Knowing who you are is the only safety net. In that net, everything happens. Knowing that it all comes and goes in that, there is the freedom to see all the ways in which we try to protect the false sense of who we think we are. The recognition of the only real safety means that any false protection mechanisms and ways of holding on to fake safety are so painfully contrasting to the freedom and relaxation of that real safety, that they can not keep being played out forever. No amount of trying to do, or undo these mechanisms can ever really work and if it does then it is only a temporary band-aid covering the real fear of losing ‘myself’. Only in knowing the real safety of who you are, can you really trust that it is ok to let down the barriers and be as you are. In the doing, trying and practicing you can simulate, imagine or pretend to be free and still all the while feeling afraid and unsafe. While you feel unsafe and there is a belief in a real threat ‘to me’, these mechanisms are just doing their job, so there would be no reason why you should or could relax them. Recognising who you are and seeing that these mechanisms are only falsely protecting ‘me’, there is the freedom and safety to watch them crumble on their own. This crumbling of protection mechanisms can be frightening, painful or just a bit uncomfortable. But as each one is seen for the pretence/joke that it is, there is more and more lived freedom.
The whole play of recognizing, and seeing through old conditioning is all a play of physically felt life energy. Seeing that the recognizing, seeing through or buying into beliefs each is an energy that plays out physically. Notice when there is a believing in or a holding onto an old mechanism, there is a physical sense that happens with that. Before embarking on some kind of spiritual or therapeutic search you may have just felt generally unhappy, but without really realizing or noticing what was going on physically with that. On the spiritual path doing lots of therapy, healing or meditation practices we start look at what is going on inside ‘ourselves’ and notice the patterns as they appear. This can be felt to be more painful than before you became aware of the mechanisms and beliefs fueling these feelings.
In recognizing that there is no one who owns or needs these patterns to protect itself, some will fall away immediately, some will fall away after a short time and some will keep playing out for years. Usually any trying to push these patterns away does not work, but in seeing that I am not disturbed no matter how much there is a playing out as if I am disturbed, provides the freedom, acceptance and ultimate safety for these patterns to dissolve on their own and in their own time. There is no longer a sense of ‘me’ believed in for these patterns to protect.
In my own experience, I have seen that this protection energy is like a magnet and is either a repelling or an attracting energy. Both energies are closed fearful feelings and usually the thought stories that go with them are based in fear, anger, arrogance, longing, needing and grasping. Neither energy is satisfying and both stories contain its own opposite. Pulling away or being detached because this is imagined to be safer than fully diving in and potentially losing control, is also accompanied by the opposite energy of desperately longing to move out of the comfort zone and feel more alive. It often plays out as arrogance or thinking that I don’t need anything or anyone. The story could be an aloof one that says ‘I am fine and don’t need anyone or anything’ or ‘I know it all already’. But actually this is really saying ‘notice me!’, ‘I am completely lost and scared’.
Needing, grasping and chasing an object, experience or person with the belief that they will satisfy me or make me whole, is also accompanied by the opposite energy of desperately wanting to be free of this external object to the point of actually hating the object and the bind that it creates. It is an insecure story of thinking that I couldn’t possibly know or be any good. ‘I am a victim’, ‘poor me’, ‘I need someone’ all the while really saying ‘I hate that I need you and I wish to be free’.
In fact both of these energies are the same energy. Notice how when one of these energies is playing out there is often a burning physical sensation maybe in the chest or the stomach. There can be a sense of agitation felt throughout the body. See how the story could be the repelling or attracting story but the sensation is the same. We would normally call this sensation fear but the sensation of fear is not the problem. It is the belief that it really means that you could actually either repel or attract life as it is, that causes all the suffering.
This dance of push/pull comes and goes and seems to be triggered by particular life circumstances. You might blame the situation or the person but really it is all you. Really seeing this is really taking responsibility and no longer believing in these safe and childish games. This is a responsibility that is beyond any idea of ‘I should take responsibility’ but really seeing the way it actually is. Admitting that there are really never any external triggers. Anything or anyone that is believed to be external is only ever imagined. Nothing or no one can fulfill or save you and nothing or no one can protect you. Any pretending that this isn’t the case is just a very addictive dream.
Usually in a relationship (romantic or otherwise) we have our usual ways of repelling or attracting, that play out again and again. Perhaps we see them, but don’t want to see them because they are our only familiar ways of being. We believe on some level that they are safe patterns that protect us. Seeing this play and taking full responsibility for it means so much more freedom from the prison of always having to relate in this very stuck way. Sometimes it takes a situation that seems to enhance the pattern to the point that it becomes so painfully unbearable that this energy can not stay stuck like this and explodes and the pattern breaks free. The reality is that you don’t know how to interact with anyone. You don’t know if what you do or say is ok. But looking for safety in this play of circumstances and people is not where you will truly find it.
There is nothing to do but feel and experience life just the way it already is. There are no boundaries between you and the rest of life. There is no inside or outside. There is no you or me. There is no fulfillment or escape. All of this appears to happen as waves of energy in who I am – wholeness, freedom, life itself.
There is great relaxation and relief in being free of the belief that you could escape or resist life, or be saved or fulfilled by life. It is a complete surrender again and again to whatever is, just the way it is, knowing that I will never lose or gain anything from it.
Unmani
