A Memoir
One of the more significant achievements that the releasing phase brought about was the substantial makeover of your world-views. You have come to less judge your life in a dualistic way - good vs. bad, right or wrong, enjoyment or suffering – and you understand to a greater extent that such divisions transgress the truth. You understand now that artificial judgment is as meaningless as asking “what is tastier, chocolate cake or a fried fish” or “which is more beautiful, a rocking chair or a car magazine?” Classifying things as good or bad is irrelevant in a world of conscious creators such as you are.
Credit: Christoffer Relander
That being the case, what is real in spite of it? What is the appropriate way to look at reality? The answer can be found in the ability to contain both sides of the coin.
I will clarify this by using the issue of loneliness as an example.
Loneliness is one of the most difficult impedances that the individual encounters in their lifetime and which intensifies once the final stages of the journey towards Realization are reached.
Then, it seems that no matter how hard one tries to befriend with others, to be sociable and to reduce the burden of ‘being alone’, one’s efforts bear no fruits and the damned loneliness strikes with full force.
No matter how many times you are told that you are never alone, that the kingdom of love is always around you, or that you can choose to be with friends, still most of the time you do not feel yet the strong connections with the realms of love or with your SELFs, and hence the feeling of loneliness remains painfully hovering around you.
And so the containment can serve as one of the best tools to remedy this situation. It is an accurate and very efficient natural self-generated resolution and if courageously performed would bring great results.
Next time that you feel alone in a world where no-one cares about you, that you have been deserted, that you are not loved and that the consequent physical pain which is accompanied by bitter weeping is unbearable, do the following simple thing:
focus your mind in the present and pay close attention to the “negative” feelings that arise from within you. Deliberately focus on those feelings and increase their intensity.
- As much as possible feel how lonely you are;
- Make sure you do not think about your loneliness but feel it.
- Do not think of the fact that you are by yourself and that nobody is there to be with you because such thinking would only lead you to feel more miserable and hopeless.
- You want to focus now only on the feeling of the loneliness and transmute its residues. * Feel the suffering of the loneliness or the painful departure of a lost lover, but again do not re-imagine in your head the break-up scene for such mind-work would only take you back to feel abject.
- Alternatively, take all the “negative” feelings that run through you and feel them. Just as you know how to fully feel “positive” feelings of happiness, content, and joy – for instance, while watching a funny comedy on TV or during an elating dance - so you should make the effort to amply feel as deep as possible the maximum “negative” feelings.
- Let this process seethe for a few minutes until the emotions wax.
- Now, bring back your mind into the process while you remember the meaningless differentiation between good or bad. Remember your ability to live with everything in your life as it is and make an honest attempt to enjoy those “negative” feelings.
- Remember – it’s not negative at all, it’s not wrong at all, and in that specific moment when you do that exercise, you simply allow yourself to feel the exuberant energy of life while it is streaming through you.
- You are lucky to allow such close connections with the rattling and lively force of life!
To learn to accept the feelings of pain and loneliness I offer the following exercise –
Imagine that you have just been released from a far away prison in which you have resided for the past twenty years. There, you lived in solitude and never saw even one single living soul. The only two things you experienced were the sunlight penetrating through the metal grating that was fixed high above in the ceiling, and the jingling sound of tableware three times a day.
Now that you are finally set free and standing outside the thick wall of your prison, any experience, be it the slightest and simplest, would invigorate your senses and would fascinate your full attention. If a ramshackle bus, whose black smelly smoke reached your nose, just passed by, you would still deeply inhale it and be grateful for being free and alive. After twenty years in solitude you would not allow yourself any judgment and simply would enjoy each and every experience that life would bring.
And so, and just the same you should regard your feelings of loneliness. After all, at one point in the future, you will reunite with your TrueLove and will never again have the chance to feel loneliness. Therefore, let your soul indulge in that feeling while it can!
Once you do it. you will suddenly realize that the loneliness is merely one more experience, one more adventure to be added to the magnificent reservoir of events called "your life". The loneliness will not seem threatening so much anymore and will make you feel embarrassed for giving it, in the past, the power to sadden you. You will feel surprised to realize that you did manage to quickly and efficiently handle what you had perceived to be a grave threat to your well being. The ability that you are developing now stimulate a dormant psychic mechanism that addresses your TrueLove with the following messages: “All right – I have learned, I have experienced, I know the dark aspect of myself. Now I no longer need it and am ready to move forward”. This ability to contain, to warmly adopt and to love the natural “negative” feelings that run through you whenever they rise, is a sign that your reunion with your Master Self has begun.
The reunion with your TrueLove has been birthed within you eons ago. It is a feeling that resides within any human being, sometimes just as a weak echo that speaks of ancient times when all was one. When you began your personal journey towards a joyous relationship you did have a vague clue regarding the meaning of TrueLove. You wanted someone to live with; someone honest, intelligent, caring and loving; a figure that would resemble a romantic character that you have seen in movies or read about in praiseworthy literary masterpieces.
In time, you have gone through many experiences most of which you kept for yourself since you had been afraid to be mocked at by those who have not understood your journey. Slowly and thoroughly you have changed concepts and world-views that you had held about love and its practical manifestations; you thanked the new people you had met who have given you new perspectives about life and who have shared with you their wisdom and priceless experiences; you read books, took workshops, traveled to far and distant places and enriched yourself by everything you experienced; and today, it is obvious, the wisdom that you gathered and that lives within you allows you to much better understand the self that you are and its journey. And while many things have indeed changed along the years one feeling remained – the tremendous compulsion to find Realization.
Along the years you surely have learned one or two new things about the essence of love; you also might have gained new insights about a past incident; and still, after so long and so many words, do you really know and understand that inner impulse? Do you know its origins? The reasons it constantly picks on you and bothers your peace of mind? What does lie behind the vague phrase “TrueLove”? Is it really about meeting another human being, your other half, Prince charming or princess bride?!
You are whole unto yourself and you certainly do not need a person from the outside to fulfill you. You know by now that as long as you keep pursuing that other half s/he would escape your grip. You may say to yourself today that you don’t need your other half and that you are “whole and compete as the way you are and that you know how to enjoy and celebrate every moment of your life”. But still, do you really mean it or these are merely nice words to cover your hopelessness and the fact that you had given up?! And if so, if we do indeed finally understand that we are whole human beings who contain everything then the big question remains – what is the meaning of the impulse to espouse TrueLove? Why do people fight until death to achieve their reunion with their TrueLover? How come we are so fascinated by romantic stories and imprisoned in their dramas? Why a happy ending makes us happy and a story in which the lovers separate saddens us? If love is just a physical force in the universe then how come we are not thrilled by turning the light on as we are by a love affair?
Lame explanations like “this is the nature of love and we better accept it” are not satisfying anymore. As species, we are more developed than we ever were in any era in our recorded history. The chase after TrueLove is very tangible and we demand true explanations that would cast away the fogy mystery that revolves love.
Credit: Bill Mayer
So indeed I am about to offer such an explanation.
First, I ask you to forget for a while any romantic childish notions or ideas about love that you may still hold and rather open your mind and rationale for new ones albeit they may disappoint you at first.
Let me say then that there is no such thing as True Love.
TrueLove is just an illusion, an emotional and mental manipulation that has been applied to many wise generations of human beings throughout history. Someone or something had had a first priority interest to insert within us lofty notions about TrueLove, soul-mates, happy relationship and then to manipulate us to act.
We had to be given an extraordinary incentive to ensure that our motivation to act in a certain way would not fade away in time. That incentive was the noble idea about TrueLove, about creating a soul reunion between two human beings in the physical realm, after which they would live happily ever after. That idea was implanted in the mass consciousness thinking and in the emotional environment until it indeed put down roots.
Consequently, it is difficult to find nowadays any human being who would declare that he or she would not really want to have TrueLove in their lives. That myth encouraged numerous travelers and seekers to go out and to search for their romantic fairy. They were willing to suffer hell, to be tortured, to even die for that cause. And indeed within time, the human species has developed itself, thanks to the pursuit of that myth, upon the evolutionary ladder.
In many ways we can now say that the “TrueLove” plan perfectly achieved its goal.
However, what was that goal in the first place? Who were the ones who invested enormous efforts to create emotional manipulations within the human species? Why have they used a path that induced many obstacles, took so much time and caused a great deal of suffering to countless humans? And perhaps the hardest question of them all – if TrueLove is just an illusion then what about our hope for happiness and pleasure in the company of another human being?
All fine questions indeed and In order to untie the knots, I must first tell the story of Queen Valentina.
Are you the one? 🙋♀
I am initiating a social/wellness tech enterprise and am looking for an enthusiastic partner to join me, in this global adventure, hand in hand to create something impactful for the people in this world.
Specifically, I am looking for someone with at least one of the following qualities (order of importance decreases):
- A values-driven person with the passion to build a social-technological enterprise;
- Self-aware, with some background in psychology (self-learned or official);
- Dedication – the ability to brainstorm, explore, work, build, draft, design a product. At first, for a few hours a week.
- Knowledge and experience in UX/UI design and/or product marketing and/or programming native apps (Android/IOS);
- Ability (if needed) to co-invest some money in the project (10-30K$).
If, when you read this, a string in your heart makes a sound, drop me a line, telling me about yourself and why you are interested. We'll take it from there 🚀
