What is our life-s journey all about anyway? What IS the truth about why our awakening journey isn't easier? What is the point of all the difficulty to wake up?
People ask me, and wonder why life is just SO messy and SO hard? Why aren't more people happy, and why does awful stuff happen to wonderful people?
Well, this journey, its mysteries, and its ups and downs as we move through our human life, is filled with tremendous challenges, upsets, fear, indecision and disappointments. These are along side the highs, joys, courage, certainty and serendipitous events. This is called duality...opposites occurring at the same time.
Students will often bemoan the fact that their life hasn't turned out as their dream board would promise, or their affirmations would have made them believe. As they get closer to loving, and being authentic, open-hearted and transparent, the 'fire' of awakening singes our ego more deeply and thoroughly.
WHY THIS TOPIC?
After working for many years as both a releasing instructor, retreat leader, and spiritual coach or guide, I thought I would address this conundrum most people eventually find themselves in and unexpected challenges of the heart, mind, and emotions that is now welcome when people are on the 'seeking' freedom path.
The SPIRITUAL PATH is the non path...yet the Only path...
This
post may make several 'minds' that have a fixed idea of this spiritual journey and inner peace seeking expectations very angry and frustrated. But addressing
what actually unfolds in people's lives is more important than any
reaction to what I will share today.
There is a popular myth about letting go, releasing and surrender. It is easy to wake up through letting go. True, and False.
True, because the art of surrender and the ultimate letting go of our identification with what is false is necessary for self-realization to 'dawn' upon us is already Here...but false, because it isn't our 'doing' that makes the shift and opening of our heart...that is the myth--that we think we are the doer. The word method or technique is part of the disillusionment. It is our non-doing and unlearning, or un-method-ing that finally creates the space for love to find us.
To reiterate, the myth is that you have to 'do' something, and that if you 'do' this 'thing' it will simply make you become enlightened.
WHO is becoming enlightened? Find out.
In addition to there, there is the mind-meld of belief systems about awakening that proliferate in our quick-fix, 'you and to it' culture. Just believe, just try harder, just think and imagine your way home.
The ideas, discussions, books and speakers over decades and of following those who profess these things are endless. The treachery of this clever mind has no bounds, and no shame. Bottom line: everything you have heard is a lie.
The age old illusion of thinking we know the answers, that our knowledge will eventually lead us to enlightenment, and that the mind keeping us safe from harm, only works when the bus is barreling down the road and we have the good sense to step back and get out of the way. In this human life, instinct can save us, and protects us from physical harm. This is well and good, and as it should be.
Ah the brass rings of Enlightenment, freedom, illumination, and liberation.
Or health, wealth, success, power, fame and making a difference in the world as we serve 'humanity'---these are the Holy Grail of marketing and of the materialistic world. Nothing wrong with any or all, however who is it that is wanting it, and where are you living from in order to journey through this life?
This is a Great Mystery...waking up. And, knowing what will keep us from FEELING, and HAVING THE FIRE OF TRUTH race through our life and destroy everthing we hold dear and sacred. The desire for this elusive thing called freedom.
Truth does much more than just singe our wings but this fact isn't revealed to us along the way. It clips them.
I have been privileged to work with helping people align with their own natural letting go abilities. It is called releasing, or other things, but it is NOT a method or a technique, and it has been unfortunate to have those words be in the description of what is neither.
True Releasing happens when we are not effort-ing, not 'doing anything' and when we stop! Releasing is natural, it is not contrived, and if it is, it isn't true letting go...it is like putting 'false tears' in our eyes to eliminate dry-eye syndrome...it is a trick.
How The Mind Interprets Words and Delay our Loving Nature to be Revealed to us. Concepts are not the answer.
When letting go becomes a method, technique, and a path, the 'way' is already lost. The surrender is already there, and all of the effort and chasing is the dust that is covering over your True Nature. When letting go or surrender becomes a strategy, a doing, or a task to master, it has only become a 'strategy for survival of the mind'. It is simply being clever, in a more sophisticated way. Taking the top off of something is not getting to the depth in order to surrender the Denial of the Self.
Why? Most people have so successfully stuffed their feelings, hurt, anger, rage, sadness, loss, regret, pomposity, and apathy, that the feeling-meter is fried from overheating due to the avoidance of knowing what we really feel.
Scratch just under the surface of anyone willing, and you will find the gremlins, demons, and guards at the gate of their heart. I have seen this in all of the work I have done, and every student who has ever attended my classes or worked privately. We will only go SO far before bailing out, back into the illusion, now more cleaned up, but simply a 'new and improved' worldly illusion...not reality.
Reality...that is simply too scary for most seekers of Truth. Seekers what 'their version' of truth--not actual Reality.
This article is about reality, about things that most teachers don't share with students, and especially don't say to those who think they have arrived because they are on a 'high of helping others' or have a fat bank account, and their rhetoric is aligned with how people are talking about spiritual things. All hogwash, but don't let me stop you from reading on.
For many years I have been writing about the reality of Self-Realization, and the mystery of Love, Awareness, and Living and Awakened Life.
Today, I take aim at the entire idea of this concept that has turned into a multi-million dollar business of deception, illusion, and seduction. During this past few months my private students have found that opening their hearts, and awakening to their True Nature, is like walking blindfolded, and on hot coals, never knowing which way to go, or if the arising of what is false will ever end.
Most spiritually-oriented students think that if they manipulate their mind and their emotions, think a certain way and take certain actions...wala---love will hit them in them in the face like a pie thrown in a comedy with the Ritz Brothers.
There is good news and bad news--for our 'idea' of what awakening our hearts really means and what it entails. The good speeches, chats, satsangs, and enlightened conversations, or intellectual discussions are still just babble from the mind. Unless we dive in and do our work and walk through places within ourselves we have truly dared to tread, we cannot awaken to who and what we Truly Are. Some of us are thicker than others and need a few more 18-wheelers to knock us off of our holier than thou pedestal.
I was certainly at least that stubborn, and it was the equal energy to my desire to know Truth, who I am, and the reality of what disappears within you on this journey, most people are not prepared to sacrifice. All lies, all that is false must go. This means the 'you' that is walking around, all accomplished, leading others, puffed up with self-importance, and trying to make a difference. Hm...make a difference by eliminating all that has been fortified with what is false, our mind, our ego, and our closed heart.
Recently, I have discovered that some of the 'most enlightened' so they say, are the most dense--yet the most innocent are the most transparent. This is how Love, and that which is beyond all understanding, works...it comes to the heart that is innocent, not 'super-wise' and not knowledgable. It comes to the pure heart.
We can be clever, have tricks, and even have some human/psycho-spiritual powers to impress others, but that is not a pure heart...that is a clever heart.Most 'seekers of Truth' do NOT want to know the downside, fallout, reality, or side-effects of their heartfelt and sincere journey.
I speak about it in this way, because in nearly 30 years of working with people, helping them 'let go' and opening to more love and wisdom...people hit solid rock walls and roadblocks withing themselves and just don't know why. Everyone wants to believe that this is some kind of treasure hunt that has no bumps and bruises, and that if we truly, truly, truly believe, and follow someone we revere, that it will be like Dorothy in
Not so fast...for wanting freedom is only the very first step into the abyss of the unknown.
Yes, UNKNOWN!
OK I will stop sugarcoating it:) Coming home to our awakened heart is not for the faint of heart. Many people revere and quote the sages, teachers, books and scriptures, in hopes that the 'seeking' and 'repetition of what others have said' will take them Home.
That isn't how Love works, to bring us back to Itself.
Love is a ruthless mistress, Truth is a ruthless mistress, and the lie of lack and our clever mind will do whatever it can to keep us in the mist of ignorance and worldly illusion. We don't like to feel, and we don't like to be uncomfortable.
Well Truth doesn't care about our wishes, when it is time for us to open, feel, and have the fire of truth burn through what is false...we have no say in the matter. We just hold on for dear life, and think that what we have learned, meditation, letting go, releasing tricks, and jumping into a silent peaceful 'state' to escape from the raging fire of Truth...will save us.
Ah what a folly this seeking and ignorant mind projects as it takes us on the journey through this life.What happens after years of 'working it', of 'releasing' and of 'believing that we are free', or comparing ourselves to those we 'think' are more advanced...falls apart.
To be continued...soon...feel free to leave a comment from your heart;)
Love and Blessings,
Jeannie Fitzsimmons CNVI, LCT Licensed Facilitator for Transformation through Letting Go.
(C) 2009 Copyright Jeannie Fitzsimmons All RIghts Reserved
310-220-5088
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