I returned to my family for Easter. My point of view which I put in place when I was a young girl about not being included is always so strong when I go home. What I am realising about the point of view is that it attacks. It attacks because it wants to keep me small separate and alone from people. When I am running my story of not being included it then gives me a life where I think that everyone around me is excluding me from everything. It really feels like it is this way, especially when I go back to my family. Yet something was different with my mum this time. I felt connected to her in a way that I never have before. I saw her differently without the fog of not being included. This point of view has been so strong that it resulted in me taking myself away from my family when I was 11 and then this resulted in my brothers being sent away and I know that this is something that they have never understood or forgiven me for. The day I walked out on my family I walked out on a family closeness that I am now never likely to know.
This is the tragedy of the point of view, in that it gives a certain kind of life. I asssert that it is the point of view that gives us our individuality. Take away the point of view and we are all simply free flowing streams of consciousness. But then something happens, and wham, we make it mean something about ourselves and the world and then that becomes the filter through which we operate. We appear to be individual and separate from each other because of the activity of the point of view. Take away the point of view which in practice means to come from nothing and what there is, is joy and discovery.
I feel like I am coming out of some cocoon. For years I played it safe living in a luxury flat with everything I needed around me and reading spiritual books. I had no idea what life is really like. Now I'm totally and completely alone and it is so scary but also very exciting. To say that I'm not scared about the future would be a lie I am, but I also know that life is in essence exciting and all I have to do is what I advise everyone else is to stay steady in the face of amazing upset, seeing it all as the game it is and reminding myself that everything is whole and complete and perfect. Most of the time I am OK but then when I can't get onto the internet or something doesn't work then I allow dark thoughts to get a grip.
I realised yesterday walking along by the sea how little I give permission to myself to do. It was a huge shock to me to realise this. I make lists of things to do and then beat myself up when I haven't done any of them. How different would life be if I gave myself permission not to have to do all of them. To commit to doing them all but if I can't then to let it go. What is weird is that I have written a number of blog entries about keeping your word not being about right or wrong, good or bad and what I have been doing is strongly making myself wrong. All of this has been so hidden from my view until now. So now I am going to give myself permission to be relaxed and happy and that feels so good.
But this also shows that insights cannot come before the consciousness is ready to receive them and this is the nature of the transformational path of development. What is required is the utmost patience and trust that the process dances to its own rhythymn and not one that I might want to dance to. Before getting the insight into not giving myself permission I had been feeling so stuck. This is how the process happens for me. I have days/weeks where I feel incredibly restless, it's like there's this raging inner battle which is going on below the level of awareness. Then the result becomes visible. Me getting that I am so hard on myself may not seem like much to anyone else but it has given me a fresh sense of freedom and ease.
Some time ago I wrote about living life from boxes. I have broken out of the box I was in that limited me by me being so hard on myself. I have the freedom that comes from that liberation but the nature of human being is that we can't operate unless we are in some box, so today, tomorrow, I don't know, my consciousness will operate from another box. I will feel it and just have to be patient until the time is right for that box also to show itself. This is the nature of transformation.
I'm slightly amused as I have been replying to posts on other websites mostly on meditation and spiritual awakening and so far I have yet to see my comment in print which in itself is curious. I have no internet access at home at the moment which is so frustrating and because I am aware that I haven't written this blog for a while I am now in an internet cafe. Before I went home for Easter I was browsing the net and reading lots of stuff from self-declared enlightened people. Suddenly I got really tired and yearned for something simple. I had a thought about Eckhart Tolle who wrote The Power of Now and wondered whether he had any events coming up. I couldn't believe it when I saw that he now has a TV channel. Yet there is something about the humility of the man which never fails to move me. There is no glitz and glamour with Eckhart. It is like he is laughing at a private joke which makes life for him empty and meaningless except to speak about the mind and how the mind goes to all lengths to convince us that it is anything but empty and meaningless. I watched some of his talk and immediately felt calmed and soothed.
This for me is the real deal, to be in the presence of someone or something that can calm the turbulent mind is powerful. He had an experience which he makes a brief reference to in The Power of Now where he speaks about being caught up in a vortex of energy and losing consciousness. This reeks of authenticity and honesty to me and amidst the plethora of self-declared enlightened beings he is the only one I would make any effort to go and see. Is this me being judgemental or just being honest from my point of view as I see it, always aware that it is only just a point of view.
This course is really speeding up. I am doing my hour of shorthand each day but somehow it doesn't seem to be clicking. I am OK once I have done the outlines but then get stuck when it is a new word that doesn't sound like it is spelled. I am so used to spelling everything being a writer that to write words how they sound and not how they are spelled is alien to me.
I'm going to go now as my timer says I have 4 mins left and to lose all of this before getting it onto the site....now that would really send me over the edge....
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2 comments:
Hello Margaret
It's funny you mentioned about Eckhart Tolle in your last blog posting, because until a Week ago I had never heard of him or his book the 'The Power of Now'. Last Saturday I went to a Café & Gallery near where I live & while I was waiting there, having a pot of tea, I picked up a copy of the Guardian April 11. Inside I came across a interview about Tolle called 'The Bedsit Epiphany'. I found it very interesting & he does come across as sincere & authentic. The short quotes in the article by Tolle such as:
"Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret is to 'die before you die' - and to find that there is no death".
This is something I have felt for a long time & people like Irena Tweedie had that sense of being dead to this world about them. When I used to look into Mrs.Tweedies eyes I couldn't find a personality there. It was like looking into a space that was vacant. Mrs Tweedie did have a sense of mischief about her though, & you always felt that she was having trouble keeping a straight face.
Once I asked her if she would sign her book 'Chasm of Fire' for me which she did (I still have it) & the inscription reads 'To my dear Harry with love and affection Irina Tweedie', but she crossed out the publisher printed letters of her name in the book just above where she had written her inscription. The letters she crossed out were the 2nd 'I' & the 'A' of Irina & the 1st 'E' & the 'D' of Tweedie, making it read - Irn Tweie. I always wondered what the significance of this was, but I didn't like to ask her. I have wondered if it was her way of saying that the personality I thought of as Irena Tweedie didn't write the book. I suppose I'll never know for sure, but I think it meant something. Irena didn't do or say anything that didn't have some teaching or lesson incorporated into it. One thing she never did was take credit for any of her work or teachings & always attributed it to her Sheikh or Bhai Sahib.
Another of Tolles quotes was:
"Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems - most situations are - but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?"
This is so true & if only it was as simple to practice this as it is to read or write the words.
I also found it amusing that Eckhart lost interest in his academic studies after his transformation & spent many days sitting on park benches in London "Externally, one would have said 'this person is completely lost, a person who had thrown everything away'". I felt this myself as I described in my last comment, sitting on Clapham common etc. However, I'm not comparing myself
with Tolle. Tolle seems to have integrated his spiritual transformation & grounded it into his day to day reality. It has become who he is. Where as for me it is a memory of an experience - an experience I had in the past & separate from who I am now in this present moment.
The fact that you mentioned Eckhart Tolle in your blog & I came across an article about him totally separately is significant to me. Synchronicities like this always mean something to me & I sit up & pay attention. Life is trying to tell me something. Usually I wait until the third knock at the door before I answer. In this instance I am using this reply as my third connection to this energy & will go out & buy 'The Power of Now'.
I have an old book 'I Am That' by Nisargadata Maharaj that I have started to read again, this always puts me in the present moment. Nisargadata was a simple cigarette roller from Bombay, leading a normal worldly life when he met a guru who told him' trust me, you are the supreme being. Simply focus on the 'I am' & you will realise your true identity. Nisargadata did believe him & practiced focusing his attention on the 'I am' presence & became & fully enlightened saint in a short period of time. It's this trusting that's missing for me. I believe it. I have experienced it & yet it is this clinging on to the personality out of fear that keeps one limited. Trusting, but letting go of the personality may be the easiest thing to write or say, but doing it may be the hardest 'easy thing' to do.
I write lists & I am lucky if cross off 20 or 30% of the items I have written on it in a Week. It's easy to overlook how much you do achieve in a week just accomplishing 20 or 30%. As you said before your day starts at 5am – you are doing enough. It's possible to completely flip out if you push yourself too hard, especially being involved in this kind of spiritual work & juggling with your course. (True) Guru's (Sat-Guru's) often assess students & limit the amount of time that they let them spend in their physical presence otherwise the student can get burnt by the fire of yoga. In your case you are working without a physical teacher, therefore life is your Guru. 'Notice' everything in minute detail, including when you feel too tired, stressed or upset to do much & then take a step back for a while.
All the best for now
Harry
As always it's so great to receive a comment from Harry. I read it very quickly on Friday evening before I went to my classroom and was just so moved by its honesty and vulnerability.
I think you are a true searcher. You are not taken in by what Alice Bailey calls 'the glamour' of the path and in this you are an inspiration to me. I look on the comments you send as pointers for where to go and for that reason I love to receive them.
I have read both 'Daughter of fire' and 'I am That'. The latter is translated as Tat Vam Asi - I AM THAT I AM. For me this translates as the first I AM is universal consciousness, undifferentiated awareness, then comes THAT which is the individualised self and then finally I AM - which is us as humans with our egos and identities.
Thank you so much for your continued support for me which comes through clearly in your comments. It is interesting how you have come to discover Eckhart. As I said, for me, by virtue of what is called his 'bedsit ephiphany' he is the real deal when it comes to someone who is living life from an enlightened state of consciousness. That is all enlightenment is, an elevated consciousness that sees the familiar in a different way.
I have been lucky enough to hear Eckart Tolle in person give a talk. Afterwards I went up to him and asked him how to deal with such experiences that shatter consciousness. He said that you didn't need to spend 10 years on a park bench like he did. His simplicity and humour inspired me then and it still does whenever I come across him.
I am so pleased that once again Harry you seem to dipping a toe into the spiritual water. The spiritual path is like this, periods of incubation...where everything can seem to be dark and stagnant and suddenly there's movement. The challenge is to stay steady and committed through the dark times....and never ever give up on what's possible.
Thanks again for your loyality to me and this blog
Margaret
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