“You made me mad.”
I just had a vasana (or core issue) go off that was potentially relationship-damaging (we worked it through) and was directly related to abundance in the near offing.
To quote Howard Beale: In my own mind, I’d had enough and I wasn’t going to take it any more.
I know, down to my core, that difficult vasanas will go off once the shackles have been taken from us.
That makes it important – no vital, I think – for financial wayshowers not only to read what I’m about to say here, but to put it into practice.
I say this at the risk of sounding a bit bossy and rude. I just know how important this matter of completing core issues or vasanas is now and how much more important it’ll be later.
We need to learn how to recognize a vasana when it goes off and know how to work with it in a way that completes rather than perpetuates it.
Why? Because taking the financial shackles off could result in a lot of people “settling scores,” “deserving better/respect,” “teaching them a lesson,” you name our favorite excuse for bad behavior. In a sentence, we won’t take it any more.
Rather than implicating others in our emotional outbursts and rejection, as financial wayshowers who are going to need to create and maintain relationships, we’ll need a means of managing our core issues or vasanas when they get triggered or erupt.
With that in mind, I want to go over my own version of the upset clearing process, which originates from Werner Erhard, Vipassana meditation, and enlightenment intensives.
I’m going to reduce it to as simple a process as I can so that it’s entirely portable.
You can use whatever technique you want of course, but this is the one I recommend.
(1) Identify the feeling.
(2) Ask your mind to send up a picture of where this feeling originated.
(3) Experience through to completion whatever arises once you’ve identified the original incident.
(4) Observe the conclusions and decisions you reached and remember them.
Now let me say a bit more about each.
Identify the feeling.
Core issues are memories and memories are arranged in the mind under feeling. If you want to open the right file drawer to find the memory, identify the emotion you’re feeling: Afraid, insecure, anxious.
You’re then in the presence of all the memories connected to that feeling.
Ask your mind to send up a picture of where this feeling originated.
Now that you have the right file drawer open, ask the mind to identify the original incident by sending you up an image.
The mind is an obedient servant in matters like this. It’ll send an image quickly. You’ll have to catch the first image that comes shooting past.
Don’t take the second or third. They’re of different incidents.
Don’t “shop” for an image with the “right” feeling.
The most frequent cause of this process failing is a person not taking the first image and therefore not removing the hook that keeps the fish on the line.
Take the first image, whatever it is, whether it feels “nice” or not. Few vasanas feel nice.
If you miss the first image, restart the process by asking the mind again.
Experience through to completion whatever arises once you’ve identified the original incident.
Coming out of an upset using this process will feel the same as going into it. You’ll think things are getting worse and it may be confusing. “Hey, I should be feeling better.” But they’re not getting worse.
Your job is to stand as a willing spectator or observer in the face of a recreated memory of the incident that so terrified you in the first place.
Your job is to reassert your beingness by not running away, not trying to change the experience, not resisting experiencing it, but to stand there allowing the emotions to play over you and the memories to flood back in. Counter-intuitive? You bet it is.
Hands off. Don’t mess with it or resist it. Experience it rather than simply thinking about it.
Look at it. Hear it. Feel it. And then, once you know the truth of it, let it go.
What causes a vasana or core issue to relax its grip on you? Knowing the truth of it.
The truth will set you free, not only absolutely but relatively.
Not only will the absolute Truth free you from “individuation” and “separation” from God. But knowing the relative truth of the vasana should bring release from emotional knots, release from cognitive dissonance, and release from tension in the body.
And you can use the fact of whether you feel increased relief or increased stress to guide you in whether you’re getting closer to the truth in your work or farther way from it, in the processing of the vasana.
Chances are the upset will leave either from you having experienced the feelings through to completion or by having seen the truth of the vasana and achieved a state of release.
And you haven’t blamed your spouse or ended a business relationship.
(Concluded in Part 2, tomorrow.)