We invest shame with more power than it may in fact have any more, given the increase in our vibrations
This began as a response to a question from my friend Su: “What does it mean to say ‘face into.'”
Let me answer Su’s question but then let’s look at the general subject of processing our upsets.
Thank you for asking, Su.
“Facing into” an unwanted emotion or condition is a growth-movement term.
It means opening oneself fully to the experience of what has been a blocked and rejected feeling – like shame, for instance, probably the best example because we all hate it so much.
Who wants to experience shame? Not me, for sure.
And yet, as I discussed in an article mid-January, I faced into a storm of shame recently. When I opened myself to fully experience it (faced into it), I was floored to discover that it disappeared almost immediately.
I’ve compared it to biting into a chocolate Easter bunny and finding it an empty shell.
It had no substance any more, just as Archangel Michael said: The Third Dimension is gone. It’s only smoke and mirrors (our own belief systems) that are holding us back now, or so it seems.
Our beliefs fashion our reality, including fashioning the way our bodies respond to reality. When we actually step into an experience that we have beliefs about and it disappears before our eyes, clearly, there’s a new sheriff in town. Our reality is shaken.
Mine was. I faced into shame and found it to be a paper tiger. (I don’t think that would have been the case forty years ago.)
I feared it because I remembered what it felt like when it did have substance.
Allowing ourselves to fully experience unpleasant feelings is probably counterintuitive to most of us. If shame comes upon us, we usually tamp it down, have a drink, talk nervously to a friend, seek absolution from someone, etc. We do anything rather than sit in a chair and allow the experience of shame to unfold in us.
Werner Erhard would have reminded us that what we resist persists. Our resisted and rejected feelings hang around forever, lurking in the background of consciousness.
We feel them as a forlorn kind of sensation. We who don’t want to experience shame end up experiencing it endlessly, when we don’t need to.
OK. Let me leave Su’s question now, but continue with this fruitful line of discussion.
I’ve just described “experiencing a rejected feeling through to completion,” which is one way of handling a vasana, one tool in my toolbox. It’s part of the upset clearing process. (1)
If we like looking for tools to process our upsets, we can also tap into Kathleen’s toolbox – which includes turnaround, apologizing, forgiving and asking for forgiveness, her forgiveness mantra, circles, etc. She’s exploring new directions in the field of completing old upsets, the things that keep us small. (2)
And then there are other toolboxes as well – seemingly more appearing by the month.
Why? Because purification – which is what we’re directing attention to – is an inescapable part of Ascension/enlightenment. Go to any spiritual teacher and they will advise something that purifies – mantra, meditation, seva, etc.
But we actually have to use these techniques. It does little good, I think, just to read about them.
I’ve watched the change in Kathleen as she forgives all and I’m certainly sold on her path. Her tools work. And I’m galloping along after her.
The more you use some of these techniques (you don’t need to use all of them), the easier it gets to move through our upsets.
In some cases, without them or another set of tools, we might never move through our upsets. Well, until Ascension clears them once and for all.
But for some people, the depth of the issues and the misery of the upsets coming up now move them to want a clearing process and to want “immediate” results. If you do, apply the tools offered, which in both our cases are the results of patient and determined inner awareness research. (3)
I plan to use every process I can lay my hands to process my financial stress. I have more vasanas tied in with that one than I can count. Tonight in the most common of circumstances, I glimpsed that below stress is fear….
Footnotes
(1) “How to Handle Unwanted Feelings: The Upset Clearing Process” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/on-processing-vasanas/how-to-handle-unwanted-feelings-the-upset-clearing-process/
(2) Kathleen’s tools are collected on her website under “Sacred Insights” at Voiceoffreedom.ca httpss://voiceoffreedom.ca/sacred-insights-2/
(3) Werner Erhard called this field of study ontology, the science of being. Others have called it phenomenology, verstehen, “verifiable by me,” etc. I think of it simply as the awareness path.