Practise

Who could imagine that life would be sometimes so cruel and at others so sublime? Who could even begin to imagine the trials and tribulations each of us goes through in the course of one lifetime? There are highs and lows, the ebb and flow of good times and bad. Our hearts full, hearts broken, eyes open, eyes closed shut tight not wanting to see how things are. We try to prolong the peaks at all costs and attempt any and all forms of escapism rather than face feeling a low point. We are caught up in a constant activity of either pushing away what is or clinging to it desperately.

And it seems we humans have unhelpful emotions built in, jealousy, unworthiness, anger, rejection, arrogance, and pride. We display all manner of emotions along the spectrum from superiority to inferiority, both of which are a strong defence to hold ourselves away from being touched. These defences rise like monsters from their lair any time life shows any sign of resembling our past trauma. Most of us are in a permanent state of near trauma, where it can take the tiniest incident, tone of voice, facial expression to trigger us into full blown trauma, barriers up, guns blazing. 

Those defences are not so much sleepy creatures lying in their lair, but hyper vigilant, super trained SAS, ninja monsters. So much as breathe the wrong way and they are up, wrapping us in familiar survival blankets of superior ambivalence or a snuggly little inferiority complex. Comfy and cosy though we now feel, nothing is getting in any more, and although hiding behind a victim mentality may seem more harmless than the egomaniac defence, both absolve us of any responsibility and prevent us from seeing what is real. Both versions are abusive, to ourselves and to others. 

These defences are the mind's way of neutralising things we don't want, metaphorical killers; they will either kill the people around us through coldness, aloofness, hatred, ambivalence and arrogance,  denying their existence or value, leaving us untouched by other people, or they will kill you through self-loathing and feelings of how pathetic you are, how unworthy. Making you feel so utterly hopeless that you doubt your right to exist, to the point that you wonder whether you do actually exist outside of your own psychology. So either way you end up wiping out yourself or the other, which essentially leaves you alone and lonely.

Who could have imagined that we could twist ourselves so far from our natural state?  How is it possible that we believe the stories we tell ourselves and cease to remember that our hearts are always free and open? This fall from grace pains me and you also I’m guessing. Why is it so easy to stop knowing ourselves as the love and the freedom that we are. We become dependent on others to give us a sense of identity, wellbeing, security and belonging. 

There is another way though but it requires practise, as much practise as we have put into honing our defences, sharpening our vigilance all of these years. If it has taken us twenty, thirty or forty years to perfect our guarded sense of invincibility then it may take a little while to nurture a quiet knowing from the inside out, a vulnerability that is not weak but allows our hearts to be permeable, touched by life and touching life. Feeling the pain and the joy without resisting or clinging. 

Allowing the moment to be what it is, exactly as it is, not separate from us but as part of us. This moment as what we are, connected, inseparable from reality. We are reality, we are life living itself, we are love loving itself, and we are freedom. I know this as a possibility and I know it to be entirely the truth but it doesn’t mean I don’t get completely drawn in to believing in the drama of my emotional world, my trauma stories too. 

Well, I say completely, but maybe that is not the whole truth, maybe there is a little more space now between the delusion and the drama. Maybe I come back to myself quicker than ever before, back to the wisdom of my heart, maybe there is a little less confidence in the illusion now and slightly if not much more faith in reality. I hope with practise that I will come to place my entire trust in reality and give up all projections, but I am human and it seems this takes time and more than a little patience and compassion.

So I will say that this is a work in progress. I try not to reprimand my monsters too much but to understand the root of their insecurity, after all they really did do a very good job at ensuring my survival. They are somewhat like tired old bodyguards who really should retire now. I attempt to not take my anger and self-loathing too seriously and I hope that I can start to recognise when I am midway through a killing spree. Life is strange, but it’s not for long and I really would like to actually fully arrive in it before it’s my time to check out again. On that note, I wish you a life full of love and wonder, peace and freedom, which I know is your birthright, because it is who you really are.......