May I be permitted to comment please on a matter? That matter is why it makes good spiritual sense to clear ourselves of as many of what I call “vasanas” (1) and Linda Dillon calls “core issues” as possible round about now.
If we’re to be of best use, after the Reval, as stewards of the Mother’s wealth, it seems to me that the clearer we are of our habitual, unworkable patterns of behavior, the fewer crack-ups we’ll have.
To illustrate how our patterns can become the core and substance of our lives, let me use myself as an example.
I’ve been connecting with myself as the Complainer recently. The runt of the litter. Never getting, and so always wanting, attention. Throws a spanner into the works. Or jams a stick into the bicycle wheel. Stops the show until he’s heard.
Over the years, the runt of the litter became a skeptic, a judgemental person, a critic, an advocate for the downtrodden, etc., etc. He closed his career as a decision-maker in human-rights cases. The Complainer ended up making a living out of listening to others’ complaints.
Something about lemons and lemonade here.
To make something of such dubious beginnings, we Complainers had to have had a storehouse of knowledge, much of it negative. We had to prefer being right to being happy. We had to be fluent at dealing with people’s ire at us popping their balloon.
We gravitated to the upholders of justice, activists for the downtrodden, self-righteous people, etc., all of whom would rather be right than happy.
We seldom got above the intellectual level of knowledge. Life showed up as barren and dry, relieved from time to time by a short romance and a few other earthly delights.
Just imagine that that one vasana – a young child’s need for attention – grew into all that … just as surely as an acorn grows into a huge oak tree. As the twig is bent, the tree inclines. Our vasanas shape our future.
Think of me as Marley’s ghost, rattling his chains a few months early. You don’t want to live a dry life like that. And it won’t mix with humanitarian, philanthropic activity anyways.
If I simply tolerate my vasanas and leave them in place, nothing I do will work. And I won’t appear normal to others; if anything, I’ll appear aberrant, abnormal.
The clearer we can be of our vasanas, the more normal and natural we become … or are … or return to.
We might want to remember that the return to the consciousness associated with Fifth Dimensionality is itself called “Sahaja” and “Sahaja” means “natural.”
Anyways, for me, the Complainer has to go. (2)
I have to undo this Marley’s future by clearing and completing as much of my past as I can – my residue of issues and conditioning – so I can be present to the fresh challenges that stewardship for the Mother will entail. And my rattling my chains is just an example. I think everyone has their chains.
I never thought that processing vasanas would be important for us operating as financial wayshowers. I always thought that clearing them was relevant only to ascension. But I get that it isn’t.
And the clearing is going way deeper than in the past, undoubtedly under the influence of the energies and of the looming Post-Reval necessity to be complete with our issues and conditioning.
Footnotes
(1) “Only one who is free from all the latent tendencies (vasanas) is a Sage.” (Sri Ramana Maharshi,Spiritual Instruction of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. Eighth Edition. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1974, Chapter 2, Question 26.)
“Vasanas or mental conditioning … is of two types – the pure and the impure. The impure is the cause of birth; the pure liberates one from birth. The impure is of the nature of nescience and ego-sense; these are the seeds, as it were, for the tree of re-birth. On the other hand, when these seeds are abandoned, the mental conditioning that merely sustains the body is of a pure nature. Such mental conditioning exists even in those who have been liberated while living: it does not lead to re-birth, as it is sustained only by past moment[um?], and not by present motivation.” (Sage Vasistha in Swami Venkatesananda, ed., The Concise Yoga Vasistha. Albany: State University of New York, 1984, 5.)
(2) For me, that means I need to identify the vasana when it’s playing and “be with it” (rest in awareness of it and with it) until it goes. It can be enjoyed, relived, whatever it requires of us.
It remains an object to be observed and enjoyed, not something to be identified with and entered into. We, the subjects, are distinct from it, as from any other thought/feeling complex.
Rest in awareness of it. Remain calm and balanced as it runs. Where you want to experience a feeling associated with it (you don’t have to; you can rest in awareness of it instead), experience it through to completion.
If it sees that we won’t engage with it, sooner or later it’ll pack up and leave.
When stressful circumstances arise, if we’ve completed a good number of our vasanas, we’ll meet the situation in a more normal, natural way, not in the reactivated and often frightened way a person does whose issue has just erupted.