The mechanism of suffering is quite simple.
We experience a shadow or cloud that obscures the experience of love. There is no change in the flow of love, only in our awareness or perception of love. This is very much like a child in a store when they suddenly realize they can’t see their mother. Mother is still there but perception has changed. Fear arises.
If we become involved in our experiences, we may forget how to experience that which has no qualities. Only what we can see, hear or touch seems real. Without a sense of source, we lose center and fear arises, hiding the love.
As we don’t wish to experience fear, we resist the experience and instead experience anxiety or anger or shame. This resistance actually amplifies it and leads to a resistance to what is. In trying to avoid fear, we resist love. It also sustains the fear rather than relieving it. This is the cloud.
Curiously, even when the fear trigger is no longer present, we continue to resist in fear of experiencing fear. Even when mother is seen, we fear her later loss. While you may think childhood examples no longer apply, fear is very primal. And we use a surprising amount of energy sustaining it.
If you don’t think you carry fear, it is just well covered. There’s a simple test. If you don’t feel immersed in love, you have a fear shadow. It even has a name. That name you call yourself, your identity. We even issue ID cards to certify our fear. (laughs)
As the mind likes to explain everything, it will make a story for why we’re experiencing something. Mommy abandoned us. I was bad and deserved punishment. My girlfriend thinks I’m an idiot. My boss thinks I screwed up. The story doesn’t require logical evidence, it simply wishes to justify your emotions, whatever the circumstance. And of course, blame something else for our experience.
We confuse what happens with how we respond. Suffering does not arise in what happens but how we see it happened to me. The current recession is a classic example. Some difficult events, but much amplified by how many are responding, making the recession worse. We see ourselves as separate and thus fail to see how our responses are related to the whole.
When we have a story about our emotions, it reinforces the feelings and makes them concrete, real. The sense of separate person becomes stronger. Most of us live in a bubble of what we think is real but is actually a complex story, a kind of waking dream. Real to us but a shadow of what is actually real.
The issue in all of this is not the fear but rather that it’s not experienced. Once it’s experienced, the fear can be quickly resolved. But to do that, we may have to see through some resistance first. To do that, you have to take the story a little less seriously. See that your story is not as real as you thought.
This process may not be obvious to you. But it is the underlying driver of much of our other “negative” emotions (the ones we resist) and all the places in our life where we are unsatisfied, anxious, restless, and otherwise unhappy.
Very simply, if it’s not love, it’s fear. Fear is the absence of love. Like darkness, it is lack, not real.
Love is real. There is only love. Really.
Davidya
Last Updated on November 11, 2017 by Davidya
LOVE this post! Really amazing. 🙂
The clarification at the end is really key too.
Just to be clear, in facing our fear, I’m not talking about going into the story and making it more real. Reliving your fears just amplifies it all more.
I’m talking about seeing through the story and letting it go. Allowing the fear to be as it is. When we see it as it is, it is over.
Thanks Ariel.
wow, I comppletely love this post. What you say is very very interesting. I have questions. Many people these days state the importance of analysing the fear, understanding where it comes from, the story behind it, the memory behind it. What you’re saying it that one must just sit with the fear, observe it, and it will pass. I find the self work of anlysing fear very hard. It doens’t seem to help. I manage to discover limiting thoughts that I have but I can’t get rid of them. So what do you think?
Just realizing the fear , being aware, especially of unity is enough???
Hey.
Am very confused by the people who say that we need to uncover beliefs , fears, and stories to see past them. Understand the root cause and then go out ,letting go of it.
I find this hard. But u seem to be saying that all we need to do is just see the fear. Bring awareness . That is all.
Also rather than the whole analyse your fear, one can simply work on see the Whole, and feeling Love.
Seems much simpler.
Hi Uzma, and thanks.
Many in fields such as psychology advocate going into your experiences to release the pain. While this can help, the problem is that it is also going into your story and can be traumatic in itself. Going into your story can amplify it and make it more real. You’ve probably heard stories of issues created when people dug to much into their muck.
The key thing to understand is that there is emotions and then there is our stories about those emotions. There is “I am hurt” and there is “That guy hurt me badly by such and such”.
At first, they can seem inextricably entwined. The story and emotions seem one and the same. But if we culture allowing what is, as it is, we find moments when the emotions will arise and we can simply be with them, without the added story. Or maybe the story is there but we pay it less heed. We simply experience what arises.
This being with what is lets the resisted emotions wash over us and resolve. It’s usually very quick. With the emotions no longer present, the story is no longer energized and fades away.
If you look under “Key Posts” on the right, there is links to other posts on this subject under “Clearing”. Culturing Gratitude was huge for me around this.
You can go into the story to heal, but it’s much more difficult. This way is faster and easier, but a bit more subtle, a bit less obvious at first.
It also makes it very clear how the story exists only because of the resisted feelings. This helps make the illusion clearer and is also clearing the foundation of ego. That of course clears the way for awakenings. Thus – its not just about lightening the load but turning the load into light (laughs)
Be aware of unity, if it is your experience. Being aware of your presence. Your gratitude for what is, anything that draws you into the present as that’s whats real, what dissolves illusion, and what makes things happen. Everything else is memory or projection.
Mind likes to understand, likes to have a story. But mind is fooled by illusions, caught be stories. Stories don’t make sense, which confuses mind. Mind concludes the world is irrational when its its own stories its seeing, not reality. Moving into the present shifts us out of mind – memories and projections.
Mind also thinks it needs to DO something. But what it needs to learn is to allow. To just let it be. Be aware, yes. Because awareness is seeing, stories is illusion.
One does not work on feeling love. One feels it or does not. But one can give attention to allowing love. Then love will begin to be seen more and more, even in what has seemed to be pain.
hmm – this has gotten long enough to be a post (laughs)
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fantastic stuff! very helpful! thanks!
Hi Zeta
Thanks for the feedback!