I awoke this morning with a transient feeling of despair.
Nothing had happened. I don’t recall having had a dream.
I decided to trace the feeling back in time.
I arrived at a day when I made a mistake and my Father withdrew his love from me. I thought I was doing my Dad a favor by cleaning the lawnmower. And one of the things I cleaned out was all of that black gunk (oil) that lived inside a small tank (gas tank) fastened to the lawnmower. The lawnmower emerged sparkling clean.
My Dad fired it up and within minutes it was ablaze.
What did I do? he asked. I cleaned it! He blew a mile high at me. What do you mean,”oil”? And I took an inner photograph of that moment of despair and here I am again.
***
Except now it had no perceptible trigger. I woke up in despair for no reason that I’m aware of.
I’m going to call these “no-reason emotions.” The last thing in the world I want to do is resist them. I have a closet full of issues I could hook them up to and convince my willing self that that was the cause.
And I do arrive at triggering events, like “the lawnmower,” which become a core issue (or vasana) with each reactivation (or triggering), available for other incidents to cling to. (1) It and all others like it become my preferences, needs, requirements, the stuff of dreams, etc.
This I called my “life”?
And I marry a person who looks at life the same way and we spend our lives arguing or “planning,” as John Lennon said: Life is what goes by while we’re making plans. We endlessly plan what we’ll do together and a life lived in the moment goes out the window.
Meanwhile, what we plan never turns out to be what we’re really looking for. Well, now that I know what we’re really looking for is love, I also know that the love I’m talking about – transformative, transfigurative, 7D love – lives in my own heart. I can summon it up any time I want, on my in-breath – providing I send it out to someone or the world on my outbreath (because love must flow). (2)
Everything is different now.
But that’s the way I had it rigged up.
***
One of the things I’ve discovered along the way, when I didn’t know what love was, is that, with so many relationships that fail for one reason or another, what I really needed to find was not a complete break, but the right distance.
Increasing the distance allowed me to be back in control of my time, which for me, as a person always driven to research, was mainly what I needed. Now my exes are among my best friends.
I needed not to be criticized for what I was feeling drawn to do, which, when I’m doing it, I feel happiest. I needed to sleep when I wanted to sleep and eat when I wanted to eat. And most of all research when I wanted to research. And, now, much later, write when I want to write.
Nowadays I get that by increasing the distance, rather than killing off the relationship altogether. I could have gotten this 45 years ago when my then girlfriend said she wanted to “differentiate.” Close.
Increase the distance. Take back control of my choices. Not have to be catering to the other.
Vasanas – I prefer to call them that, linking my research to Sri Ramana’s (3) – are not (necessarily) logical. They may be but usually are not. They’re creations of our mind, born out of early traumatic experiences, and take whatever form we give to them.
But, once we re-experience what lies at the core of them and then let them be, instead of them persisting, they release their grip and become over time just another neutral memory.
Jesus points this out in “The Third Way.” (4) He said it in the New Testament: “The truth shall set you free.” I believe that statement holds true all the way back to reunion with the One.
Well, I don’t feel despair any more. A stray feeling, probably triggered me in my sleep but went unremembered. Years ago I would have acted on the feeling and attributed it to present circumstances and had a fight with my partner and get characterized as a person who flies off the handle, yada yada yada.
Now it passes after a few minutes processing and I’m back in peace.
Footnotes
(1) See Vasanas: Preparing For Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R16.pdf
(2) Archangel Michael: Love is a fluid energy. It has need to flow and so, when it does not flow, it becomes … well, as you put it, it can become dry and brittle. It has need to be given and received above, below, within, without and in every which way. (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, April 30, 2019.)
Sri Ramakrishna: Love is one of the patterns of the Mother. Love will always flow. It will never stand still. The Mother is energy, movement. In her universal aspect, she never stands still. Were she do so, the world would return to its Origin. Love is her energy and the flow of love is her movement. It supports the world; comprises it; and dissolves it in the end. (Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 116.)
(3) Sri Ramana: Only one who is free from all the latent tendencies (vasanas) is a Sage. (Sri Ramana Maharshi, Spiritual Instruction of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. Eighth Edition. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1974, Chapter 2, Question 26.)
Sri Ramana: All the age long vasanas (impressions) carry the mind outwards and turn it to external objects. All such thoughts have to be given up and the mind turned inward. (Sri Ramana Maharshi, Gems from Bhagavan. Comp. A. Devaraja Mudaliar. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1985. chapter 8.)
(4) Pamela Kribbe, “Jeshua: The Third Way,”