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Archives for posts with tag: happiness
Rumi
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It’s very easy to get down on yourself during awakening, especially as it relates to those who are engaged in emotional release of conditioning. But even as you are, in the words of Peter Gabriel, “digging in the dirt” it does not mean you have to wallow in it.
It is entirely possible to learn how to take out the trash without messing yourself up in the process. This is not refusing to acknowledge what is there, it’s that the pranic force does not make it necessary to ever have to open that dirty trash bag. Toss it, exit the burning building, get out for fucks sake.
There. I said it. Indelicate though it may be, the truth here is that there is no honor in being a martyr to your past and you can grow up, step up, and exit the past and simply be done. You can wallow or you can keep on ascending, your pick.
The presence of prana is the game changer, you see. Prior to this, what most people have is their rational minds and physical senses. If you allow prana to help you break through the veil of that awareness into the subconscious to find an expanding awareness of both intuition and feeling (not to be confused with emotion). It becomes possible to simply be done once a suppressed emotion has finally been recognized and processed so it can be gone forever (if need be).
There is a big difference between authentic cleansing and simply holding on to your trash while acting like you really are getting rid of it just as your hands clutch onto it for dear life. Or just shoving it down again.
This is why in many old traditions the teachers tell their students to smile as they meditate. I was explaining to my daughter yesterday that there are ways of triggering confidence, happiness, and even joy by learning how to fool your conditioned mind out of feeling negatively. It’s a radical idea: fake it until you make it.
Buddha said that all change happens right now. You just begin. So change your thoughts. Now. Yes, you might return to sadness or loathing, or a dozen negative states, but you begin by bringing your mind to a new place and hold it there as long as you can. Then, over days and weeks, this becomes a habit. You remain in the new state longer and longer. You hold that feeling and eventually action becomes character, and character, in the words of Gautama Buddha, becomes destiny.Some miss that the only plan is what you intend and help manifest.
There will inevitably come a time when what’s left of your inner junk gets driven to the surface. It can no longer survive in the new you. Like bubbles rising from the depths, they are forced upwards and like bubbles surfacing, spread into the ether as though they were never there. They were nothing more than patterns you loved to hate that imprisoned you in a negative self-talk. Kick them to the curb. If it means repenting and changing your ways now, do so. Fake it until you make it. Time itself will see to it that change comes. And it will.
Is this an inauthentic way to heal or grow? I ask you; is it fake to allow yourself to be as happy as you can muster? This happiness will show you where you still need work. It will. So let it be, and the process will take care of itself and you. Joy will create the contrast you need to see the shadow. There are indeed millions of ways to address awakening that are already authentic and beneficial and can work very well. They have for me.
In Indonesia they teach meditation with a smile. In time, you will find more of the smile to be genuine. Their way might just be quicker and involve less misery. You are constantly reminded of the power of the positive in each moment.
It’s hard enough facing shadow. There is always a reason to be happy and thankful for just being alive here at this pivotal time.
So yes, there will be a time when you know the smile may not be real. But you aren’t doing this to be fake, you are doing this to change, to steer your boat into a new direction.
The Sea Of Sorrow-A Lesson In Sadness
About six years ago I was going through a highly accelerated process in awakening. I had asked for change and I got it. I went through this ego death, a rearranging of the self that moves ego to the back of the bus. During this time I began to encounter a vast stretch of my spiritual ocean I referred to as the “Sea of Sorrow.” Intuitively, I thought my job was to process this sorrow. So I did. Like a man in a boat, I tried to cry out all of the sorrow I felt rising up around me. This went on for over several months. I cried every day, trying to tap deeply into this vast sea.
I realized that this sea that I was feeling could not possibly be mine alone. There just wasn’t that much sadness in my past. I realized once I stepped back that this belonged to all of us, this vast sea of sorrow. When you awaken, the consciousness you awaken to is that of collective consciousness and how everything is connected. I realized there was no way to process all of it. So I stopped. It had become habitual by then. I weaned myself off over a matter of a few days and steered my own boat out of that sea. I left. I didn’t return. I left and found myself on much calmer waters. My mind changed, clearing. That great sadness became a memory. And there will come a time when fewer years are added to this sea by virtue of fewer people who choose to shed their tears. They choose joy instead of sorrow. And in time, that sea will itself sublime into the ether. It will become a distant memory and anyone who dares return will only find a dry valley where once there were tears. It will have lost all of its magnetic charge on us because it no longer means anything to us.
Do you see how it can be for you?
You choose.
So it’s possible to choose bliss and when you feel this bliss constantly like I do, that bliss alone heals. It heals all the hard places in you. If you think you can heal this neurosis by wrestling with it, by fixing or fiddling with it, you are mistaken. This neurosis is circular and is madness. It feeds on itself and seeks others to raise the same banner as it sadly does, with vigor and passion. There is no rationalizing with it. So? You quit it. You walk away. You become a quitter.
You quickly begin to forget what it was like to feel like shit and remember instead how perfect bliss is. And one by one you are healed of one conditioned neurosis after another.
Tantra, the core tantra, is about bliss and how it literally can heal you. When you surrender completely and deeply enough, that bliss will penetrate to your cellular DNA and work out the blocks that are there. This is what kundalini does all on its own as it is. The bliss, as you let it in, heals as deep as you dare to go. This, the soul of tantra, heals your shame, your guilt, and brings you to a place where you just have no more fucks to give.
There. I said it again.
You just slip deep into bliss and as you do, it’s as though cell by cell, the magnetic quality of bliss rewires your brain, nervous system, and body. You find yourself wondering just what you were so concerned about moments earlier. This is the beginning of repatterning your brain so you no longer “go there.”
This is the power of tantra, the orgasmic bliss that is the healer. You can feel it with or without sex. And not everyone is ready to harness it for sex. It can be enough just to heal the psyche. It isn’t about sex, you see. It is acknowledging what you are, your incredible capacity to hold this riotously sensual feeling inside until you explode over and over.
Like Osiris, prana helps you to get put back together a better way.
No, you do not need to roll around in your own garbage just to get it out. You can be happy. You can take each moment microsecond by microsecond, building a powerful wave that is joyous instead of sad.
It’s up to you. I ask, which would you prefer?
~Nemaste!
UPDATE: this morning I experienced an example of something mentioned in this post. I have noticed that over the last few years when I awaken in the morning I experience this odd jolt of transition that I never experienced before having experienced awakening (kundalini). I have noted several people so far who have mentioned this same experience who themselves have gone through awakening (all on their own-no prompting from me) so I am getting the sense it’s fairly normal once you reach a certain stage in the experience.
This is a feeling of dread almost. It’s not the greatest feeling. This morning, though, as I rose from dream I had a smile on my face, thinking about what I had written here, and was keen to see how it might work. I am happy to report that it worked very well indeed. Give it a try.
This time of the year is hard on a lot of people. I grew up with people who grew dark and troubled in the wintry months. Seems with the time change, then the bad weather, then all of those expectations surrounding the holidays….and…..and….
I know. I get it. And yet? Dining on ashes does not solve the depression or sadness conundrum. What “wrankles” a lot of people is when I say that your joy or happiness is a choice. But it is. You have permission now to get upset with me. Go ahead. But keep reading. It gets better.
The interesting thing is that a positive outlook has been linked to the left brain, while those deeper more blue feelings are tied to the right brain. Who would have thought, right? And yet, what I know about the left brain based on years of study both on a professional level and in observing myself in meditation and awakening, is that its a really simple hemisphere. We know this now, which is that the left brain handles simple linear processing-type things. Its good at lists, creating strategies, things like that. Oh, and its also where our feelings of positivity exist, too! The right brain sees a much bigger picture, but it also has a hard time feeling bright. So we need to know how to give that side, which happens to bloom in awakening (the right brain-seat of kundalini shakti) a little boost. We might actually begin to feel like feeling good is just a simplistic way of looking at things. And maybe so, but you know what? It beats the heck out of the alternative, am I right?
Knowing your essential self is also knowing that YOU are in control of your feelings and not something that has been stuffed down deep inside of you. Now it might seem that going about bright and shiny all day while feeling like things aren’t all just perfect inside is somehow dishonest, but I tell you that until the moment comes when you can solve whatever the wrinkles are within you, which would you prefer to do, dine on ashes, or be happy? The reality remains that some things you cannot in this moment fix. But really, does it make any sense AT ALL to allow whatever lies beneath that you cannot in this moment get to to get you down? If I did that, I would just throw my hands up because the truth is…..we all have piles of junk (some more than others) to deal with. If we let that issue alone get to us…..why even go on? Why get up in the morning? Right? A week ago I got down about something related to my family. I found my body crashing and burning. I felt through this hard place in me and I knew that in due course it was going to get healed. Everything like this has seemed to do so as if according to a given order. I just let kundalini work its magic. In the meantime, I wait. I do! I wait and I am faced with how to make this inner space happier and more enjoyable. And it’s funny; when I do that, everything turns around for me!
Having been in the depths of the Dark Night Of The Soul for an extended period some years ago, also, I am all for the buffet of happiness. And the thing is, YOU can change your physiology so that you produce all of the necessary chemistry to allow that reality to come over you physiologically. While waiting for your inner self to clarify and clear, it might as well be an order of happiness and joy. And add a little extra love in your heart, too.
Today I had a critique with my students of their work. While we were between pieces, I described how a woman learned that in order to combat her anxiety over performing or speaking in front of people, she discovered that in order to change how she felt, she could actually adopt a physical posture that told her mind that she was….confident. And she found that whenever she was not confident or happy, she found that she could….fake it. Even if she felt a certain way, certain body postures would counter the body chemistry that was being produced in her body. And it worked great for her. It was so good, she has gone on to tell people that you can basically, in the words of Susanna from art class, “fake it until you make it.”
Now I know that this can bring up the sense that maybe we are just being dishonest or somehow notgenuine. But look, its possible that some people can be so gripped by an emotion that they will do anything to get out of it. Anxiety and depression have reached epic proportions in our country. And you know what? I have found that our feelings are entirely a result of some condition that we have at some point made a choice about. I know; you may not have chosen that shitty childhood. None of us feel that way, but I have had to face the reality in my spiritual work that actually, I really DID choose that shitty childhood. I chose it actually to overcome something really important to heal and it seems that some of the early events in my life, I knew about upon entering this world. I’m not even saying that bad stuff is your fault. I’m saying that if you could see and know the reason behind why some things happen, it would probably inspire you in the weirdest of ways to know that some of the hardest things contain the seeds of our salvation as human beings. It really isn’t even what you thought it was….which is kind of like a wonderful surprise gift you get only at the very end of a hard feeling you are getting ready to heal. It really only matters until it no longer matters, and when its gone, its gone. Gone! Now tell me, wouldn’t you like to get you some healing like that? Well, its within the reach person on the planet.
I know though that many wont agree, and all I can say is that someday, somewhere, when you see into the layer I have reached, then on that day you will remember this little bit of writing that seemed so messed up and backwards and realize what it was I was talking about. You see, until the error is healed in us, we cannot hope to extricate ourselves from it, not even a relationship which is the same as our last one. You have to heal that stuff inside…..
So I ask you, again, while you wait for the healing time to come, which do you prefer, hurricanes and lightening or something a little more enjoyable?
So given the mad ramble I have put you through, I will actually do something that I often don’t do, which is to post some great ways to deal with the winter blues and your emotions which might be a little on the hard side. That’s next post. For the time being, I wish you joy and happiness because….well….the alternative is really no fun at all.
God-dess Bless.
-P.
If you aren’t happy, it is all your fault. I was told that this was an old saying from around the Mediterranean. I think its sound advice. No pushing responsibility for your own happiness or the lack of it onto others. I was married with children and was involved in a relationship with some co-dependency. What this meant was that neither she nor I stood up for being happy on our own but sought to have our happiness validated through the other. The problem with this is that it is essentially a way to give away our own personal power, and when that happens, no good can come from it. relationships, though, can run along for years in this way just as long as no big issues crop up. But over time, it can begin to accumulate more dysfunction in its wake and this can create big problems. it is easy for me to see just how abusive this person was to me, but the truth is, I chose her, took part, and even tried to get her to see the light probably as she was trying to do the same with me. Radical honesty is in order, but sometimes in relationships like this if people are unwilling to grow or change, it means you most often have to go your own way because it will wind up being just more of the same. Until we are done with the issue that once caused us hurt or pain, we are destined to repeat it, and it seems that the only way out is to release the desire to keep going back into the hurt without resolving it. This most often means being able to forgive it. And this forgiveness does not always mean forgiving another person, but yourself. You wake up, just as I did, and see you have been allowing yourself to live in a vat of corrosive chemistry day in and day out. Seeing and knowing this is often enough motivation to help bring about he change necessary. But the change doe snot come from pointing the finger at others, but at admitting the problem was within us all the time No, you do not own anothers’ own bad behavior, just your own. You entered into it, it is your freewill to move out of it. To do this requires a good deal of not just honesty but also compassion Maybe just a lot more compassion. I think our meters are running low, am I right?
So if you want to sing your song a little differently, or are hung up yourself on wanting to blame others for some perceived ill, I highly recommend that you read the following three articles listed below first. Getting off the big trip of ego is a good way to help calm things down a few notches. Being responsible for your own happiness is a true path to actually BEING happy! Pretty amazing, huh?!!
How To Stop Blaming Other People For Your Own Misery
Waking The Infinite 