Shame
I don’t know about you, but I genuinely find myself in strange waters these days.
Often I feel love arising in me and sometimes flowing outwards, and then something occurs and I feel shame and worry that overpower the new way I’m feeling.
This can feel confusing.
Feeling shame arises from a way of being that I was conditioned in. Some of the parents of my generation’s childhood (not all) seemed to use a child-rearing method, which I think Dr. Spock was addressing, that appeared to resemble – I hate to say it – dog training school.
When we did something they approved of, they’d say “good boy”; when we did something they disapproved of, they’d say “bad boy.” And when they saw us as bad boys (or girls), they’d add: “You oughtta be ashamed of yourself.”
This led to what the psychologists of our generation called a “shame-based identity.” We are at the moment in a transition, I say, from a shame-based identity to a love-based identity, the major feature of which, as a friend reminds me, is the absence of judgment, including self-judgment.
Well, now as we move into higher-dimensional life, this conditioning continues to go off whenever I make what I perceive of as a mistake. And so I wanted to discuss how I’ve resolved to manage entering this strange land we’re in and this kind of a shame-based mind attack when it happens.
It’s been a consistent trait with me that I’ve always chosen to work on the frontier of knowledge. That has lost me a few Ph.D.’s when my advisors have said that what I was studying was not within the purview of the discipline (cultural history in history) or within the purview of the university (enlightenment in religious studies).
But I preferred to stay with my studies and left the university.
The manner in which I enter and move out into a new field these days is by establishing a beachhead, as the Allies did on D-Day, and then moving out from there.
And the beachhead is established by arriving at an initial distinction, upon which I plant my flag. It was Werner Erhard who taught me the value of distinctions. I test the distinction out to see whether it’s valid and then see where it leads.
I then move from one distinction to the next, and the next, etc. (We’ll come to shame in a moment.)
This occurred for me the other day as a result of a discussion with a friend. I noticed I was in the new land of love, the vestibule of the Fifth Dimension, (1) and yet an upset had occurred and the shame I felt was pulling me back to Third Dimensionality.
Actually this did not happen only once, but two or three times. Because I was in the new land of love, this occurrence, this rising of shame pulling me back to Third-Dimensionality, was starkly visible, whereas as long as I was in Third Dimensionality I’d imagine it was invisible – part of what Werner called “the background of obviousness.”
And I knew I had to establish a beachhead if I was to hold my ground in Fifth Dimensionality rather than retreat.
Then a realization or distinction occurred to me: Though I had no empirical evidence for the thought, I knew in my bones that, if I wanted to remain shining brightly, I had to be squeaky clean. If I wanted to continue to feel the love I do these days, then my integrity had to be unquestioningly in and untainted.
“Squeaky clean” is yet another distinction I learned from Werner. (2) But “shining brightly” comes from Plotinus and I’ll reproduce his discussion of that below. It’s one of the seminal passages from the wise that I read over and over again. (3)
If I allowed my integrity to go out, then I lost my place in the vestibule of Fifth Dimensionality and had to retreat to Third Dimensionality.
So this called for vigilance and commitment.
(Continued in Part 2. Readers are welcome to read ahead if they wish to, but I’m trying not to overload you.)
Footnotes
(1) We have our foot inside Fifth Dimensionality. We’re on a lower plane of it. We have not yet had sahaja samadhi or Ascension, which will transform our characters utterly.
Steve: How could I be Fifth Dimensional and not have had sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi?
Archangel Michael: You are looking to the Fifth Dimension as simply being one place or another and you do not know that you are not in training and that you are … on the verge of samadhi.
So it is a preparation and those preparation phases … as we have said, there are many levels to each dimension. (“Entering the Mental Plane – Part 1” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/life-death/entering-the-mental-plane-part-1/
Est trainers would ask us if we knew what it felt like to walk down the street squeaky clean. At the time I did not. These days I am seeing more what that looks like and what it’s benefits are.
While I can’t find a reference to squeaky cleanness, here’s one to cleanness:
“Dirty communication is irresponsible. It puts the source of your experience outside yourself. Clean communication is responsible. It places you in the picture as the source of your experience.” (est Communications Workshop Leader Jed Naylor, Oct. 1980.) See est Dictionary at https://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/the-path-of-awareness/est-dictionary/.
From the Free Dictionary:
squeak·y-clean (skw
k-kln)
adj. Informal
(2) Plotinus: How will one see this immense beauty that dwells, as it were, in inner sanctuaries and comes not forward to be seen by the profane?
Let him who can arise, withdraw into himself, forego all that is known by the eyes, turn aside forever from the bodily beauty that was once his joy. He must not hanker after the graceful shapes that appear in bodies, but know them for copies, for traceries, for shadows, and hasten away towards that which they bespeak. …
Withdraw into yourself and look. … Do as does the sculptor of a statue that is to be beautified: he cuts away here, he smooths it there, he makes this line lighter, this other one purer, until he disengages beautiful lineaments in the marble. Do you this, too.
Cut away all that is excessive. straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one radiance of beauty. Never cease “working at the statue” until there shines out upon you from it the divine sheen of virtue….
Have you become like this? Do you see yourself, abiding within yourself, in pure solitude? Does nothing now remain to shatter that interior unity, nor anything cling to your authentic self? Are you entirely that sole true light which is not contained by space, not confined to any circumscribed form, not diffused as something without term, but ever immeasurable as something greater than all measure and something more than all quantity? Do you see yourself in this state?
Then you have become vision itself. Be of good heart. Remaining here you have ascended aloft. You need a guide no longer. Strain and see. (Plotinus in Elmer O’Brien, ed., The Essential Plotinus. Representative Treatises from the Enneads. Toronto: New American Library, 1964, 40-3.)