Hi Anita – everyone

That was nicely summarized.

Last night I watched a BBC interview of Ken Burns who creates documentaries about history. History and storytelling were obviously his passion. I watched as he connected with the interviewer and audience. His spoke in a slow calm manor, his breath even. He talked about his passion for history and its power to break a heart open.

At the end of the interview both Ken, the interviewer and I had tears welling in the corner of our eyes. It seemed to me Ken Burns was speaking from his Truth, a still point of compassion that his passion for History had opened in him. I find that I’m seeing this light more often as I learn to look.

“Some people, like myself, rely on analysis as a way to process emotions”

That has been my method for most of my life and have come to the conclusion that emotions are to be felt in the moment and the situation from which they arose analyzed. The emotion information to the happening. In hindsight when I analyze emotion as a way to process them I was really questioning if I had a right to feel what I felt. Questioning if the emotions were real and if they weren’t was what happened? A process that creates the secondary emotions. The thoughts of the emotions creating emotions. Feeling bad about feeling bad. Then if after all that I had a realization to a deeper Truth I failed to live it as my truth.

If both the experience and thoughts can produce emotion responses how do we know if were processing the emotion of the experience or the emotions arising from the thoughts of the experience?. Is this a way for the ego to avoid and pretend it is controlling life?

The wisdom traditions suggest that analyzing of emotion is like a attempt to grasp air with your hands.
“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky” – Thich Nhat Hanh

I feel that to be a Truth

HI Anita
I suspect we have fallen into a trap of language 🙂

You noted that stillness before analysis is preferable to using analysis as a means to stillness. That makes sense—yet, for me, understanding often brings stillness. Perhaps this is why I struggle with your ability to be still and let things happen naturally.

You over estimate my ability – the space of stillness – what is the space between the arising breath and it return?
My notion of stillness is based on the Centering prayer. Really its about taking a breath, creating space before and when analyses has ‘gone off the rails’.

You likened transcendence to dance, where leading and following merge—implying that the sequence doesn’t matter, only the experience itself. Perhaps that’s why I only feel comfortable in free-style dance, where I neither lead nor follow another person.

Dance as a metaphor even free style is a lead follow, follow lead. Mind, body, spirit, music… which is the lead which is the follow? Its all connected. Dance is an excellent practice for working on the self and my experience is that most studios are a safe place to do so. It’s an oddity but dance attracts introverts and with similar fears you note.

Yet, my trauma is still heavy, even after all these years. I can carry it better because I am stronger, but I don’t want to view it as weightless. That would feel dismissive of its reality, almost like a form of denial.

I can relate to that experience.
For me it was similar to a feeling that forgiveness was saying what happened was ok and I might question if this a holding on was to punish ourselves, the ones who hurt us, to not forget? Dealing with unhealthy boundaries, but not healing?

Looking forward to the Eternal where there is no trauma feels—dare I say—similar to the idea of Heaven.

The word Heaven has a lot of baggage. For most it suggests a place, something to achieve at the end of life and ‘look forward to’ a something that exists ‘up’ there… vice an inner experience available in the Now. “the kingdom of ‘heaven’ is within you”

Try holding the metaphor/word Eternal more lightly. Not a something to grasp and hold. A space without measurement. (notice when you without measuring though fade, and as thoughts fade so do emotions.) For me, the metaphor ‘Eternal’ is a contemplation, a breath.

When you think of the present moment do you imagine a space of time between this point and that point? Try imaging the present now as not as a measurement but all points. A Circle without circumference. The Circle from which all things arise and return.

Our suffering exists in our bones, our muscles, our neurons….

Maybe where born with it? The wisdom traditions point to our thoughts/mind as the source of suffering. Krishnamurti suggests that when we experience a emotion and feel it and leave it at that. Only we don’t, we attach thoughts: words, measurements, expectations, analyses… and suffer. (we may even enjoy this suffering in some way). This may be where the notion of awareness comes in, to understand this prosses with out judgment/measurement.

I do believe in the Eternal, but I question whether it is about Love.

The word love has a lot of baggage. In the realm of measurement the word love has come to mean little and everything. What we call love entangled with pleasure, possession, measurement… I doubt is love at all.

And strangely, as I am now thinking of befriending fear and shame, I have no desire to analyze them further.

What happened in that moment? What happened to that moment? What if you lived what you realized?

Hi Anita
Thanks for the response. I feel a need to clarify – A need probably linked to some past trauma. At least I’m aware. I know its not necessary but I do enjoy analyses 🙂 kind of masochistic.

You acknowledge that despite changing the order of his practices—meditation, contemplation, prayer, dance, art— you were still engaging in method-based healing, rather than allowing life to unfold naturally. You contrast two approaches:

The intent wasn’t to contrast two approaches but a unification of a change in order – even though I fall into old habits and temptations. Silence/stillness before analyses vice trying to use analyses as away to stillness.

If I fully embrace my emotions without resistance, I can stop being defined by my suffering, allowing transcendence into peace. In essence, acceptance clears the path for transcendence, while rejection creates internal barriers. I wonder if your transcendence, Peter, is involved with fully embracing your emotions with no resistance?

I am uncomfortable with the wording of ‘your transcendence’. That has a progressive feel, or something set as a goal to be achieved. I need to hold the word lightly…. My sense is that transcendence is a happening vice a doing or willing or achieving.
I’m not sure it matters what comes first, in dance the Lead is follow and follow lead. Does it matter?

You acknowledge that you still fall into analysis, then remember, then forgets again—implying transcendence isn’t a permanent state.

Transcendence as a state implies a something that can be possessed. I would say transcendence transcends the realm of time, measurement, and language and leave it at that.

you see the Eternal as offering immediate relief from suffering—not because trauma doesn’t exist, but because in the Eternal, trauma no longer holds weight or control over the self. Identifying too much with suffering keeps it alive, whereas stepping into an awareness beyond time allows suffering to dissolve naturally. — rather than processing suffering as something to be worked through, you view detachment from the entire concept of suffering as a way to transcend it.

In stillness and silence there is nothing to cling to so yes, no suffering. Perhaps the experience happens at the moment of freefall, weightlessness when the arising transitions to the return and return to the arising of a breath?

To clarify I’m not attempting to address the trauma in the ‘Eternal’ realm that can only be addressed in the temporal. The experience of the Eternal, of being Love, and the composition that arises… provides a kind of foundation to examine the trauma. The memory of the trauma viewed through the memory of the experience of the “weightlessness”

You suggest that this realization shifted how you engage with past memories—seeing them as just past, rather than something that needs direct fixing.

Not found of the word ‘just’ but yes, the realization has shifted how I engage with the life – Life being motion, time, measurement, duality…. Life a playground that calls out to be felt and known.

I have not been particularly good at communicating. I am not dismissing the past or viewing it as only. I am not pretending not to feel what I feel. The notion of fixing has been problematic for me. I don’t always get to healing, but dealing, hopefully with healthy boundaries, is a step forward. Its not a permanent temporal state… question to self – is that what I’ve been trying to do, find a permeant state? – that won’t work life is motion

The habit of analyses is difficult to break but I’m “going to put down the bag of chips now”. Progress! I don’t see a need to identify with that habit, it just is, and enough to be aware.

Is it that I was stuck analyzing shame and fear in efforts to chase them away via understanding that kept them hanging on tight, while trying to understand them with an attitude of befriending them would have made all the difference? In other words, it’s not the analysis itself that kept them strong within me, but my efforts to divorce myself from them through analysis that kept them powerful within me?

I have know that game! With the same results.

As I have gotten older sadly it now only takes few chips to make me feel sick and with that the interval between craving for chips decreases. At the grocery store when I pick up a bag the memory of a future sick feeling arises, and most time I put the bag down. 🙂

LOL I see I used the word sadly. I so liked my salty snacks, I miss them, but they don’t like me.

Going over what I wrote I see that I fell into the trap of talking to much about method as a path. Method fascinates me but too distraction. Put another way I fell into my temptation.

I ought to have just pointed to the TAO – “Tao: The Pathless Path” “pathless” as it is not about fixed rules…. Rather, its a state of being of the natural flow of life.

Reading over what I wrote I noticed I was still engaging in the same methods just a different order. Mediation, contemplation, prayer, yoga, dance, art… then addressing any specific past happening/trauma, feeling the feelings…. Vice allowing a memory of an trauma to take my attention, working to address it, usually mind trying to understand mind, and then trying to find a balanced state of being.
(I still fall into the trap of the latter, then I remember, then I forget… Analyses is like continuing to eat chips when you know you have enough and that continuing will leave you feeling sick yet you still don’t stop, and you end up feeling sick.)

Also noticed I might have answered the questions with a simple meditation/contemplation.

Movement is time, stillness eternity.
Movement creates life, Stillness Love,
To be still Yet still moving – That is everything!
– after Do Hyun Choe

Sitting in that meditation and contemplation has changed how I engaged with past memory (all memory is past).
Its not my intention to ‘sell’ that experience as ‘The’ or even ‘A’ Way to do things.

Hi Anita

In 2016 I would say I headed out into the woods gathering information, words in a hope to understand and understand arrive as some imagined something. Information isn’t knowing and not surprisingly I got got stuck. In hind sight I would say I was dealing but not healing. The two years ago I asked a different question. What if I actually believed in the things I learned were Truths?

I am going to attempt to answer your other questions but not knowing what the answers are this may be a mess.

Here’s my question: Does detachment need to be preceded by acknowledgment and emotional integration, or do you see transcendence as an immediate path forward?

This surprises me but Yes I see Transcendence as a immediate path forward. I’ve had glimpses… to be addresed in part two. Yes their will be apart two.

Krishnamurti questioned whether detachment is truly the opposite of attachment, suggesting that if one pursues detachment as a goal, it can become another form of attachment, creating conflict and striving.

That matches my experience of detachment as a goal. Removing the notion of ‘goal’ detachment changes from something one does or seeks but a way of being, an awareness of allowing? Such a detachment is not a denial of trauma, emotions, or the investigation into such things but to paraphrase Millo no longer identifing with it anymore.

Does that mean suffering doesn’t warrant full emotional acknowledgment before moving on? Now I hear Krishnamurti asking what acknowledgment means. If acknowledgment means holding on to what we discovered, then we have just created a different version of what we will suffer from. If acknowledgment means flow and no longer identifying with the trauma then I think we get closer. We still suffer as life in ‘time’ (measurement) – in maya – is suffering but what has changed is a possibility of flow.

Is full emotional acknowledgment a path to healing – Yes
Has it worked for me, no.
Have I observed it working for others not really. But I have a bias

From my earliest memories I have been taught that to get to Love I must do the work and follow the rules, (rules that included full emotional acknowledgement) and then just maybe I would deserve to be Loved.

The experience of maya is real and more imminent grabbing our attention while the experience of the Eternal is real but still…
Neither path cancers the other. My experience is that the realm of maya is more likely to separate us from the experience of stillness and Eternal. While the experience of the Eternal immediately addresses maya.

A note on Love from Krishnamurti
“When the mind is no longer projecting itself, pursuing its particular sensations, demands, urges, hidden fears, seeking self-fulfilment, held in bondage to belief – only then is there a possibility of love.
So, we must be concerned, not with love, which comes into being spontaneously, without our particularly seeking it, we must be concerned with the things that are hindering love, with the things of the mind which project themselves and create a barrier.

My doing the work had only created different barriers. The wisdom traditions all suggest a work that is no work. What if I lived what I said I belived

Perhaps a better question. When does the seeker get to be one who found?

Hi Anita

I’m curious if you feel I’m suggesting that our betrayals aren’t real or that any literal separation of relationship needs to be justified? I am attempting to step past the notion of temporal relationship that we tend to project outwards…

We talked of the problem of rumination. That each retelling of our stories is an act of reliving them often reenforcing the illusion that the past happening is happening now vice the reality that its the memories/labels/measurements that are happing now. To the body there is no difference between the happening and the memory of a happening. The danger is that we become attached to our story telling and its this attachment to that creates the illusion of distance from our natural self and so we suffer.

My feeling is that everyone has been betrayed at some point in thier lives, probably multiple times, and oddly a something that connects us. I suspect betrayal is at the root of the divide and is very real. Just as even though the sun nether rises or sets the experience of it rising and setting is real, real enough that we measure our experienced by it. Awareness reveling that it is in the latter that we suffer as it separates us from the former. Stepping past a notion of ‘temporal relationship’ the “issue” moves from betrayal to the separation from Self.

Early life betrayal is real and as we have explored, we tend to entangle ourselves and measure our experiences by it. Anthony de Mello suggests the task is to get back to The Reality where “Happiness is our natural state” – where the sun neither rises or sets but Is and We Are, we must drop something. My thought is that we drop language, and or hold it more lightly and in this way reduce the space/illusion of separation from our “natural state”.

Aside: religion often unintentionally teaches that we must work and follow commandments and in that way become compassionate and loving. When the reality is that compassion is a natural arising and that from the natural arising such commandments aren’t required. Do you see what I’m pointing at? That the question of our betrayals being real or not may be second half of life distraction. We don’t’ need to fix our betrayals to get back to our “natural selves”. Awakening to the realty that we are already and always Are… the question of betrayal and justifications fades. Compassion and interconnectedness naturally arises. It really does!

I’ve mentioned before the notion that the reality of each breathe being a “birth, betrayal, death and resurrection”. Birth a state of innocence betrayed, the betrayal, very real creating the illusion of separation from ‘Self’ and the suffering that results, death a process of detachment (not indifference) removes the illusion of separation, resulting in resurrection the return to what Is as It Is, as We Are. A rebirth of innocence…

”The word innocent is often used to mean a person of no knowing, or a simpleton. But the roots of the word mean to be free of injury or hurt. In Spanish, the word innocent is understood to mean a person who tries not to harm another, but who also is able to heal any injury or harm to herself.” – “Innocence is knowing everything (life as it Is) and still being attracted to the good.” ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Sound familure?) 🙂

Happened upon Anthony de Mello today as I was pondering the notion of separation. the problem of man’s assumed separation from nature in relation to the notion of the separation of observer from the observed, the thinker from the thought… how this false sense of separation may be the source of illusion, maya, of suffering?

“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. … That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.”
― Anthony de Mello

“People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.

“Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don’t have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don’t you experience it? Because you’ve got to drop something. You’ve got to drop illusions. You don’t have to add anything in order to be happy; you’ve got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!”
― Anthony de Mello