head stones disappear into the horizon by the millions
egoes all laid to rest
some hardened in battle
some hardened with great wealth and possessions
some hardened with abuse both given with emotion and received emotion
some hardened with great addiction and attachments
some hardened by great fear, anxiety and resistance
all tainted with the bloodstains of separation
still chained to their silenced yet aching soiled and bruised souls
yet the life blood of the ego evaporates back to the jinns who seeded the thoughts and feelings to which these beings unknowingly attached
the only hope of these lost souls is for those who may one day enter this place of lament to unfetter their chains with the wisdom and grace of loving compassion
yet so few enter the narrow opening in the rusted gate in their earthly lifetime to release these…
The bad guys in life are a whole lot different than we might think they are. Once we see them truly we illuminate the roots of our own dysfunction, thereby giving ourselves and those we held responsible for wrongdoing the space to heal. From this healed place, we are inspired to do and say exactly what each situation requires.
Think of your mind. Now think of the bad guy’s mind. Now think of all the minds on Earth. Now think about all minds across time and space. They all share one big room. They all have the same ultimate destination–Home. Home is Love, true self awareness, harmony. If you stop, take a breath, and feel deep within, you carry the memory of it with you. The memory of Home is at the root of every desire you have.
Every desire you have to exert control within your life is actually…
What I feel from what you’ve described, is that you immediately judged this sensation, as being… or named the sensation, as being an expression of the separate self; and you want to get rid of it.
That’s the problem. That’s the only problem, actually. It’s that you’ve made an enemy of the sensation, and everything you do, from then on, is going to make it worse. So you find yourself in this kind of double bind, where you want to get rid of it, but everything you do to get rid of it, just makes it worse.
Yes, it’s exactly what’s happening.
Yes. So…
It’s very simple. Befriend the sensation.
Instead of the habitual response,
“This is uncomfortable”, “This is bad”, “This needs to be got rid of”,
take the opposite approach.
Be happy that this residue of the “separate me” has been flushed out of one of its favourite hiding places, the heart area; and has been exposed.
And totally allow it, invite it, to come even closer.
Turn around.
Face it.
Instead of saying “You’re my enemy, I want to get rid of you”,
say to it: “You’ve been there, buried in my heart most of my life; I don’t even really know you. I’ve been so busy trying to get rid of you, or at least trying to suppress or avoid you, that I don’t really know what you are.”
So, totally open the door.
Let it come.
Be interested in it.
Befriend it.
Yes. Thank you. And to maybe go along a little further is… is… That’s what I’ve… I’ve been doing, and sometimes successfully…
Hang on.
Hang on.
When you say “successfully”…
[All burst in laughter]
… this little desire to get rid of it…
Yes!
… has crept in again.
Yes; I was just gonna talk about that a little more. Because as… as… as much as I consciously can, what I’m trying to say is, I try to face it, I try to do that, but it’s like there’s a part that is not in my control…
Yeah; and then you try to welcome it and befriend it, in order to get rid of it.
Yes! Exactly!
Exactly!
So and then… and… this… and…
Exactly!
You know what I am talking about, obviously, so…
[Laughter]
It’s… It’s…
So.
There’s a very simple test;
and that is, to test whether or not you’re really allowing the sensation;
or whether you’re allowing it with a secret agenda to kill it as soon as… to get rid of it.
And the test is this.
You ask yourself:
“Could I live with this sensation for the rest of my life?”
And the answer must be Yes.
The answer is No.
Perfect!
When somebody else… The same question…
Perfect.
Perfect.
Well that’s good, that you see the answer is No.
Because the question exposes your agenda with the sensation.
That’s good; you’re honest; you say,
“No, to be honest, I don’t want this sensation”.
So then, turn around and face the sensation again, and go on facing it; go on with this process of facing it, allowing it, asking yourself the question,
“Could I really… Am I totally at peace with it?”
Until you get a genuine Yes,
– and it’s not just, as you’ve discovered, it’s not just
“Oh yes, OK; now I’m going to work on this sensation; OK, I can live with it for the rest of my life.”
It’s not like that.
It takes time. There are layers.
First of all, there will be a “No, I can’t.”
And then the No will get softer.
And you keep doing it. It… it’s a process. It takes time.
And it’s good that you… It’s good that you don’t too readily say “Oh yes, I can live with this for the rest of my life.”
Because it’s… It takes some time.
There is such a habit in us… such a deeply ingrained habit in us… of rejecting, suppressing, avoiding these uncomfortable sensations… That habit is not just got rid of through understanding “Oh yes, I just have to work on my experience.”
In practice it takes time.
Go there again and again and again
and the No,
the “No, I don’t want this”,
will get thinner and thinner;
it will… it will dissolve.
Gradually.
The bad guys in life are a whole lot different than we might think they are. Once we see them truly we illuminate the roots of our own dysfunction, thereby giving ourselves and those we held responsible for wrongdoing the space to heal. From this healed place, we are inspired to do and say exactly what each situation requires.
