When I became sober it was my wish to get out of the state of addiction and become clear, transparent. To be who I am and not carry along these layers of shame, guilt, pain and misunderstanding of Life. As in such, becoming sober is a part of the path I (want to) walk. I was not sure where and how it would ‘fit into’ or ‘latch onto’ anything existing in this world but I had a vision of it: I wanted to become my core what I now call Self which I had seen in an ayahuasca ceremony. I want(ed) to learn to back away from my reactionist behaviour and not let old emotions, experiences stand in the way of a beginners mind / transparency. Not let old, unprocessed stuff colour new experiences.
Up to now I had not found where in this world I could find anything which could tell me about this road or this place. Up to today. 🙂 An internet search dropped this into my lap.
Vairagya
Fundamentally, Sushumna is attribute-less, it has no quality of its own. It is like empty space. If there is empty space, you can create anything you want. Once energies enter into Sushumna, we say you attain to Vairagya. “Raga,” means color. “Vairag,” means no color, you have become transparent. If you have become transparent, if what is behind you is red, you turn red too. If what is behind you is blue, you turn blue too. If what is behind you is yellow, you turn yellow too. You are unprejudiced. Wherever you are, you become a part of that, but nothing sticks to you. Only if you are like this, only if you are in a state of Vairag, then you will dare to explore all dimensions of life when you live here.
This is what I want. Long road 🙂 but finally an entrance into this matter that I did not have to come up with by myself. And well, a long road but as I noticed in sobriety: every step is one and baby steps are good.
Reading ‘The gifts of imperfection’ now teaches me a lot. I read about 20 pages a day – which, for me is sufficient when dealing with this kind of matter which in me looks to not only change my knowledge, my feelings, my memories and ideas but also my cells, my DNA. One of the things I learned is that now is exactly the time to read it. I had to let go of an overload of shame and sense of lack of worth before I could take this in. I feel the book is bringing me peace. 🙂 A word I would have never thought to find in this blog.
During the reading of the book I relive situations which have caused me pain and shame and also in which I shamed others. I am strong enough to look at them now without loosing my right to exist or feeling a need to drink away my feelings. The disappearing of the layers of shame make room for space and clarity, I feel I can breathe better and experience my body better. This morning I lay on my balcony in the sun and after reading something which resonated deeply with me I visualised myself standing up and suddenly became aware of tension and ‘charge’ I hold in several of my chakra’s – that was awesome. I have read my Anodea Judith book on chakra’s but have rarely actually experienced them. It is nice to learn how to look and feel more clearly now the mist that shame causes starts to lift.
Another thing I found was this post on the Hawaiian art of healing. It really resonates with me.
Ho’oponopono professes that we are all connected beings and if we see something wrong, it is a part of us that has brought us to that particular event/situation. Any event in our life is brought to us through our own vibrations.
In earlier times, if one person behaved criminally then the whole family, clan and village felt they were responsible for that behaviour. HoĘ»oponopono was communicated by the village and it was addressed to the ultimate Spirit and Gaia. The heart of the mantra was – “We are responsible.”ho’oponopono mantra “We are sorry.” “Please forgive us.”
I have, from childhood onwards, looked at behaviour of people and wondered why there are so many hurt people and nobody helps them. We let children grow up in dirty slums with no place to play, no money for good food, worse, only money for poisonous fastfood and when it is ‘too late’ and the negativity of their surroundings has caught on to them we shame them, punish them and put them in jail for stealing, using drugs and other ‘criminal’ acts. I always wonder: who is the criminal here? To me it seems we have build a society where there is a definite lower class who carries the burdens of our (?) ‘success’. We do that worldwide by exploiting factory workers in Asia, Africa, we do that within countries where we allow beggars and junks to live in the nastiest circumstances, we allow that in classes, where the kid with the poor clothes and the snotty nose is the scape goat. Wealth creates a definite upper class of haves which lives on the have nots and… is ok with that. And the inbetweens keep striving and striving. The Hawaiian healing system says we, as a tribe need to take responsibility there otherwise we don’t heal. I’m thinking that is true.
I believe this concept of leaching on the weak was present in my family too. Now the curtains start to lift I truly experience how we preyed on my mother. In order to describe the relation between my mother and father I once said; ‘There are people who get cancer, and there are people whom you get cancer from.’ However harsh it sounds, looking back now, with shame lifting and being able to look at what different energy flows we had in our house I am guessing it comes very close to the truth. I am sorry mama, I am so sorry.
And… this is one side of the truth. Getting off track but mentioning it here for later reference: my mother did what my therapist calles ‘subjugation and resistance’. Not sure if he said that about her, it’s just a principle many women, people, live in: first ‘voluntarily’ subjugate to another and from there on…. fight against it! I have it too in relations to men, I feel I use as a way to keep me safe. ‘If I don’t stand up for my rights I will not be seen and not be shot down.’ (raped that is) And then in the relation suck and tease and fight because the subjugation is ‘not really my thing’. Touching on a deep fear here: I fear when I show Worthiness, when being a woman, which is pretty much a given, I will be raped. I think that was true for the environment I grew up in. Not sure though, truth has become something with many faces.
Yes, truth, truth… would come in handy. I am thinking lately that truth is relative to the world we live in and the position from which we look at things. Yeah, yeah, I know, I am 45 and I should have gotten to that point a little earlier possibly :-). I’m getting there… it is just that I don’t want to seem to let go of too many securities all at once. Truth sort of feels like a jar filled with skittles; some people only look at the orange, others only at the green ones and when speaking about their world they speak their orange and green truth. Like I used to think that all men are assholes.
And then there is this:
And then there is this, the different bodies where the use of plaster to heal a broken leg is smart in the physical body but the astral body has totally no use for it.
And then there are all the different worlds people live in, physically but also emotionally and spiritually. I wish I could map it out to understand it better. I could not find a photo to accompany it, it has to do with different planes too. I feel I do a lot of shifts through these worlds and modes and perceptions but I have no overview. It will come.
So, yes, I got of track here, funny to notice that this is another new ‘first time’ that I really start to consider editing a post to keep it more concise and understandable. I’m guessing that this thought pops up because I start to belong to myself a little more and that makes me feel like I don’t fit out and that makes me able to dare to fit in by editing. I am guessing my not editing is, next to not restricting myself in what I write, also a (sometimes not so nice) protest against the world. Yeah, the whole world of course. ;-).
I’ve lost track of where I am with this post but I need to leave so here’s a quick end:
I am happy that I quit, realising now the necessity. Also needing to do my desensitization training more because there is a power inside building up towards the 1 year anniversary which I find difficult. It’s this ‘if I can do it one year without, I might as well….. drink again.’ And it is coming at me from a whole lot of different angles currently, mainly mental things, not longing things.
I need: eh, to go on with what I do AND work on work together. Now I still have money to be able to choose.
I want: to have enough money to be able to settle in this confusing time where I am actually not confused but the world seems more confused to me. It is disturbing and I don’t know anymore where I fit in. Even though I fit into myself better and better.
I take: Ayurveda pills, really enjoying them. Ayurveda diet which currently is: no yoghurt, no banana, apples and pears only cooked (good breakfast! :-)), vegetables only cooked, cheese is ok but no or little meat. I do sometimes have chocolate but ha! I am actually looking at the quantity I am eating and considering eating less and acting upon it. No difficultly. And… no promises. I saw a photo of me yesterday with some tiny kids. I was appalled by my enormity. Need to find a healthy way to deal with that.
3 Things: 1 The gifts of imperfection book, 2 The system that ‘failure’ helps me to sort important stuff out and grow. I’m thinking if I had not worked out what is in the posts of today and the one before I would only be getting sicker and sicker. 3&4 My bravery to look at all the issues and my ability to hold my own space while doing so.
Discipline: still in the phase of doing things the whole day. Netflixing and Facebooking only in lunchtime. This morning I even started to plan some stuff while being in bed (NEW!!!) and my plan for tonight is to go to bed early and break the 1:30 am I’m doing these days. Let’s see. 🙂
Hope you have a nice day/evening. Thank you for reading and being with me on this journey. 🙂 ❤
xx, Feeling
feelingmywaybackintolife 