Adyashanti is said to have remarked that he was surprised to learn in his life that, unlike himself, other people believed their thoughts.
A spiritual wag is said to have commented that our lives go along very happily – until we think about them.
I’ve noticed a peculiar phenomenon. When I first wake up, for a microsecond, I feel awful. And I also notice that I often take this feeling, and the thoughts that arise with it, seriously.
Nonetheless, I feel much less awful these days than I did years ago.
I’ve felt various shades of dismay and depression, defeat and despair.
And all of it arises from the ripple effects of living with an abusive and violent father.
I’m through with a lot of that – not all by any means, because the feelings run deeper and deeper, I find.
But here we are at this late stage, still feeling those effects and freeing myself from them by observing them rather than reacting to them.
***
What made this morning different was that, when I felt the dismay and despair, I didn’t hook up with them this time. I didn’t don them like a suit of clothes.
They were over there and I was over here and I didn’t “put them on” like a pair of sunglasses.
Usually in the morning I’m not thinking at all and so this “putting them on” is automatic.
Now I’m thinking “from them.” I’m dismayed, miserable, out of sorts.
And of course, rather than having a wonderful day, I start my day as a grumblepuss, an old grump.
So I ask my mind to send me up a picture or a message that will explain the origin of this feeling.
OK, I got it. The message below the feeling is, oh, gawd, not another day in this awful life.
I am beyond disappointed. I am beyond caring. I am only interested in a way out of the torture this life is.
Yes, like lock and key, saying that connects perfectly with the energy I feel.
I just be with it. (1)
***
There seems to be a tsunami of sadness flowing just below the surface of my consciousness. It hasn’t surfaced yet or I haven’t opened to it.
We only live our own lives, right? I don’t know how it is for you and you don’t know how it is for me.
So can one say that I was a sensitive child? Compared to whom? Can one say that I was treated more poorly than most? I have no idea. I only know me.
For me, living with a violent father, who was dominating my mother and me, was hell on Earth. I would wake up each morning and wish I was dead. I would feel dismay that I had to go through another day.
If I’m to process the vasana (publicly) from stem to stern , then I have to look at what conclusions I drew from this and what decisions I made.
The first conclusion was that life is hell and you just have to find a way to survive. The second conclusion was that it made no sense to expect anything more than hell because hell was what I got, day after day, living with my Father. I had given up trying to feel good.
Some decisions I made include to expect nothing from life. I look forward to leaving. In the time in between, I’m just gonna get by.
***
Next I want to check in with myself and see what the effect has been of raising all this to awareness. Do I feel lighter? Has there been a degree of release? Has the truth set me free?
I’ve dredged up enough of the vasana, intellectually, to feel I understand why I feel dismay upon waking up in the morning
Experientially, I haven’t even begun to plumb the feeling. With one possible exception: It may turn out that when I go to plumb dismay, like shame, worry, stress, and other feelings I’ve processed in the recent past, it-no longer has any objective existence any more.
I do notice that I’m having difficulty “getting into” dismay. Is that because I’m blocking something? Or because it no longer objectively exists? I don’t know.
I will take some time to see if I can locate dismay as an objectively- and consciously-experienced feeling.
(Concluded in Part 2, tomorrow.)
Footnotes
(1) In an earlier article that, I said, in classical theory, a person interrupting a spiritual process to write about it would be regarded as an imbecile. But I am writing all the way through my in-process process.
This is one difference in attitude between the classical view and the lightworker view, I think: The latter puts the call of personal enlightenment aside when service to the Mother requires it.