It’s funny to think back to 9-10 years ago and remember how I conceptualized ‘awakening’ and ‘enlightenment’ then.
At that time, I see that I thought of it in terms of an escape from the mundane or even unpleasant reality I was living in.
My thought process was something like, “Once I’m enlightened, I’ll be living in bliss and all of this stuff will just go away or not matter any more.”
Actually, there’s probably some truth to that, though not in the way I perceived it back then.
The key difference is that I was thinking of it as an escape from myself, specifically my shadow, my trauma patterns, where now it’s obvious that, if anything, it’s an embracing, integration, and/or alchemical transmutation (which feels like another form of integration) of all those aspects that have historically been pushed away into the dark recesses of my psyche/body.
Fast-forward to now, 2015. I like to think I’ve come a long way since I started this conscious path toward awakening, but I still notice where I’m constantly realizing that nothing gets glossed over in this process.
The scariest of the scary must come up for examination. Yes, even that one, the one that’s the most painful, the most secret, the most avoided…No!…Oh yes!
Everything must go.
It’s been important for me to re-frame this process as a gift rather than as the endless torture session the ego, in all its victim-story-loving ways, prefers to see it as.
For me, these pieces of misqualified energy, shadow material, vasanas (traumatic reaction patterns), often get activated by something external.
I’m blessed to have some amazing friends in my life who are also my teachers, in the sense that they can be the perfect trigger at the perfect moment for whatever needs to come up for processing. What will today’s lesson(s) be?
I’ve noticed that it’s becoming a bit gentler. Of course it’s up to me as far as how gentle or rough it is. Resistance and/or kicking and screaming through the process makes it harder. Surrender and trust that it’s actually a loving process of purification tends to make it pass through with the most ease and grace possible.
The victim story is an especially stubborn one for me. Wow. That’s one story the ego sure doesn’t want to lose its grip on; it feeds on it.
It’s a very well-learned story and I think it’s one many of us are working through. This one I think I may be processing, at least in part, on behalf of the collective, because it feels so BIG.
The temptation to feel harmed or wronged by someone, to lash out, point the finger, and say “how dare you!” is so strong sometimes that it brings with it a visceral rush of adrenaline that I’m thinking must be addictive on some level.
Yet, as always, the victim game only perpetuates the pain cycle, sending that part of the illusion back out into the matrix, and back to ourselves.
Pointing at someone and calling them ‘wrong’ only makes that person feel now like they’ve been wronged. And so it goes, on and on….
Personally, I’m starting to feel done with the pain cycle. I feel almost beaten down by it. There’s little fight left in me because of how thoroughly I’ve played that game out. It doesn’t work. It never worked. There are no real winners in the victim/perpetrator game.
So what’s the alternative? No surprise here… It’s love. It’s forgiveness. It’s choosing the ‘higher’ path, even when the temptation is there to go in for that adrenaline rush that comes from playing the blame game.
The habit of the victim story is so well-worn that I’m finding it takes some serious re-training to build new neural pathways so that the love-and-forgiveness approach becomes the new habit.
My sense – and recent channelings have pointed this out too – is that there’s more divine support for this process of victim-story release than ever before. We’re supported in all that is love, and all that is not love is dissolving; there’s no spiritual foundation for it.
When the triggers come up, I’m learning to love myself through them (thank you, Matt Kahn) (1), and to allow myself to receive the love and support that’s provided for me from all my spiritual friends/guides (or as I lovingly call them, my ‘peeps’).
It’s this love that allows the transmutation to occur. Everything that arises, no matter how seemingly unpleasant, is a gift we’ve called forth at a soul level to help heal us.
As we realize this and re-train ourselves past the old habit of feeling victimized by the unpleasantness that confronts us and into unconditionally loving what presents itself, the more ease and grace-filled the process will be.
For me, it feels like a deep surrender. This surrender feels like relief. As I acknowledge that I have no control over external situations, this allows me to soften and let go. I feel old, rigid structures within me beginning to dissolve. It’s so much easier to let go than to keep holding on to what doesn’t work for me!
My current mantra is, “It feels so good to let go.”
So, it seems the future is in the path of least resistance. The lesson is in learning to trust this, as I don’t feel many of us have been conditioned this way. But as I’ve experimented with letting go, it’s immediately shown its rewards to me (and they’ve been delicious beyond what I ever envisioned).
The bliss I imagined all those years ago is starting to appear in my experience; but not as something that just swoops down from the sky and rescues me from my shadow. Instead it is something I am creating, by un-creating, or letting go of, all the barriers I had built that had obscured it.
Footnotes
(1) “Matt Kahn: The Love Revolution,” March 24, 2014, at httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFS84Jp1qfc