Another Lesson From India so Appropriate Here as Well
Still working on my journals from India, and again came across the following, which happened in 2001 but is so appropriate to what I have been writing about here on this blog. Particularly the post about "Living in the Shadow of the Past". Hope you enjoy this personal insight and would love your comments.
Much love to all of you...and success on your own inner journeys.
Monday October 8th, 2001-8 AM
I didn't really know how to write about what just happened but it has been another turning point for me in my work with myself and my quest to come to terms with my painful past experiences which have had such enormous impacts on my whole life. To know the past
and to perceive it in a neutral light and to truly be able to forgive and put it all where it belongs...in the past...and not have it always accompanying me in subtle forms in all I do and in my relationships up to this day......I very often felt I had managed to do just that, but certain memories would keep coming back to haunt me and the same painful emotions were always still there...dealing with this and freeing
myself from this has eluded me… until today.
The fact that this happened on the very last day of my 2 months alone is for me, at any rate, very significant...it means to me that this was the time I
needed to purge myself and it is now perfectly suitable for me to be getting on with my travels with someone else...I no longer so desperately need this time "with myself". It is just another proof to me that we must never worry about "what will happen
when..." as the natural flow of events, the overview, is always in place and perfect for our needs...we do not need to waste all of our valuable energies worrying if we made the right decisions and analyzing each move before we make it and what if it will not "work out" and maybe we should have done something else. The idea is to just "DO".
I just read a quote by Ray Bradbury (of all people)
which is quite appropriate:
"Make your journey be a joyous one!
Don't think! Thinking is the enemy of creativity
It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is
lousy...
You can't try to do things.
You simply must DO things!"
Very apropos for all of us actually.
I really am still working on quieting my mind but that will still take time but the basic idea is "to do" and "enjoy" without thinking so much. All will always happen for our own personal best interest.
Now...What happened was I have been trying all kinds of techniques and exercises and processes to rid myself of several poisonous memories which have been keeping
me from truly feeling completely forgiving of the past and these memories were still preventing me from fully getting on with my life and with certain
relationships. I felt that none of the things I was doing was helping and again went to sleep last night feeling quite disturbed by the fact that I couldn’t overcome these feelings which always flooded back to me every time I tried working with the past.
One particular memory headed the list always and perhaps is representative of the injustices I felt as a child and I could never seem to see it in any
perspective other than a child being unjustly treated. No matter how I approached it, it just remained the same and hurt me and angered me every time over again.
It is an incident involving an ice cream tart and probably I am the only one who even remembers it, but, I have finally broken free of not only that incident,but every feeling of pain, anger and injustice it represented from my past.
In the early morning hours when we have "those kinds of dreams", a kind of video film of my childhood started to play. But it included feelings, smells, sounds, sights and impressions which placed me in the role of both participant and at the same time neutral
observer of the events and scenes. Places and people and sights and events and memories arose going back to when I was as young as 2 up to about the age of
10-12. So detailed was the "video" that I was actually there once again. I can still feel the
essence of the places and smell the food and hear the traffic noises while I sit here and write!! Most of the places and people I had not thought of in 50 years
if ever, and these came flooding back to me, candy stores, movie theaters, my grandmother(!), dancing school, on and on and on...friends, neighbors, it was unbelievable!! I wish I had some kind of dream video recorder to save it and replay for all of you to see!! But I guess the idea was just for me to BE there just once more and live through it as well - and neutrally observe it in order to finally purge myself.
Now this all sounds clever and nice and I know even while still watching it that it was working to finally get me moving on without the burden of my past...but as I opened my eyes (at first I had to rub them to be sure I was now really awake) a sparrow sat on the string which acts as my closet here and just looked at me...When I opened my eyes, it chirped as if to say "Oh, now you are a "free bird" just like me!!" (sparrow in Hebrew is called a "tzipor dror" meaning a "bird of freedom") and this is truly now how I
feel. I helped the sparrow find his way out of my room (don't know how he got in...was he here all night??) and then had an enormous cry of overwhelming joy and here I am writing!! I feel "light as a bird" inside and cannot truly believe that this happened to
me. Having the bird here to confirm it and physically emphasis the impact of what happened is almost unbelievable. But true!! So...that's if for
today...must truly assimilate what has happened to
me...it is quite amazing!!
Tuesday...October 9th (still in Mcleod)
After reading something by the Dalai Lama now I had an even greater insight into that ice cream tart incident I mentioned yesterday. It says when someone hurts you or angers you...not only to see it from the other persons point of view which is obvious...but to think
what opportunity it gave you to grow or something positive from YOUR point of view. Up until today I had actually not seen anything positive from my point of view in the incident...when all of a sudden it dawned on me...just now...and I burst out laughing...Am still smiling as I write this... I was given the opportunity at a VERY early age to learn
that you "cannot fool Mother!!"..a fact which probably made the next 15 years of my life a lot easier for me (or maybe you CAN fool her but you've got to be very clever and subtle to do it...so I was forced to develop some very useful tools for the rest of my
life!!)
Much love to all of you...and success on your own inner journeys.
Monday October 8th, 2001-8 AM
I didn't really know how to write about what just happened but it has been another turning point for me in my work with myself and my quest to come to terms with my painful past experiences which have had such enormous impacts on my whole life. To know the past
and to perceive it in a neutral light and to truly be able to forgive and put it all where it belongs...in the past...and not have it always accompanying me in subtle forms in all I do and in my relationships up to this day......I very often felt I had managed to do just that, but certain memories would keep coming back to haunt me and the same painful emotions were always still there...dealing with this and freeing
myself from this has eluded me… until today.
The fact that this happened on the very last day of my 2 months alone is for me, at any rate, very significant...it means to me that this was the time I
needed to purge myself and it is now perfectly suitable for me to be getting on with my travels with someone else...I no longer so desperately need this time "with myself". It is just another proof to me that we must never worry about "what will happen
when..." as the natural flow of events, the overview, is always in place and perfect for our needs...we do not need to waste all of our valuable energies worrying if we made the right decisions and analyzing each move before we make it and what if it will not "work out" and maybe we should have done something else. The idea is to just "DO".
I just read a quote by Ray Bradbury (of all people)
which is quite appropriate:
"Make your journey be a joyous one!
Don't think! Thinking is the enemy of creativity
It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is
lousy...
You can't try to do things.
You simply must DO things!"
Very apropos for all of us actually.
I really am still working on quieting my mind but that will still take time but the basic idea is "to do" and "enjoy" without thinking so much. All will always happen for our own personal best interest.
Now...What happened was I have been trying all kinds of techniques and exercises and processes to rid myself of several poisonous memories which have been keeping
me from truly feeling completely forgiving of the past and these memories were still preventing me from fully getting on with my life and with certain
relationships. I felt that none of the things I was doing was helping and again went to sleep last night feeling quite disturbed by the fact that I couldn’t overcome these feelings which always flooded back to me every time I tried working with the past.
One particular memory headed the list always and perhaps is representative of the injustices I felt as a child and I could never seem to see it in any
perspective other than a child being unjustly treated. No matter how I approached it, it just remained the same and hurt me and angered me every time over again.
It is an incident involving an ice cream tart and probably I am the only one who even remembers it, but, I have finally broken free of not only that incident,but every feeling of pain, anger and injustice it represented from my past.
In the early morning hours when we have "those kinds of dreams", a kind of video film of my childhood started to play. But it included feelings, smells, sounds, sights and impressions which placed me in the role of both participant and at the same time neutral
observer of the events and scenes. Places and people and sights and events and memories arose going back to when I was as young as 2 up to about the age of
10-12. So detailed was the "video" that I was actually there once again. I can still feel the
essence of the places and smell the food and hear the traffic noises while I sit here and write!! Most of the places and people I had not thought of in 50 years
if ever, and these came flooding back to me, candy stores, movie theaters, my grandmother(!), dancing school, on and on and on...friends, neighbors, it was unbelievable!! I wish I had some kind of dream video recorder to save it and replay for all of you to see!! But I guess the idea was just for me to BE there just once more and live through it as well - and neutrally observe it in order to finally purge myself.
Now this all sounds clever and nice and I know even while still watching it that it was working to finally get me moving on without the burden of my past...but as I opened my eyes (at first I had to rub them to be sure I was now really awake) a sparrow sat on the string which acts as my closet here and just looked at me...When I opened my eyes, it chirped as if to say "Oh, now you are a "free bird" just like me!!" (sparrow in Hebrew is called a "tzipor dror" meaning a "bird of freedom") and this is truly now how I
feel. I helped the sparrow find his way out of my room (don't know how he got in...was he here all night??) and then had an enormous cry of overwhelming joy and here I am writing!! I feel "light as a bird" inside and cannot truly believe that this happened to
me. Having the bird here to confirm it and physically emphasis the impact of what happened is almost unbelievable. But true!! So...that's if for
today...must truly assimilate what has happened to
me...it is quite amazing!!
Tuesday...October 9th (still in Mcleod)
After reading something by the Dalai Lama now I had an even greater insight into that ice cream tart incident I mentioned yesterday. It says when someone hurts you or angers you...not only to see it from the other persons point of view which is obvious...but to think
what opportunity it gave you to grow or something positive from YOUR point of view. Up until today I had actually not seen anything positive from my point of view in the incident...when all of a sudden it dawned on me...just now...and I burst out laughing...Am still smiling as I write this... I was given the opportunity at a VERY early age to learn
that you "cannot fool Mother!!"..a fact which probably made the next 15 years of my life a lot easier for me (or maybe you CAN fool her but you've got to be very clever and subtle to do it...so I was forced to develop some very useful tools for the rest of my
life!!)
Labels: dreams, India, insights, lessons, personal stories, Shadow of the Past
posted by Jane @ 7:53 PM
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