I’d like to continue with the discussion I began yesterday, which keeps unfolding for me.

It was the first time I consciously served as my own therapist and guided the listening process to a successful completion.

It also showed how many vasanas, of increasing depth, are rising to the surface – at least in me.

It showed how easy it’s getting to access the memories of the originating or original incident. Our refusal to accept and experience that incident is what holds the vasana in place.

Finally, it illustrated the truth setting me free.

This was rich diggings.

Now the next step shows up for me.

I want to take the matter further and connect two dots.

I’d like to discuss the role of muscular tension (first dot) in the increase and decrease of awareness (second dot).

For years I’ve held that increasing muscular tension results in decreasing awareness.  Or put another way : Awareness varies inversely proportional to the degree of muscular tension in the body.

I had a brilliant demonstration of it once when I was caught in a planetarium fire. My mother died in a housefire so fires are not my friend.

After discovering there was a fire in the planetarium, I went unconscious. I regained consciousness to hear the planetarium manager shouting at me to take my seat again.  I was doing the equivalent of sleepwalking out the door, so stressed was I at the sight of a fire.

The more stressed or tense we are, the less aware.

I can’t explain the biology of it. From years in growth-movement retreats and workshops, I know within myself the feeling of tension releasing with an “Aha!” And I also know the feeling of adding to our muscular tension by telling a lie. I’ve watched the process minutely.

***

The corollary is also true and is by far the more interesting.

We’ve been given a tool that unlocks and dissolves that muscular tension. It’s called the truth.  Put the truth in the place where the truth should be (and where falsehood now resides) and the muscular tension dissolves. Our awareness is literally freed.

At all levels, the truth – or Truth – sets us free.

What is the tension telling us to do? It’s telling us to be cautious here. We’re getting into our made-up story and we’d better remember what we’ve said so far. We don’t want to get mixed up or spill the beans.

It’s telling us also to watch how we present ourselves. We can’t be natural because we might let our fabrications slip out. We must be on guard.

It’s suggesting to us that we shut down the discussion as soon as possible so as to minimize the chances of a slip-up. Cut and run.

All of these matters flash themselves as defensiveness to the other person. They sense that something’s out – whether they know what it is or not – and fashion their behavior accordingly.

Whereas if we tell the truth, there’s no story to remember. There’s no need to watch how we present ourselves. We don’t have to defend anything: The truth is the truth. It is what it is.

Isn’t it interesting and doesn’t it betray the design of life that the truth in these everyday matters sets us free from the matter? So here we go, getting conditioned to the truth. And to it setting us free.

It just so happens that the entire purpose of life is to know the Truth of who we are. When we know That, God meets God. That’s what God desires. And we are reunited with the One that gave us birth.

So here we are, with training wheels on, seeing that telling the truth sets us free from the upset, releases muscular tension, and restores to us the ability to be natural. Eventually it’ll be second nature in us – no need for rules – to seek out, embrace, and follow the truth.

From one truth to another, we leapfrog. Always, the truths about ourselves are the ones that have impact – and eventually set us free.