2007/10/12

Cut at the heart

Quote from A Course in Miracles :

1. Suffering is an emphasis upon all that the world has done to injure you. Here is the world’s demented version of salvation clearly shown. Like to a dream of punishment, in which the dreamer is unconscious of what brought on the attack against himself, he sees himself attacked unjustly, and by something not himself. He is the victim of this "something else," a thing outside himself, for which he has no reason to be held responsible. He must be innocent because he knows not what he does, but what is done to him. Yet is his own attack upon himself apparent still, for it is he who bears the suffering. And he cannot escape because its source is seen outside himself.

----–

The mind I call mine seems to carry an attack on life. It can show up clearly as hatred and be less obvious in expressions of irritation and impatience - but it is my own judgement upon others and the world.
But these are really my judgement on my self-as-judged and yet disowned.
The root of this seeming evil in me is too heavily fearful to allow directly into awareness and in deliberately obscured past I have sought to hide it by seeing it in all that I have disowned in my mind - and call 'world' and 'other'. This gives fenced off 'me' a breathing space where I have some sense of a self rather than unbearable conflictedness. But at great cost, because I have put the source of my judgements as if outside myself - and now suffer as if violated from the other or from outside myself.

But now I have come to recognise- to know again - that the darkness is never 'out there' but is reflecting something that has a gift for me if I can but be willing to listen and see with a fresh willingness for peace and wholeness of mind.

Last night and again this late afternoon I have experience of great pain in the right side of the heart. Like being cut. The first time was while singing for dancers and I felt to hang in and just find a way with it. It did fade after a while and caused me to moderate myself to be less energised but perhaps more transparent as a channel. Today as it hit again it brought a wave of deep emotional pains and I was tempted to follow that as if it were a cause - but the stories of 'my pains' are not worth the telling or the listening because I dont really believe them - or desire to. Self pity moved over to a sense of grimness amidst something that started to feel like hospitals, incapacity or leaving the body. I felt a great need to let everything else go - not difficult as it floored me - and just calm and feel and open. I also have the toothe ache which, though carrying a somewhat uncomfortable skull and throb, is something I have experienced trusting through and releasing fear - so it was as if the toothache was like a beacon for the larger fear. And indeed the toothache did remind me that it is my fear that causes pain to mount as if with power over me to become past bearing.
So I started the welcoming of the pain as medicine - as surgeons needle and knife. As I do so it softens because it opened a space to feel directly rather than to 'feel' my fears and thoughts about the pain. The capacity and willingness to hold and embrace is love - and this awoke in me as a sense of loving and being loved - of which the pain was not apart or violating.
I recognise that I want to be free of fear of whatever this is so that I can wholly embrace and trust. In the awakened love this is not merely thinking but love's prayer in me.
The experience had turned about and though all sorts of symptoms persisted I was in a gentle place. Very quiet within and indeed as if cut - and yet a core awareness within that has nothing spare and yet nothing lacking.
I have often wondered just how much illness and dysfunction that we seek remedy for, is in fact the gift of awakening unrecognised. I would never put this onto another unless asked of - because the essence of the matter is trust or fear.
How do I know if I am engaging with trust or allowing fear to fool me? If all I do is think (and react from that) I will surely ensure the latter.
But trust that opens to peace is self evidently the result of my true desire.

The thought of being cut at the heart had associations one of which is - Leonard Cohen's lyric 'By the River's Dark'
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/thepassionofthechrist/bytheriversdark.htm

In Peace

Brian