I couldn’t sleep last night. It took some deliberation and conscious intent in order to put myself to sleep for at least a good three hours before waking up this morning. There is also an awareness that there is a loss of appetite today and after work, all I did after dropping off some friends off was to head home, had a glass of barley, a nap, some writing, some reading, some work and a bath. It was dinner time and I knew it was time to eat although the body showed no indication of hunger albeit without food the whole day save for an energy bar and a cup of coffee in the early morning before work. Again, a conscious action was performed to eat at least a little something. And the whole day, there were waves and waves of vulnerability surfacing and simmering off and the only thing that I could do was to stay present to it since I was not mindful enough to catch the initial cause of it. It was interesting to note that the whole mechanism of such set up arose because there was a belief of “I am unworthy to eat; also unworthy to sleep” being supported by some sense of uselessness. And this was only known through a sheer questioning of “what’s wrong” as if speaking to another me, in me.
Recalling Byron Katie’s story prior her awakening where she felt not even worthy enough to sleep on a bed, it seemed as if all kinds of awakening carries some tail end of self loathe, self judgement and feelings of disgust of the self. There was indeed a statement I read somewhere that the final frontier is in fact – self consciousness. Final seems such a far-fetched word yet it made me wonder, was not the journey all the while towards self consciousness itself?
The truth is that most of us, if not all are constantly trapped in an illusion. Seldom do we realise we ourselves are the illusion until of course, there is awakefulness to it. Yet momentarily, when awakefulness is not sustained, it is popped back into it to a mind made drama believing as real.
We often hear the words ‘love anyway’ and I could not agree more that it is not only about loving another anyway but also about oneself. Yet to use the word ‘love anyway’ is as if to imply that there was no love before. Perhaps the appropriate word to use is to embrace it non-judgementally. Much like embracing a child of our own, this is afterall, our own inner child that we are embracing. A friend shared with me earlier that if we allow ourselves to dive into those feelings and feel it without being immersed in it, it is likely that we are able to identify firstly the type of emotion or feeling and thereafter its own meaning of the emotion or feeling eventually arise naturally. Can’t deny that it takes much courage to consciously experience that and learn from it since most of the time, when such feeling or emotion arise, there is often already much resistance towards it. At times, embrace is difficult too, but at least, don’t reject it. Same thing, just opposite sides of the same coin and it doesn’t really matter which side we work on, as long as it is undone.
Self Realisation is delicious although the path that leads to it often has a taste of unpleasantness and vulnerability. Yet without such, how else can invulnerability be experienced? It is a long journey and I am pretty sure it will end, some day. 🙂
Tags: acceptance, awareness, conditionings, dream, ego, forgiveness, Freedom, Home, Ideas, ignorance, innerchild, innertalks, inquiry, integrity, Love, mindfulness, reality, reflections, Self, selfawareness, spiritualjourney, stories, takingresponsibility, thoughts, unworthiness, willingness, wisdom
