I’d like to illustrate here the application of the upset clearing process to a really-tough vasana (or core issue). (1)
I’m going to raise to awareness a feeling that’s difficult to experience.
It’s so strong that it’s been roasting me alive for three days now.
Constant Comment may be gone but my vasanas live!
A chance email made a chance remark and that chance remark got in. In response, I unleashed on myself a continuous flow of shame and humiliation, not really knowing what was happening.
After identifying the feeling (the first step in the upset clearing process), which was not hard, I initially tracked it back to an impromptu speech I was asked to give at my fiftieth high-school reunion. (The second step.) I had been the school president.
I tried to describe to the grads the consciousness shift we’re going through, thinking that everyone would welcome the glad news. Nope. No one wanted to hear about it. I felt ashamed and humiliated.
Seeing it caused humiliation to come up in a steady flow. I remained open to it and experienced it. (The third step.)
Then today I saw that the thread goes back much farther than the reunion and I uncovered a long string of incidents in which I felt ashamed or humiliated. All the humiliation in my life seems to be coming up right now, which fits with our knowledge of the impact of the rising energies. The energies are bringing everything up to be experienced and let go of.
I see a fellow employee at the Refugee Board who would undercut and ridicule me, the hoods in our neighborhood throwing things at our car, the three boys who played a prank on me by suddenly vamoosing simultaneously, (2) on and on the incidents go.
And I feel increasing release the more I see. If we keep in mind that the truth will set us free, then the more of the truth we see, the more should be our sense of release. If we feel more burdened, we need to turn around and go the other way. I feel more and more release.
So I keep going back in time.
All the failed relationships. Awkward partings. Broken hearts.
The fights I’ve had. The fights I’ve walked away from.
Making a bloody fool of myself. Never knowing love. Settling for keeping people happy.
Endless acts, numbers, pretence; looking good, playing the game. All the wasted years.
The images keep coming, but still the key log in the logjam eludes me.
Meanwhile, humiliation continues to come in seemingly-endless waves.
I shrivel up. I shrink and lose my confidence. How can I write?
I can only write about this.
And then gradually, the next morning, it begins to lift. It looks like this vasana isn’t going to be resolved by a realization, but by an exhausting of the experience.
Humiliation must be one of the hardest emotions to fully experience. It obliges the individual to experience their own vulnerability, fragility, fearfulness, or similar rejected and shameful states. We stand revealed in all our nakedness and failings, awkwardness and limitations.
I feel drained.
The feeling will eventually lift completely but I have to be willing to allow it to be here for that to happen, which for me means experiencing it. That’s not pleasant, I can testify, but necessary.
What I’ve been illustrating here is the application of the upset clearing process to a deeply-searing vasana.
I hope I’ve also demonstrated how, in growth work, anything that happens can be made use of – even shame and humiliation.
And I focused on the deconstruction of the constructed self that results from our decisions, which themselves flow from our vasanas, all designed – in this case – to ward off further humiliation.
Footnotes
(1) See “How to Handle Unwanted Feelings: The Upset Clearing Process,” April 25, 2011, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/04/25/how-to-handle-unwanted-feelings-the-upset-clearing-process/
Decisions are things like “I will never do this/say this/feel that again.” “I will always make sure to do this/say this/think that.”
(2) I was so hurt at the sudden disappearance of all three that I never joined a group of boys again.
