Meeting Our Old Conditioning With Awareness
I just returned from leading a retreat on a tiny jewel of an island in the beautiful San Juan Islands and my heart is filled to overflowing. The joy of being in such beauty is almost indescribable (one person said they felt they had arrived at the Garden of Eden!). And gratitude is still moving deeply through me for being able to explore for three glorious days with a wonderful group of people.
All of us were following the call to be open to life and to experience the joy of being truly alive. At the same time, each one of us had the willingness to meet inside of ourselves the old conditioning that keeps us caught in struggle. There is a quote from Eckhart Tolle that I put on my shower wall when I moved into my house 13 years ago that speaks to what we are exploring here. It is about how we can become alchemists, turning the heavy darkness of our struggling self back into the free flowing aliveness that we truly are.
Eckhart says:
“When the pain body has woken up, you may experience turbulence. Be present. Give it your complete attention. Don’t let it overwhelm your thinking. Watch it. Feel its energy in your body. Full attention means full acceptance. This brings forth a transmutation into radiance.”
What he means by “pain body” is all of the resistance and struggling that happens in our minds. (I love that he says that you may experience turbulence. For most of us, when the struggling self shows up, we buy into it hook, line and sinker and know lots of turbulence!). But we can learn how to do what he is suggesting.
Rather than getting caught in our struggles, we can learn how to watch what is going on inside, feel the energy in our bodies, accept what is here, and become curious about it. This allows for what Eckhart is calling the transmutation into radiance. In other words, we were all conditioned into fear, shame, anger and despair, and these emotions are nothing but trapped energy that longs to be released back into free flowing aliveness through the power of our own accepting attention. Can you imagine just being with your fear or anger or shame rather than reacting to it? It is not only possible; it is the path to freedom.
Each of us on that island was able to understand at a deeper level that we are not alone in our struggles – that everybody has them. And we also opened together to the truth that our struggling self is nothing to be afraid of or ashamed of. This allowed us to be curious about what was going on inside of us, and under the gaze of curiosity, the heaviness of our struggles lightened and together we rediscovered the joy of being alive. In fact, at the end of the retreat, we informed Erica and Steve, who own the island, that none of us was leaving – that we were all moving in with them!
So be curious today. Know that whenever you become tight – whether you notice your body tightening, your mind or your emotions – know that it is just trapped energy asking to be released through your willingness to simply be curious about what it happening right now!
Be light, Mary