At times I feel like I'm living on the other side of the veil. Certainly on the side opposite city life though that's a known. I'm speaking of the veil between worlds. The veil between the dimension we know and those we don't. The veil that mystics and meditators speak of reaching. Having spent time with meditation and mysticism, I can say I have often found this idea illusory at best. I have felt bewildered when trying to grasp the reality that there is a life to be lived just a quantum leap away. (In the quantum world, the world of particles and sub-particles that create the world we see, the nucleus of an atom will blink in and out of existence many times (maybe 1000's) per second. It's happening now. Take a moment to feel that in your body: that each nucleus of each atom that build the molecules that make the trillions of cells you know as your 'body', are blinking in and out of existence. Where is the physical matter when it has blinked out of sight? The best guess of physicists is that it moves into another dimension, one perhaps parallel to our own.
Have you ever seen a black and white image that is one picture when you focus on the white and another when you focus on the black? What if our physical reality was similar and we could choose to focus on the parts of ourselves that seem to have 'disappeared?' Is this making any sense? What if we could choose to focus on the parts of us that are infinite rather than limited? What if we could choose everything about our experience? According to Jan Frazier, we can. In her book, When Fear Falls Away: The Story of a Sudden Awakening, she writes that we have always had the choice. In the grips of fear triggered while waiting to receive the results of a mammogram, Ms. Frazier asked spirit for release from fear. Little did she know that the answer to her prayer would result in all of her fear leaving for good. From the absence of fear she realized that fear, anxiety, worry, anger, etc. are choices we make. Think about that for a second...or better yet, try it out: feel fear, feel the worry or anxiety you carry and then decide not to feel it. What happened?
I tried this today and I can report that it works. What I noticed is rather than choosing to feel happy or peaceful, I chose not to feel the anxiety. The difference is that when I have tried to choose peace or joy (which I have done on countless occasions), I only felt the lack of those feelings more intensely. When I tried simply choosing not to be anxious, the space created in anxiety's absence was already peace. Huh, I just realized this is an example of how we are already peace. I didn't have to 'become' peace, I only had to not be my anxiety and in that space, peace was already there. Wow. Seems so obvious now but I guess that's the nature of 'a-ha' moments! Perhaps the difference is that when choosing not to feel, we are acknowledging exactly how we are feeling and when we try to choose or create a reality other than the one of the moment, we are focused on what we aren't feeling. A subtle yet important distinction. Jan Frazier writes:
I tried this today and I can report that it works. What I noticed is rather than choosing to feel happy or peaceful, I chose not to feel the anxiety. The difference is that when I have tried to choose peace or joy (which I have done on countless occasions), I only felt the lack of those feelings more intensely. When I tried simply choosing not to be anxious, the space created in anxiety's absence was already peace. Huh, I just realized this is an example of how we are already peace. I didn't have to 'become' peace, I only had to not be my anxiety and in that space, peace was already there. Wow. Seems so obvious now but I guess that's the nature of 'a-ha' moments! Perhaps the difference is that when choosing not to feel, we are acknowledging exactly how we are feeling and when we try to choose or create a reality other than the one of the moment, we are focused on what we aren't feeling. A subtle yet important distinction. Jan Frazier writes:
Maybe until we are ready to opt out of fear, we cannot bear to look in the face of the truth that we really do have a choice. If I don't realize this suit of skin I wear has a zipper, it won't dawn on me I have any choice but to wear the suit, every day—even to die in it. Another way of saying it is this: I have to realize I'm in prison before there's any hope of getting out.
This brings to mind Stephen Cope's 'Twin Pillars of Yoga:' Awareness and Equanimity.
We must be aware of the choices we are making, or choosing not to make, in order to change something. Non-judgment helps us see clearly. The Yoga Sutras begin by saying our suffering comes from the lack of awareness around our true nature. What if we practiced simply choosing not to be or not to act on that which causes us suffering, i.e. worry, guilt, fear, anxiety? If we 'let go' of the idea that these emotions really say something about who we are...gosh, the world would certainly be a different place. Our lives would be different, though as this is something new I'm practicing, not sure what the qualitative difference would be. Can we really live our lives not ruled by fear, anxiety, worry? I'll continue peeking behind the veil, I hope you peek with me.
More coming on this subject, feels like I'm just scratching the surface.
