Pamela Wilson is a teacher from the Ramana lineage. I’ve not yet heard her give satsang but have heard she’s very heart-based. She woke with Neelam whom I have met. A friend of mine sent this quote from her site. I love her approach to the stories of the mind. (Interestingly, she’s registered a church for her teaching and teaches in partnership.)
I’m not in the don’t-touch-it school. Maybe it’s my Italian heritage. I call it Mediterranean satsang. I say, “Come here, poor little story!” If the story keeps coming back, it means it’s desperate for a little loving attention.
If you are always going, “Oh, it’s just story,” of course it’s going to renew its effort: “No, I’m not!”
If a certain situation continues to arise, just let it sit with you. See it as your devotee. Grant it the compassion to be able to sit with you. Say, “Yes, you are welcome here.” Even story. In the beginning it’s good to get firm with stories, because there are way too many of them. But it’s like Reader’s Digest; you have them condensed down to the top five issues, right?
When you’re feeling strong, or if you have a friend to sit with, just sit in the silence until you’re soothed, until the body and brain are soothed, and then invite the story to come sit. It will start to activate the body, and then the brain will start to bring in strategies to fix it and try to help. So thank the brain, and then attend to what’s happening in the body. Stories have another function, other than bothering us. They’re designed to dissolve the defenses in the body. They’re like armor. So you sit with the issue, the upset, and see where it’s triggering in the body, and then just allow awareness to move into it and permeate the upset – like awareness has hands, and it’s soothing and loving.
What you’re doing is helping the body let go of the past. One of the ways the body creates release is by recreating something from the past in order to pull it out of the earth of the body. Otherwise it stays deep. This system of release is strange – almost reptilian, it’s so ancient. These bodies are from another time. Even though you get a fresh, new body every time, a lot of the defenses are recreated through thought. That’s why I say bring the story here. There’s no lack of brilliance in the design of either the body or the way it lets go, or even that this world is so harsh. Robert Adams used to call this the remedial planet, because when you really want freedom, this is where you come.
It’s sweet: the body asks for a blessing through its upset, its agitation. It’s invoking the Beloved, awareness-consciousness: “Please, master, come here. Please heal me.” And if it’s really frantic, then it will be sending out distress signals all the time. So it has another function: to awaken the Beloved. It awakens the satguru through its distress.
Ramana used to say, “I would follow a devotee into hell if need be.” So when hell or agitation arises in the body, it’s luring the satguru out of the heart. Everything is an invitation for the Buddha to awaken and bring peace, even to the body. It calls for the laying on of hands, the welcoming and soothing. Even doubt is asking for your love. Doubt is talking to you, saying, “Master, is this true?”
When you see your body and thought as your devotees, you have a completely different relationship with them. Where else are they going to go for truth?
Pamela Wilson
www.pamelasatsang.com
Last Updated on November 8, 2014 by Davidya
This is a very good post and advice Davidya. Essentially you say “So you sit with the issue, the upset, and see where it’s triggering in the body, and then just allow awareness to move into it and permeate the upset – like awareness has hands, and it’s soothing and loving.”
Actually, this was one of my top 2 blocks with a twist. I was taught to view life from the neck up. I could say I was in touch with my body through sports or just taking care of it in the usual ways and healing.
In actuality, I was not in touch with the energetic aspect of my body which I most frequently experienced mostly through emotions which brings sensations. The stories seem to build from there here.
I was very distant from myself emotionally for decades. No intimacy with my humanness meant difficulty in intimate relationships and a big feeling of separation and judgmental thinking. No one really taught me this growing up. So lack of awareness of the energetic and emotional aspects kept me baffled as to why I felt disconnected from life at times. I was disconnected within.
In truth I learned to suppress energy and emotion and that built up pressure within in the forms of tenseness, stress, and anger fortunately not depression.
So inviting in the stories is very good and I add the emotional and energetic sensations. I have had and still do have thoughts, emotions, and energies that rush for completion. That is o.k. It is like the lotus flower opening analogy. I find it very integrating with wholeness and completeness with awareness providing the space for the dance. Just allowing myself to be totally open, naked, and exposed within is dropping the artificial sense of separation which really was never true.
So these energies, emotions, and stories do resolve themselves in the open space and I am no longer afraid of the ride. In a sense, I was afraid of aspects of my humanness. This has brought a new level of joy, intimacy, openness, and emotional availability. The emotional availability has opened thru ideas of a separate self and ideasthoughts that separate although one has to use language.
A beautiful friend asked me about feeling one time, and I did not do her justice with my answer. It is very important for integration.
Want to be a magnet for joy, integration, and unity? This is good advice along with patience. It has taken several years for some beliefs trapped energetically to move on. This is where the authentic swing resides. Nothing beats the release, the wholeness and the freedom. The Beloved rises forth from here.
It brings tears to the eyes just writing about it.
Deep Bow! You offer healing here.
Ben
Thanks for sharing that Ben. Yes, it’s quite a journey to go from living in the head with emotions suppressed and seeming uncomfortable into coming back in touch with how we feel and clearing the baggage and then into discovering the richness of life brought through feelings. With the door open, the Beloved can then come to visit then stay.
Emotions are also our drivers to act. It makes a big difference to our experience of life and it’s results if we are acting from fear or from happiness, shame or love.
A somewhat related thread came up in comments on Remember This also:
https://davidya.ca/2011/09/10/remember-this/
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