Let the Light In

Just do what lets the light in!

 I have a conundrum when it comes to balancing my spiritual needs with my human needs as I partake on this journey of Self-realization. Basically, I know I do not want to serve the "me" with its outward grasping for the things it thinks will make it happy and it’s pushing away of the things it believes will disturb it.  I do know, at some deep level, that is not how it works.

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added onto you. Matthew 6:33

Happiness, love, peace, fulfillment etc. come from the inside. The essence of who we are, Sat Chit Ananda (Existence/Consciousness/Bliss) or the Kingdom of God ...is like a light shining from the core of who we are. This light is encapsulated in a body and mind. Our potential for experiencing the full extent of this inner light ...is covered up with layers and layers of protective and adaptive personality. 

Why?

As lights/souls/higher consciousness...whatever you wish to describe it...we find ourselves on a planet full of ever changing and moving phenomenon.  Life happens around us and to us...as it is meant to do. As beings encapsulated in body and mind, we experience and try to make sense of the events that are unfolding around us: the environments we are in, the family situations;illness, deaths,births and new beginnings...hardships and blessings. All of Life's many unfolding’s are meant to enter our experience and blow right through. We are meant to be these big open vessels for Life to experience Itself through. But they don't pass right through, do they? Things get stuck inside us.

Why do they get stuck?

Somewhere along the line we begin to use the mind to label and judge our experiences.  Some of these experiences that unfold in front of these forms we are in and get more and more attached to, the personal mind judges as "pleasant" because they create a certain energy experience as they pass through our senses. Maybe they tickle, or are soothing, or create a feeling of euphoria in the body. The mind jumps in as a response to those sensations to say, "This feels good! So, this is good!  I want more of than!” The mind then begins to generate emotions related to that experience...excitement and hope...and a sense of possibility.  It uses the body and these emotions to begin looking to the external world for that which will create more of these sensations and emotions.

When something from Life passes through the senses creating a sensation that is painful or heavy...or tense...however…the body and the mind together might make a judgement, "This feels very unpleasant!  I don't like this. I don't want to experience this again!" The mind begins to generate emotions of repulsion, fear, anger, resentment etc. It begins to use the body and its emotions to actively resist such experiences.  Instead of staying open to the experience, it closes. Well, it thinks it closes.  Life is going to attempt pass through us if we are consciously willing it to or not. It is going to come in one way or the other. But if we do not deal with it as it enters the emotionally charged energy around the event will be suppressed or repressed becoming a knot in our physical and mental experience of life. We have created what yoga refers to as a samskara.

We collect these good and bad experiences and begin to label them as what we like and don't like. Thus, the formation of the personality/psyche begins. Its noise becomes very distracting and so all consuming. We tend to focus all our attention and energy on it.   We have essentially formed the first layer around the body and mind. From its formation we begin to see it as who we are. It becomes the "me"....and we develop an intense need to protect it. We begin a lifelong search of the external world for the things that will serve this ‘me’...and we also do whatever we can to manipulate external factors, so they don't disturb it. “Serve not disturb” is ‘me’s’ demand that we so obediently follow.

As we progress through life and as it unfolds around us, we continue to experience things that the mind judges as pleasant and things the mind judges as unpleasant. Because we have already created some knots with this liking and disliking...this grasping for what we want and this pushing away of what we don't want… the layers around the light of who we truly are get thicker and thicker. Our personality gets bigger. Those things we really, really didn't like or couldn't let pass through like trauma, for example, become the dominant traits in this personality development...and the things we really, really like and want more of become the drive of our personality. We focus the Self ‘out there’ to protect and serve the personality, who we believe ourselves to be, as well as the mind and body. The more we give the personality wants, the more it needs and demands.  The more we get what the personality doesn't want, the more we close. We forget there is a light inside us...a light from which true joy and happiness come. Grasping, Clinging, pushing away becomes an endless drama.

Our focus is directed from the personality and the body mind layer outward.

As a yogi I want to turn that focus in the opposite direction. I have learned that we really do not want "me" to get what it wants because it will keep us stuck on this focus direction outward.  I want, instead, to get to the light of who I am.  In order to do that, I have to go through many layers, from the outside in. I need to look deeply into these layers, become aware of how they are in the way, and I have to be willing to let them dissolve away. This "noticing and looking deeply" will dissolve each layer, if it is done with compassion and understanding.

I have already dug so far. I am now stuck, it seems, on a certain layer. I feel somewhat squished between heavy external life events on one side and the heavy emotional energies I am unleashing here from the graves I buried them in on the other. I can’t see much light.

 At this point of the inward excavation, I am not happy with the things that once fulfilled me because I see how insignificant they are…I don’t have false attachment anymore. I am not 100% happy in my relationship at the same time I know my relationship is not responsible for my happiness or lack of. I am not happy in this situation I am in, in this house and family situation but again I know these things are not responsible for my lack of happiness. I am not happy with my lack of money and at the same time I know having money probably wouldn’t make me any happier. These circumstances are just triggering something already inside me wanting to come up and out. It is not a “pleasant” experience for the body and mind or what remains of my personality. I want to feel better but my once effective go-to doesn’t work for me anymore.  I don’t operate on hopes and dream. I no longer escape into a future focus because I learned that doesn’t work in the long run. I want to accept where I am now as I go deeper and deeper rather than allowing this “me” to pull me farther and farther away from what is really important.

My conundrum is that though I see the personality or the “me” as being in the way of my true happiness, and though I know that my inner world is more important than my outer, my external world is still pounding down on me, taking my attention away from my inward mission. My circumstances do not always seem conducive to this process of going inward... I still go. I also see as I debride through the layers that some pretty nasty emotional stuff is being uncovered. I feel sandwiched between the challenges of the external world and the challenges of this inward mission. Sigh.

Still, I continue to peel away the layers…or at least allow them to get peeled away by Life. The personality people once knew me by…say a successful career woman on a higher educational path, a writer, speaker with a good income...mother of four...in a fit body was a shell hiding who I really was. That was my Redeemer ego. When that was stripped away, I found myself in another false layer of who I thought I was…then another…and another. All these layers serve at the time in some way, but they served the adaptive and protective personality not the true Self.  

Well now I realize I am down to shamer ego full of a lot of core beliefs based on trauma messaging and it is nasty lol. As I pull away layers, I am feeling the feelings I stuffed that became knots in me...at the same time I have these external events pounding down on me. Squished! Stuck! Yuck!

I know that the only way out of this is through. I need to get to the center of who I am. I need to remove, or allow to be removed, layer and layer of "me". But I feel stuck, and I cannot see where I am going. It is dark in here.

Where I am right now is not a good feeling place. People refer to it “as the dark night of the soul.”  Though I know it is a part of the process, and I do accept it, I fear, sometimes, it will overwhelm me. I need some light, some joy, some inspiration to trickle through. Just enough to keep me going. Hope and dreams belong to the outward direction approach not the inward. I need the “felt experience” of something powerful and positive to be my light.

As I was sharing this conundrum with someone today…they offered these words.  “Just do what lets the light in”. The moment I heard them…I knew they were to be my mantra. …helping me to move from this place of stuck-ness to the light within. It isn’t like we are supposed to “do nothing” to serve the human as we progress on this journey inward.  This human is what needs the light...the light of who we are. It isn't easy being human. 

We just need to remember where that light comes from…not out there but in here.  Sometimes, however, things from the external world can act as laser beams that penetrate through the layers so the light can shine through.  Find those things and take part in those actions that let the light shine through as you continue digging deeper to the Light within you.

All is well!

Note: I used images from a search for "free images and clip art". Hope I am not stepping on toes!