News From the Inner Front

I woke up a bit late this morning and noticed that I was feeling reluctant to do my hour’s meditation. I was feeling antsy and was tempted to make some excuse that perhaps I shouldn’t do it today. Actually, there was never a question as to whether I would meditate or not, because that is just what I do at this point; come rain, sunshine or blizzard, I do meditate. For me, practice has gone beyond a discipline and it is just what I do as an expression of my being. But today I noticed my reluctance. (I do Holosync™ binaural meditation, by the way; I am three years and two months into the process.)

For me, reluctance is always a sure sign that there is something that wants to emerge, something that I need to look at. As I began my meditation, I noticed my mind bouncing around like a super ball in a racquetball court—another clue that my ego is playing the avoidance game. I noticed a pain arising in my chest and breathed into it, welcoming it, as Rumi says, as an honored guest with a gift for me from the world beyond.

Let me say at this point that I am a Six type on the Enneagram and fear is basic to my personality structure (and essential to Sixes’ whole personality organization). We can be counterphobic (doing all kinds of scary things to conquer our fear), or phobic (hiding from the world because it is so damn dangerous out there). A lot of this fear can be unconscious, until you start a practice such as Holosync™-facilitated meditation that eventually opens the doors to all of these repressed, unconscious complexes.

All that is to say that it was fear arising this a.m. The fears that were arising were the following:

1. Fear about the book that I am currently writing and near finishing. There is a certain safety in writing a book, but it is another thing to finish it and get it out into the world.
2. The fear of failure associated with that.
3. Also, some discouragement at what a long difficult journey it has been holding the torch for this Integral Recovery unfoldment. Seeing the potential for so much alleviation of needless suffering in the world, but running into a seeming endless bombardment of the flack of human foibles and weakness, ego agendas, and self-serving greed and power games.
4. Lastly, a basic distrust of people. This is very hard for me to say, even to myself, much less admit it in a public blog. But there it is. I don’t trust people to have the high-minded commitment to follow through on… whatever. Do I have a history that helped create and reinforce this kind of fear and ego conditioning in myself? You bet. Am I afraid that ultimately I might also fail in this way? Yes.

So, there is the ugly truth that I am holding in my awareness and the pain I am holding in my heart. What am I to do with this stuff? Nothing. Let it do what it wants. I have learned that we do not have to do anything with the feelings that arise, but simply let the feelings do whatever they want. Let them come do their thing and then release… And when they are gone, we are left with a gift: spaciousness, clarity, and oftentimes the wisdom that replaces the negative emotion and its associated mental messages. For example, “Yeah, screw people! Life has shown me that they are simply not to be trusted.” There may be a good and logical case for this sort of attitude, but it is not exactly the way I want to live my life.

So, as I finished my meditation, what was I left with? A bit of a feeling that these issues had shifted, a transmutation had taken place. Not entirely gone, but shifted, lighter, perhaps more translucent. And the question that I was left with was not, can you trust others, but, are you being faithful in your life? I am not accountable for others’ actions, but I am accountable for my own.

Once, on a Vision Quest, I cried out, “How can I help?” “How can I be of service to my people?” Though it took years, I was given the answer I sought and shown the way that I was to serve. Now, my deepest Self fires back at me, “Are you being faithful to your promise, your Quest, your Vision?” It matters not one whit what the rest of the world does or if you can trust people. The question that must be addressed is, “Are you being faithful.” That’s what matters to your soul. You plant the seed. It is My job to bring the rain. There it is.

As I write this, I feel the residual fear transform into strong faith in the work I have been given and shown. Yeah, okay. I’ll do my part. Because when I get right down to it, there is no other way for me to roll.