The Art of Knowing Myself
I am reading an awesome book called The Unfolding Now by A. H. Almaas. Almaas discusses the “hands off!” approach to your experience. Easy to say, one of the toughest things to do. Rarely do we fully allow any experience and not tamper with it. The majority of us will inject heaps of feelings such as wanting, needing, resisting, rejecting, hurting around it. If something feels good, we crave more of it. If something doesn’t feel good we resist, judge, blame blah! This is part of mastering the art of knowing yourself.
Allow your experience. Just as it comes in all its raw form. Sit in it and feel it fully. There are many layers within it often which will jerk you around like a fairground ride but underneath is the True Nature of what is really here. Try it and don’t beat yourself up because that’s you interfering with the experience again! Arghh!
Appropriate loving action.
Simply being with your experience is ok, but appropriate action is often required due to the requirement to relate with partners, family etc.
So there you are busily interfering with your latest experience. Your beliefs, values and opinions swing you into reaction born from the stories that are forming in the mind. The ego is busy barking instructions about who is not doing things right and this/that should/ should not be happening. It’s like a fish wife! You find yourself reacting from a place of filtered stories that perhaps are so far away from your True Nature, Source, Essence (you probably have your own name for it!). Is there any wonder that there is so much relational trouble on the planet?
Mastering the art of loving action is “work in progress” and won’t ever be perfect. Get real with that right now. Know that it is perfectly normal to have “stinky” thoughts, feelings and moments in your existence as well as fantastic heart bursting ones. Eckhart Tolle in his exquisite book, The Power of Now, talks about honouring the low energy (times) in your life. Ebb and flow is all part of the inhale and exhale of the Universe. You can’t have expansion without contraction.
I am about to spend 10 days in a Vipassana meditation retreat in Herefordshire again. This extreme sport of meditation (10 hours a day!) teaches that the impermanence of life and nature requires us to get in the flow and surrender to what is. In silence you learn to sit and observe your body and mind and all the colourful ways it chooses to show you how it works. The best practise I have ever had for my artwork! Nothing to do, nothing to say, but observe.
Practising loving action is about learning when’s best to do communicate. In time of ebb, chances are our bodies will be full of unhelpful chemicals that will heighten and dramatise our responses. Not the best time to have a heart to heart about something that is really pissing you off!
