to do...was allow this stuff to come to the surface, and watch it be released. So simple...all I had to to do was let go of the stuff inside me so there was nothing there for others or Life to touch or to bother.
The More Sensible Solution
Wouldn't doing that be the less painful and more sustainable option, making more sense in the long run?
If we feel like we have to "do" something, manipulate the world and make changes every time someone or something touches our stuff(the inner blockages we don't want to deal with) ...man we are not going to have a great Life are we? Our whole life will center around protecting ourselves from the stuff we stored inside by blaming Life and others for causing our suffering, running away, numbing, cutting off pieces of who we are etc.
And it doesn't work to do this...that stuff doesn't go away ...it just gets buried, denied, pushed down and hidden.
The solution then for dealing with suffering is not to make such a drastic change . Don't cut off your limb. Cut off that piece of you that prevents you from allowing the energies of life to flow through.
How do we do that?
Just Watch
1) Get back up into that seat of awareness and watch Life doing what Life does...watch as it breathes in experiences and as it breathes out. Notice that Life is just behaving and unfolding naturally. Come to see that Life is not the problem.
2) Then watch that trouble- making, problem-creating part of you in action in response to what Life does.. I call this part the ego. Watch as it sends you off into the external world to fix everything out there so you do not have to deal with the stuff inside that it tells you is "bad" or "unpleasant". Watch it and know that as long as you are watching it, you are not it. You have detached. Notice how ridiculous its solutions for your so called problems are.
3) Then watch as the feelings you have been avoiding come to the surface, watch as they trigger more thoughts that want to drag you away. Don't go! Stay in the seat of watching and as long as you are watching these thoughts and feelings will not consume you. It probably won't be pleasant...there will likley be pain if these things were buried with pain...but when you realize these feelings and thoughts are not you...you are the one watching them...they lose their power over you. Like all form, they come, they spin around a bit before you and then they go.
3) Look at the Life situations that have taken you to this point as teachers, pointing you to the root of the problem and the true solution...release and letting go.
So We don't Make Changes in Our External Worlds?
I am not saying we do not make changes in our lives. We can make all kinds of small changes that help to take pieces of rubble away...which I am in the process of doing now. There is no cutting away involved in these small changes I am making. :)
As far as the bigger changes go...I still may have to make some of those in the future...but only after I release and let go of that inside part of me I was folishly trying to protect. Then and only then can I look out at the world, from the clear state of consciousness, to determine what type of chnage may need to be made.
The real and most effective changes we make are internal not external. Go inward first and deal with that mess you have hiding away. Then decide if outer world change is really required to bring more peace into your expression of Life and therefore in the world.
Even if it is, it probably will not require the cutting off of a limb.
Hmmm! Something to think about.
Allis well.
Michael Singer (2007) the untethered soul. New Harbinger/Noetic Books
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