Practicing Detachment.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
My question is basically how do I summon up a sense of grace and courage as I now face down the unpleasant aspects of myself that I had always managed to keep locked away in the underground of my awareness. Along my journey with meditation, I have tasted real beauty and felt the music of bliss vibrate inside my heart. I had come to believe at times that love would be with me always. Right now I feel naked to myself. Denial is of no use. Twisted thoughts at times pervade my awareness. Even though, at the same time, I have an undeniable sense of detachment from these things, it can still be horrifying. A bit like watching a horror film in fact, where you’re scared at what you’re seeing even though it’s not you, or even real. Fears and insecurities (some even from childhood) that I thought had been long ago dealt with inexplicably appear. Sometimes I am a frightened child looking out through these 29-year-old eyes.
For a long time I would cycle through a contented self-referral awareness to an ego control-based awareness in fairly predictable patterns, each phase ranging from several days to weeks, while the length and intensity of that contented mode would grow stronger with each cycle. However, for the past six months the frequency of this cycle has drastically accelerated. What used to be days spent inside each opposite mode of being is now only hours or minutes. Back and forth like a see-saw. It is becoming difficult to function in a practical way because of the diametrically opposed way an identical circumstance or decision is viewed through the prism of these opposite modes of being from literally one moment to the next.
I really have a sense that a period of reckoning has arrived. Almost as though my ego is mounting a last stand in its fight for total control. My only course of action thus far in dealing with this frightening/uncertain time is simply perseverance in my regular meditation practice. Maybe there is some advice you could offer me.
Answer:
This process of facing down the unpleasant aspects of one’s self is the most challenging spiritual task you will face. You are handling it perfectly. Just as you say, it is a matter of residing as much as possible in your silent witness point of view while you are transparent to all the content of your conditioned self. From the ego’s perspective, this is a terrifying process, but for your larger sense of self, you are purging yourself of false illusions, reintegrating the fragments of your soul, and reclaiming that inherent power. Don’t worry as the tempo of the process speeds up. The same principle of you accessing deeper levels of your higher self still applies. Your meditation practice will provide this automatically. Just hang in there, you’re doing great.
Love,
Deepak
