How’s this for loud? Jim Carrey, The Mask
I think the energies are forcing every last vasana (or core issue) up in us. Here’s one that’s up for me.
I have an inordinate need for quiet right now and I’m sure it’s a problem for people around me.
Anything carried to an extreme stands a good chance of being a vasana. So let me look at it from that angle.
We usually bow down before a desire to be quiet and still. That’s an indication of accomplishment, no?
But that can hide the situation where the person is off-balance, too insistent on quiet. Like there’s a reason for it that hasn’t been discovered or declared? Why do I need to be so quiet?
I suspect I’m off-balance and just covering my tracks well.
Where it becomes a problem is that I’m being guided either to look at deeper and deeper issues or else to look more broadly at things, to discern the bigger and bigger picture.
As any writer knows, that’s an impossible task if one is excessively interrupted. It’s made worse if you have a poor memory and can’t remember where you left off.
One cannot attain the depths of concentration to follow the thoughts, from wherever they come, under these circumstances.
I’m in so deep a place these days that coming up to the surface is like emerging from the depths of the ocean. I should be in a decompression chamber or a monastery!
***
I’m treating the matter as a vasana because I get off-balance with it. And, besides, processing a vasana is educational. I’m using the upset clearing process. (1)
I first name the feeling: Anger at being interrupted; a fear of loud noises.
I next ask my mind to feed back to me an image or a word that shows me the origin of this feeling.
I’m moulting. That’s the word I got. A larger form is emerging, as it is for all of us. However, the fact that I’m not doing it with grace shows a vasana is still there. Let me look again.
What traumatic event triggered this vasana?
How stupid of me? What could be more traumatic than your Father shouting at you, inches from your face, at age seven, so that your personality is blown right off you?
Yes, I prefer quiet. The more the better.
I “be with” the feelings that arise. My hands feel feeble. I’m out of breath, fatigued. I don’t have a thought in my head, not out of spiritual quietness but out of shell-shock.
That’s the consequence of the incident: I’m shell-shocked. The way I have it rigged, the more noise, the more danger to me.
I had this vasana reinforced in Toronto when a neighbor rigged some expensive speakers across the road from me. My protests only led to louder broadcasts for a whole summer. And the police would do nothing. That energized this vasana.
I allow myself to be in the experience of whatever arises.
The thought that comes, as incongruous as it sounds, is: I am dead. Moreover when I say it, a pre-arranged signal that Michael and I have for “yes” goes off. I’m utterly deadened by loud noise. After what occurred when my Dad shouted at me, (2) I may as well be dead.
I bowed my head and experienced being dead. Again, Michael’s signal of encouragement. I guess I fall completely apart in the face of someone yelling at me. Another “yes.”
I don’t fool myself that the job is done by simply recognizing where my fear and anger over loud noise and interruptions comes from. I don’t feel as if I’ve processed this completely. I’ve just recognized the dynamic and now will have to watch for it – the vasana and behavior patterns born of it.
I feel like a carpet hung over a clothesline and someone is taking a stiff broom to it. There’s a general clean-up afoot in the world and a general clean-up afoot in me.
Footnotes
(1) On processing a vasana, 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/
(2) I remained dissociated for the next fifty years.