jan20

These past couple weeks it's almost like my mind has become a self-correcting mechanism. The key seems to be feeling. As long as I withdraw my attention from thoughts and keep it on feelings, the thoughts automatically correct themselves. Anytime something uncomfortable comes up lately, I notice it, go to the feeling, stay with it for a while without analyzing, worrying, judging or resisting, maybe release/express if something comes to the surface, and then my thoughts and perspectives are corrected - almost purified. Anger dissolves into compassion, grief into gratitude, loneliness into freedom, depression into peace, fear into trust, confusion into clarity. All on its own, just from keeping my attention on it without interfering or believing judgmental thoughts.

It seems too simple to be so effective, but it's happening. I mean, I guess I'm not just doing that. There's also the meditation, diet, reading, plenty of solitude interspersed with brief but intentional socializing, better boundaries and a general lack of toxicity or distractions in my life at the moment. I guess all of it coming together is just accelerating things.

Yesterday I did an 8 hour meditation at a temple in honor of the historical Buddha's enlightenment. I spent a good deal of it intentionally communicating with my own mind, or rather the conscious was doing so with the unconscious. Questions were asked and answers and images were returned, and I was able to draw up the parts of myself (at least some parts) that I was repressing and rejecting. And right there, I accepted and integrated them. I let go of the denial and judgment and embraced them as part of my wholeness, and even saw the natural grace in them that I hadn't been able to until that moment. And my whole perspective shifted. I felt more free to be myself. Not a better version of myself, but just more myself, as I am now. That kind of process seemed so vague and complex at one time but yesterday I was just able to ask my own mind and it answered and corrected itself so easily, probably because I wasn't resisting and creating internal conflict around what it was presenting. In a sense I was just watching the mind engage with itself and giving it full freedom to do so without splitting and confining it with conditioned judgments.

My perception of reality deepened to new dimensions as well. And just now I found myself feeling grateful for everyone in my past who hurt me, who previously felt like mistakes that I wish I hadn't gotten involved with. Now I can see that they all brought unique life experiences and activated significant processes in me - aspects of myself that were buried and dormant before I got involved with them. The relationships brought pain and hardships but my time with them ultimately made me more whole, more aware, more expressive, more alive, more bold, more free, more contented, more expansive, more human, more fully myself. Yes, I lost that for a while and closed myself off, and I'm still in a somewhat insular state of recovery. But even that was needed to force me to finally turn deeply and thoroughly inward, stop engaging with so many things that had been siphoning out my attention and energy and find what I'm finding now. So all these people who looked like demons yesterday are now looking like angels. They all helped me in the longrun.

And they didn't even do anything wrong, really. It was me who was choosing to engage with them and do things that were hurting me. I just couldn't see that at the time, and in a way it wasn't really a choice because I was blinded and compelled by my unconscious conditioning and feelings. I was compelled to engage and eventually I was compelled to disengage. In a sense, I'm responsible for all of my suffering. And in a deeper sense, no one was responsible for any of it. Responsibility and choice only come with awareness, and at the time we were each compelled by forces beyond our awareness to do things that ended up generating pain, much of it mutual. And that pain, eventually/apparently, contributed to the growth and gratitude I'm noting now. I'm reminded of Alan Watts saying that everything comes out in the wash in the end. Everything turns out to be alright.

Depending on how it feels, it just might not seem so in the moment. But even the "bad" feelings aren't bad when they're accepted. It's when they're rejected and resisted that they feel bad. The moment they're accepted they melt into the suchness of the moment - they just become part of what's happening/passing through right now. An emotion is active and calling for attention, so I'll feel it until it passes. Maybe I'll laugh, maybe I'll cry - whether it's pleasurable or painful becomes somewhat arbitrary once they're all seen as fleeting sensations, just different experiences passing through. Either way it'll eventually clarify and dissolve back into peace, contentment, gratitude, clarity and a deeper/broader perspective that was previously obscured by the feelings and accompanying thoughts.

Even a human life can be seen in this context. Here now and gone soon, whether tomorrow or several tomorrow's from now. And in all likelihood the dissolution of this experience will lead to a similar return/release of awareness to something greater that's being obscured while it's passing through.