I reached the point yesterday of carrying so much stress that I had to do something about it.
A lot of it is about confidential matters, which makes it doubly difficult. But a lot of it as well, I’m sure, is the “forcing” energy of the love showers we’re experiencing as we gradually ascend.
Suzi pointed out how the stress we’re under is there to challenge us and I agree.
Remind me of that if I forget I think it’s the only productive way to approach the many things that will confront us and demand a response from us in the future: To see them as challenges for us to get bigger.
The stress flushed up two things. One I’ll describe here and the other, for brevity, in the post that follows.
My brother, Paul, who’s a therapist, graced me with his listening, which allowed me to get at the source of the forced-up conditioned behavior.
The pattern I had to let go of was any scrap of desire on my part for what Archangel Michael calls “profile.”
“Profile” is any desire for stature, authority, power, affirmation, recognition, approval, on and on.
Almost any desire for profile, save that which is necessary to carry out the terms of our service, (1) presents a burr to which tumbleweed can stick.
Before starting in on this area of life – Ascension, primarily – I had no idea of the power of our beliefs. The subtle realms become closed to us as the result of our beliefs.
I watched myself in conversation and saw that there was a slight desire for profile. It colored things. It flavored them.
Profile is about me; service is about us. In my view, the desire for profile (an egoistic desire) is an obstacle to the effectiveness – and the purity – of our service.
Everyone can spot it anyways. We fool no one. We think to ourselves that we can maybe slip this one in. But people see us. (2) We’re invisible only to ourselves.
I know every time I indulge in the desire for profile, it doesn’t work. If it gets a grip on me, my effectiveness in service will go down correspondingly.
However, to actually shift from holding out for a wee bit of profile to agreeing with myself to drop the desire for profile altogether (except as service demands) was for me a definite shift that required work.
I’ve made the shift and what the challenge now becomes is to behave consistent with it when the conditioned behavior of going for profile goes off. Or just to lose all trace of my resolve in the curtain of this inaccessible memory I have. (3)
Apart from the memory situation, this is how learning takes place in the Earth school, is it not? The stress of operating in a counterproductive way builds up until the person makes a shift.
We recognize this as the way paradigmatic breakthrough occurs, I hope. Cognitive dissonance builds until we can no longer stand it and drop all our objections, prior knowledge and preferences. We stand in the face of the answer, naked of beliefs, and allow ourselves to get it. This is paradigmatic breakthrough. (4)
Is this not how we remove the barriers and liberate our consciousness?
The pressure-cooker of stress can be used to force us to expand, emerge, get bigger. That’s how I have to handle it because the cognitive dissonance created by stress has built up so much for me that I have to open to new ways of seeing things.
I need to let go of all need for profile (except that needed for service) for my own good and the good of anyone else aligned with me.
Let the next level of “I” that lies under the egoic “I” emerge.
I know that awareness talk can sometimes be demanding so the second realization I’ll share in the next post.
Footnotes
(1) The general of an army needs profile. An airline pilot needs profile. A surgeon in the operating theater needs profile.
(2) I’m beginning the practice of acting outside my apartment as if I’m always potentially being seen because I’m sure that later in life it’ll prove a useful discipline.
(3) Jesus suggests today that memory problems today are widespread: “Many of you today have memory problems as humans and find this at the least unsettling and, sometimes, even terrifying.” (Jesus through John Smallman, Oct. 30, 2016 at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2016/10/30/jesus-via-john-smallman-humanity-ready-change/
(4) Usually a person isn’t capable of a shift until the vasana has at least been loosened up. Otherwise the vasana goes off with an explosiveness that smothers mindfulness and erases the memory of any resolve to go a new way. One has to have reached a level of comparative completeness with the vasana before it ceases to be a determining factor in any situation that’s likely to trigger it. “Walking on eggshells” comes to mind for any who have to participate with the “volcanic.”
And, yes, I have felt this way many times. It does ease with systematic commitment and a fair amount of hard work. And a high degree of personal responsibility.