I know I’ve referred to this at some earlier date, but I keep getting it at a deeper level.
All realizations – whether of love or bliss or identity – are gotten at deeper and deeper levels. You won’t hear me discussing different issues, usually. You’ll hear me getting my own issues more deeply.
There is, I believe, one predominant feeling that has become the foundation of our persona or constructed self, the basis of all (or most of) our ideas, feelings, words, and actions.
Maybe I can borrow Sri Ramakrishna’s example of the shirt. The shirt reflects the color of the dye it was dyed in. The belch regurgitates what was eaten, he’d say.
The person is already set up, already conditioned, already primed when they come into a conversation because of one primal attitude their hearts and minds have been dyed in.
***
Several times I’ve seen this core issue or root vasana in me, or felt it. I can’t exactly pin it down, it’s so subtle and pervasive.
Let me look. …
It’s part of the resist, revenge, resent cycle, I see.
OK, I heard myself say, “Everyone is out to get you.” That’s my Dad talking. (1)
It isn’t enough that I’m perpetually angry towards and resistant to my Dad, now long transitioned. It’s gotten extended to everybody.
My Dad didn’t trust anybody. He’d stand on his own two feet – or so he said. Anyways, it’s all story anyways.
But the twig was bent towards suspiciousness, a lack of trust.
Such an original bending of the tree has consequences. The tree grows in that direction unless it’s unbended – unless, that is, we source or complete our core issue or root vasana that lies at the heart of it. This core issue is what I’m pointing at.
Mine is anger towards Dad and suspiciousness of everybody.
It’s present in the look on my face. It is the look on my face. It’s present in how I feel. It has me enter into a conversation with an always-already listening of “I don’t believe you. And I don’t believe the next thing you’re gonna say either. Everyone is only out for themselves.”
Yes, this is the way I enter into the world, without the world having a say in the matter.
If this is my within, what might I expect from my without?
Footnotes
(1) If we ask the mind to send up the really pivotal images and thoughts connected to the vasana, the mind will obligingly do so.