I continue to allow myself to feel what arises, the residue of a vasana or core issue reactivated.
As long-time readers know, I regard the re-activation of a vasana as a good thing. It’s only then that we can re-experience and complete the incomplete feelings at the heart of it. (1)
Mostly we don’t share them. We might suppress them or paper them over with a smile.
But my job is to experience them and write about them. That’s why I’m writing about it now.
Not to cleverly manipulate you. I have no interest in that. Why would I write what I write and manipulate? If you see that in print, you can be sure that a troll or worse has written it.
I write awareness writing because every minute is a potentially-rich learning experience – if we remain aware of things – and I want that learning. These times of lowness are especially generous in lessons. And it won’t kill me to explore them.
So please don’t try to rescue me. Just let me explore the feeling and share about it. I’ll use the upset clearing process on feelings I need to dissipate. (2)
***
There was a feeling that was asking to be seen and felt.
I saw that I was allowing myself at that moment to feel depressed. That’s the presenting condition. Not like I knew I was depressed before consciously naming it.
It took a while for me to see how I was feeling. I told Suzi I was going for a long walk in Stanley Park to clear my head. And I haven’t been able to get out the door.
That was the first clue. Why can’t I get out the door? Well, I’m depressed, I replied.
OK. Now I’ve named the condition. I can get depressed about being depressed. Or I can use the upset clearing process and move through it.
I choose the latter. Having named the feeling, I now ask my mind to give me a picture or thought about the original incident behind it. It’s seldom the present that we’re reacting to. It’s usually a much-earlier traumatic incident.
I’ll tell you mine, again for educational purposes, so you can see what the incident at the heart of a vasana looks like. I do this to demonstrate how to move through an upset without “dumping” on others.
***
I see my Mother lying on her collapsed bed. She’s lost it – God knows why or how – and broken her bed with her fists in a rage.
The doctor is arranging emergency transportation to the psych ward.
My Aunt Lou has come over and says to me: “Steve, you’d better let me sign her in. Whoever signs her in, she will never speak to that person again.” My Mother never spoke to Lou again.
Leaving aside my Mother’s situation and speaking only for myself, my world collapsed. I’m maybe sixteen at the time and the idea that my Mother might not be here, in my life, for any reason, had never crossed my mind.
This sequestering of my Mom was a psychic break in my experience of wellbeing and it brought me thoughts, for the first time, of my Mother’s mortality.
For my Mother, her decline after that until she died in a housefire two years later was rapid. (3)
So that’s the significance of the event and the origin of the present-day upset. I concluded that I was now on my own. I decided I needed to “leave the nest” and look after myself – and my Mom.
And finally I did not want to feel the depression and insecurity again that I felt at that time and so I created behavior patterns that would ward off re-experiencing them.
But there it is: The full picture, the earlier traumatic incidents which lie below my present-day feeling of depression.
Now what I need to do is to experience the feeling itself until it lifts.
So not tough it out. Not deny the feelings. Not tamp them down. But experience them until they lift of their own volition.
Jesus described this process when he said: “The truth shall make you free.” If I’m onto the truth, I’ll feel increasing relief. If I’m going down the wrong path, I’ll feel more upset and tension. Once I’m through the process, I’m through it because the truth has set me free.
I now “be with” the feeling of depression.
***
In my opinion, we just keep creating vasanas until our behavior is so much in line with the divine qualities that we no longer do – or we ascend. The first, I think, would lead to the second. (Only one pathway among many, I’m sure.)
Well, obviously as you can see, I’m through my depression. It didn’t stay any longer when I ceased to give it energy and just observed it. Awareness dissolves our upsets.
Recovery from our depressed feelings doesn’t have to stretch on for long periods of time. It doesn’t (usually) require a psychoanalyst to handle. I follow Contextual Therapist Bob Shaw’s lead in believing recovery can happen right now and right now.
OK. Time to get back to work. Right now.
Footnotes
(1) See for instance “OK, I Feel Upset. … Oh, Great!” in Vasanas: Preparing for Ascension by Clearing Old Issues. Vancouver: Golden Age of Gaia at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R8.pages.pdf
(2) “How to Handle Unwanted Feelings: The Upset Clearing Process,” December 29, 2018, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2018/12/29/how-to-handle-unwanted-feelings-the-upset-clearing-process-2/
(3) I’ve spoken to her since then through Linda and she told me she didn’t suffer in her passing. She was gone long before the fire broke out, she said.
Most people are not required to go through traumatic death experiences; they leave before the end.
