I’ve just passed through a shift so basic in my life that I didn’t know beforehand that the shift was available or possible.
And I have to acknowledge a friend, whom I don’t want to embarrass by naming, who has modelled this way of being for me until I got it.
Where do I start?
The shift occurred Friday night and into Saturday morning and I can only describe it in retrospect. Going forward I did not even suspect that anything was happening.
Previously, as you know, I’ve been processing vasanas and core issues. A vasana is a reaction pattern formed in response to an earlier, traumatic incident. It includes the issue, the conclusion reached about life, the decision on how to act in the future, memories, feelings, body language, etc.
A core issue is an issue which we’d choose to die before exposing, facing and resolving.
I could characterize my life as being OK, even very happy at times, but punctuated often by the triggering of a vasana and limited by my not wanting to stray onto the wrong side of my core issues.
But I think I’ve cleared so many vasanas that my life became ripe for this major shift. Still I wouldn’t even have recognized that there was the possibility of a shift, or have recognized the shift when it happened, had it not been for my friend modelling it beforehand.
It’s going to sound funny. It may not seem like a big deal when you hear me describe it. You may’ve had to have been there to appreciate it.
I shifted from my memories being solely of earlier, traumatic times to my memories including happier, better times.
Let me let that sink in.
I’ve almost never had memories of earlier, better or earlier, happier times, only of earlier, traumatic ones. Can you imagine that?
The shift began in the early evening, when I was walking along the beach with my friend in a familiar part of Vancouver (English Bay) and went to share an earlier, traumatic incident that arose in my mind. OK, a complaint from a distant past.
But I didn’t and I reported that I had not. I said I was sparing her and she agreed. And we laughed together.
But that proved to be only the tip of the iceberg.
Later on in meditation, I began to be aware that I was now remembering earlier, happier times instead of simply all the old “bad memories,” our “top tunes,” as Werner Erhard would have called them. A walk down memory lane for me became ennobling rather than depressing. (1)
As it happened, last night, the memory of earlier, happier times was so powerful that it propelled me into a transformational moment, a peak experience.
The impact of that remembrance was to open the door to a flood of memories and a shift in my way of being. I don’t claim to be able to explain it, but it occurred nonetheless.
Not only were the remembrances powerful, but the states of being they related to came alive for me as well.
But I want to describe only the first memory because it was so powerful.
The first memory was of the last lunch I had at Cold Mountain Institute before leaving a now-ended, three-month encounter group.
The group was saying goodbye. But so well did we know each other by then and so deeply did we accept each other’s personal sovereignty that no one I can remember said a word.
Can you imagine anything more counter-intuitive than spending your last moments with a group that you had been to hell and back with and not saying a word?
We’d aired so many vasanas, resolved so many core issues, explored so many significant chunks of our lives together, and passed through such stages of awkwardness in learning new ways that I knew every one of them better than I knew my own loved ones. Way, way better.
But I can’t imagine anything more unexpected than spending my last meal with them in silence.
That last lunch made a permanent impression on me and was the highpoint of personal development in my life to that time, a high water mark. And I’ll never forget it.
But the point of my sharing it is that I was able to access the way I felt at that moment and remembered the experience of group love – of love at the level of the group – and the deep acceptance of another’s personal sovereignty – and of mine – that I was in that made our silent communion possible.
I realized that, if I could remember how I felt at the end of the experience, I could also remember what brought me to that place. And I began to remember. I remembered some of the learnings that brought us all to that point. The technology of the group began returning to me.
It was the sum, the mix of all these memories that sent me into a transformational moment.
In that peak experience, I emerged in a way I never have before. (2)
I’d like to keep this share from becoming overly long so I may stop here and discuss the importance of “personal sovereignty” in another post. (3)
But what I’m left with is that I now have access to the happier memories of my life whereas in all my life until that time I did not. I don’t know what life will be like from here on in but it’s about as wonderful at this moment as anything I’ve known.
One clue as to how life will be is that I awoke this morning expressing gratitude for everything in my life – my life itself, my relationship, my family, my memories, my state of being, everything. This too my wayshower friend had modeled for me.
I can tell that friend that what she’s doing is working and keep going. I am living proof of the workability of this new paradigm, whatever it is.
Are you in that place of remembering only the earlier, traumatic incidents in your life? Well, I can tell you that there is another place to be.
Footnotes
(1) I can hear someone quoting Krishnamurti to the effect that thought, memory is not love.
“Thought, with its emotional and sensational content, is not love. Thought invariably denies love. … The sense of time and space, of separation and sorrow, is born of the process of thought, and it is only when the thought process ceases that there can be love.” (1)
That’s very true and at many points during my experience my mind was indeed completely empty of thought.
But there’s also no denying that (1) the recollection of the memory that lies at the heart of a vasana can set one free from the vasana and (2) many instances could be cited of sudden thoughts sending a person into rapture and enlightenment.
Keep in mind as well that it’s an accepted path to enlightenment to remember who we are. After all, most of us have already ascended in other lives, as Sue Lie’s Arcturians reminded us the other day: “In your other Ascension lives, all of you (even those who are now lost in darkness) have had Ascension experiences.” (“Arcturian Message – Keeping the Lights ON,” channelled by Suzanne Lie. August 6, 2014, at https://suzanneliephd.blogspot.co.uk/.)
(2) See the essays under “Emergence” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/emergence-2/.
(3) Although, for one cut at it see “Monarchs in Our Own Domain” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/08/05/monarchs-in-our-own-domain/.