Donn Smith
Donn Smith stated in his video that he could relieve fears in an instant. Another reader writes that he can remove beliefs in an instant. I firmly believe that we can and will speed up the process of flattening vasanas, but I have to add that neither fears nor beliefs are equivalent to vasanas.
I’ve been getting mail on this subject and finally decided to actually write a note on it.
In 1977 I had an out-of-body experience that removed forever the fear of death – instantly. I’ve written about it a few times and compared it to someone seeing the grass move outside their apartment at night. Whatever it is we fear is moving towards us and our fear grows. Then it leaves the grass and we see that it’s only Kitty and we’re instantly relieved.
Seeing your body from outside of it has that effect of removing ignorance instantly, the ignorance being that we cease to exist when we die. Once we see that which survives death, the fear of death apparently disappears instantaneously.
The same with a belief. Once we raise a belief to our awareness, we can change that belief cognitively.
But a vasana is a much deeper-seated behavioral complex than either of these. A vasana has arisen because of a traumatic incident which usually occurred at a time in our lives, our earliest years, when we were ill-equipped to interpret matters, sustain the trauma without mental and emotional damage, endure and complete the experience, etc.
A vasana is composed of memories, beliefs, decisions, reactions, all bound up in a complex that goes off automatically as a pattern whenever we see, hear, or feel something that reminds us of the original incident.
I once knew a woman who was ritualistically and sadistically raped by her parents over and over again. I watched her process the vasanas that resulted in one Enlightenment Intensive after another. She had to go through the experience repeatedly and each time was so intense. What she was going through could not be captured by the words “fear” or “belief.” They’re simply too partial to encapsulate what she was dealing with.
Moreover, in discussing my own process of clearing vasanas, I’ve been careful to state that I don’t think that all, or perhaps even most, vasanas will yield to a single running of the process. Most vasanas require repeated processing. They subside gradually.
Werner Erhard used to say that the mind was the sum total of its “records,” which for me is a synonym for “vasanas.” He wrote:
“The mind is a linear arrangement of multisensory, total records of successive moments of now. Its purpose, its design function, is survival: the survival of the being and anything which it considers itself to be.” (1)
est Trainer Angelo d’Amelio once said that:
“When I activate a record, the entire pattern gets pulled up, including posture, facial expression, vocal tone, gestures, expressions, attitudes, etc., and the entire pattern has total command value over you.” (2)
Records or vasanas are triggered by a process of association, as Trainer Ron Browning once described:
“Anything is like anything else, is like anything else, but not always. The mind will say that this horse is like the horse that nipped you, but it may not be and it may be.” (3)
The mind decides what horse is like the horse that bit you and the process of association may not be entirely logical, which is one reason why processing a record or vasana is not entirely a process based on logic. This horse with a red halter may be like the horse that bit you but that horse with a black halter may not, etc.
Records or vasanas have “command value” over us. When records play, we often relapse into an automatic and habitual round of acting out which was the same as the last time we ran it and may be the same as the next. Life has a mechanical quality when we come from our vasanas. We give up spontaneity, aliveness, and full self-expression to them.
And we balk against anything that seems liable to trigger our vasanas. After the passage of time, we become what I call “coralized” or “fossilized.” We respond with nothing but our greatly expanded vasanas, rocking in our chairs and reminiscing about the good and bad times of the past. We are simply the sum total of our memories and opinions, what Werner used to call “a guy in a diner” – you know, the one with the loud voice and strong opinions?
Vasanas, as far as I can see to date, are only removed by discovering and re-experiencing through to completion the original incident that started the creation of the thread that a vasana is. We have to see what is driving the whole performance and then we have to re-experience the incident that we refused to complete in the first place.
Well, I say “only removed” until Donn or someone else comes up with a process or a non-process that can actually eradicate the vasana itself and not simply a fear or belief that is based on it. If instantaneously, all the better.
Donn or someone else may very well come up with that process/non-process. We all of us are, it seems, tackling amazing, troublesome elements of 3D existence at this moment, buoyed up by the rising energies and inspired by the various exalted beings who’ve focussed their attention on Earth at this time of Ascension.
We will arrive at the pathways through the various situations that have perplexed us for centuries. Of that I’m sure. But, as with all things, we have to assure ourselves that we really have found a pathway through and not simply something that looks on the surface of things that it worked when it may not have done so.
Footnotes
(1) Luke Rhineheart quotes a trainer saying this in The Book of est. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976, 174. But I recollect hearing Werner himself giving this definition.
(2) est Trainer Angelo d’Amelio, est Training, Nov. 1979.
(3) est Trainer Ron Browning, est Training, Nov. 1979.