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

Hi Anita

“seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, feeling with the heart of another.” ― Alfred Adler

Untangling…
The Heart breaking
Keeps beating
How can this be
The way of an open heart

Hi Anita

“Doing and Thinking cannot replace Being and Feeling – I need to learn to do that further. I am a beginner.”

Indeed ones doing, thinking, being, feeling ought to connected not in conflict. It is a work in progress for me as well… a beginner mind is a good place be as this isn’t so much a learning as a happening. 🙂

Jung talks of four core psychological functions: Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, and Intuition and integrating them as a task of individuation. Funny as it may be it is the story of Cinderella I ponder when I think about the integration of the four functions.

Similar to a dream interpretation each character representing an aspect of the psyche.

Father having died representing Cinderella inability to act in creating healthy boundaries and the mother becoming stepmother representing the nurturing spirit turning against the psyche. It is no wonder the Cinderella part of the psyche finds itself in ashes.

Cinderella the feeling functions disconnected from the prince the doing functions. (This is depression and when one finds themselves stuck. Something I know to well.) Being moved towards action and then “marriage”. I wonder if it isn’t also the marriage between the Eternal and Temporal… Also note that the magical or numinous moment that takes Cinderella out of the ‘house’ is not a act of will but a happening.

Today the standard take on Cinderella is to discount it saying something like Cinderella shouldn’t need a Prince to “save and take care” of her. And we wonder why things are so troubling these days. Feeling separated from doing, being separated from thinking… celebrated as independence. A reasons perhaps why stories, even those of the wisdom traditions, no longer seem able to help us. (rant for the day) 🙂

Anyway have a good weekend, hopefully the sun will be shining.

Hi Everyone

I agree Anita I think this was what Allan Watts was getting at when he said “We seldom realize that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of language’s and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society (others)“.

Unfortunately this form of communication and questing involves rumination so in that way is problematic. It has help me become more conscious of the impact and connection between verbalization, rumination and emotion.

Other thoughts that arose…

Just as the word tree is not a tree, fear, anger, as all such emotion when felt are not a word.
Begging the question is Love a emotion?

Anita wrote: “Krishnamurti: ‘To live without time is really to have this sense of great love, because love is not of time, love is not something that was or will be; to explore this and live with it is the real question.’”- And yet, people need our love right here and now.

I think that’s the point Krishnamurti is making. As we explored in other threads the ‘to live without time’ would be to experience the timeless Eternal Now in which Love is the defining attribute and unconditional. This Love is not a word or measurement and has no opposite, it is, and we are that. To explore this relationship between temporal and Eternal Love from which all arise and return is then very much the real question. Which is kind of what we have been exploring. Love as such we would love here and now. (work in progress)

I can hear Krishnamurti response to the call “that people need our love now,” – Yes Love! What’s stopping you? The man was very blunt.
(The next question the questioner usually asked was how. To which Krishnamurti would point out that in asking how you have defeated yourself as this is a doing not a how’ing. The how also implying one is looking to follow and following you never are. “In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there, and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.” – the Spinx spoke only once and said, the desert is a grain of sand and grain of sand the desert. Now let us return to silence.)

For Krishnamurti love is not something to be grasped or defined, but a state of being that emerges when we cease to cling to what is not love. Love as negation, a journey of self-discovery through the process of negation, where we examine and discard what is not love (attachment, fear, competition, violence…) in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of what love truly is. A topic for another time?

That said living in time as we do, as I do, even having glimpses of the timeless Eternal, to be loved here and now, and hear and experience the words sincerely… I understand.
Now I hear a Buddha say be aware you are choosing, that this is desire and attachment… suffering.

Alessa wrote: “We live between the past and the future. Always looking back and looking forward. I read that the emotions can spring from memories of the past. They are also stored in the unconscious mind.”

One of the reasons I like the notion of living without time. Memory being an artifact of time/past (future is a projected past memory) and the act of recalling a act of verbalization recreating the experience and with that the associated emotions.

Tangent: Something that struck me about most Creation stories is the use of language to create. In Genesis G_d creates by speaking. In the beginning was the word… ‘Let there be…’ a Creating from nothing to something that wasn’t. Adam (Humanity) made in the image of G_d is then given the task to name. Naming a type of small c creation that can only reveal what was already their (The blank canvas from which all things arise and return… a kind of chipping away at the marble to reveal the David within.) Naming often mistaken for big C Creating. (Lead us not into temptation of mistaking the map for the territory)

The thought is that because we create, construct or constructs, through language if we are to free ourselves from the suffering that comes from verbalization, we must address the issue of language to which we have the tools of meditation, contemplation… where for a moment…

I mentioned that I can’t recall a time when I wasn’t afraid. Having done the work, I can trace its origins and how this sense of fear/anxiety become embedded. Maybe in my DNA. It is a something that is. Perhaps if I enter a hermitage or some sort it might be possible…

Now in the second half of life enough time has past where I can observe past stories and notice when I’m verbalizing them which is really me trying to fix them. That however doesn’t mean I’m free of what has become a ‘embedded’ sense, at least not yet.

I sit quietly and feel without labeling I notice the place in the body, It sits between the heart and throat. I do not have to verbalize it to know that it is.

The reality is that I live in time most of the time. Perhaps there are those that can transcend time, for me I’ve had glimpses. I am as I am. I am done trying to fix myself, more verbalization’s of memory, the past in the present that never is….

Turning me off rumination 😊

Until the next time… 😊

I am after all who I am.

Hi Anita

You captured my perspective quite well and thanks for linking to past post as I’m glad I’ve been consistent as I try to come to terms with what we are now thinking of as soul anger. The sense of betrayal is definitely part of that.
I found this statement “I am talking about the kind of shaming that does not allow improvement…” difficult to hear/read. I’ve mentioned before that I feel undeserved shame is the orignal sin not disobedience, a theology that I wonder isn’t a sin itself creating the experience of shame and evil you written about.

I was writing up the following before you posted.

Contemplating on my experience of anger I recall the following experience.
My Girlfriend had ended the relationship with me and a few weeks later I was laid off. I was upset, depressed and mostly ego angry, the usual stuff one experiences when such things happen. The anger as I recall didn’t have much energy associate with it and for the most part was directed inwards. The saying that “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have” proved true. I had glimpsed a possibility of who I imagined I could be and a life that might have been but would never be. I was mourning the loss and the anger transformed general into depression. A story as old as time.

A few months latter I run into my X and saw that she had replaced me and moved on. The moment hit me like a fright train and that night I tossed and turned. I was angry, really angry with no place to direct it. I could not deny the reasons my X gave for needing to move on. Love required the relationship to end. I even had to acknowledge that my past employer had little choice in letting people go as the project we were working on ended. Still, it hurt. Life hurt

At about 2 AM it started to rain, and I got out of bed to look out the window and watch. As I watched I allowed myself to feel my anger and as I did it began to rain harder. I watched as the rain hit the ground and I wanted it to hit harder. I wanted to punish the earth. As I directed may anger into rain, the ran shower became a storm, lightning and thunder, the rain drops becoming noticeable bigger hitting the earth hard enough to bounce. Harder, harder… I became the storm, each individual drop of ran battering the earth, so satisfying… and the earth laughed…

I fell back on the bed exhausted. I don’t know how much time had gone by and can’t recall ever being so exhausted as I was in that moment. The anger spent the storm passed returning to a light drizzle of rain. The earth unharmed and amused, I fell into deep sleep.

The amount of anger turned to rage scared me. I recalled a time I almost struck my brother… when I woke in the morning I reached out to a therapist.

When I think of that night, I wonder if something hadn’t broken, or if something was healed, maybe both. The moment turned out to be a turning point as this was when I “entered the forest where there is no path” to begin my quest. What was it I really believed, was I being true to what I believed, but more importantly what’s Love got to do with it.

Hi Everyone

When I reflect back I don’t feel anger like I did when I was young – That said I don’t think I can be friends with anger… I do is have what I feel is a healthy respect for it.

“Anger has that peculiar quality of isolation; like sorrow, it cuts one off, and for the time being, at least, all relationship comes to an end…’ – Krishnamurti”-
On the other hand, could anger expressed respectfully— perhaps even with empathy— strengthen relationships instead of breaking them? I feel much of our fear of anger stems from how often it is expressed abusively, both in personal lives and on a global scale?

I’ve given this a lot of thought and can’t recall a experience where I have been able to use the energy of anger, which I picture as white or red hot, as not isolating.
You asked if I was shamed for my anger and the answer is yes and no. When I’ve been in a moment of anger were there is hot energy of anger, I’m very much reacting vice responding to the situation and in after almost always regret my actions and felt shame. What I would call deserved shame. If you’re asking if I have ever been shamed for standing up for my self (setting boundaries which others may view as a acting out of anger) yes and what I would call undeserved shame.

Seems I’m differentiating between the ‘energy of anger’ and a general notion of anger.

Alessa mentioned that anger may be a secondary emotion which matches my experience. I feel that for relationship to be strengthened by anger its when the energy of anger is dissipated and primary emotion acknowledged. My observation is that it takes time to allow the energy of anger to dissipated before the primary emotion can be felt, acknowledged and addressed. It is indeed a strong relationship with good boundaries that allow for that space vice anger transforming into resentments and isolation.

That’s the thing with anger it always transforming itself into other things. I’ve been watching a show called Family Law. The main character marriage and career unraveling seemingly due to a drinking problem. At the root of the drinking problem is anger at unresolved parental issues. This anger isn’t hot though, its subterranean. The character is complex in that her nature is loving and protective yet many of her interactions are reactions and so often cruel and vengeful only feeding the shame, fear and isolation that may be the primary emotions anger is covered up. She is in AA but has not done the work. (Actually, all the characters, even the therapist, have very little self knowledge and seem incapable of learning anything from their experiences, which keeps the show going. These characters are in serious need of shadow work as they are almost pure projection of their past pain. Unable to see their shadow they keep recreating the issues in their relationships.)

If a relationship becomes stronger after anger, was it anger that was expressed respectfully, or was anger acknowledged, and the primary emotion addressed. I think I’m getting lost in language and the difference doesn’t matter.

One of the online communities I connect with is centered on the notion of Contemplation and Action. Richard Rohr saw that Activists responding to injustice often fell into the trap of “righteous anger” becoming, if dressed up differently, that which they were against. Richard added the notion of Contemplation as a way of creating space to transform the energy of “righteous anger” to the energy of compassion. That one can be fully engaged in addressing injustice (motion, life) while centered in compassion (stillness, silence, love – the Eternal now from which all things arise and return – my interpretation). The idea of being still within motion, silent within the noise to bring us back to, and keep us in relationship.

Thoughts to ponder.

Hi Tommy

Just wanted to say I’ve appreciated reading what you had to say and style.
I’ve also wondered about the nature of compassion. To much to little… is it something that can or should be a measurement?