Life is going to enfold around you...triggering your samskaras. Are you using your experiences in Life to get rid of your stuff or compensate for it? Welcome Life when it hits your blockages. Welcome the stuff that comes up. If you let go...samskaras will go. When we are pure and clean Life will be beautiful no matter what.
Paraphrased summary of the podcast below.
I had another experience during meditation today and it was not a mystical one. I don't think any of my experiences are mystical. It was merely an intention. I consciously set out to envision certain things. I sat down with the sankalpa (yogic intention) of welcoming and allowing the release of my biggest samskara...a deeply rooted shame. I know this one is going to take some time to release. It is more entrenched than the others and bigger. I also agree with the samskara release being a FILO staking system as Singer desribes. First in, last out. This one is probably one of my earlier ones ( possibly comes from generations ago, now a part of my genetic make up). Yet I feel compelled...not to insist that it push its way up past the others, but to simply welcome it up when it is ready to come up. It seems close.
The day before yesterday I envisoned it as a malignant tumour (and that is basically what shame is) wrapped around the cells of my sushumna (the yogic pathway for shakti). I could see the long tenacles of it also wrapped around memories and other stuffed things, I could see it so clearly. Whitish yellow in appearance, slimy yet sleek. It reminded me of something I seen before in my life in a picture of a poisonous jelly fish or some type of octopus from way down in the ocean?? Weird.
Anyway, today my intention was to start disentangling its tenacles from that which it was clinging to. I imagined what I was rescuing from its grip was myself in various stages of development...a two year old ( my grandsons' age), then a five or six year old, then a ten year old, a middle school student, a high school student, then a young university student making all kinds of mistakes, a young nurse making mistakes, an older nurse making mistakes, a wife, a mother, a nursing educator, a tutor, an imperfect friend and sibling etc...Each time I gently removed the tenacles soothing the beast that was holding onto these things with respect and compassion. Then, I took each so called "me" and just hugged them and said, "It is okay...all a part of being 'this human'. " When all was loose, I took this tumour which was now some kind of living creature and I hugged it, I thanked it, and stroked it before taking it the ocean to set it free. I watched as it floated off. Weird, I know but somehow what was needed.
This is what this morning's meditation turned into when I got to the part about observing any mental formations that wanted to come up. Mostly, this visualization was consciously intended and willed but another part of the experience just emerged.
Now I know in yoga there is nothing "I" as a human person need to do to release samskaras except stop putting more in, then to allow and let go as each samskara emerges on its own...from the last in to the first in...but I focused on a selected samskara. I felt compelled to. Why? Because I know this shame (even more than fear) is my biggest blockage. It is not only affecting my physical and emotional well being, it is blocking my spiritual growth which to me is nothing more than freedom from suffering and the release of Shakti so Sat Chit Ananda can flow better through me and into the world.
Anyway, I am sharing all this because I know more than ever about the inter-connectedness of us all. I know 'this human's" tiny experience of stored shame is shared by other humans, and posisbly by other beings in one form or another. I know that samskaras (stored and stuffed emotional energy associated with experiences that were resisted) prevents us from knowing who we are, what we truly want and need, and what is best for all. Blockages lead to desire and aversion and these are the source of human suffering. Purification of them is the solution. So, I share. Not that I know anything or am anywhere near being enlightened. I am, however, like many of you on this journey of ending suffering for myself and others.
All is well.
Michael A. Singer /Temple of the Universe (Sunday June 16, 2024) Learning to Live Without Resistance. https://tou.org/talks/
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