Look at this figure grimly trying to push down all that feels untamed within. My bible these days in case you have not already guessed is Richard Moss's book The Mandala of Being. These days I am going through a considerable amount of "darkness cleansing" and this book is helping me meet feelings in myself that I have long recoiled from.
What I mean by this is, I know, and yet still, I always forget, that my outer circumstances are not the cause of my uncomfortable, darker, more repressed feelings. My outer circumstances can only trigger what I have already, long ago, repressed within. And life is exact and timely in this darkness cleansing process.
I like the look of this jester because try as he might to be "happy", "positive" and "nice" his face belies that he cannot push down his repressed feelings any longer. They want to come into the light.
Everything must be brought up to the light, as much as we would like to pretend and wish otherwise. This is a process we rarely learn how to do.
The process itself is intensely difficult, yet rewarding...cleansing...relieving. Usually when repressed feelings come up, there begins a black despair. Nothing feels right. Everything feels horribly wrong...tainted. Usually when I get to this point, I desperately want to change my circumstances, run away, quit my job, leave my partner, burn down my home!! Ahhhh!
We want to run but we cannot hide! We feel terrible, but the darkness is benevolent. This is where the present moment comes in. We have inner thoughts, stories, beliefs ect. within that suck us into tremendous emotional suffering and these are the very hardest to stay present for.
Richard Moss, so generously writes:
"We must learn that when we are powerfully contracted, we must turn our attention fully towards the sensations of angst and despair instead of the thoughts that such dark feelings always generate.
I have learned that I must stop thinking at the feelings, which means I must stop trying to interpret or explain them. I intentionally resist letting my mind race with thoughts that invariably begin to generate stories about why I am feeling this way and what I should do.
Instead I enter into a pure relationship, a profound intimacy with this suffering, and simultaneously sink into the Now of my body as though falling into infinite space.
My attention never breaks with the bodily sensations. When my energy moves back to into my reactive mind, as it does for a while, I just renew the single pointed attention to the feeling. Suddenly whether it happens all at once or after many long hours, the darkest place becomes stillness, and even bliss.
It is as if I suddenly become transparent, so that both the terrible feeling and the self that hosted it disappear, and there is openness. I return to the beginning of myself, the Now."
So many presence teachings do not explain this process. This is what we have to present for...the hard stuff...so it can transform in the light of our attention.
I have been working with this process of attention to my darker feelings for over two years and it has tested everything in me. This kind of presence requires tremendous strength and willingness, and it must be built up gradually over time.
To give you an example, in the last while, I have been intensely struggling in myself, filled with overwhelming dark feelings, and have been feeling quite ill. Finally this past weekend, I began to turn my attention more fully to the intensity of darkness within.
It was hard not to go into my typical stories that arise, that tell me everything in my life must be changed NOW in order for me to feel better. Finally on Sunday, after mustering my fullest effort to be present within for days on end, I broke. I took our dogs for a slow walk and started to cry. I could not withstand my inner pain any longer. I have no idea why I was even crying, but as I started to sob more vociferously, I crawled up onto a flat rock and let it rip. My golden retriever climbed up next to me and kissed my face worriedly, and then she and the two other dogs sat in a semi-circle around me and held court as I moved through the feelings fully in my body.
As my tears began to subside, I slid down the rock and lay flat in the grass, in the hot sunshine. The dogs relaxed and gathered around and we reclined, present and at peace, my heart wide open....nothing needing to be different anymore.
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