If you’re an awareness writer, in a certain sense, you don’t get to choose what you’ll write about. You write about what’s right there in front of you.
I haven’t processed a vasana in a while and I actually feel a little rusty. But I begin to get to work on the loneliness that I feel that doesn’t go away of its own volition and that’s right there in front of me.
I notice that it strikes at certain times of the day and not at others. That time is right after dinner, what would be for me quiet time, relaxing time, and often relationship time.
It’s the time when most people are at home with their families. Skype stops ringing. The email stops flowing. There’s less to do. All goes quiet for the night.
It’s at this time that I realize that there’s no one for me to contact, no family to see, no partner to touch bases with.
The feeling that then arises is like a yawning drag on me. It’s like a force that seems to want to suck me under. It must be one of the least pleasant feelings I’m aware of, save perhaps for humiliation.
I begin to process it. The last time I experienced lingering loneliness in around 2004, it took six months to complete the experience. I did not at the time know how to process a root vasana. Let’s see how processing works.
When I ask my mind to reflect back to me a picture, a word, a thought relating to the origins of this feeling, (1) the first thing I hear is my Dad calling me a lazy, no-good good-for-nothing. I remember how I used to “barricade” myself in my room to stay away from him. But that doesn’t bring any release from these feelings. So that’s a tunnel with no cheese.
I next get a picture of three young boys playing a trick on me. When I came to where I was to join them for a day of play, all three suddenly took off and vanished in different directions.
While it was a simple prank, I didn’t know what had happened at the time. It cut me deeply and, afterwards, I walked home slowly and sadly. I responded by cutting myself off from my friends and going further inward.
Seeing this last memory from a distant past, I’d say around twenty percent of the loneliness lifts. The release I feel indicates that this incident was probably part of the root of this vasana. Lots of cheese down this tunnel.
I look some more.
I go back and have a distant memory of Mom going into the hospital. I remember how lonely it was without her. But I cannot recover that memory any more clearly than that. The vague recollection does not lead to release so that incident doesn’t seem significant to this unwanted condition.
Then I remember my Mom and Dad going on a trip and leaving us with a Scottish woman, Mrs. Burns, who lived up to her name by burning whatever she cooked. Again more loneliness without Mom and Dad.
Another perhaps 30% of the loneliness lifts so that separation from Mom and Dad did play a large part in this vasana.
The loneliness has now downgraded to an indistinct sadness. This is manageable and so it could slip off my radar at this point.
But I persevere. I ask myself what this sadness relates to and this now relates to more current events, which I draw a veil of discrete silence over. But it’s enough to notice it and another 10% of the unwanted feelings lift. I’m now distinctly back in the tolerable range.
The loneliness has lifted and I’m back to normal. I didn’t think it would yield to processing but it has, until tomorrow night perhaps. We’ll see.
But if it returns, or if something underneath it arises, such as sadness or depression, I’ll walk through the same process with that until all of it is seen and lifts. I may not have to spend six months at this, after all. (2)
Footnotes
(1) If I find the original incident, the “seed” or root of the vasana, the truth of it will set me free, just as Jesus said. If I’m not set free by something I see in this process, then that something is not the truth or origin of my vasana. I have to keep going in that case.
(2) The best channeled treatment of this process is from Jesus: “Jeshua via Pamela Kribbe: The Third Way,” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/01/26/jeshua-the-third-way/.