trust

Some random musings on your post:

I suspect that times have been uncertain
and erratic to break down artificial
external constructs that we all use to
maintain our level of trust.

When these break down, the only thing
left is what you have on the inside, and
it points to all the rough areas we have
inside ourselves where internal trust is
lacking.

In other words, it is likely a necessary
but somewhat unpleasant activity to force
people to go within and expose all those
dark areas that we run from.

A painting of Saturn eating his children, you say?
I find that very interesting since Saturn
is considered “higher Earth”, and Earth energies
are all about being centered in who you are and
being strong in your boundaries. There is nothing
more invasive to a person’s boundaries than being
attacked by a cannibal . . . and even more so, when
you are defenseless as a child. If you really stop
and consider the symbolism here, it is quite striking.

As traumatic as recent news events have been,
every cloud has a silver lining; and if you look hard
enough, I think you’ll be able to find one here.
The thing to be “thankful” here is for the terrible
recent events to help bring to the surface a deep
dark fear that you have likely been carrying all your life.

In other words, any fear you may feel now is
not something new, but is something you’ve had for awhile,
and you’ve only just now become *aware* of it. Or maybe
you were aware of it before, and it is only now that you
are strong enough to be able to face it and heal it.

This latter bit is common theme in doing practices.
Eventually we gain enough internal strength to finally
become ready to face all those difficult things and
dark places we were afraid to explore, and then they
expose themselves at exactly the right time.

This is where the real trust comes in.
The knowing that you are now strong enough within
yourself to address these issues. That is why you
are facing them. Because you are now strong enough.

Feel strong and feel joy in the knowledge
that you are now ready to handle some raw edges.
It is a cause to celebrate within, as your true self
has a wisdom deeper than any exposed fear, and knows
you are now ready.

And that is something you can really trust.

S

>>>That is where I want to go…..
>>>able to take in the outside without being
>>>emotionally thrown all over the place.
>>>I feel closer to it, every day closer
>>>than the one before and in the process I am loving
>>>myself more and more…

This can happen through continually becoming
more deeply grounded into your core being.
Feelings will always arise, and it is natural
for them to do so; but at the same time, as you
reach new levels of grounding, you can remain
centered in your true self and just bear witness
to it all as a neutral observer. The feelings
are still there; that bit has not changed; but
somehow you can just watch it all from a neutral
point of awareness . . .

It is like you, drop into a level of awareness,
where you “watch” the “you” that is living your life.
This “watcher” is calm, centered, and happy
regardless of the movie that is being seen.
The “watcher” can somehow enjoy all aspects
of the movie, even the bad parts, and recognize
that it is simply the richness of life, while
not losing that calm, centered, and happy feeling.

It is sort of hard to explain; it just has
to be experienced. But I find that through
continually doing grounding practices, you
naturally evolve to such a perspective without
even trying to do so. It happens spontaneously.

There are a lot of people that take the perspective
that the thinking mind is bad, a poison, something
you have to continually disengage from, like
training a dog. But this is the wrong approach.

When you drop into the new level of awareness
I mentioned above, you do not have to escape
the mind any more than you have to escape your
feelings. You can watch it all happening neutrally.

And what I like the best, is that you don’t have
to DO anything to have this happen. It requires
no action on your part. Simply do grounding practices,
especially standing practice, and as the days, weeks,
months, years go on, you spontaneously reposition
yourself into that deeper level of awareness
without even trying. It arises naturally.

Qi,
Steven

> I am trying to transform a self that is able to interact with life without losing my
>core or throwing my emotions (not feelings) all over the place. I want to have >feelings that are appropriate to the immediate situation but don’t carry over into >chronic emotions.

I hear what you’re saying here and i think thats a great way to be. I tried doing that but i found it difficult and hard work for me to be able to do that. It’s my character to automatically spin the emotion around more and more till it builds up to an undesired powerful level very quickly. I can’t proceed with a clear mind and do what i really want to do like that. Not without releasing my emotions out to everyone present (like shouting in anger, etc which then has bad consequences later). That relaxes me again but only for a moment until i get bad energy back from others.

If i catch an emotion at the very beginning before it spirals to anything but a tiny muscular tension somewhere in my body and let it go in it’s tracks, i’m already aware of the emotion i’m feeling but i dissapated it quickly while it was small and easy.

>Right, I thought about that too. But it seems to me if I have to protect myself from
>outside influences I am using so much energy in building and maintaining that guard.

Yes i can understand your angle but it’s not how i feel about it. To me prevention is the best method. It takes me no energy now i am in the habit of not listening to the news (or also people complaining at work, something else which can bring me down), but once the emotion gets hold it takes me more effort to stop it becomming a problem.

I don’t enjoy it so i don’t feel like i’m missing out on anything on not reading about the news. Sure it’s less conversations i can join in at work, but if i want to join in i just ask about them about it and they’re happy enough to fill me in. The only thing i listen to in the news now is on the radio station for about 2 minutes, they have an oddspot which i think is entertaining as well as they have one piece of music news which is most often uplifting. It’s the same time every day so i just listen to those 2 minutes of the news on the radio 🙂

In reality, what i do is
1. try to avoid bad thoughts
2. try to stop them as early as possible
3. if it goes on and it’s spiralling out of control as family arguments can, after an hour or 2 i just have a cigarette, it breaks me out of the cycle and i can be calm again. I don’t smoke much but it helps me in this instance or i can go all day dwelling on it and i can feel my energy is just wasting away.

I’m sure there are better ways than what i do but it works well for me so far, until i can improve my meditations further.

Steven and Adel, Do you know what your chinese element is? What you naturally are most strongly?

I am wood. I am interested to know yours both because i have a theory 🙂

Smoking is just a chemical means to suppress anger.

They have done studies that show that nicotine
reduces the natural anger response. The way they showed
this was through double-blind studies where they
had people wear a nicotine patch and then create
scenarios where a normal person would feel stress-induced
anger. One such example would be to have them do
a requested computer task, and after a period of time,
have the thing crash or frustrate them in some way.
Heart rate, etc., and other diagnostic measures like
brain wave scans etc. were done to determine level
of anger. Some people were wearing patches with
no nicotine (control group) and some with. In all cases,
those wearing the nicotine had less of an anger response.
To eliminate from the study the possibility that
this was merely due to the lack of withdrawal symptoms
arising, all participants in the study were never-smokers,
so that the lack of anger could not be attributed to
simply the abatement of withdrawal symptoms (smoking
not allowed during the testing).

When people quit smoking–other than cravings–what is
usually present in all such people? People tend to
be angry, irritable, prone to blow up for no reason,
generally miserable to be around.

It is my personal belief that this is simply all the
suppressed anger that has been stored in the body over
the years through smoking, finally having the opportunity
to begin to be released.

I also remember reading that, on an energetic level,
cancer is caused by suppressed anger. Suppressed anger
building to a level to which the liver can no longer
function properly to detoxify the body, and then cancer
arises . . . almost as if it is the suppressed anger taking form.

It is my speculation that this is the cause of cancer
in long-term smokers. Over the years of suppressing
anger through smoking, the suppressed anger eventually
reaches critical mass and eventually creates cancer,
typically starting in the organ that has weakened the
most (namely the lungs)– even though energetically it
is the liver. Typically cancer will show up in the liver
in the late stages of the disease, even if it first
appeared elsewhere.

This post is not some kind of “health message” to get
you to quit smoking, or some kind of judgment.
It is just something to think about.

I used to be a smoker, so I know how difficult it is
to quit . . . how appealing the “feel-good” chemicals
are, and how uncomfortable it can be when you want to
smoke and are in a situation where you can’t. I know
that all quite well.

I also know that I equally well felt more calm and
when I was feeling really angry that it made
the anger go away. In fact, I would have to say that
there were many times when I would make “attempts” to
quit where I would subconsciously put myself into
situations that would get me angry, so that I would
have an excuse to smoke and sabotage the quit attempt.
“If only such-and-so person hadn’t done XYZ to piss
me off, then I would’ve been able to quit. Bastard.”
All the while subconsciously “glad” they pissed me
off, because I really didn’t “want” to quit.

So I’ve been there, and done that.

But the point of this post isn’t really so much
a commentary on smoking as it is the whole approach
of avoidance and suppression.

You say your tactics are:
1. avoid bad thoughts
2. stop bad thoughts when they occur
3. diffuse anger through smoking

All three of these tactics are avoidance and suppression.
You haven’t actually solved anything, in my opinion.

Do you feel you want to have to avoid things to
avoid having negative thoughts and emotions arise?
Do you want to live life that way?
Or would you prefer to be able to live in the world
without having to hide from various aspects of it?
Smoking is anger suppression, and avoidance is really
just another form of suppression . . . it is pretending
that a problem isn’t there by not acknowledging it.

All this stuff accumulates.

I will say this, having given up smoking.
After you give it up, and are away from it for awhile
and you have diffused a lot of the repressed anger,
you will find that you tend not to be as much of a slave
to emotions. Smoking suppressed them, especially anger,
so when you experience them you as a smoker, you experience
them stronger than if you haven’t been a smoker.
In other words, smoking creates the very problem
that it seems to fix.

The same can be said of all avoidance and suppression.
It creates the very problem that it appears to solve.
So it becomes a never-ending process . . .

You can spend a lifetime doing this very thing, and
you get quite good at it, but having been down that road
before I can say that it is the road to nowhere.

In my view . . .

Steven

I do.

But I think it would be more fun
if you revealed your theory before I say.

S