Friday 26 October 2007

Tiredness as a form of resistance.....

Today I was so tired at work. I know that tiredness is a form of resistance. I was tired because I wasn't being inspired. After I finish the seminar evenings I should be tired because I will have been up from very early in the morning but I'm not. Leaving work I am tired but then I get into the environment of possibility and making things happen in the world and I get so enthusiastic and inspired.

I had a phone call from one of the people in my group. When he asked me how I was. I was flippant and said that I was fine. Then he said 'what's really going on for you'. When he said this I could feel panic within me as my mind scrabbled for a kind of non-commital answer. He then said 'I get the feeling that for you your mind dominates over your heart'. I thought this was so interesting He then said 'for me it is my heart that dominates and then you have power, there is no power when the mind dominates over the heart'. This is so true. Wisdom without compassion is sterile and compassion without wisdom is to be a fool. When he said this I wondered if it is because I live so much in my head and not in my emotions or feelings that all of my insights happen in my head and don't translate into being powerful out there in the world.

I have written before about the lines of development of the human, the physical, emotional, intellectual, social and spiritual. I have always viewed the emotional and spiritual to be opposite to each other. To be spiritual one has to have control over emotion. But does control mean total suppression. In the past I thought it did, now I'm not so sure. It is this working to control my emotions that I have done for much of my life which may have caused the disconnect between my head and my heart. When it comes to theory and understanding there is no-one to really beat me (said with a certain amount of arrogance, not to be taken seriously!) but when it comes to identifying what the emotions are that are driving me, I'm sure my teenage nieces are more self-aware when it comes to emotions than me.

After the phone-call I just sat on my sofa thinking 'wow'. To be shown an insight like that, for me to think about and if it serves me to take on and if not let go is powerful teaching that came to me from the universe via another. It will be interesting to see if my assisting agreement tomorrow is different as a result of this insight. If I will be able to connect with anothers heart first by establishing where they are right at this moment and then moving into their heads and hearing about their ideas about what they want to create for the future.

I was thinking again about the difference between the ego and soul and how to have one is not to have the other and wondering why they are so separate. In my re-reading of the Course in Miracles I came across this sentence which made it clearer for me 'nothing can reach spirit from the ego, and nothing can reach the ego from spirit (I also think it applies to soul which is one step below spirit. Soul is consciousness, Spirit is awareness) Spirit can neither strengthen the ego nor reduce the conflict within it. The ego is a contradiction. Your self and God's self are in opposition. They are opposed in source, in direction and outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because spirit cannot perceive and ego cannot know.

I have emboldened those last few words because for me they identify the root of what Buddhists call Maya - the world of illusion. The ego is man-made, it arose when consciousness shifted from the animal to the human kingdom. Animals don't have an ego in terms of deciding what they want. Animals operate on instinct not ego. Ego or self-determination entered in at the shift from the third to the fourth kingdom - animal to human. Because it is of our making, it is not real but we act as though it is and will do anything to defend our belief in its realness.

It is the ego that sees things as different and separate and in so doing is in direct conflict with spirit. The nature of spirit is that it cannot see difference. The split mind which yoga and other spiritual practices aim to heal is to realise that the ego is man-made and give it up so that it can re-unite with spirit. It is from spirit that it originally came. This is why when we can see through the stories we have created about things that have happened as just stories and not facts, that we can give them up. It is that 'giving up' because of correct seeing for the first time that re-unites ego and spirit. Or more correctly where ego transcends to spirit. It merges with spirit because it was never truly separate. It is only the energy that was invested in believing it to be separate that maintained its existence. Free up that trapped energy and the separation disappears....

It's going to be a long day tomorrow. My washing machine has packed up so I have to juggle it so that the washing machine has been fixed and I'm in time for my agreement. To be honest I am feeling apprehensive about meeting the woman who was so keen that I take responsibility for the breakdown that happened last Saturday. As I write this I can feel the flutter in my stomach which I recognise as the uncertainty of not knowing what to do when I'm dragged so deeply into the adult world....

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