If something comes along that disturbs my heart, bring it on! I don't want to live in here afraid of my own heart. If something comes along that disturbs my mind, bring it on! I don't want to live in here afraid of my own mind.
Michael A. Singer
The Experience
I had an experience this morning and as part of my practice, I did my best to stay with it. It was a somewhat uncomfortable feeling that teasingly poked and prodded some old samskaras, making them grumble and rumble inside me. Though it was not an intense sensation, I felt it in the body parts I always feel this experience in...in my gut...and jaw...a tightening and clenching in a variety of degrees. Today it was a mild to moderate degree. I could feel myself curling forward as if to protect my vital organs from attack. Nothing dramatic ...just a slight reflex. I could also see how my mind was reacting with old habit tendencies. It was automatically trying to solve the problem of this experience by pushing the experience away, looking for something that would make me feel better inside or at least, not worse. It was doing me a solid. It wanted me to avoid the situation-potential that was , it believed, responsible for the discomfort. Since it was an anticipatory focus on something that may or may not happen in the future but something I was committed to being available for should it happen...since it involved a "waiting" and a "not knowing"...the mind, I could picture, was pacing back and forth wringing its hands, cuing the body to stay super "alert" for signs of this thing coming into my experience. It had the amygdala on guard. I was hypervigilant and easily startled ( mildly so) by noises that indicated this thing mind was preparing itself for might be unfolding in front of me. It was challenging to settle into the moment.
Asking "Why?", Instead of "What Can I Do About It?"
Now, I awoke with this experience, of what psychologists might call "mild anticipatory anxiety", but I also went to bed with it. In Fact, it was there in my subconscious mind as I was sleeping making it a somewhat restless night, and it was definitely there when I awoke before my alarm even went off. So I lay there at five a.m. with a choice to make. I knew I could do something to make the thing the mind thought was responsible for this level of discomfort go away and that would mean I wouldn't have to handle it or I could continue to commit to allowing all of it into my experience: the thing mind was anticipating and my reaction to it. I knew I could resist in a variety of ways or I could simply be here inside with this restless mind observing it and body "experience" what was happening as it waited to see if this thing would materialize. Instead of asking what can I do to feel better, I knew I could ask "Why? Why am I feeling this way? " I decided to do the latter.
Relaxing, Observing, Allowing, Asking, and Healing
So I lay there and began to focus on breath by counting my exhales. I observed my body and mind handling this experience of anticipation as I gently encouraged them to relax. Body was easier than mind to encourage. Mind, in its fearful ( albeit mildly so), problem - solving and protection mode was restless and it did what it could to carry me away from the "what is" of my moment...to prepare me for what might be coming up. So, I had to bring myself back again and again and again to the moment, to body, to breath, and to my commitment to stay with this experience. I had to counter mind's recurring question "What can we do about this to feel better?" and I asked "Why? Why am I feeling this way?" As I asked that I was suddenly hit with a visualization of a little girl standing in the corner of a familiar room absolutely terrified as she waited for something bad to happen. I suddenly knew why I was having the experience I was having. Though the degree of fear I was having this morning was nothing in comparison to the degree of fear the little girl was experiencing back then, I knew it was the same fear. That realization was very profound. (Probably more profound than I am actually understanding at this moment). Most of the fear we experience today is a diluted form of the fear that is stuffed inside us...that for some reason has been triggered.
Why Relief?
With that in mind, I brought myself back to breath , body and moment and continued to do my best to meditate, this time with a little more insight and self compassion. The discomfort did not go away but I was more accepting of it. When the alarm rang I allowed mind to take over a bit in its preparation for what I had committed myself to that day, should it materialize. I got up and I waited an hour. As it happened, it didn't materialize and I must say I felt, as usual, a tremendous sense of relief. A feeling that comes with "not having to" flooded my body and mind and the jaw unclenched, the gut relaxed, the iliopsoas let go of its need to pull me forward. Mind stopped pacing and was happily smiling. I had to ask again, "Why? Why am I feeling this way?"
The mind quickly responded, " We are relieved because we did not have to face and deal with what we were afraid of: the challenge that might lead to something bad happening to us. We get to stay here where it it is safe, doing what comes naturally to us...writing and healing. " (Mind likes to use "we" or "me", "I" prefers that the mind didn't take such liberties. Self does not identify with mind. lol)
Of course, "I", unlike mind, knows it goes a lot deeper than that. Mind is relieved that it no longer has to be so vigilant, that it didn't have to handle the challenge. Self , on the other hand, was never anxious and was never relieved. It would have happily taken on the challenge as something to help it grow (...if mind didn't feel so compelled to protect the "me")...just as it gratefully took on the challenge of me sitting with this emotional experience this morning.. Self sees how my willingness to sit with disturbance helped the "I" in me to grow with that visualized realization I had. Some samskara pieces were released this morning, as small as they might have been. Some healing took place.
No Shame. Progress
I also see, in comparison to other similar morning experiences brought on for the same reason, this one was much milder and the relief was greater because there was no shame involved. There was no shame because I was willing to be with what was. I was not avoiding and running away this time. I was not doing something to make the feeling go away. I was committed to accepting the situation should it materialize. I was prepared to face the challenge regardless of how I felt inside. Most importantly, I was committed to experiencing the anticipatory anxiety, the discomfort and whatever else came up as a result of waiting and not knowing. I was allowing it all into my life. I was saying to Life..."Thy will be done, not my will." This is progress!!!
Willingness to Heal Greater than Fear
My determination to heal by releasing all the samskaras stuck inside me was and is, I realize, much greater than my fear. The fear is not going to go away over night. It is going to come and go in its varying degrees. I am still going to feel yucky and uncomfortable inside because of it but I know now I don't have to resist it. There is a reason for this fear, this pain and discomfort...one that deserves acceptance, respect, kindness and compassion...and the less I resist it, the freer I will be.
The less we resist our pain and discomfort, the quicker our samskaras will be released and the freer we will all be.
Story Details May Differ but Fear is Fear
Now, that was a long winded story about a common challenge we all face with our stuffed fear that may arise as anticipatory anxiety in many of us. Fear is fear, in whatever form or degree it comes in and as long as we are fearing, we have some healing to do! We do not want to stay afraid of our hearts and minds do we?
I didn't tell you the life situation details as to exactly what I was fearing because it really, really doesn't matter. What matters is not what is or isn't happening "out there" but what is happening "in here". Do you get that yet? There is nothing "wrong" with the outside world with all its changing events and circumstances. It is not the problem. It may trigger what is not okay inside us ...as this waiting did for me this morning, as it does for me most mornings...but that is as far as it goes. Nothing "out there" is going to break us and nothing "out there" is going to fix us. The problem is we are not okay inside. We , as "me" are broken in some degree or another because we have stuffed our pain inside and it has become a knotted tangle of emotional energy that needs to be released. It is in the way of us experiencing what we are meant to experience...true joy! We, with our problematic little mes, have gotten in the way of who we truly are. We need to admit that to ourselves and then we need to begin healing by relaxing and letting go as life pours through us. We need to become strainers that allow life's precious energy to flow through us...instead of the sealed up airtight containers many of us have become.
As Michael Singer says, we just don't know how beautiful we are inside, beneath all this junk we have stuffed on top of Self. I don't know about you, but I want to be beautiful inside. That, I know, is the greatest gift I can give anyone. So though I may tense up and tremble from time to time, I still say, "Bring it on!"
All is well.
Michael A. Singer/ Temple of teh Universe ( May 8, 2023) You don't want what you think you want. https://tou.org/talks/
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