The Golden Scaffolding - Matt Licata

It's an act of mercy and compassion to step back and acknowledge
how much we've been through over these last couple of years.
Just to be alive as a human being on the planet right now carries
with it a certain tone of activation in the body and nervous system.

It's like there's been a continuous drip of a soul-level cortisol or
adrenaline, on the one hand, and a collapse into hopelessness/
helplessness on the other - an alternation between hyper-vigilance
and a numbing shutting down.

Each of these responses and the bodily felt arousal that accompanies
them are coherent and make sense.  In addition to our verbal
narratives and stories, there are the stories of the body and also
those of the nervous system that weave together.

Underneath it all, a deep longing to rest and to feel safe again in our
bodies, to re-tune and enter consciously into the next phase.  
Something has fallen away that we will never be able to return to,
but the exact nature of what's coming next has yet to be given.

This not-knowing where we're headed can generate that deep, even
cosmic sort of restlessness that many are experiencing.  We are in
that period of liminality and transitional space, in between the way
things used to be and the birth that is yet to come.

The temptation is to get out of the in-between and into the rebirth as
quickly as possible.  But if we bypass the reorganization prematurely,
we will not be able to receive the gold that is found only within the
core of that which is falling apart.  This is the invitation into the
rich, alchemical yellowing.

This is a difficult realm to navigate as it is not held as valid and
honorable in our conventional world.  But it is one of potential
and creativity, a doorway to experience that is not always available
in times of certainty and flow.

In the very center of the paradox and contradictory energies is the
water of life.  It is a courageous journey into that territory and one
that will surprise us.

It may grind us into dust, but it is the particles that survive that
initiation that form the golden neural and soul-scaffolding of a
new world.

Matt Licata

~

Photo from the Internet

 

"Co-Dependency" Revisited...

It was pointed out to me recently that I have slipped back into an old pattern of co-dependency.  Oh dear…  What a realization that was! As much as I don’t like psychological labels and identities, it was still worth looking at. Many of you are old enough to remember that word from the 80’s when the “in” word was “co-dependent.” :)  Some of you may have been in elementary school :) and may be asking – what is “co-dependency”?  There’s a helpful book by Melody Beattie called Co-Dependent No More, written 26 years ago.  I dug my well-worn, highlighted and underlined copy out of the basement archives.

The realization came that it has been an insidious process of falling back into the realm of unconscious behavior in the family dynamic, being drawn into the Family Shadow.  It has been a gradual slide into unawareness, and unconscious patterns and roles again - trying to affect change in a family system that is unwilling and seemingly unable to change – at least unwilling to be aware that change is needed.  I had a strong sense of responsibility that *I* needed to *do something* about this dysfunctional person, this dysfunctional family system, to once and for all get “us” to “work,” to “heal”, to at least “communicate honestly.”  I had forgotten that it is not about trying to control or change the “other” person, or their behavior, but it is always about taking responsibility for oneself…  It didn’t occurr to me that I could just let go and let it be what it is – and be okay with that.

In this insidious slide I became emotionally entangled – trying to “help”, to “rescue” – code words for control.  The more “helpless” I felt the more reactive I became, trying to control that which was totally out of my control – my family, and our dysfunctional behavior.  In the process I became chronically reactive, frustrated and angry because I couldn’t rescue or fix “them.”  I felt more entangled in the drama of their emotional needs – with phone calls that became one-sided venting sessions.   I became resentful of the emotional enmeshment, of accommodating, of feeling helpless and controlled by the dysfunctional system.  It was a feeling of being at the end of someone else’s emotional leash all the time - a big warning sign that something was amiss.  In all of this I had clearly lost a sense of awareness of the Infinite Being within, and became even more identified as the little “me” person – struggling to find resolution, grasping at straws to see which one might work.

I ask myself, how could I have become so unconscious, so lost in all of it!  Why could I not just have opened my heart and be a presence of Love?  Wouldn’t that solve everything?   I had confused “love” and “spirituality” with always being available, accommodating and “helpful” – also called enabling :) - trying to control the situation by offering unwanted advice and suggestions in my attempt to be “responsible” – ultimately to soothe my own sense of helplessness.  I allowed myself to be put in the middle, creating a triangle - feeling like a ping pong ball emotionally, not wanting to take anybody’s side, but wanting to be “supportive.”  Or so I told myself, unaware of my own dysfunction!   As Byron Katie has said in Loving What Is, I was getting into their business, focused on how they *should* be.  Her book really addresses this issue although she doesn’t call it “co-dependencey.”

I have known, conceptually, for a long time that you cannot save someone from their life experience; you cannot change someone else’s behavior, minbd-set, or view of reality.   And you can’t ever make the dysfunctional person/s happy.  But neither should you have to walk on egg shells around that person, in fear of making them mad.  Now I have to put this renewed awareness into practice and learn all over again to step back, to detach, to take myself out of the middle and let each one take responsibility for themselves and let them experience the impact of their own consequences; setting internal boundaries again, not allowing myself to get entangled in the family drama.  I think this is why it bothered me when The Fence came down between our neighbor, as it symbolized that I was still attached to a sense of self that felt vulnerable, needing protection.  It reflected an internal process that was being played out in my daily life.  “The Universe” was giving me signals that it was time to awaken, to see what was happening…  So I’ve been listening - trying to stay grounded in the Inner Being through meditation, continually coming back to what is truly Awake and Aware within me that could see beyond all this dysfunction, that was totally unaffected by all this, even as my ego-self suffered on the surface.

As has been said many times by many a “spiritual person/teacher” – there are no “spiritual by-passes.”  One must look at themselves honestly, and do the emotional work they need to do to be free.  The “spiritual path” seems to be a catalyst for raising these issues that need to be addressed so that we may be free from our psychological and emotional entanglements; free from our identification with the ego-self – the root issue.  Actually I think that is ultimately what “enlightenment” is:  Being free from the entanglements and identifications that keep us from being awake and seeing the Truth of who we really are underneath all the patterns and roles that keep us from living freely, from realizing our True Nature.

Stay tuned.  I will be writing more on this journey of awakening and unfolding - the journey of opening the True Heart…  It is time…

Photo: Reflected light on the TV screen

I Cry for Sirens...

This morning, as I was driving to my mother’s to take her to the eye doctor, I passed an ambulance speeding down the fast lane coming from the opposite direction across the medium; lights flashing, sirens blaring, horn frantically honking to get the traffic ahead of it out of the way. I immediately started to cry. I had forgotten that since childhood the sound of ambulance sirens makes me cry… It’s as if my heart leaps out of my chest, knowing that whoever is in that ambulance is in trouble and needs help. I can hear it in the sirens – of course – that’s what they’re for.

This morning I recognized this strange phenomenon as the heart of compassion. I felt the heart of compassion that actually lives here wake up again. I had never thought of it that way before. I’ve always tried to hide this little quirk of crying at sirens; to stuff those feelings, to hide the love that wants to express itself, to stop myself from crying. I thought there was something emotionally wrong with me. Or maybe that it had something to do with being hospitalized many times as a child after birth. I have rationalized that because I had been hospitalized so many times that maybe I had *heard* sirens a lot, and that’s why they made me cry.

Today I recognized the tender heart of compassion – crying *for* someone in trouble, in danger, maybe dying, or in pain and possibly suffering. It has always been here, since childhood – this little heart of compassion. It has been covered over with layers and layers of fear; not allowing myself to overtly *feel* and express the compassion that is there. I also hid it behind a mask of adulthood, and a mask of “spirituality.” That’s easy to do in some “spiritual circles,” you know – to not feel, to hide what you feel behind a mask of ideology, belief, ritual or religiosity. “Spirituality” becomes clinical, intellectual, philosophical, detached.

I learned to wear the “spiritual mask” early in life, and later in life to talk myself into lofty, wordified “spiritual” places. Please slap me if I do it again. :) I learned on “the spiritual path” that there is no “me”, and therefore no “other” because there is only Beingness. The danger of misinterpreting that is that another’s pain then somehow becomes invisible – instead of recognizing that our pain is all the same. How ironic. We separate ourselves from one another's heartache – dismissing it as just a story of a “me” that doesn’t exist - because feeling another’s pain leaves us too vulnerable, too engaged; and because we’d have to face our own – Heart that is. I know this is not true for all of us. I hid my Heart. But - the Heart remembers – and Love *sees*, hears, notices, *feels*, and *cares* - with deep compassion…

Today the rawness of an unprotected loving Heart exploded in my chest. And I remembered how that *feels*… And I rather liked it. I hope I never lose it; never stop *feeling*, whether it’s sadness, grief, or love and joy. I’m sure there will be more opportunities as Life opens this Heart more and more :) I not only cried, I smiled, because I knew it meant that the Heart that lives here is *Alive* – feeling – caring – loving…

♥

Food and Feelings "Window"

Sometimes “spirituality” can become a kind of mask that we hide behind – another persona. This has been true for me in the past – hiding my feelings. Even now I have to catch myself sometimes and ask: Am I being real here... What am I really feeling… Am I just believing convincing spiritual jargon, and spewing out all the “right” words, “spiritualizing” my way through my feelings… Or am I being authentic. There is something authentic in *allowing and expressing* feelings – the truth of life experience. Feeling the feelings allows me to be more open to others, more compassionate, more engaged, more available, more vulnerable, and less detached. Feelings open the heart.

So – with my food fetish recently I am looking into the inner window of what the feelings are behind the Food: why I indulge, why I use it as a drug, what feelings am I trying to stuff, what am I trying to suppress, to medicate, to avoid, what are the holes that I am trying to fill, what is not being satisfied, what pain am I trying to soothe… Food actually has become a practice in awareness. At this point I am still on the outer fringes of awareness, but I am aware that something is not quite whole here – something needs to be seen, felt and acknowledged… And so I’m beginning to listen, to not resist the feelings, and see what they have to offer.

My first pass at *seeing* the feelings behind the food produced this list:

Food is resistance to what is.
Food is avoidance, denial, repression, suppression, self-gratification.
Food is anger, anxiety, frustration, grief, self-denial, self-sacrifice, unmet emotion, unmet feeling, unmet life.
Food is security, and insecurity, self-doubt, and neuroses of all kinds.
Food is distraction, disappointment and dissatisfaction.
Food is numbing.
Food is false control when I feel out of control.
Food is consumed in order *not* to face things that need to be faced.
Food is a way of fighting the fear.
Food is about not being good enough.
Food covers a deep pain, a deep grief, and temporarily fills a deep hole.

When I looked into this hole of pain and grief, I recognized that it is the old wound of separation – the original wounding of mankind - that spawns all religions, the search for Truth, for wholeness, for “Oneness.” Intellectually I know this mental *idea* of separation cannot be true… But, evidently it is still *believed* somewhere in this system. There is a very *deep* sense of *feeling* separate from ‘The Beloved’ – that no amount of intellectualizing or spiritualizing can assuage. This feeling is like being torn and gutted. It is torment and an extreme longing for relief. Food evidently offers that relief – like any other addiction – physical or spiritual. In fact, the feeling of “separateness” from the ‘The Beloved’ is probably the basis of all addictions.

The feeling invites me in, to see, to come to face to face with this sense of separateness that I continue to *feel* in my *being,* despite “knowing” otherwise: That in truth, this Primordial Beingness (‘The Beloved’) is intimate with and inseparable from all life, and all life experiences. I know this and yet evidently I don’t… And the closer I get to this gaping hole, the more I want to eat!!!! There is an overwhelming compulsion to consume every time I approach…

But I am willing to at least look over the edge, to feel this feeling of separation, to befriend it, to honor it, to *see* it, to stop avoiding and resisting it, or trying to cover it over with “spirituality.” Oh yes, almost forgot – and with food. I can’t *deny* its presence. It is too visceral – too intense. To hold it and give it space is freeing… ‘The Beloved’, through awareness, embraces everything, receives every feeling, every emotion back to ItSelf with deep acceptance and deep compassion. In the embrace the sense of emotional “pain” in this body begins to relax - because it has been seen, acknowledged and welcomed home.

The seeing of this, and the embrace of it, is not the end of it, however. It’s the beginning. It’s the beginning of living authentically, living mindfully, living fully awake and aware – with feelings and food… It’s an ongoing discovery.

~*~

Window "Pain"

After my foray into the “Egoless” Forest, a couple of posts back, with its lush green foliage, it appears that there are still some dragons lurking in the shadows there. Where are those knights when you need them!? And I thought they were here to protect and defend. Ah – but it appears that the lady of the castle must face her own dragons and apparently it is time. No “spiritualizing” of this lingering shadow-self is allowed here in the Egoless forest.

It was inevitable in window sitting that these shadow orphans of the self would come out of hiding from behind the trees to be seen and heard. That’s really all they want, like the rest of us. They are the parts that have been avoided; the parts I’d rather not deal with; the ones that are still hurting, still in pain, still not seeing who they really are. Experiencing our Essential Self more deeply actually opens the window to seeing more deeply all that has been avoided – through seeking enlightenment, through using “spirituality” as a cover to hide behind. Experiencing “True Self” is not the end, it’s the beginning. And each time I experience an “awakening” into this Natural State of Being, it seems a deeper awareness opens up to these hidden aspects that want to be known.

So it appears that I’m going to be exploring these more hidden spaces during “window sitting.” It’s already started. These little gremlins keep throwing rocks at the castle window, trying to get my attention. Which is strange, because the window is open and the screens are on – but I can hear them knocking. :) So I’m getting to reflect on all the ways I am still attached to “me”, especially in relationship. The sign of attachment seems to be the level of anger, frustration and irritation that I still feel in those relationships and with life in general. There is also a noticing that there is still a need for this “me” to defend, argue, correct, to speak out against, to judge – oooo – really? Maybe I don’t want to see this! Too late! I see that I am still playing out the unconscious dramas in relationships with family and my husband. This unconscious drama is like some kind of unspoken language of emotional triggers and reactions – deep neural pathways of pain that are engrained and habitual. I won’t regale you with the details, or go into the personal stories, but having to spend inordinate amounts of time with my family over the last several months has triggered a lot of old habituated patterns and suppressed feelings.

It has been my experience that in this process of awakening, enlightenment, or however one calls it, it is discovered that there is an emotional investment in hanging on to this sense of “me” with its fears, playing prescribed roles. In some unconscious way we seem to get attached to the “me’s” way of seeing – through pain - and therefore get emotionally invested in hanging onto our pain; to *not* seeing who we really are, because it’s too threatening to the ego. We cling to this suffering “me’s” way of seeing because there is a pay-off somehow. We get to stay stuck – and complain about it. We get to avoid what we don’t want to see and hide within this phantom “me.” We get to stay identified with the “me” that we believe we are - tenaciously hanging on to our sense of me that doesn’t *want* to see who it *really* IS, and doesn’t want to give up its role – causing suffering.

So I continue window sitting, curiously pulling back the curtain and seeing through the window “pains” – the places where pain still lives – not wallowing in pain mind you, not fixated on it, but allowing the resident orphans their say and meeting them with deep compassion and presence – welcoming them Home.

~*~

I did this picture back in 1991 as part of an “Inner Child” exercise.

She is the vulnerable child, in hiding.

~*~

PS: This does not mean that all my posts from now on will be about
"pain" or the shadow self.
I will continue to write about whatever shows up at the window...

"To Infinity and Beyond"

Buzz Lightyear was a toy in a movie – you may remember. He would jump off bed posts and railings trying to transcend his “toyness,” and the bounds of earth. Being in his little bubble he felt immune to the realities of an earthbound existence. With each attempt at transcendence he would crash back to earth with a resounding thud – get up, shake himself off and then be off on another path in another attempt at transcendence.

He had an idealized image of himself as an astronaut, a space walker. And he believed he had a special mission that was beyond the confines of earthly life. He based his misguided attempts at transcending this realm on the fiction of those perceptions of himself.

I’m going to take poetic license here and add to the story: One day, on one of his launches, he suddenly found himself floating in a field of stars in outer space. It was incredibly still there, peaceful, no sound – just – nothing - but stars and the sounds of silence. He couldn’t believe it. Amazing he thought. So this is it. I’ve finally done it. I’ve transcended earth. I must be in Divine territory, he thought, finally attaining enlightenment. He had catapulted way, way out into spaciousness. But then, just as suddenly, he found himself back on the earth plane again. Grounded by gravity he became depressed. He wanted to go back to the stars. He wanted that experience again. It seemed his “transcendent experience” hadn’t changed the fact that he was a toy.

Many years ago I used to have the words “To Infinity and Beyond” as a computer screen saver – moving back and forth, up and down across the screen with stars in the background – to remind me why I was really here: to transcend my humanness – or so I thought. My search for ways to transcend into Infinity was serious business for me. I wore a mask, a bubble face-shield of “spirituality” – hiding behind and within its comforting certainties. But like Buzz Lightyear I kept falling off railings and bedposts every time I tried to transcend the ego in order to “become enlightened.”

Buzz had to accept that he was a toy. He had to accept himself completely as he was – the whole package. He had to quit trying to transcend, and then he could “fly,” with the help of a rocket on his back and his friend Woody of course, another toy who knew he was a toy and was okay with that.

At one time I believed that if I could just transcend my self, my ego, step into the Light and ride with the stars, that my ego-self would go away – that I could spiritually bypass the anxiety, the anger, the depression – the shadow self; that it would all dissolve if I could just “get there” – where ever “there” was. And I did believe there was a “there” to get to, instead of a right here, right now space to be in. (see The Lure of Enlightenment)

I had to learn to embrace my humanness, and my life experience. I had to accept my-*self* as I was, in each moment. I had to let go of trying to transcend it and just Be. Like the mind, like the heart, like breathing, it all has a function. Everything is in service to Being/Consciousness. The sages say as you become more rooted and grounded in Being, the ego becomes more transparent, allowing Beingness to shine through – but it doesn’t “go away.” They say that as you transition into and identify with the Consciousness of Being, rather than identify with the face plate, the ego is then seen through as being just that: a mask, a persona, a wave of the greater Ocean, a radar device of Being. It no longer is seen as a separate entity to overcome or get rid of. *Everything* is seen as one Consciousness – One Life living *as* the many. You just are as you are. You just Be.

I lose perspective on occasion. I start believing in a separate self again that has to “get” something or somewhere. When that happens I find myself thinking of the lyrics from R Kelly’s song and think of my buddy Buzz:

“I believe I can fly, I believe I can touch the sky, I think about it every night and day, spread my wings and fly away…” sigh…

When I get caught in the dream again I have to come back to Earth, to *seeing* the truth of Reality, and put Buzz back on the shelf...

Heart Smiles, MeANderi
http://www.ASerenitySanctuary.com/