Credit: Goodreads
I continue to observe my moods to understand the battle that’s raging within me between friendliness and unfriendliness.
This morning I saw a nexus or knot in consciousness that was so basic and yet so decisive in determining my mood that I stayed with it, observing it, for quite a while.
I saw a part of myself wanting to express love.
And then I saw a second part of me smother that impulse with “I don’t want to X,” “I don’t feel like Y,” and “I hate Z.”
If you’ve ever felt unrequited love, you know that it really hurts. Love wants to flow and connect, be accepted and returned. When I love someone and it isn’t accepted and returned, I ache and feel miserable.
By the same token, when I feel love arise within me and I myself smother it out of grumpiness and unfriendliness, I feel depressed and miserable as well.
I ask my mind to throw up the original incident in which this nexus arose.
Initially I see a grumpy young boy, who had withdrawn from family fun and preferred to be off by himself. I hear myself say, “If you won’t love me, I won’t participate.” And off I go to my room to read or play by myself.
That worked for many, many years and it went unchallenged. I was regarded as studious, inward-turned, preferring quiet and solitude, etc.
But now that I feel and express love, the inner conflict has heated up. Because now something wants to emerge and be expressed and my grumpiness prevents it. Now I hurt because of what I’m doing to myself.
This situation demonstrates that a heart opening doesn’t cure all ills. Michael discussed in 2015 how our gradual Ascension with its heart openings and expansion of beingness can bring up crippling feelings:
Archangel Michael: Does Ascension mean that you are in the love? Yes! But does it bring up close and personal this clarity of what is not right, what we have called distraction or aberration? It most certainly does because there is no room for it.
But it is so extreme [in your case], that it immediately, without reservation or being sidetracked, has to be dealt with, cleared, healed, mended, tended, released back to the Mother, back to me … because you cannot carry this; it is already laying you flat.
Steve: Definitely. It’s crippling.
AAM: So lie on the bed, go into your heart, call me (I’m already there) and let me literally lift this. Surrender it to me. … The establishment of peace within is pivotal, critical and you cannot feel that fullness of peace and of love [in this condition]. …
It is the healing of the wounds of war and the wounds of war, dearest, are the wounds of the human experience.
And it is not just the old Third. It is the superconsciousness that you are entering into and the level of awareness of what grief and sorrow really feel like. Then it becomes so unacceptable, so personal that it cannot be permitted.
I will lift this. You have ample experience to write about. (1)
Well, at least I know that he wants me to write about it!
The fact that love wants to pour from my heart and is prevented by habitual grumpiness is probably what has overcome the former generous outpouring of love. It may be behind my heart closing somewhat – not completely because love still flows until prevented. Michael explained:
“You have had a heart opening [but] it is like a rubber stopper that opens, closes, opens, closes. So it is partially open. … But it is not 1000%.” (2)
If it were 1000%, that would be Sahaja Samadhi and that experience would be powerful enough to burn all my vasanas (or core issues) to a crisp. (3)
When I’m in the midst of this battle, my grumpiness makes me feel like a one-ton boulder that’s almost impossible to move. And I find it almost impossible to allow love room to move and flow outwards. Most people just leave me alone when I’m in this mood. (4)
At last, I now see the two sides of this everyday, continuous inner conflict between love and grumpiness. And in simply seeing and observing it, I’m no longer in it. I’ve done what a boss of mine used to call “getting my arms around it.” I am the observer now, outside of the experience of grumpiness, rather than the participant, gripped by the feeling.
It isn’t as if I don’t have lots of tools. Now that I’ve identified the basic nexus or knot, I’ll use those tools to address the unwanted condition.
I’ll use the universal laws to eliminate it, affirmations to remind myself of the truth of the situation, and anything else that the Company of Heaven recommends.
I’ll also watch my grumpiness with ongoing awareness – just “being with” it – to dissolve it.
As well, I’ll ask Michael and the Mother directly to take this vasana and its accompanying mood away from me.
I’ll turn the flow of this wonderful love on me and love myself through grumpiness.
Along with their assistance, I’ll take whatever actions I can and eliminate this crippling condition from my life.
Footnotes
(1) Ibid., March 24, 2015. This conversation took place eleven days after the heart opening. On another occasion, he said:
“It is not just the old Third [i.e., a leftover vasana of grumpiness]. It is the superconsciousness that you are entering into and the level of awareness of what grief and sorrow really feel like. Then it becomes so unacceptable, so personal that it cannot be permitted.” (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Aug. 3, 2015.)
(2) Ibid., Aug. 3, 2015.
(3) Shankara tells us: “The flame of illumination [Sahaja] … is kindled by discrimination between Atman and non-Atman. [It] will burn away the effects of ignorance [i.e., the vasanas], down to their very roots.” (Shankara in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher lsherwood, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination. Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1975; c1947, 39.)
This neither happens in sixth-chakra Cosmic Consciousness or in seventh-chakra Brahmajnana or God-Realization; only with leaving the Third-Dimension altogether in Sahaja (a permanent and full heart opening) are the vasanas finally and fully destroyed.
Says Sadhu Arunachala:
“Vasanas were not got rid of all of a sudden by a flash of Cosmic Consciousness. One may have worked them out in a previous existence leaving a little to be done in the present life, but in any case they must first be destroyed.” (Sadhu Arunachala (A.W. Chadwick), A Sadhu’s Reminiscences of Ramana Maharshi. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1961, 45.)
Says Sri Ramana:
“In kevala nirvikalpa samadhi [Brahmajnana] one is not free from vasanas and does not, therefore, attain mukti.
Only after the samskaras have been destroyed [in Sahaja] can one attain salvation [liberation, mukti, moksha]. … Even though one practices kevala nirvikalpa samadhi for years together, if one has not rooted out the vasanas, he will not attain salvation.” (Sri Ramana Maharshi in Ramananda Swarnagiri, Crumbs from His Table. https://www.ramana-maharshi.org. Downloaded 10 September 2005, n.p.)
(4) Winston Churchill also had moods like this, which he called his “black dog.” Unfortujnately he didn’t know about vasanas and the upset clearing process.