I’m in a process whose exact nature is beyond my ability to describe. I’m loathe to attach a name to it because it seems larger than any name I attach to it.
It’s seeing vasanas go off that I’ve been totally unaware of. Some of them are maximally disconcerting. I’m completely at a standstill at the moment.
One is a vasana connected to my mother and I can only report it and hope I sound sensible.
I’ve always thought that I loved my mother unreservedly and that’s always been how I’ve presented myself. But I’m seeing at this moment that that isn’t the total picture. In fact I both loved and hated my mother.
I hated her for dying. I hated her for leaving me. I hated her for abandoning me. But I’ve never seen that clearly before.
The impact on me of hating her and loving her at the same time is that my relationships with some women are skewed. My wife describes it as me approaching and then as quickly backing away.
I know what she’s describing but I’ve never been able to make out exactly what happens. It happens almost too quickly for me to see it. I’ve never been able to unpack it. And it has never released its secret to me.
And now I see that, as my love for a person rises, so does this hidden component of hate as well. The two come invisibly linked together with me.
It makes me crazy at times. It makes my behavior unpredictable. And it all goes on at a level below awareness. It exists for me at the level of a deep, dark secret.
I force my experience of it underground the minute I sense even the slightest awareness of it. It’s like a rejected attitude within me and brings in its train embarrassment and humiliation. It’s exceedingly troublesome.
As this vasana enters my awareness, I feel the same craziness arise within me. I recognize this vasana as like kryptonite to me, my Waterloo, an Achilles heel. In the face of it I want to run and hide.
And simply becoming aware of it does not mean I’ve mastered it. Not by any means.
I see this vasana as lying at the basis of a shame-based identity for me. I’m ashamed that I could feel any emotion such as hate in regard to my much beloved mother. The mere suggestion that I might feel hate for her would strike me as preposterous in my everyday life.
All of this is arising and calling out to be experienced through to completion. Immediately behind it is another vasana, which sees me become a loner.
One vasana after another seems to want to come up. I feel like a minefield with one going off after another.
The sensation is like being squeezed through a three-inch pipe and everything that could go off in me is. I continue resting as these roman candles go off, feeling exhausted before and feeling a need for replenishment, comforting and reassurance after.