"Spiritual paradoxes may appear in response to spiritual choice; for example, the spiritual seeker wants love and joy but that intention triggers the surfacing of all that obstructs [love] and prevents its appearance. Those who dedicate themselves to peace and love automatically pull up from the unconscious all that is cruel, unloving, and hateful to be healed. This may bring about consternation until judgmentalism about it is replaced with compassion, and forgiveness takes its place. These were, after all, what had obstructed the love and joy, so one can be thankful that these deterrents have been brought up to be resolved by the spiritual tools available." – Dr. David R. Hawkins, I: Reality & Subjectivity, pg. 24
Photo taken at Monastère De Béthléem in Saint-Cergues, France on 11/18/2019
Meditation can be a dangerous game.
If you search for stock images of someone in meditation, you might be misled into thinking that by sitting down and going within, one will be transported into a peaceful, worry-less state. Unfortunately, I've learned for myself that that's just not the case, especially at the beginning.
Meditation, like all tools, works via a mechanism. At its most basic, meditation is a process of watching the mind; witnessing the content (images, feelings, thoughts, desires, etc.) that arises within the broad field of one's awareness. However, the extent to which a person is filled up with judgment will fundamentally determine how severely they will weaponize the content of their mind against themself during meditation.
Therefore, what's absolutely essential to understand about meditation is CONTEXT. Just as the planets and galaxies exist within space, so too does the endless content of mind exist within context. It's not the thoughts or facts that are painful, it's how we hold them in mind that makes them difficult to sit with–– it's the quality of the context, the field of awareness itself.
Therefore, beware.
Beware the inner judge. Beware the subtle tendency of your witnessing mind to make things wrong, bad, or unacceptable. Beware that it will automatically, of its own nature, condemn what is held in awareness. Imagine space hating any of the planets or galaxies within it. How tragic that would be!
Yet we can be so hard on ourselves. Cruel in a way that few others would ever dream of treating us. "Being our own worst critic" is such a common experience, we may even think that it's natural or perhaps even necessary. After all, we'd have to to fixate on our flaws if those are what's getting in the way of our evolution... right?
Well, what happens when we meditate? We go within. We learn to face the depth and power of the unconscious. We look at whatever comes up.
When I began spiritual inquiry, meditation, and yoga, I was at war with myself. The chronic pain condition that haunted me every morning, day, and night, was relentless. And I hated it. I hated the pain. It was a curse. I hated myself for being weak and made feeble. I wished I was better, different, and was working as hard as I could to be worthy of love. How I wish I could turn back the clock and share this post with myself.
The mechanism of intention–– specifically the intention to heal and love myself, as misguided as it was–– initiated the process of bringing up everything from the unconscious that was not loving, which was blocking my healing, so that it could be healed. Unfortunately, back then, I hadn't yet read the quote at the top of this post, and my inner judge would weaponize against me all the unloving things that came up in meditation, reinforcing the idea that I was bad and unlovable. All the awful things I'd done, my darkest desires, my intrusive thoughts, you name it. For years, it was a painful, difficult, sometimes brutal process of self-inquiry.... But everything shifted once I started choosing gentleness.
Held within a context of gentleness, the content of my unconscious has progressively become fuel for self-compassion, rather than fuel for self-judgment–– "more to love" vs. "more to loathe". By Grace alone, alignment with a loving, gentle quality of witnessing, has transformed the actual, physical space of my awareness into a powerful energetic field that dissolves negative thoughts without any need for opposition or judgmental separation. I no longer need to make things wrong or bad, or create distance between me and my shadow to stay true to my intentions of healing and love. I've learned that everything is either an expression of love or a cry for love... that hateful thoughts do not represent love's opposite, but merely its absence. So now, even the ugly parts of myself have become worthy of love and are increasingly welcome in the space of my increasingly-benign context.
To a Benign Mind, bad thoughts do not = "unlovable", and that is truly a miracle. So, if you ask me, I would say that being benign first is the key to a more painless, effortless practice of self-inquiry, inner growth, and a fruitful practice of deep meditation.
In a future post, I'll share more tools, teachings, and practices that have helped me to transform my conscience (context) in case you'd like to try them yourself.
Thank you for reading my post.
Until next time,
Jacob
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