Forget yourself, forget who you’ve been, forget all your obligations. Not permanently, but have times of forgetting everything but being a free spirit. Imagine a day in which you drift like a leaf floating on a river and go whichever way the river goes, basking in the sun, so to speak.
Blockages in your body may have to do with all the “deliberacy” of your life. A life that is deliberate is not spontaneous. A life that is deliberate in some ways is not free. He says many are taught the religion of deliberacy. In that religion, deliberacy is the virtue, and freedom and wildness and spontaneity are not. It’s therefore important to return to the early state of freedom before indoctrination. Deliberacy may cause the need for or a pattern of eruptions. Perhaps you would use a different word than deliberacy, like control, but we like that word because it is we think more precise. It is controlling; it is excluding, and other things—we don’t need to enumerate them.
For one thing, if you’re overly deliberate, then you will project deliberacy on other people. If you think another person is deliberately doing things to offend you, it isn’t only the other person’s behavior that triggers a response; it is your projection of deliberacy: that, in your mind, the other person somehow knew it would set you off. Intentionality, where it was not there. Now we’re using deliberacy in another sense: “You deliberately did that to bother me.” How many times have you projected onto another person that s/he deliberately did something that set you off, or that s/he deliberately wasn’t there for you.
We are showing you now different faces of deliberacy. First we showed how deliberacy curtails behavior: “I will deliberately do this and I will deliberately choose not to do that.” Such as you would deliberately choose to be there for others and deliberately choose not to be there for yourself in a balanced way. Then we showed you how deliberacy became a way of becoming infuriated. Remember, the two are linked. It’s not only that your deliberacy leads you to project on others that they are deliberately doing things to thwart you, but you are doing that because you have been too deliberate yourself, and controlled and constrained and unfree and therefore edgy and therefore reactive and therefore resentful. They are linked. We do not believe that people ever intend to make friends enemies. We think it is our notion of projecting enemyship, which we are calling deliberacy, on another person’s actions, is the core. It is, of course, the blindness to one’s own projection—and projection in general is blind—and not seeing the other person at all because you are relating to your projection of them and not them at all.
Not taking care of yourself is part of the first kind of deliberacy: to deliberately ignore your own signals, to deliberately avoid confrontation.
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We want you to understand that many were taught that others are adversaries. Many are taught by modeling that the way to do relationship with others is adversarial. So the slipping back into that role is what we’re suggesting happens, the role that was modeled. The task is to plant flowers in that dark house. It’s not usually the way to simply never go back to that place. The wiring is there. It can be changed; it can be diminished, but often part of the process of transformation is to allow yourself consciously, with the light of the truth lantern being held, to go into the place of adversarial projection without being lost in it.
Initially when a person projects onto another person, they are blind 100% and they don’t apologize perhaps ever, or way late. Over time, if the soul is working on itself the gap between unconsciousness and consciousness becomes shorter. They may blow up at someone and two days later apologize instead of a week, then one day later, then one hour later, and then one minute later, and, to take this to its logical extreme, in the middle of it. That’s what we’re saying. The farthest extreme is beyond that: to be conscious as you’re losing it that you’re losing it and to do everything within your skill set to both minimize damage to another person and to ride the waves, the storm, successfully without wrecking on any beachfront. To feel it approaching and to navigate it and not to fear it or judge it. If you fear it or judge it that will predispose you to losing it and going unconscious. Because if you judge it, then you disown it. If you disown it, it will operate outside of your consciousness. If you fear it, you will empower it. Different reasons for both those, but similar.
So what we are saying is the best approach is always compassion for self. If you have too much sorrow, too much apologetic-ness, too much grief over causing damage, you actually sabotage the growth process because all those are putting attention on the other person which is where the problem began to begin with. It’s just one more way of abandoning self. It’s not that we don’t think you should have any regret, but if your regret supercedes or overwhelms your compassion for yourself, it doesn’t work. The change doesn’t happen. So, yes, have compassion for anyone you’ve made an enemy or treated badly, but have at least as much compassion for yourself being swept away.
In order to remain conscious, you have to be compassionate. Compassion is an essential component of awareness. If you’re not compassionate toward yourself, the likelihood of treating someone abusively or making them an enemy is much, much, much greater. The more compassion one has for one’s shadow behavior, the easier it will be to transform, redeem, absolve, heal, whatever word you wish to use. Just as it is interpersonally. If someone is harsh to you and you have no compassion versus if someone is harsh to you and you have compassion. Is there not so much more awareness when you have compassion? When you don’t have compassion, you attribute deliberacy; when you don’t have compassion, you attribute malice; when you don’t have compassion you react; when you don’t have compassion, it triggers all the previous ways of reacting; when you don’t have compassion you don’t understand why the person is behaving the way they are. You’re lost in your stance. When you have compassion, you open your heart.
A: Compassion for self, compassion for others is the key to awareness, the key to understanding and the key to staying conscious and navigating the waters of life appropriately. So that’s why one must have compassion for one’s defensive reactions, because otherwise one will become more defensive.
Compassion leads to love; love leads to knowing and truth. In other words, if all you can think of someone is negative or if someone has become the enemy, or if you are feeling someone is trying to thwart you, 99.99% of the time, you’re off balance. So you can pretty much realize you are off balance and therefore the goal is to recover balance and not to interact until balance is recovered. It can save a lot of misery. It also immediately directs the attention to what is needed.
There is also a 2nd chakra power component to deliberacy. Remember that when others were treating you mean, you were powerless. In fact, when you’re lost in rage, you’re powerless, when you’re lost in projection you’re powerless, and when you’re lost in deliberacy you are also in a certain way powerless. You’ve reduced your choices. When you deliberately spend extra time with another and deliberately ignore your own needs, you reduce your options and you reduce your power. It’s a little less obvious and direct, but it is true. We’re not saying only by the impact of having your needs wilt. Part of it is having the habit run you; not having the power to be conscious beyond the habit.
May we sing a melody to you? It’s message is let go of effort, let go of strain.
You can be in your body
You can live quite happily
You can live forever free
Let go and live with glee.
You can develop and strengthen self compassion in whatever ways work for you from looking in the mirror, to writing down, to dialoguing with a friend, to artwork or crafts, collages, whatever way you wish, focus on the question: “What is beautiful about me? What is wonderful about me? What is sacred about me? What about me should I rejoice about?” Any method.
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Copyright © 2001 Hank Friedman --- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
| Forget yourself, forget who you’ve been, forget all your obligations. Not permanently, but have times of forgetting everything but being a free spirit. Imagine a day in which you drift like a leaf floating on a river and go whichever way the river goes, basking in the sun, so to speak. Blockages in your body may have to do with all the “deliberacy” of your life. A life that is deliberate is not spontaneous. A life that is deliberate in some ways is not free. He says many are taught the religion of deliberacy. In that religion, deliberacy is the virtue, and freedom and wildness and spontaneity are not. It’s therefore important to return to the early state of freedom before indoctrination. Deliberacy may cause the need for or a pattern of eruptions. Perhaps you would use a different word than deliberacy, like control, but we like that word because it is we think more precise. It is controlling; it is excluding, and other things—we don’t need to enumerate them. For one thing, if you’re overly deliberate, then you will project deliberacy on other people. If you think another person is deliberately doing things to offend you, it isn’t only the other person’s behavior that triggers a response; it is your projection of deliberacy: that, in your mind, the other person somehow knew it would set you off. Intentionality, where it was not there. Now we’re using deliberacy in another sense: “You deliberately did that to bother me.” How many times have you projected onto another person that s/he deliberately did something that set you off, or that s/he deliberately wasn’t there for you. We are showing you now different faces of deliberacy. First we showed how deliberacy curtails behavior: “I will deliberately do this and I will deliberately choose not to do that.” Such as you would deliberately choose to be there for others and deliberately choose not to be there for yourself in a balanced way. Then we showed you how deliberacy became a way of becoming infuriated. Remember, the two are linked. It’s not only that your deliberacy leads you to project on others that they are deliberately doing things to thwart you, but you are doing that because you have been too deliberate yourself, and controlled and constrained and unfree and therefore edgy and therefore reactive and therefore resentful. They are linked. We do not believe that people ever intend to make friends enemies. We think it is our notion of projecting enemyship, which we are calling deliberacy, on another person’s actions, is the core. It is, of course, the blindness to one’s own projection—and projection in general is blind—and not seeing the other person at all because you are relating to your projection of them and not them at all. Not taking care of yourself is part of the first kind of deliberacy: to deliberately ignore your own signals, to deliberately avoid confrontation. We want you to understand that many were taught that others are adversaries. Many are taught by modeling that the way to do relationship with others is adversarial. So the slipping back into that role is what we’re suggesting happens, the role that was modeled. The task is to plant flowers in that dark house. It’s not usually the way to simply never go back to that place. The wiring is there. It can be changed; it can be diminished, but often part of the process of transformation is to allow yourself consciously, with the light of the truth lantern being held, to go into the place of adversarial projection without being lost in it. Initially when a person projects onto another person, they are blind 100% and they don’t apologize perhaps ever, or way late. Over time, if the soul is working on itself the gap between unconsciousness and consciousness becomes shorter. They may blow up at someone and two days later apologize instead of a week, then one day later, then one hour later, and then one minute later, and, to take this to its logical extreme, in the middle of it. That’s what we’re saying. The farthest extreme is beyond that: to be conscious as you’re losing it that you’re losing it and to do everything within your skill set to both minimize damage to another person and to ride the waves, the storm, successfully without wrecking on any beachfront. To feel it approaching and to navigate it and not to fear it or judge it. If you fear it or judge it that will predispose you to losing it and going unconscious. Because if you judge it, then you disown it. If you disown it, it will operate outside of your consciousness. If you fear it, you will empower it. Different reasons for both those, but similar. So what we are saying is the best approach is always compassion for self. If you have too much sorrow, too much apologetic-ness, too much grief over causing damage, you actually sabotage the growth process because all those are putting attention on the other person which is where the problem began to begin with. It’s just one more way of abandoning self. It’s not that we don’t think you should have any regret, but if your regret supercedes or overwhelms your compassion for yourself, it doesn’t work. The change doesn’t happen. So, yes, have compassion for anyone you’ve made an enemy or treated badly, but have at least as much compassion for yourself being swept away. In order to remain conscious, you have to be compassionate. Compassion is an essential component of awareness. If you’re not compassionate toward yourself, the likelihood of treating someone abusively or making them an enemy is much, much, much greater. The more compassion one has for one’s shadow behavior, the easier it will be to transform, redeem, absolve, heal, whatever word you wish to use. Just as it is interpersonally. If someone is harsh to you and you have no compassion versus if someone is harsh to you and you have compassion. Is there not so much more awareness when you have compassion? When you don’t have compassion, you attribute deliberacy; when you don’t have compassion, you attribute malice; when you don’t have compassion you react; when you don’t have compassion, it triggers all the previous ways of reacting; when you don’t have compassion you don’t understand why the person is behaving the way they are. You’re lost in your stance. When you have compassion, you open your heart. A: Compassion for self, compassion for others is the key to awareness, the key to understanding and the key to staying conscious and navigating the waters of life appropriately. So that’s why one must have compassion for one’s defensive reactions, because otherwise one will become more defensive. Compassion leads to love; love leads to knowing and truth. In other words, if all you can think of someone is negative or if someone has become the enemy, or if you are feeling someone is trying to thwart you, 99.99% of the time, you’re off balance. So you can pretty much realize you are off balance and therefore the goal is to recover balance and not to interact until balance is recovered. It can save a lot of misery. It also immediately directs the attention to what is needed. There is also a 2nd chakra power component to deliberacy. Remember that when others were treating you mean, you were powerless. In fact, when you’re lost in rage, you’re powerless, when you’re lost in projection you’re powerless, and when you’re lost in deliberacy you are also in a certain way powerless. You’ve reduced your choices. When you deliberately spend extra time with another and deliberately ignore your own needs, you reduce your options and you reduce your power. It’s a little less obvious and direct, but it is true. We’re not saying only by the impact of having your needs wilt. Part of it is having the habit run you; not having the power to be conscious beyond the habit. May we sing a melody to you? It’s message is let go of effort, let go of strain. You can be in your body You can live quite happily You can live forever free Let go and live with glee. You can develop and strengthen self compassion in whatever ways work for you from looking in the mirror, to writing down, to dialoguing with a friend, to artwork or crafts, collages, whatever way you wish, focus on the question: “What is beautiful about me? What is wonderful about me? What is sacred about me? What about me should I rejoice about?” Any method. Click to Return to Send e-mail to Hank Friedman by clicking here Copyright © 2001 Hank Friedman --- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |