I might mention in passing that I asked AAM in the private part of my last reading if Saul was indeed St. Paul. He said that the statement was partly correct, but that it was more accurate to say that St. Paul was a part of the soul called Saul. I did mention this to John Smallman.
So Saul begins by saying that “many of you are finding life very trying at present as various issues that need your attention rumble around just below your level of conscious awareness, stirring up your emotions and making you feel sad, depressed, irritable, and plain angry.” My belief is that various issues are rumbling around just below consciousness because the energies are rising and making it more difficult for us to have our issues remain well below awareness.The rising energies can be said to be raising these issues to awareness.
So this is one reason why we may be feeling sad, depressed, irritable, and angry right now: because the energies are shaking loose the vasanas or sleeping volcanoes from earlier traumatic issues which carry with them the energies of sadness, depression, etc.
He continues: “Maybe you have tried sitting with those feelings in an attempt to identify their underlying cause, and then release them. And it is quite likely that you have had difficulty making any progress because the feelings, the inner discomforts, remain, even though you cannot identify any issues that might be causing them.”
If we struggle with trying to identify the causes of issues, if we consciously try to identify the causes by thinking about them (in the sense of applying ourselves to thought), we’ll be unsuccessful because this is not the way the mind works. It will not identify the causes of issues if we struggle at it. We can ask it to identify the original incident that traumatic issues are attached to but we then have to sit back and allow the mind to work without exerting effort. Effort only overrules the natural working of the mind and defeats it.
Instead he recomends that we “just relax as best you can and accept the moods as they flow through you, and intend to release them.” Krishnamurti called this “choiceless awareness.” I’ve called it “being with and observing.” Just relaxing with whatever mood is there and watching the thoughts pass by if you wish. If you actually do see the thought which is the truth of the issue, seeing it may release you from it. The truth may set you free. So it is fruitful to watch, but it is not fruitful to struggle with it. What you resist, by struggling, persists.
” They may last a day or two but they will pass, and when they do, you will feel lighter and more buoyant.” All moods do have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If they are unresisted they do pass. And, if they are unresisted, when they have reached their natural term and do pass, the chances are that you have completed the experience that lies under the issue and so contributed to its disappearance from your repertoire of issues.
“All feelings, all moods, all emotions pass; they are only temporary, although they may be repetitive.” They are only repetitive if we resist them each time they arise. If we relax with them and allow ourselves to experience them completely, they will become weaker and weaker and finally disappear.
“The more you can relax and accept them in the moment – without acting on them but acknowledging them and intending to release them – the more effective will be your intent to let them go.” Absolutely. Do you see that so many of our sources are saying the same thing?
The more we can relax with and accept our moods, without acting on them but simply acknowledging them, the more successful we’ll be in letting them go. That is not the way we usually be with sadness, depression, etc. We usually get quite upset at feeling that way and ask for a consult or a prescription. We don’t usually just be with and observe moods like sadness and depression, etc.
If we learned in school the way of being with an upset that Saul describes here, our lives might have been substantially different than they have been. We’d have found that the amount of time spent in being upset would be drastically reduced and we would not be bothered with stuffed-down and temporally-persistent upsets. We would heave been clearing them in the moment rather than condemning ourselves to repeatedly feeling and resisting them. Less work for psychiatrists, less need for prescription drugs, mental hospitals, etc.
Saul goes on to show how we engage with our thoughts and, in doing so, create our reality – or rather the illusion. But thoughts and feelings are just part of the illusion’s energy flow. Perhaps I’ll leave that part of his talk for another time. But what he has described above is what I’ve called the upset clearing process and I did want to demonstrate that so many masters and others describe this process.
Why? Because God Him/Her/Itself is stillness, acceptance, relaxation, no resistance. If we be with our upsets as God is, they, being impermanent creations of the mind, do disappear. All except God is impermanence. Let me repeat that: God is the only permanent thing there is. Anything material appears, persists for a while and then disappears, including our thoughts, feelings, and moods.
We’ve been given the power to make things be relatively permanent by our free choice. All we have to do is resist their leaving and they’ll be given a measure of permanence. But if we be with them as God is (acceptance, no resistance), they disappear like the impermanent creations they are, leaving only that which is permanent, which is God or the divine substrate.
The rest of Saul’s column is very good too. I just don’t want to make this column overly long. Saul, as he does so often, goes over the complete case for a free and full consciousness. That seems to be the special task that he has agreed to fulfill. A free and full consciousness would have us feel again as children, innocent and easily able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, which in our immediate case would be to ascend.
Of course the Kingdom of Heaven has levels and there are countless levels above the Fifth Dimension, but compared to the physical plane or Third Dimension, the Fifth Dimension can be said to be “Heaven.” (1)
Footnotes
(1) And in fact the Fifth Dimension, or Mental Plane as it is called on the astral side, is indeed referred to as “Heaven,” as St. Paul does when he says he met a man from the ‘Third Heaven.” This statement is the same as saying that he met a man from the third subplane of the Mental Plane.