Often there is not a free flow of energy in the body, and as we direct our awareness inward, we experience, in a very clear and intimate way, the accumulated tensions, knots, and holdings that are present. page 18
I sat out to meditate this morning and my ability to do so was challenged by my mind's attention to the sounds and pictures of Life going on all around me. I might have put a little too much sugar in my humming bird feeder this morning ...the little guys were wild today, dive bombing over my head. The Blue Jays were busy getting the acorns out of the Oak trees. There were Chickadees laughing in the distance. The breeze was lovely through the full branches of Maple, Birch and Poplar. The Pine trees looked like friendly and amazing giants standing over me. The grass at my feet was just humming with life...so many insects especially bees and it just filled my heart to watch them and hear them . (I was so worried about the bees at the beginning of the season...as if someone answered my prayers...they are everywhere! ) I would close my eyes but some lovely thing would asked to be observed.
It was challenging to focus the mind and go inward but I tried. When I did, I could feel a very familiar tightness in my core, and a pressure on the left side of my chest. I recognize this feeling as good old resistance. I recalled what I read in the below book, my new study project, and realized that I was resisting in all of the three ways discussed...with self pity, fear and most of all apathy. Though I didn't allow myself to get dragged along by story...I could see what Life events were/are triggering this resistance...and how I respond to each. The feelings of confusion, loss, and self deprecation I experience in this present living situation has been resisted with apathy. Upon realizing I settled into a situation that was not healthy for me in my present stage of development, I turned down the "care" meter to the point I shut off feeling. I was coping with "apathy"...I was not dealing with the situation with a spiritual selflessness brought on by a sincere desire to do the "right" thing. I was just resisting feeling pain with apathy and indifference especially towards myself. Yuck!
As I sat with that realization I could feel a movement of energy from my belly to my chest, then to the area behind the back of my eyes. So much sadness wanted to come out but the energy is still a little tangled up...I have some more disentangling to do.
It was interesting to note, though, how this feeling...this sensation of tightness in my gut always feels like a solid mass, the core beliefs that trigger this feeling also feel like solid masses inside me. The pressure in my chest also feels solid, like someone's hand pushing down on my chest and occassionally squeezing it. My mind registers teh sensations as solid. And as solid it has this sense of permanence and power over me. Thus the resistance of the resistance.
Something amazing happens when we realize that none of it is solid...it is just a sensation brought on by the body in response to a pain. The sensation...the physical, emotional and mental is not a solid mass of anything. It is just energy that my mind perecieves as "tangled knots" but even that perception is just energy. The knot, which is just an illusion, can be dissolved ...the tangle, which is just a creation of the mind and not what is really happening, can be untangled. And that energy that wants to flow through these eyes can be released so it flows freely. This can happen just by looking deeply enough inward. Yoga, of course, can help too.
Hmmm! Isn't that amazing?
Often, when we resist painful feelings, we have this idea that there is some solid mass of pain in a part of the body. When we allow ourselves to feel the sensations that are there, when we go into them, then we begin to see that pain is not a solid mass but a field of vbration, characterized perhaps by tightness, burning , or pressure. But what we see clearly is that there is nothing solid. We begin to experience this for ourselves and dissolve the illusion of solidity. As this happens in our practice, it begins the process of untying the energy blocks and knots in our system. We begin to allow for a freer flow of energy which is very healing. page 22
All is well
Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield (2001) Seeking the Heart of Wisdom. Shambala Classics: Boulder
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