Dealing With The Anxiety Of Releasing Our Old Life

It is strangely quiet all around. I suppose many are ruminating, contemplating, reflecting... and that is wonderful. Now if ever is a good time to ponder our set beliefs and question our conditioning. It is also a time that brings feelings of distress to the surface. I am sure that many of us feel embarrassed about it! Shouldn't we be stepping up the ladder already and not wollop about all sorts of things that are not even any of our own business... However, Karen Bishop explains it quite eloquently. We must not meddle with other people's paths but allow them to find their own inner stability and realization. This to me is a very painful process, as I have always felt a great need to assist and guide as much as I humanly can. Now I have to step back and watch all the misery that surround me without interfering. I think that what I feel is an anxiety based in compasssion on the one hand and disappointment of having to let go of things that didn't work out on the other. It is strange that the more you let go, the harder it seems to become, because the uncertainty and emptiness becomes ever more obvious. And then the waiting... the knowledge that there is nothing one can do but wait. Meanwhile all sorts of thoughts and feelings pass by and one must be vigilant not to allow them to hook up within you so that you get more bogged down than necessary. Still things of the past suddenly show up and shake you in a way that it never did back THEN! All I can say is that increased awareness of one's own emotional life enhances the sense of vulnerability, however without the benefit of being able to see the bigger picture yet.

For a while I was getting verification that all my secret intuitions of this life were indeed signs of insight and knowledge and not haphazard. Things that I suspected but had no way of confirming are now coming true. However, now, most of the time, it's all just quiet... in an almost spooky, ominous way. Occassionally there are some new things coming in, information that is totally unexpected. Many of us are wallowing in a sea of uncertainty, where many basic things are really hard to deal with. Even staying put as Karen Bishop suggests is hard, because it enhances the feeling of waiting and the impatience that follows thereupon. I do feel very strongly that allowing things to be without the urge to control one's life with too much assertion is very important right now. This she has been suggesting as well, and I wholeheartedly agree. I feel guilty to feel anxious of all this emptiness and the need of holding back on things that I feel tempted to affect in one direction or another. But I think there is nothing else we can do at this time. I thought I knew about all this already but apparently the sense of urgency and energetic infiltration is ever more present and causing ever more inner pressure! There is not much to hold onto and this we must accept! The new cannot enter unless we stop seeking ways of releasing our anxiety instead of releasing our old life!

All I can say is... be careful what you wish for, and what you think of yourself... I hope this artwork brings some thoughts to mind. It's called "Who Will Get The Rose?" (collage on paper 2008, all rights reserved).

Who is truly pure at heart?

Questioning Automatic Beliefs

It's good to determine the semantic distinctions between words or expressions such as "judging" and "being judgmental", "having opinions" and "being opiniated", and a host of other subtle nuances. First, we need to establish whether we are talking about the same thing. I am bringing this up so as to highlight the theme of this blog. This is the fact that we take many words and expressions for granted instead of questioning them and making sure that we know exactly what we are talking about, and that we are all implying the same thing when we are talking about matters that matter... Again and again, I encounter this problem online.

One thing in particular I'd like for people to question is why exactly everybody should be treated equally? People assume it's that way, because they have been taught it's the moral way to be. However it's seldom being put into practice in the world as we know it today. It seems to me, that this belief or assumption requires a really deeper resonance in people before things can really start to change and the world become a better place for everybody. In fact automatic beliefsystems are in the way of more creative and heartfelt insights regarding the deeper truths in life.

If we feel a need to judge others, which sometimes is hard to avoid, maybe we could at least try to keep it as objective as possible and avoid going into the judging process so wholeheartedly. A judging statement is just another opinion of our mind and a product of dualist thinking (one thing is inferior to another). If only we could challenge each other gently, not so harshly that all the automatic defense-mechanisms get started. There is no point in being mean. But being passive is not a form of love either!Seeing personality (or individuality, which is perhaps a step further in the evolutionary hierarchy) as a form of beauty is helpful to me. Even though many of us believe that we are all one at a deeper level, it is not exactly what is being expressed on this level of reality. What we see here on Earth is usually the differentiation rather than the underlying Oneness, in other words the fact that each soul has developed its own individuality and has a sense of self that is completely unique. Surely this development is one of the points of evolution? The One divides into fragments that all have a personal point of view... Thus we are One but Many at the same time.

My motto has been to get away from a thinking in terms of "either-or" and instead embrace the profound and mysterious paradox of "both-and". As the Buddhist philospher Nagarjuna pointed out, even that is not an expression of the ultimate truth as he saw it, and I believe that too. But it's a step forward, an exercise for the mind. Can we perceive each other as both one with us and separate individuals?I don't think there's anything wrong with opinions, they make the world go around. But ultimately, it's maybe a question of challenging one's automatic beliefs and figuring out ways of opening the heart a bit more? Many times I have thought; "what's the bloody use"? But throughout my life I've trusted that the meaningfulness of it all will show spontaneously if I manage to open up my channels even more.

Artwork: "Why?", collage on paper by author, copyright 2008