Have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing.
I am so stuck!! Or am I?
I am struggling to get out of this story but as you can see by my last entry, I keep getting pulled back in. There has to be some valuable learning that I am meant to gain and possibly share from it. I am learning some crazy but very cool things when I sit with my experience. My experience at this moment is one of resisting my pull back to the story. I observe myself fairly present. Then I observe myself experiencing the physical discomfort and the thinking that goes with it, then I observe myself getting pulled back into the story, the memory, and the identity. When I realize I am in a story, I consciously pull myself out with whatever tool I have in my toolbox: mindful breathing, awareness of my surroundings, the feel of my feet against the floor or earth as I walk. I come back and I ask, "What do I do with this so I don't keep getting pulled back in?" I say, "I'll write!". I come here to write and what do I write about? This story, of course. I don't intend to write about it but something pulls me back to it again and again. Not sure if what I write is wholesome or skillful but it is honest. Yet the narration alone takes me from "experiencing" that which is likely crying to be experienced.
According to Eckhart Tolle, in the below video, I am operating in a fiction called, "I am this". I need to remind myself that " I am not this!" I am not this character in this story. Every time I go into this story, however, I have to ask if I am strengthening my identity as the character in this story.
I am not completely lost because I also realize I am not a character in any story. I am, like all human beings, really on a journey to lose self...not strengthen it. That is what our true purpose is, what awakening is...getting beyond this puny little idea we have of self to who we really are. Even Jesus in Matthew 16: 24 tells his disciples that if they wanted to follow Christ in holiness, they had to deny themselves. This little puny "me-me" that we often over-dientify with/as and all the trappings that go with it is really nothing. The Buddha reminded all who would listen, that the "self" was merely an illusion, a mental concept and as long as we are trapped in that identity we will have suffering/dukkha. As long as I am trapped in this story of me the suffering victim, I am suffering.
How trapped am I? And it must be really, really boring and annoying to hear me or read me when I keep getting lost in this story. lol
I think that is some value to reviewing the story ( with some objective distance). It allows me to see how my mind works, the minds of other humans work, and to explore relating through crucial universal laws and their effects on our experience. There is definitely some value to having those stored emotions related to memory come up so I can sit with them, look deeply into them and then let them pass through. Wayne Dyer speaks to this as well in the below video. In order to take charge of our lives and become unstuck, we need to let go of the "junk" we have stored within us that does not serve. We need to heal from our traumas brought on by our identifications with little me. He said he was as positive and optimistic as he was because he did this. We can all do this.
He also explains using a cool analogy that we spend a lot of our lives moving away from who we really are, from the true Self in our identification with the little self that is not real. He uses the clock and explains that we start out at the 12 knowing who we are and then as we begin to age, like the hand of the clock, we begin to move away from that Self. By the time we hit three we forget about True Self and live like the little self, lost in all the superficial glitter of the material world, creating a superficial idea of who and what we are based on what we do and what we own, what we believe and how our bodies look. By the time we get to six (O'clock not six years old lol) we are up to our necks in it and realize that something so important is missing. We are truly suffering. That 6 O'clock can be seen as our dark night of the soul. We suddenly want more gold and less glitter. That is the turning point! From there, realizing that the "little self" does not offer us anything of value, we begin to move back toward the true Self. We have gained certain life-altering realizations by the time we hit 9 from asking, "Who am I?" and find peace instead of dukkha. The little self and all its glitter no longer does anything for us. It dissolves.
And like the hands of the clock as we evolve there is no going back. Once we reach that understanding that the ego identity is not who we are we cannot go back to it. We cannot "unawaken". From six to 12 is a wonderful, sometimes confusing and challenging, journey. I see myself maybe around 7 O'clock.. It is still confusing and challenging but I am learning and growing. So I may visit this story I seem to be stuck on again and again but it will never be able to pull me back in completely. There is a distance between me and it. . My little identity is dissolving as I realize more and more who I really am. I see clearly what I am doing and that is the progress of an awakening individual.
Hmm! I thought that was cool.
All is well!
Wayne Dyer/ The Prosperity Code ( April, 2022) 15 Minutes with Wayne Dyer to Ease Your Mind and Soul. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jcaYk1VXYY
Eckhart Tolle (July 12, 2022) What is the Main Purpose in Life? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5NFgN-djJQ
No comments:
Post a Comment