So, there’s awareness of a background against which everything bounces off – the good and the bad, the ideas, beliefs, struggle, ecstasy, magnificence, joy.
Over the last days something’s been cooking here. It’s been going on for some time now in different forms, shapes, levels and words. But it really popped out with my bike getting stolen in the middle of Covent Garden last Saturday afternoon.
It was locked to a railing while we went shopping for some twenty minutes. To begin with, I would have refused to acknowledge the reality of the situation if they wouldn’t have left the cut cables which made the fact painfully clear in the very instant of our return.
The following moments in retrospect and slow motion revealed: At first there was a shock, disbelieve that “somebody would really do this”. Then pain, heartbreak over the loss. The thought of “they might have done it for some reason” popped up. Eventually rage flashed up. At this point manipulation and control kicked in to calm the situation and avoid an irrational outburst in the middle of the street. I watched myself picking up the remains and making my way to the tube, silently and boiling on the inside. The body was shaking but numbed to what was really going on and busy with the little voice in the head feeding stuff about this all being no big deal.
Completely remote controlled I arrived at the station and stumbled into the train. The brain started replaying the situation, I felt nauseous. I couldn’t believe this was all about a bicycle! How ridiculous. Ok, it was a really fancy full-suspension super duper thing but strangely I felt pretty ok with the physical loss. So taking one step deeper and found it was emotional attachment which really hit me. My eyes filled with tears and the sickness changed into a burning in my belly.
Suddenly I had a sense that this might not be sadness but rather struggle with anger. This stroke a chord. Why anger, you may ask. Well, since this is all about honesty I need to add that after the shock had faded, memory came back and gradually I started remembering details until I realised that there was no one else to blame but my very own beautiful self for not locking the bicycle properly. As simple as that. Feeling embarrassed and in denial of anger at myself for having been so not present and frowsy when locking it (although I had an intuition earlier) was the moment of giving birth to the whole misery that followed. The more I tried pushing the anger away the more consuming it became. Missing to own the fact and looking into what made me feel so uncomfortable resulted in the diversion into oversized blame of the thieves. I felt ashamed to be seen in this irresponsible and unloving behaviour. At the same time it felt good to finally admit it. This was completely out of proportion. There was no compassion for anyone, not for myself and not for the perpetrators, no love and no caring. Boy, was I angry!
Then, all of a sudden I woke up to how deeply identified I had become with “me”, indulging in a labyrinth of self-pity stories, cause and effect, victimhood and complaint. Something shifted and suddenly I felt alive, sparkling and excited to dive deeper. After ploughing through endless painful layers I hit what felt the bottom truth. Simple fear of not being loved if I would have admitted my “failure”; the very moment I connected with this my heart opened and I realised that all that had been going on was ultimately me not loving myself. The terror stopped immediately and I felt in peace.
Boy, what had I put the universe through in those fifteen minutes!
When getting of the tube the debris and effects of inner turmoil felt almost tangible. I felt for those guys who had stolen the bike. I felt ok for them to have it as they obviously needed it more than I do. Mostly I felt shaken by what I had put out into the field.
Well, those are all very human feelings you might say, and yes on one level I agree. Yet I feel touched by the potential to move beyond the reaction of basic human survival mechanism into expansiveness. This feels tremendously exciting and – alive!
With the “tube-revelation” it seems I’ve yet come to see another layer of truth in here. Although I would say I am an honest person, this level of subtle hiding seems vast from what I can see now. Looking at how I’ve been interacting just the past couple days made me realise this over and over again. Mostly it’s a split second or subtle degree or slight convenience skipping over flashes of whatever discomfort I might experience or feel in response to someone or something else.
I am left feeling humbled and deeply grateful for this eye-opener. There’s more understanding of how everything is always affecting everything. It is about purity and transparency because it’s there anyway. I’m excited and ready to step into the whole inconvenient truth. I’m done hiding.
Over the last days something’s been cooking here. It’s been going on for some time now in different forms, shapes and words. But with my bike getting stolen in the middle of Covent Garden last Saturday afternoon it popped to another level.
To begin with, I would have refused to acknowledge the reality of the situation if they wouldn’t have left the cut cables which made the fact painfully clear in the very instant of our return. Retrospectively the following moments in slow motion revealed: At first there was a shock, disbelieve that “somebody would really do this”. Then pain, heartbreak over the loss. The thought of “they might have done it for some reason” popped up. Eventually rage flashed. At this point manipulation and control kicked in to calm the situation and avoid an irrational outburst in the middle of the street. I watched myself picking up the remains and making my way to the tube, silently and boiling on the inside. The body was shaking but numbed to what was really going on and busy with the little voice in the head feeding stuff about this all being no big deal. Read more »
August 11, 2009by Veronika in profound transformation
I want to start out here by sharing a story with you. Some years ago I was on the island of Maui and I was giving a talk and I was talking about truth and I was more specifically talking about how the truth really manifests in the context of life after awakening. And what I was saying was what would it be like if we didn’t avoid anything we knew to be true. What if we came out of hiding in all areas of our life, what if we stopped avoiding ourselves completely because that literally is the awakened life.
What is typing this sentence is an amazing, mysterious, self-organizing community of atoms (an arbitrary label, it could just as easily be labelled molecules, subatomic particles or simply energy). Somehow this collection of atoms organizes itself into possibly one of the most sophisticated, self-reflective communities of atoms existing in the universe. Somehow, this collection of countless individual atoms cooperates together in a field that continues to pattern itself in relative continuity. Miraculously, an overall sense of a separate individual awareness arises amidst this collection of atoms. It feels like there is a “me” here. This “me” experiences itself as an autonomous, volitional entity. It seems like “I” have control over what I do. Read more »
Excerpt from an email from Paul Lowe to his list today.
…it is the mind that is asking this question. When/if it gets an answer nothing useful will be accomplished. And it can be fun playing.
Chiocelessness cannot be chosen. So how do you make a choiceless choice? You can’t. The choice chooses you.
If you read about the lives of truly great and successful people, in any field, you will find there is a trend — they say that their success was not due to them — it came to them. Solutions and inspirations ‘popped through.’ Read more »
June 12, 2009by Paul Lowe in profound transformation
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