... let all your blockages and disturbances become the fuel for the journey. That which is holding you down can become a powerful force that raises you up. You just have to be willing to take the ascent.
Michael Singer, page 79
It is probably hard to believe what Singer is saying in the above quote. We might not agree that the disturbances we sometimes feel can be fuel that lifts us higher when it seems like the challenges are just bringing us down. Many of us are conditioned to believe that we have to run from disturbing things or "do" something to make it all better.
I keep writing here about my dilemna ( one I am no closer to understanding let alone solving btw). I "perceive" disturbance in my outer world and I am questioning if I need to make some major life changes in response to this ongoing 'situation'.
Most 'normal-minded' people, including professionals, would look at my situation and say, "Definitely. Make some changes to your external situation. You are suffering because of what is happening in the world around you , so go there for the solutions and the changes. Do something and do it quick!"
I myself often go to that place of thinking the same thing. Even my strong gut instinct occassionally points to certain things 'out there' as the source of my disturbance.
Yet, though I know this focus on the external world as the source of our happiness or suffering is 'normal'...a deeper part of me knows normal does not equate to truth. A deeper, more wise part of me knows that all disturbance has an internal cause and therefore the solution will never be found in any change I may make 'out there'. It will only come with cleaning up my insides.
It is the inside that is a mess not the outside. The so called disturbance is coming from the inside. Life events have little to do with it. So housecleaning should begin inside.
Most of us, however, are looking out at the world through this internal mess without even seeing it and that is like looking through some really dirty lens and seeing the world around us through the haze of disturbance. The world looks like it is a mess. The world looks disturbing. But it isn't, our view is.
Life Doesn't Change Its Nature, Perception Does
Life is not punishing us when challenging situations of varying degrees show up in front of us. It doesn't set out to hurt or destroy. It is just Life coming and going, arising and dissolving through different forms. Sure Life is in a constant state of change. That is the nature of Life. That nature, however, has not changed just because we percieve difficulty. It is not like sometimes Life is still and frozen in time...where nothing moves, nothing dies, nothing comes in, keeping us safe and protected...and other times all these things suddenly start to happen and move about threatening us. This is always happening...Life is always moving, changing, bringing things in and taking them out. That is the nature of Life.
It is just sometimes we 'perceive' it as beautiful and sometimes we percieve it as 'ugly'. Sometimes we 'like it' and sometimes we don't. Sometimes it gives us the warm fuzzies ...other times we 'perceive' it to be dark and depressing. Life has not changed its nature. We just changed our perception of it. We changed the way we look out at the world.
The Seat of Clarity
When we are able to step back away from ego with all its silly and unrealistic expectations, when we refuse to get lost in drama or what is happening out there and maintain instead our seat of awareness in higher consciousness....where we can witness Life doing what Life does around us and through us without getting lost in it ...when our insides are clean and the energy of outer things just flow through without getting jammed up...we look out at the world through a very clear lens. There is no judgement of "this is good", "this is bad", 'this is pleasant', "this is unpleasant", "this is disturbing", "this isn't". Life just is. It is beautiful, amazing, full of mystery and awe. There is no ego interference, therefore there is no fear. Without fear there are no problems and therefore no need to fix or make changes. We operate from a very high vibration...Love, joy, enthusiasm can flow into us, through us and from us. It is a state we want to be in. It is an inner state that determines how we see the world.
When we fall from this seat of witnessing...things change. We see differently. We experience Life differently on the inside. We struggle against it, believing we need to manipulate it somehow.
Through the Haze of Disturbance
How do we fall?
Well the whole thing starts with fear...and fear is just another thing that comes into our experience. If we do not accept, let in, release and let go of fear like we are meant to do with all these things that come into our experiences, fear gets stored inside. Then becasue fear does not like fear...we will spend the rest of our lives trying to keep fear inside and hide from it so we do not have to feel it. This blocks our energy.
How do we hide from fear?
By doing whatever we can to control and manipulate the world out there, to make it safe and easy so it doesn't 'trigger' our fear. We begin to define how Life should be out there in order to avoid anything disturbing fear in here. That is where "This is good" "This is desirable" and "This is bad" "This is undesirable" comes from. We then spend a great deal of enegry seeking, and clinging to the good and desirable, and pushing away, resisting, struggling against the bad and undesirable. We are actually struggling with Life just so we can avoid feeling fear.
You are either trying to figure out how to keep things from happening , or you're trying to figure out what to do because they did happen. You are fighting with creation.... pg 73
How is that working for you?
Have you stopped fear? Or are things out there constantly stimulating your fear no matter what you do to try to control it? Are you noticing that the more you try to supress fear, keep it under wraps inside you, to stop the world from bothering you...the more you get bothered?
Life meant to challenge us to release fear
Life is going to constantly hand us situations that disturb us and therefore stimulate fear because it wants us to release all these blockages. Life is meant to flow through us so we expand and go upward, not so that we shrivel up in fear. We need to have open hearts to do that...so we need to remove the blockages fear creates.
So things are going to happen. Some life situations will be easy, some challenging. We are not meant to run from the challenging ones, in order to keep fear hidden in its place within us. We are meant to "allow and embrace" the challenges so fear is triggered and comes to the surface and from there we release it and let it go!
If we allow these situations to distract us, and take us to a place where we neeed to run from them or "do" something about them just so we do not fear...we will fall from our peaceful state of awareness. We will fall down into that lower energy vibration. We will get all caught up and tangled up in disturbace and not see that...that is not who we are. We will forget that we are the witness, not the disturbance.
When we look out at the world all tangled up in this inner mess we created...the world looks pretty bleak.
...as you look out through your disturbed energy, everything is distorted by the haze of disturbance. Things that looked beautiful now look ugly. Things you liked, now look dark and depressing. But nothing has really changed. It's just that you are working at life from the seat of disturbance.
This is sufferng. This is being held down by disturbance.It is not the situation that is the problem for us...it is the way it somehow stimulates our fear. But what seems like a problem is actually an opportunity for growth.
It doesn't have to be this way. We can instead free ourselves from this and get back up into the seat of higher consciousness. We can have an open heart that sees the beauty and majesty of the world.
All we have to do is be willing to confront fear and allow it to come through us, so it can be released from us. This disturbance ...if embraced rather than resisted...can take us back up to higher awareness and a higher vibration.
Are you willing to climb?
All is well.
Michael Singer (2007) the untethered soul. New Harbinger/Noetic Books
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