Awareness is the greatest agent for change.
Eckhart Tolle in The New Earth
As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anyone else. All you can do is create a space for the transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.
Eckhart Tolle from The Power of Now.
I am remembering back to when I really started to evolve in my transformation. It was 2006? I was about to get divorced, still living with my ex but in the process of buying a house near by. Someone recommended "A New Earth" to me. I was reluctant to read it. Though I was always a bit "spiritual"(quietly so)...aware of something that could not be seen especially as a child, I had developed a very scientific mind that depended on empirical evidence to explain reality. I guess, I became a bit of a materialist. I was also so very egoic at the time...identified so much with my "me" and "my" body and what it "was doing and going through", that if someone were to tell me I wasn't this body or its problems, let alone this "me", I would have told them they were absolutely nuts!!! Sure, I was studying and practicing yoga but I stuck to the Hatha component because I felt the other stuff was a "little too woo-woo". And though I was also reading writers like Wayne Dyer and Marianne Williamson, I focused on the psychology of their teaching rather than the parapsychology. I was not, by any means, easy to convince that consciousness was a thing, let alone who we are. Yet, the experience of the divorce was opening something in me. So, I proceeded to read Tolle's book.
At first, there was the usual resistance, "This is nuts!" or "I don't get it!" ... but as I kept going, this crack that was opening in me began to widen, and there was like these waves of pure knowing emerging in me. The resistance was soon replaced with a lot of very profound "aha" moments! My perceptions were shifting. "This is truth!" I found myself reciting to anyone who would listen (and few would listen...people were convinced I was having a breakdown). I was beginning "to get it", albeit very slowly and at a very rudimentary level, but it felt like it was coming from inside me. I still was not even sure what "it" was.
I then read "The Power of Now" and many other books like it. I felt compelled to go on to read A Course in Miracles for the first time. That was a heavy read. It took me a long time to get through it. It wasn't until the third time through that the learning became assimilated into my inner knowledge library. I began to look at the other things Wayne Dyer was teaching. I looked at things like Abraham and the Secret and began consciously trying to manifest. All the while, I was still practicing yoga and opening up a little more to the teachings...hesitantly, because my religious conditioning was warning me of the dangers.
My mind was not satisfied...I realized somewhere in 2014, maybe after another sick leave from work and finding myself at the verge of losing everything I owned, that there had to be more to it; that I didn't have to look out there, I had to look in here. I upped my meditation practice. I put away my dream boards and my need for the law of attraction to bring into my life what I thought I needed. I began to ask for peace of mind no matter what over anything else. I looked into Buddhism and was floored by the absolute wisdom I found there. I upped my yoga practice. I read Patanjali's sutras. I began practicing all limbs (realizing that I had already been practicing them to some degree but I reinforced my commitment to a sadhana.) I discovered Michael Singer. I studied the suttras and scriptures of other ancient wisdom traditions from the east. I soon began the studying necessary to become a yoga teacher. I studied to become a meditation and mindfulness teacher. All the while, this knowing in me kept growing and expanding to the point I can't believe that I ever thought differently than this. I see now! There is no going back to that foggy and distorted vision I had. "It", whatever It is, is sooo clear to me.
I also began to come down from my head where I had lived my entire life and into my body and moment. I began to pull away from my past and future focus and started to live in the here and now. I began to see this me as 'this human I call "me". I detached from my absorption in it. I lost so much attachment to those things that once consumed me. I stopped resisting Life...and found myself opening up, accepting and appreciating all of it'.
I am no longer attached to the past story of "me", but I do know I have stored samskaras inside that I need to release and that is where I am now. My life changed completely. And this inner knowing I had is now being replaced by a not knowing. The more I think I know the less I realize I know. I am seeing so clearly the limitation of words and concepts. It's crazy!
So, to me, sometimes as I speak to my loved ones, or go on and on in my blog entries and videos, I forget that not everyone sees it the way I see it. A lot of people are not there yet....wherever "there" is. Not that this "me" is superior in any way shape or form for being here now....not at all...this "me" is not even real! Man, that blows me away.
Anyway...I just felt compelled to share that.
All is well.
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