When your Life looks totally fucked up, investigate to see what you are worshipping (paying attention to).
Are you paying attention to the story or the feelings, the moment? What feeling do you not want to feel? This will help you journey to the root of suffering.
Suffering comes when our mind is playing God. Suffering comes when we rely on the conditioning and the conditioning will always find something wrong. This truth telling is a form of disillusionment and disillusionment can be painful as we are burning through lies, but if we welcome this pain, we are taking the medicine. Suffering happens by honoring the idea that you know what should be happening and you know that what IS shouldn’t be. This all comes from our conditioning. Our conditioning has a set of criteria for what should and should not be. And when you are awakening it can be like a spiritual detox is happening.
If you have ever done a detox for your body then you know that a “healing crisis” can occur. This is when all the toxins that have been dormant in your body come to the surface while the cleanse is taking place. If you were not aware of this natural process, you might think, ‘oh, shit, this can’t be right.’ But if you trust, then the natural unfolding can occur more smoothly.
This is the same for awakening. It can be like a “spiritual detox” for many. You feel like you have “advanced” so much on the spiritual path and now you may feel like all of this “ugliness and toxins” are coming up. This is normal. Everything you have run from arises for healing. Just stay out of the judgments and be willing to start anew in each moment.
The healing is your attention and love. You are the light for any dark corners to be shed on. This happens through feeling all the feelings that arise: guilt, fear, terror, shame, anger, rage, frustration, boredom, restlessness, sadness, along with the joy, love, and peace. Whatever is Here, IS your key Home. Feeling it all without the stories or labels attached is the most helpful.
When this detox happens the mind cannot control it. It can’t fit this experience into a box because this is all unknown. Our conditioning says this is wrong and you need to repress or numb all of this. But running from this is the suffering. You are ready for healing. This is an experience that most ‘awakened ones’ seem to have been through at some point. The degree of intensity and the duration differs being to being.
This has been called “the dark night of the soul” or “the wilderness period” or “the winter period” or “the desert period” or “the 40 days 40 nights” metaphor, or the temptation of Christ, or Buddha tempted by Mara. These are all just names for a period of feeling like you are in a “no man’s land.” Feeling like you are in limbo. The destruction of all of the old has occurred while the seeds are being planted for the new and the new has not arrived yet.
You are totally alone. You feel abandoned by your ideas of what God is like and what God allows because God is no longer separate from you. God is no longer an idea. God is a presence. This is what Life is encouraging you to discover right now. You can no longer look out for God; you must look within for God.
You feel disoriented when you remain in the mind. The mind is being outgrown. You are too vast to live in the confines of the mind and its conditioning.
Sometimes Life destroys everything that can be destroyed so you can discover what is still Here. What can never die! You are the strength of the phoenix rising from the ashes of all the old concepts reborn as your authentic Self. You are the courage of the caterpillar willing to go into the dark, unknown cocoon and become the butterfly you truly ARE. If you feel like a storm is present…stop, go within, be still.
If some or all of this is your experience keep coming back to this moment and letting go of the story. If this is not your experience, then don’t worry. We don’t know what is needed for each being waking up. Your experience of awakening could be relatively smooth. I’m only sharing the lens through my own experience. All that matters, though, is your experience right now.
If prayer resonates with you, the prayer I said within my heart during challenging times was:
Merge me with you Lord so there is no longer You AND I, but…
only THIS.
When this is sincerely said with all of your heart and being, there is no way this prayer cannot be answered. We don’t know when and we don’t know how, but everything in your Life after this prayer is declared is the answer. You only have to let go of your idea of what the wrapping paper on the Gift should look like.
(Source: The Invitation (to Live) (the Truth) by Tathina / http://www.amazon.com/Invitation-Live-Truth-Tathina/dp/1507888112/)
