No need to be lonely

“You are either free, up against it or hiding.”

is something one of my teachers said recently that really hit home.


My understanding of what he meant was something like: in any given moment in life we are either (a) touched by our experience, not feeling separate from it and flowing easily and naturally with it, (b)  fighting with life and suffering and often realising that we are doing this, or (c) so detatched from our experience that we don’t even realise that we are distant from it, alternatively knowingly putting our heads in the sand and trying to pretend it isn't happening.


I had a profound experience of the first two very clearly recently within a very short space of time, which I’d like to share with you.  The third is very familiar to me too, but this experience was mainly about the freedom and fighting.


I had recently given notice from a job that I’d held for 15 years, which I had fallen out of love with.  I’d decided to follow my heart and devote all of my time to building work based around heartfulness and presence.  To say that I felt excited and energised was a bit of an understatement.  I was stoked.


And then I went dancing.  I went to 5 Rhythms, which is a dance practice somewhere between clubbing and meditation.  We dance for the joy of dancing and we dance to come home to ourselves and to connect to others, to connect to life.


As well as being great fun and really joyous, it can also be a challenging place to be.  It certainly is for me, and others have told me the same.  In addition to the easy, openhearted bits, I often see myself playing out all of my life patterns on the dancefloor - feeling self-conscious, comparing myself to others, judging them, sometimes even fixating on them.  It’s not pretty.  But because it is a dancing meditation, we are encourged to notice what’s going on.   We see that we are suffering, and quite often we have haven’t got a clue what do to about it.  I often haven’t got a clue about what to do about it, if in fact there is anything that actually needs to be done.


And on this particular evening for the first 30 minutes that just wasn’t happening.  My habitual patterns weren’t running.  I was simply in my experience and loving it.  I was free.


I was able to have a very conscious experience of what free felt like.  I loved my dance (though there was no ego attachment to it) there was just loving my dance.  I loved everyone else’s dances without exception.  I wasn’t judging them, I was loving them.  If I felt attraction for someone it felt simple and easy - I was able to celebrate it as my feeling of attraction and to share it with them without wanting or expecting anything back - and I could see from their response that they enjoyed receiving the simple gift of my appreciation without any of the usual strings attached.  Everything, but everything felt simple and easy.  I was flowing with life. 


It gave me a glimpse.  A glimpse of what’s possible, when I’m not run by my patterns and when I’m simply living as part of life.  As life.  Separate, but not separate.


And then, as predicted it happened.  After about 30 minutes of freedom, my patterns started to re-emerge.  I found myself feeling slightly dissatisfied with my dance, and judging and comparing others.  When I felt attraction for someone I could sometimes notice my attention becoming fixated on them, which didn’t feel nice.  (I’m guesing it didn’t feel nice for them either, but even inside me it didn’t feel too good).  Things no longer felt completely easy.  There was in fact a quiet but persistent sense that somewhere, just out of direct line of sight there was an (as yet undefined) problem.  I knew that this was something that I was doing to reality - but I didn’t know how to set myself free.  Damn! I was “up against it”.


And it was a wonderful contrast.  To be able to experience both so clearly and so fully within a 1 hour period was a great gift and allowed me to see certain things much more clearly.


After about half an hour of this general grumpiness, I was reminded of my recent insights and I started to get curious.  Were there feelings in my body that wanted to be felt and that I wasn’t feeling?  I checked.  Yup.  There they were.  I couldn’t fully feel them but I could just about see where they were hanging out.  Why couldn’t I feel them?  Most of my attention was outside on the others, liking them, disliking them, making up stories about them, obsessing over them and generally fixating on them.  Very little of my attention was on my own body.  I’d left home.  I’d abandoned myself - at least temporarily.  It felt painful and a little lonely.


I resolved just for that moment to bring all of my attention in.  To ignore everyone else and to carry on dancing but to feel the feelings.  Could I do it?  Yes.  Was it difficult?  No, not really, once I’d noticed that I needed to do it and made a firm decision that that’s what I was going to do for a bit.  


And so I did.  I carried on dancing and felt the feelings.  I let the feelings become part of my physical expression and danced the feelings.  All of them.  I danced my sadness and frustration, my anger and my joy, my grief and my delight.


In the mix there were some strong so-called “negative” feelings - sadness, anger, grief.  But there was nothing happening in my life that I felt these things about.  Where did these strong “negative” feelings come from?  My sense is/was that they are old stuff - old “stories” stored in my body, from days gone by when strong experiences happened that I wasn’t able to process, and so my body has buried them.  (A bit like the way that we currently bury radioactive waste, becuase we don’t know how to process it and make it safe).  And by not paying attention to these strong buried feelings they were leaking out all over the place, making my life and that of those around me a less pleasant place to be.


So, I just felt them these feelings.  I gave myself to it and them 100% for a little while.  And the effect was amazing.  The feelings didn’t go away, but I came home.


There I was, in my body, dancing and feeling, just dancing and feeling, eyes half closed, having my experience, no separation - once again, free.


But this was a slightly different free from earlier that evening.  Earlier it had been free with no painful feelings.  Now it was free with painful feelings.  The first one didn’t seem to take any practice to do.  The second was a little bit more challenging, because my usual pattern when there are painful feelings to be felt is not to feel them.  


And yet in some ways I noticed that it was the same free.  All I needed to do was to feel what I was feeling, to embrace my experience and life became easy again, the sense of dissatisfaction and problem disappeared and I was able to celebrate - everything.  Even though I was not in contact with others, I noticed I didn’t feel lonely, not a bit.  I felt...loved.


I noticed that along with feeling the pain, I was suddenly able to feel joy too.  Gradually I was able to open my eyes and see the others and include them.  I wasn’t judging them anymore, I was able to see them, just see them and appreciate them for who they were, as they were.  Gradually, being careful to “stay at home” with myself and my feelings I was able to make eye contact.  It was a bit vulnerable at first, because I was allowing them to see my how I was, with all of my feelings, but also felt simple and easy.  Nothing to hide.  Hello you, this is me.  I’m like this right now.  Ah, you’re like that.  Nice to meet you.


I had some exquisite dances from that place, of meeting people including all the feelings that were happening in me and by doing that being able to include them too.  I was so touched to be sharing myself with them and to be able to appreciate them as they appreciated me and I appreciated myself.  I felt such gratitude.  Gratitude to myself, gratitude to my partners, gratitude to life.  


And this was a deeper glimpse.  A glimpse of how I could be free in the world when things inside didn’t feel easy.  How I didn’t need to zone out or withdraw, but how I could completely include myself and from there relate with the world.  I didn’t need to wait for the moment that all of my “stuff” would be resolved.  I could do this in any moment.  In any moment when I was able to notice that I’d left home and when I was willing to come home, face the music and feel the feelings.


And the simple insight that I gained from this experience was I can now see the suffering and fixation as a reminder - a reminder that I’ve “left home”.


Whenever I notice my attention is out - that I’m judging others or myself - that I’m wondering whether they like me or what they are thinking, when there feels like there is a problem with life - its a sure sign that there’s something closer to home that is crying out to be felt.


All I need to do is to come in, and just for a little while give in all my attention, before being able to open out my attention and include the rest of the world.


How do I know if I’m actually feeling the feeling?  It’s not as obvious as I originally thought.


I had a craniosacral session the other day and told my craniosacral therapist that I was feeling tired.  I thought that’s what I was feeling.  And to some extent it was true.  But then she said “can you sink into the tiredness and feel what’s there?”.  I realised that I had been hovering above the tiredness, not really feeling it, somehow resisting it (and yes, that background sense of “problem” was there too).  When I sank into the tiredness and let myself feel it I contacted something else, a sense of deep sadness/grief.  And with it came a sense of relief, a sense of coming home.  It was touching.


I found myself writing the following words this morning:


*If I am getting externally fixated it’s because there’s a feeling that want’s to be felt and I’m not at home to feel it.


* If there is a sense of tiredness/contraction/resistance - I’m probably floating just above the feeling...almost feeling it but not quite.


Can I melt into the tiredness/resistance?  What is there that I’m not yet fully feeling?


* Feeling the feelings doesn’t have a scratchy resistant quality to it (that quality indicates to that I’m not quite in the place of my experience).


That resistance is probably the “self contraction” that keeps me seperate from life/oneness/unity.


Feeling the feelings has a relieving - coming home quality.


Even if it is accompanied by sadness/anger/grief.


It is touching.


(Because it is touching experience).


If there feels like there is a problem ask:


Am I touched by my experience right now?


Can I melt into my experience and let it have me, let it touch me.


If the answer is no, then can I be touched by that?


By my feeling of separation from life and the loneliness that accompanies it.


Keep gently enquiring.


Stay with yourself - not trying, but not abandoning yourself either.


You’re just up against it, that’s all.


Until you are touched by your experience.


Until you are home.
Free.


Home.


~


love


Daniel

Rules of Being Human

I didn't write this and I can't quite discover who did.  I found it at the end of a great book on Craniosacral Therapy by Rollin Becker called The Stillness of Life.  I think it's rather fab.

Rules of Being Human

1.  You will receive a body.  You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2.  You will learn lessons.  You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life.  Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons.  You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant or stupid.

3.  There are no mistakes, only lessons.  Growth is a process of trial and error experimentation.  The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately "works".

4.  A lesson is repeated until it is learned.  A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it.  When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

5.  Learning lessons does not end.  There is no part of life that does not contain lessons.  If you are alive then there are lessons to be learned.

6.  "There" is no better than "here".  When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will, again, look better than "here".

7.  Others are merely mirrors of you.  You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

8.  What you make of your life is up to you.  You have all of the tools and resources you need.  What you do with them is up to you.  The choice is yours.

9.  Your answers lie inside you.  The answers to life's questions lie inside you.  All you need to do is look, listen and trust.

10.  You will forget all this.

~ 


Daniel Kingsley - Cranio - on Facebook
www.reconnectohealth.co.uk

Coming home to be healed

Amma came to me last night.  I don’t mean that she came in a dream by some sort of astral travel, if that’s the sort of thing she’s prone to do, but more that (at 3am today) I had a palpable sense of who she is and what she offers, and it opened my heart.  More importantly, I had a sense that it is something that is a potential in me, you and in everyone.  It was a profound experience and I want to share it with you.

It’s not really important for you to like or even know Amma for the purpose of this story.  Her role in proceedings here is metaphorical.  But in order to understand what I have to share it might help for you to have some idea who she is and what she does, if you haven’t met her yet yourself.

Amma is a large jolly looking Indian woman who hugs people.  Lots of people.  She goes all around the world doing it and people queue up to be hugged by her.  Many people believe that she is a living saint - an enlightened avatar, and that her hugs have mystical and healing properties.  This is why they queue up for hours and late into the night to receive her blessing and her embrace.  They come to her to experience her love, they come to her for healing.

I’ve met her and been hugged by her on 2 occasions in the past.  Actually, the hugs were not life changing experiences for me.  Frankly, I’ve had better hugs from the people I love and more transformative esoteric energetic experiences from other beings and teachers.  There is no denying, however, that the feeling of the room when you are sitting there with her and the other participants is a delightful one and it does feel to me like bathing in a sea of love.  There are many worse ways to spend a Tuesday evening, especially in Alexandra Palace.

Anyway, this story is not a discussion of Amma and her work and whether or not it is a good use of anyone’s time to seek her out for a cuddle, it’s much more about what I realised at 3am this morning and how it reminds me of what she does and what we all can do.

At 10pm yesterday I arrived back from an amazing tantra workshop with Jan Day (Living Tantra 1, since you ask) where we had spent the entire week practising saying “yes!” to all of our human experience.  Yes to the pleasure, yes to the pain, yes to our sexuality, yes to our wounding, yes to it all.  It did feel like something had started to shift in me during the workshop, that I was finally ready to start to embrace parts of my experience that in the past I had at best tolerated and at worst had actively been resisting.  I offer my deep heartfelt thanks and my gratitude to Jan for holding such a safe space for me to start this part of that journey. I sense that I will be working with her some more.

But doing it on a workshop is one thing.  Doing it in life is quite another.  And doing it at 3am in my own bed when I can’t sleep is not something I would have believed possible.  And yet it was.

I woke up at about 3am feeling intense discomfort in my body.  This is not an unfamiliar experience for me.  There are old patterns in my body (probably trauma from childhood, perhaps not) that play out at various times and whilst I’m asleep is one of their favourite times to express.  I often wake feeling internally contorted and churned up and in such physical/emotional discomfort that I’m unable to sleep.

What I usually do is try to find a way to soothe these patterns away.  Essentially finding the places that are tight and gently bringing my attention to them telling them that it’s ok for them to relax.  And they usually do, eventually.  And then I can go back to sleep.

And this is fine, up to a point.  Except it feels like a bit of a sticking plaster.  I simply relax the tense places enough for me to sleep, but the underlying patterns themselves are not addressed.  They are not addressed because I don’t really want to engage with them, to meet them and to know them.  I feel a little like a teacher who has learned to be able to calm down the children in class who are misbehaving, rather than being willing to sit down with them and really help them to work through the pain that was causing them to misbehave in the first place.

And that’s what was different last night. 

Last night when the pain came, for perhaps the first time I was willing and able to welcome it.  Not to try to soothe it away, not to try to deal with it, but simply to be genuinely curious about who had come to visit and to welcome it as a long-lost cousin from a far-away land (which in reality is not so far away at all).

The experience was incredibly moving and the response of my body was astounding.  The pain came – I said yes.  The tears came, I said yes.  My body contorted into strange shapes – I said yes.  I said welcome.

I was left after about 30 minutes feeling more relaxed than I had ever felt when I had been trying to soothe the pain away.  I felt like a little part of the pain had really been met and having really been met had been able to let go.  But even this is beside the point.  I felt that I had been really inside and celebrating my experience, even though it was a difficult one.

I was reminded of what my teacher Adam had said to me recently about the absolutely fundamental importance of really being willing to have the experience I was actually having and that when I was refusing to do so I was rejecting and devaluing my life.  I was starting to have a deeper glimpse of how it might be to really embrace all of my experience and so to be present in all of my life, celebrating it all.

I am now starting to see that there is no end-goal in life beyond this, being present in and celebrating our experience.

I was reminded of the metaphor of life as a record player that came to me recently.  (I know record players are rather old-skool now, but updating it to CD technology seems to squish the romance). Our still-conscious nature is the needle, our ever-changing experience is the vinyl.  When consciousness touches experience, there is love.  When the needle that we are as source touches the vinyl of the experience that appears and changes, we are the music that plays.

I was also reminded of something that Pamela Wilson had said when I had explored the question of pain with her.  She had said that the pain comes to you as the guru, in order to be seen and loved by you and to be set free.  I had understood what she had said at the time but had had no sense that it might actually be possible for me to do and try as I might had been able to relate in this way with my pain.  Except last night at 3am, that’s just what I did.  And it was so, so beautiful!

I was moved to pick up my pen and write some words.  These are the words that came:

Coming home to be healed.

It’s not about even allowing tension/pain to soften.

It’s about the patterns of pain coming to you, for you to love them and set them free.

Don’t ask “How can I be free from this pain?

Do ask: “Who comes to me just now for healing?”

“What is your nature?”

And then say:

“Ah!  You’re like that!”

“Yes!”

“Welcome!  Welcome just as you are!”

“There’s no need for you (the tension, the sadness, the pain) to change”

“Welcome home”

“You are loved.”

~

Ask simply: “Who comes to me next for healing?”

Sit, as Amma sits, in front of the queue of beautiful hurting pieces coming to you for a hug, and one after another love them.  Say: “Yes my child, welcome home!”.  And hug them to your chest as they sob in your arms, and the two of you cry and laugh together.

Some of them have traveled many miles to be here, as they have heard that you are a saint of extraordinary power, a living embodiment of god.  You tell them: “I don’t know about that, but you are very welcome nonetheless and I love you.  Yes, my child, it’s OK to cry, mummy’s here.  Yes, sweet one, it’s all OK”.  And rock them gently in your arms as one by one you welcome them home.

Don’t play favourites, take them into your arms in the order they come to you.

Don’t try to change them.

Don’t even try to set them free.

Just ask “who comes to me for a blessing?”

And love them one after another.

Because that’s what they need.

And because you are the only one who can.

A perfect moment

"Perfect moments" often crop up when you least expect them to.  The one that inspired the piece of writing that follows occurred on the not-especially-wonderful-but-quite-nice Manly Beach in Sydney after I'd spent 45 minutes wandering round the surf shops deciding that I couldn't find a T-shirt that I was prepared to pay the asking price of $60 for.  Not a very auspicious background for a realisation of bliss, you might think (as I did).  On this occassion we would both have been wrong...

As I sat looking out to sea, waiting vaguely for my friend to finish her shopping, a sense of complete wellbeing arose, along with some realisations that caused me to pick up my pen and my notebook, as I luxuriated in a perfect moment, in the sure knowledge that I could not hold onto it.

Of course, all moments are perfect, it's all about our relationship to reality, and that is the real subject of the little meandering poem/exploration below.  I hope you enjoy it.

~

The absolute bliss
of a perfect moment,
which is any moment
when you know
without a trace of doubt,
that all is well,
everything is as it should be,
and nothing needs to be done.

You are home.
You are home -
knowing that there is no distinction
between you and home.
You are, we are, it is
One.

From here
it seems almost incredible
that you ever believed
that there was anything wrong,
that there was a problem with life,
that you needed something
in order to be
complete.

And yet,
checking the record books,
the archives,
the Polaroids,
you realise that you've been here
many times before.

Paradise found,
has somehow,
always become
paradise lost.

The glorious holiday you took last year,
is now reduced to a collection of
fragments of fading memory,
as is every other cherished experience
you've ever had,
or ever will have.

And the joy, which was welcome
has been replaced by flatness
or discomfort,
which aren't welcome at all.

How can this be?

It is simply the experience of being
human.

It seems you have been
holding on to
the superficially plausible myth,
that a single perfect moment
can save your soul.
And it can't.

No experience is it,
and yet any experience
can be the gateway
to recovering your birthright.

To knowing yourself
as the ocean,
the wave,
the grain of sand,
and as god,
as love.

So,
how to live?
If nothing is it
and everything is it?

I shrug and admit,
that I don't know.

What I do know
is that
living will happen,
choices will be made,
and life will unfold.

And the only choice remaining
that's worth the candle
is to love it,

over and over
and over
again.

~

love

Daniel

Waking up and feeling the feelings...

I woke this morning, or rather I was half asleep and waking up, but I realised in my groggy state that all was not well in my world. 

There was a (annoyingly familiar) sense that something was wrong and a sense of discomfort that was emotional and physical at the same time. My mind went into irritation, disappointment and then immediately to trying to plan things to do in order to “solve the problem” and “make it stop”. This is a pretty familiar morning pattern. What happened next is less familiar.

In the midst of this turmoil, by grace, the enquiry arose:

“Are there any difficult feelings that need to be felt that you're not feeling?”

Still half-asleep, I felt into my body.

I could feel tension in my belly, holding and shaking in my jaw, but beneath that there were feelings of fear, petulance, sadness and some others that I could not even name.

There was also resistance to feeling the feelings – a sense of not wanting them, but I noticed that the resistance was melting fast in the presence of my new-found curiosity about what I was feeling.

I stopped trying to name the feelings and gently felt into them.

Gradually, as I did so, they moved and shifted, everything softened and the resistance melted away.  I could sense the texture of the feelings, their shape and colour.  I felt tender towards them.  Feelings still remained but it was no longer me and them – we were in it together. I felt ease in the midst of the feelings.  I felt a sense of peace and drifted deliciously back to sleep.

I woke 2 and a half hours later. It was now 10:30am. I was delighted! I felt so rested. I felt easy, peaceful and simple.

I had this insight (both new to me and a reminder of something I already knew but had forgotten) and I wanted to share it:

The sense of problem

The sense that something needs to be done

That I need to do something (but it isn't clear what)

The feeling of discomfort/suffering

The sense of needing distraction

The feeling of being incomplete...

...are all essentially the same thing.

And are all caused by my not feeling feelings that want/need to be felt.

~

Whatever is left afterwards is simply sensation and feeling.  This may include both pleasant and unpleasant sensations/feelings and frequently both.

~

Right now, as I write this having got out of bed and to my notebook and picked up my pen, there is no problem. There is nowhere to go, nothing that needs to be done in order to perfect this moment.

Even though I have not yet brushed my teeth and my mouth feels like the morning after the night before. My mouth can wait.

Even though there is holding in my stomach and shaking in my jaw.

In the midst of a soft, sweet sadness, lying like a gentle blanket over all the world.

Here I know I need nothing and it's all OK.

There is an ease and a quiet satisfaction.

There is very little mental activity and no worrying or planning for the future.

I am very simply in contact with myself, my feelings and my truth (which is both mine and not mine).

It is clear that from this place action (if necessary) is simple and unproblematic.

I feel gratitude and love.

This is what it feels like to be home.

~

Heading home

The dance-meditation of 5 Rhythms was ending for the evening and I lay sprawled on the floor in exquisite stillness, wanting nothing, needing nothing, knowing that there was nowhere to go and nothing to do.  Once again I had remembered what I often forget, that life is essentially simple and living it can be very very simple.

As I sat in the silence of the closing circle I remembered the words of my teacher Adam, when I thanked him for the retreat I’d done in Portugal, telling him that it was one of the richest experiences that I’d ever had.  He said:  “It was a rich experience, because you were there for it”.

I reflected on the moments in the dance when just for a moment I fall totally in love with the way that my arm is moving or the angle my foot makes when it touches the ground, and how that moment feels precious and perfect, and was reminded that what Adam had said was spot-on.  My experience was satisfying because I was there, loving it.

And this goes for difficult or painful experiences as well.  That same evening, I heard a dancer in the circle speak this very clearly when she spoke of a transformative and joyous experience of loving the pain and heartache that were arising for her and how this allowed her to appreciate love and joy simultaneously, and knew that I’d similar experiences of opening to what I often push away and how seeming lead was transformed instantly into gold.

I reflected on those times when although I was dancing my heart out I metaphorically had my fingers crossed behind my back, willing my painful experience to go away, or the times when rather than feel the discomfort I distracted myself by getting very interested in what other people were doing, judging them or letting my mind develop strategies for getting close to them.  Of course, what I was doing was leaving the reality of myself in order to meet an idea of them.  No wonder it didn’t feel satisfying.

I also reflected on the times when people have said to me “wow, I so loved your dancing tonight” and how if I hadn’t been loving my dancing, no amount of praise from others could turn an empty experience into a full one.  If I had been loving my dancing their love and appreciation would always be the icing on the cake.

The blindingly obvious truth is: the only one who can be there for my experience is me.

And if I’m not there for it, either because I’m pushing it away or distracting myself from it using thoughts the result is that I feel “split”.  The lights are on but there’s no-one at home.  My experience feels dissatisfying.

I realised sitting in that circle of silence, that I often under-value my experience, having a “hard wired” assumption that what’s happening somewhere else in the room is more interesting than what’s happening here, leaving myself to go on a fruitless search for salvation.  The flip side is that when I don’t, when I dare to be there for myself, I discover infinite riches.  From that place of being truly at home I can go out into the world and meet other people in a different sort of way and to have something exquisitely valuable to share with them.  Me.

After the circle broke up, I accepted an invitation to drink tea with some friends at a local café - we left in separate cars.  Driving there and sitting at the red traffic light I had a choice of two directions – left to the café and right for the road home.  I'd chosen my lane and the indicator was blinking left. Surprisingly, I found myself in a conflict about whether or not to join my friends having accepted their kind invitation only minutes earlier.  

I checked in with myself to discover what was going on inside and the answer was clear.  I realised that I wasn't feeling sociable - there were some painful feelings bubbling and what in fact I wanted was to spend some time with myself gently feeling them. With relief, I recognised that I could simply do what felt right in that moment - my friends would understand. As the light turned green I changed the indicator from left to right and headed home.

On "unbearable" feelings

Sitting with the very lovely Pamela this evening in satsang, I wondered what it was that I had to bring that I wanted to share.  For a long time there was nothing, so I simply enjoyed others' sharings and felt myself gently melting and softening.

Then, as if from nowhere, something did arise. It didn't feel like quite the heart of the matter, but yet it was touching and it arose in response to something that someone else had shared, so I trusted my instincts and shared it anyway.  As my teacher Adam says "there's no need to go digging - always play the top card" - and this was on top.  (Of course by playing the top card, the next card in the deck is automatically revealed...).

What I shared was around "problems" - that the thought that there is a problem with what is happening in life is often very seductive, reasonable and convincing.  And it often appears scary or difficult to challenge it.

To turn around, look the "problem" and the thought in the face - to call its bluff and ask, kindly, "is there really a problem here?" often seems a bit tricky.

Experience tells me that every time I've had (what feels like) the courage to turn around and ask the question "is there really a problem here?", the Wizard of Oz's curtain is pulled back to reveal that there never was a problem, just a state of affairs that I was scared to embrace - usually some feelings that I just didn't want to feel.  And actually it was quite possible to feel the feelings, and everything melted into ease and love, often joy and bliss.

And noticing that quite often the courage to turn around and face the "problem" doesn't arise - that I simply seek a distraction from it, from engaging with reality, from feeling the feelings.

And allowing that to be OK too.  Perhaps even welcoming that.

There's something here about compassion.

Pamela offered Papaji's observation that many of us are in tune with clear-seeing, but are a bit behind with compassion.  He spoke of an aeroplane or a bird with the wing of clear-seeing unfurled but the wing of compassion not aloft.  He pointed out that in order to fly effectively over the landscape (especially in turbulent weather) both wings need to be out.  With only one wing out we will end up flying in circles!  I found this funny and very touching.  And of course in that moment there was compassion - for myself and for all of us.

And then bubbling up inside me I felt what was currently challenging for me in life - what I really wanted to share that evening.

It's around feeling the very strong feelings and sensations that often arise in my body.  I suspect that they may be left over from unresolved "stuff" dating back to childhood, but that's just a guess - I don't know it to be true.  What I do know is that the sensations are seriously intense, contain lots of energy and are very firey.

I know that like all feelings they only want to be felt.

And yet...

And yet they sometimes feel "unbearable".

Or that's the thought that arises, combined with an unwillingness or seeming inability to engage with them.

Pamela's usual observation is that everything that comes to us, comes to us as the infinite in order to know its true nature (which is love).

It's as if love has wrapped itself up in a form and has forgotten itself and then presents itself back to us in order to come home.

All it wants is for us to sit with it with an open heart.

And this feels true to me.

And yet...

And yet the feelings sometimes feel like they are too much.

It feels like...

It feels like there is a problem here!

Yet I know that there aren't really any problems.

So I knew that there was something screwy going on here.  Some confusion on my part.

I came to the humbling point of realising that I could do with a little help with unravelling it.

So I offered it to Pamela and we batted it around together.

Her being with me and it was very helpful.

The words that follow are the words I wrote on the tube coming home, being a synthesis of what arose between us and what followed after...

~~~


There is no need to bear "unbearable feelings".

They do not need to be bourne.

No one needs to carry them - to hold their "weight".

They just want to be met in presence.


~


And yet...they are so intense and fiery.

The fear is that the fire will burn me up.

The longing is that the fire will burn me up.


~


The fear and the longing are so close.
 
I rub my hands together as I say this - a millimetre apart - as if making fire!  Perhaps this is what teachers call the heat of practice...


~


What if I just let the feelings have me...and trust?

Trust that nothing essential can be burned away,

And only that which is not essential will be consumed.

Trust life and love.


~


It's not about mastering compassion.

It's about letting compassion master us.

It's absolute humility.

Allowing myself to be touched and be torched.

Set alight and burned clean.

Over and over.

Because.

Just because.

For love.


~


With thanks to Pamela

love

Daniel