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AN EXERCISE IN CONSCIOUSNESS
I have decided that I had a wonderful childhood. I have finally processed enough of the pain to recognize the beauty of my life. Prior to this time, all I saw, all I identified with, was the pain, the horrors, and the abuse. It was who I was. It described me. It defined me. It was the reason for by being. I even said how wonderful a gift the childhood traumas were, look what I have learned from them! Where we focus our energy determines our perceptions and therefore how we experience this life. The mirror reflection of our consciousness IS our life, the events, the circumstances, even the people and our emotions. Our consciousness is continuously reminding us of how and where we are feeling separate from our Source in the playing field of the game called Life. In terms of the pain I was identifying with, the fact that it was still present in my life signified that I was resistant to releasing it and therefore I was stuck in it. It was my own personal message to myself. "Hey, Deb, you wanna' know where you're still feeling separate from Source? Check it out&ldots; who do you think you are? What do you feel inside&ldots; especially when you think of your childhood?" I discovered that my entire belief structure, particularly the beliefs about Source (God/Goddess/All That Is) were all in response to the childhood pain and an attempt to rationalize it, to make the pain ok and then to rise above it. I created a beautiful pain system that denied the pain. I even found back up for my belief structure in the inspired writings of great teachers. If only I was aware enough, enlightened enough, clear enough - then I would rise above the pain. If I read enough, did enough workshops, took enough classes&ldots; Then I could pass beyond the realm of pain, beyond duality. I finally realized that I was to experience the pain, that it really was OK. I was in judgment about pain. It was something bad, something to be rid of. Every time I talked or thought about pain it was with qualifying terms. Pain was to be avoided through spiritual growth. Sounds like judgment to me. I was in judgment against pain. Logical, right? Pain is "bad", right? Well, another mind-trap. Non-judgment means no judgment. Whatever is being experienced is to be experienced without comment, without qualifications - it just is. My mind has had plenty of comments about my experiences of the past. Those comments included judgments as to the value of the experience. Sometimes I was so busy looking at the event that I forgot to experience it! (However, I found that I would get to re-experience the emotions years later - oh boy!) I've heard it said that life is for living. Sounds pretty, but what does that mean? For me, it means that I get into the experience, notice the mind making its comments and focus on the feelings the experience produces, thereby giving myself "permission" to have those feelings and emotions I had previously been blocking in my life. This is the key&ldots; Beyond thinking, beyond the comments, beliefs, perceptions and judgments is the experience. The experience is your interactions (whoever YOU are) with the event. You become the event. We lose our sense of ego-personality self when we are completely into the experience. Think about it. Think about a time when you were so involved in something that nothing else existed. You were without qualifying comments, there was no past, no future, just you in the moment, pure being. When I discovered that I was using the perceived pain to avoid more pain I became willing to experience the pain. It wasn't nearly as awful as my mind had made it out to be. And when I had actually experienced the pain, I recognized what I had been blind, to, yet what had been there all along - the beauty. Everywhere there is beauty; we need only have eyes to see it. And we will not see it until we go through the murk and mire that binds us, the resistance to our own emotions and feelings, the response to beliefs, perceptions and judgments - most of which we bought from someone else. I saw for the first time how wonderful my childhood really was. Oh, sure, all that "awful stuff" happened, yet without the presence of the pain, it became just stuff - no judgment, no comments. Suddenly I saw all the moments when I had been happy, playful, joyous, and free. As a child I did not linger in the "awful" moments. When something horrible was happening, I was there. When something terrific was happening, like a moment of oneness with a cactus in the desert, then I was there. I wasn't thinking of the icky stuff that happened to me just hours before. As an adult, all I saw was the awful stuff. How much I forgot! I forgot the beauty and remembered only pain! That was the message to myself. "Deb, feel this pain, process it, complete the experience and you will be aware of a whole other world!" I did and it was so. Why do adults seem to need to process their childhood pain? Didn't it get "handled" in childhood? Well, that is another article for another time. For now&ldots; I feel free. I feel renewed. My heart is filled with joy. ~
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All paths lead to love.
BLESSING AND CURSING Life is a reflex of mental states. As far as you are concerned, the character that things will bear will be the character that you first impress upon them. Bless a thing and it will bless you. Curse it and it will curse you. If you put your condemnation upon anything in life, it will hit back at you and hurt you. If you bless any situation, it has no power to hurt you, and even if it is troublesome for a time it will gradually fade out. Bless your body. If there is anything wrong with a particular organ, bless that organ. Bless your home. Bless your business. Bless your associates. Turn any seeming enemies into friends by blessing them. Bless the climate. Bless the town, and the state, and the country. Bless a thing and it will bless you. |
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