I have returned to England after what has been the best Christmas and New Year of my life. Usually I come back feeling bewildered and hurt with a view that I wasn't included by my family. When I look back now it all seems so ridiculous. What was different for me this Christmas was that I had no fear. I had no fear and there was nothing to protect. I believe that it is only when there is no fear that one can truly look at people with the eyes of compassion and see into their souls to the suffering that lies there. I was so aware of this with everyone I met. I listened to them deeply and through that listening was able to connect and relate to everyone in such a way that our house was full of visitors this Christmas.
The highlight for me has to be the acceptance by my family of the training that I am doing and which has given me the breakthroughs that I have written about. I never dreamed that my mum would be speaking about it and interested in its power to transform life for human being. I was so aware of this when I was giving an introduction. It was such a sacred space for me and without any fear present it was a powerful introduction so much so that those people who came to hear me have seeen what is possible for themselves and are thinking and talking about it. They came to tell my mum how brilliant I was! I wasn't brilliant....I am committed that no human being suffers and the training I am doing and what it is giving to me has proven to me that it can make a difference to everyone. In the past I was a bit reluctant to speak and share openly but not anymore. I can't begin to imagine what life would have been like if I wasn't able to unconceal the source of a decision I made when I was young which was giving me a life that I am sure I wouldn't consciously have chosen.
What I saw also is that a strategy decided upon to survive in life while beneficial the first time also acts as a kind of straight jacket as the person gets older. Maybe because I had my insight into how common it is to make a decision about controlling life and then the kind of life that gives that I see control being so strong in most people's lives. The need to control or be in control. When we are young this need for control can drive people to be high achievers and become very successful but the problem is that as the person gets older the control aspect doesn't get weaker and then this causes problems when it comes to trying to control others. When the strategy of needing to 'control' gets adopted and forms part of the identity there is no brake; it develops and deepens in line with the development of the child into adulthood and then old age where it really becomes a problem. The tragedy is that that which serves initially becomes a master at the end and causes so much suffering to human being.
The frustrating thing about it all is how it operates below the level of consciousness. It is only when we put ourselves in some kind of self-development training that these decisions and hence behaviours that were adopted to survive come to the consciousness and can be transformed. It took me being told that 'it was like having a five year old (interesting that, given that was where I stopped mentally and emotionally) in charge of a team' and I was asked to stand down' that I saw how deep my need to control was. It was so strong that at one point I thought that I could be mildly autistic (absolutely barking now I now) but I am trying in my clumsy way to demonstrate a process which I believe that all of us as human beings go through. I saw that my obsessive need for control to the point that I would never consider anothers point of view and I got really upset around change stemmed from a decision I made the first time the universe let me down. At that moment I decided that I had to control life and what came out of that emerged a personality whose life became about being in control of every area of life.
I am so grateful that I had the insight to see this and the act of seeing transformed it to the point that I surrender to life now in every second and every moment. As a result I am very mindful. With mindfulness, comes concentration and with concentration comes insight. The gift I got just before Christmas was the gift of no-fear. While fear is there nothing else is possible. I assert that it is human beings fundamental fear of each other which lies at the heart of why looking good and having to be right are ingrained behaviour patterns of humans. If we didn't fear each other we wouldn't be concerned with looking good or having to be right. The having to be right is a sublte form of control. To admit to not being right is to relinquish control which is to be liberated from human suffering.
I was given a beautiful book for Christmas from my friend Lotus by the Vietnamese Master Thich Nhat Hanh called Peaceful Action, Open Heart which is really beautiful. In it he speaks about looking deeply into everything. This is similar to what I write when I say look beyond the appearance to the essence and in that looking something else emerges. Sometimes I feel so frustrated that I can read all these books and there is no learning for me in them. But what I am always left with is the how....how do I teach others to access this ultimate dimension that is always and ever behind the historical dimension. In the book it says that those who can touch the ultimate dimension for a duty to go and teach but what good is words. All words leave is a frustration for me and those I would attempt to teach to. And yet the book also says 'don't be content to abide in your own peace, joy and bliss' so as I write this I am feeling just a tad stuck.
As I start this new year the two qualities that I assert are essential to live an awakened life are surrender and no-fear. It is an interesting development on my spiritual path. I have written in many blogs about the profound experience I had on a meditation retreat in Southern England in 1999 (or 1998) I honestly can't remember which started me off in earnest on this path. Before that experience it was all theory and concepts. That experience made it all so real to the point that it has now become my life's work - breaking the cycle of suffering and being living proof that the spiritual dimension to all of us as humans is just as important in fact more important than the physical, emotional, mental and intellectual dimension of us as human beings. It is the essence of all of the dimensions though it appears to look differently....
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