Ben Wong and Jock Mckeen, leaders of the Three-Month Resident Fellowship at Cold Mountain, 1976
Continuing with the discussion from yesterday, while we can get behind and under our words, we can’t avoid communicating.
But the act of getting under or behind the words puts us in touch with ourselves and that’s something that we’re not as much adept at these days as we were some years ago.
Usually it’s the present that’s considered the apogee. But forty years of cabal rule has had its effect on us. From my perspective, we aren’t as alive today as people were back in the heyday of the Human Potential Movement. Time to come alive again!
The question of the hour back then was “how do you feel?” People might be sitting on feelings, talking over top of them, denying them, resisting them, and remaining unaware of them. And feelings were what so often determined action.
What does it mean to be in touch with ourselves? Not many of us today probably are in touch with our feelings. Being in touch with them is not the end of the road, to be sure. Being in touch with our heart, soul, or Self is, and then with the All Self.
But getting in touch with our feelings is an interim step which gives us vital information we need on what we and others are planning to do, leaning and moving towards doing. We tend to act in response to how we feel.
If we feel lonely, we seek company. If we feel angry, we may attack. If we feel depressed, we may hide ourselves away. We and other people feel our feelings and unconsciously act on the basis of them. But if you ask someone today how they’re feeling, though they react to their feelings outside awareness, they’ll either stare at you blankly or respond by telling you a thought.
Workshop in session
What I’m talking about here is social interaction. If I was talking about spiritual paths, the discussion would be different. Archangel Michael said to me today in a private reading that most people think they are speaking from their hearts when they’re really speaking from their feelings, their emotional bodies. That’s a senior truth, truer than what I’m saying.
Mine is an interim truth, one that allows us to better communicate to one another and know how to orient to each other in this middle ground called everyday life.
Not until I know how you feel am I ready to commit to action on your behalf. Knowing how you feel is the missing piece for me. Until I know how you feel, all is hesitation on my part. Then you tell me how you feel and I know what to do. That’s the way it works with us, as far as I can see.
I’ve shared before how in the sixth week of a three-month resident fellowship (encounter group) at Cold Mountain Institute many years ago, I suddenly got that I was out of touch with my feelings. Isn’t it strange to think that we do feel and yet most people aren’t aware from moment to moment how or what they feel?
Well, when I suddenly realized in a momentary blaze of insight that I was out of touch with my feelings, I let out a whoop. I ran down the path from the residences to the lodge shouting “I got it! I’m out of touch with my feelings! I’m out of touch with my feelings!”
You may think people laughed at me. No, they cheered and applauded.
Residents eating lunch on the patio of the lodge at Cold Mountain Institute, Cortes Island, B.C.
And that moment was a turning point for me. I began to see what a pleasure it is to watch the rise and fall of my feelings. I began to see that the mind files its issues and vasanas under “feeling” headings – vasanas associated with fear, issues associated with felt lack, etc.
I began to see how following a feeling back in time or to the deepeest inner space I can can locate and identify an unwanted condition. On and on the learnings went in what is perhaps the richest field of exploration and study – far richer for me than flying to the Moon.
But today may as well be a wasteland. Yes, we talk about commitment, creation, building, etc. But there isn’t a lot of familiarity with our selves.
Archangel Michael has been coaching me to create sacred union with myself. Gosh, he doesn’t need to prod me much in that direction. I know the tremendous rewards of increasing my awareness of myself, of raising my consciousness in the area of self-awareness.
This entire thing, this process called life, is simply one big exercise in self-awareness. Know who you are fully and really and you can leave the round of life and go home. Know the truth of who you are and the truth will set you free.
So these little awarenesses of knowing how we feel, what we want, what we intend, and what we see are preparation for the big awarenesses.
We didn’t call it the path of awareness in those days. We called it “the awareness game.” I love the awareness game more than I love meditation (and I love meditation). And I crave partners in awareness conversations, workshops in awareness, trainings in aware and alive communication, etc.
After the Reval one thing I’m going to do is to see if I can recreate the growth center that used to exist on Granville Island, here in Vancouver (we called it “the Barge”), bring back the circuit riders, and breathe new life into such wonderful techniques as rebirthing, bioenergetics and bodywork. I’m looking for partners in re-establishing the Growth Movement, people who are willing to dream big.