The new year is almost upon us: a new year with new possibilities. It's time once again to write down that list of resolutions. What do you want to change in your life? For many of us, creating the list will be easy. All we have to do is go find last year's list and put a new date at the top.
Is this true for you? Do the same problems show up over and over in your life? It is for most of us.
How does it happen that so often we intend so much and achieve so little? We really do want to carry out everything on that list we make each year, or at least we hope we do. But somehow, for most of us, the items don't change from year to year. What gets between our good intentions and our actions? For most of us, no matter how it may appear to others, trying harder won't make much difference.
Even if this does not apply to you, even if your life is close to perfect and you always accomplish what you set out to do, there may be some small areas of improvement possible in your life. There may be some frustration, some unhappiness or pain that could be healed. Or you may want to learn to move through emotional upsets more quickly.
Many spiritual teachers say that there are only two states of being for humans, love and fear. I will explain in a moment what I mean; meanwhile, though it may not make much sense at this point, or you may think that this is too simple a way to describe the complexity of human consciousness, please consider that it might be true that all of human experience can be reduced to these two states. Fear, in all of its disguises, is what keeps us from creating the changes we want in our lives.
Our everyday trances
Many teachers discuss the day-to-day condition for most people as one of being asleep, of being in a type of involuntary trance, while appearing awake to both oneself and others. These teachers say that waking up and staying awake are not easy.
Consciousness is difficult to examine because the structure of belief, and of believing, is invisible without rigorous training. It is usually easier to see that other peoples' beliefs, or filters, are "beliefs," rather than clear and absolute perceptions of reality, than it is to see the same about our own. "Beliefs," "habits" and "filters" are slightly different descriptions of that which clouds our more direct experience of reality.
Our identity - that is, who we think and believe we are, what we think of as the foundation of our selves - is made up of our beliefs, for most of us. For example, I am a gender, my name is such and such, I am so many years old, I live in this town, I went to that school, I studied and follow this religion, my profession is interesting or not and so on. These beliefs are not our real selves, but we usually think they are. When those beliefs are threatened or criticized, we usually reject the challenge, if we even perceive it. Almost all beliefs become filters through which we perceive our own experiences and reality. Information that does not agree with the filter is ignored or discounted. We walk through life reacting by habit, and most of our behavior is automatic. We each have our own version of this practice.
The hypnosis of fear
Why would we form filters, habits and belief systems that prevent us from experiencing reality more directly? Many teachers say these trances are caused by fear - that is, by seeing oneself as separate and alone.
Fear's opposite is love. Love is experienced as openness, flowing energy, a relaxed body, breathing down into the belly, trust, peace and joy. Fear is experienced as behaviors such as feeling tension and pain in the body, breathing in the chest, having a tight belly, performing acts of violence, lying, cheating and stealing; emotional states such as suspicion, mistrust, cynicism, anger, boredom, hopelessness, shame, embarrassment, rage, hate, romanticism, resentment and grief; and rigid belief systems such as sexism, racism, nationalism and classism, to name just a few.
We have this fear, with its many masks, because we humans tend to live in a defensive stance, imagining danger around every corner. We create habitual behaviors that make us feel safer and that include fixed ways of thinking, feeling and managing our bodies to prevent us from feeling the fear.
How can you tell when you are in such a trance? It's not easy. Trances do have specific characteristics, which you can recognize more quickly with practice. They have a repetitive quality in their emotional components, thoughts and body sensations. The more day-to-day trances are part of what we usually consider our "personality," "who we are," and "what we believe." The more dramatic ones have strong emotions and often more or less destructive behaviors associated with them. They are all the filters, or beliefs, and habits through which we live our lives.
Maintaining these trances takes energy. That is why we are often so tired and dispirited and feel so hopeless in life. Much of our energy is being used holding these beliefs and behaviors in place and repressing unwanted emotional states, so we have much less energy available to live life.
Anger is a common trance state that we have all experienced. Anger is one of many secondary emotions. It is a shield we throw up to protect ourselves from the hurt of rejection, the disappointment over the death of our hopes and dreams, the sadness of one more relationship falling apart, the realization that once again someone we trusted has not lived up to our expectations, the grief over how life has turned out, the fear of being alone if our loved ones are harmed. There are many shields, and underneath them all is the state of feeling separate from everyone and everything else. Underneath anger is fear.
Human beings have always had to adapt to change and respond to danger to survive. We have created technologies to change our environment for human comfort, efficiency and safety. Now we ourselves are being forced to adapt ever more quickly to the technological changes that we created to make life easier. In the past, societies had a couple of generations to integrate technological changes. Now our technology has become so intense that changes that once we would have had a generation or more to integrate must be accepted in 10 or 15 years. The stress this puts on society and the individuals in society is overwhelming us. While we are in less danger from famines and bears, we are in more danger from car wrecks and the daily grind.
The more stress we are under, the more likely it is our bodies will interpret the tension from stress as danger and the more likely we are to fall back on habitual behaviors that have gotten us through dangers, real or imagined, in the past. These dangers can include any time we didn't know what to do in a situation, whether we perceived the danger as physical, emotional or mental; they can include all the times when we got scared as a kid, felt that no one cared about us or felt any overwhelming emotion.
When we are in such situations, or in a new situation that strongly reminds us of a previous one, we are more likely to react than to act. These habitual reactions, when we unconsciously behave as if a new situation is like a past situation, are the commonest types of trances. We live them. We lose our ability to assess each new situation as the new situation it is. Even when we have no idea that we are afraid or have anything to reasonably be afraid of, we are often reacting to a fear of experiencing fear or rejection like that of a particular time in the past.
Being in the state of fear reduces our ability to think, to fight, to get away from danger. It makes us rather stupid. The state of fear is so unpleasant and frightening that we have automatic mechanisms - trances - to reduce our awareness of it.
This syndrome is not easy to discuss or examine. Nor is it easy to change those habitual reactions, those belief systems that are accepted as the real reality, those filters that are invisible because we are looking through them rather than at them. But most of us in the Craft have learned that what we wish for, concentrate on, infuse with emotion, create rituals about, hold in our thoughts and focus our attention on is what we create in our lives. How much of our time is spent in these mental machinations, rehearsing the trances that are the foci of our lives? Do we want to continue building on these past hurts? Is there a path from fear to love?
How - and whether - to begin to change
If you find change attractive, take it in small steps and with a teacher or mentor if possible, because we all have an unlimited ability to con ourselves about what we are doing with our lives. In the long run, you will have to find a teacher, and a community, to support you to make consistent movement. However, the first part of waking can be done alone, and it will reduce the pain of life and the feeling of aloneness. The solitary ritual at the end of this article is a good beginning on the path to change. It is an excellent way to turn down the volume on the pain in your life and create space and courage for love.
Earlier in this article, I spoke of us, we, ourselves, because community is the context for humans. But those who wish to wake up can, and in fact must, begin this work as individuals. No one else can do it for you. Neither can anyone prevent you from it if you desire it deeply enough. Every moment of living becomes another opportunity to open your heart and experience whatever is present. Each individual who awakens and lives in a state of love toward life and self makes a contribution to the possibility of all human communities living in that state.
Is waking up from this trance worth the effort it will take? That is a very personal question, and each of us must answer it alone. If the answer is yes, you will have to choose to act upon that decision, moment to moment, again and again. What is to be gained by beginning to wake up? Why not stay in our trances, since they have been adequate to get us to this point?
All the involuntary trance states - anger, fear, hatred, self-righteousness, cynicism, hopelessness, confusion, greed, lust and so on - simply spin upon themselves or lead to another version of themselves. For example, anger can change to violence, then to depression, to hopelessness and back to anger. There is no way out of the process using those emotional states. Being calm and working on not caring doesn't usually work all that well either.
The strongest reason most people become willing to learn to wake up is that the trance states and belief systems that worked for them in the past are not working very well any more, and the amount of emotional or physical pain they are experiencing drives them to seek other knowledge. Trying to change from inside the trance system has had little effect for them. For example, trying to control your temper in the middle of losing it is usually an exercise in frustration.
But even after we first accept, then test the proposition and realize that we are asleep most of the time, it is difficult to stay awake. I suggest this difficulty in examining our belief structures is partly created by our lack of forgiveness toward ourselves, toward others and toward life. Our unwillingness to forgive and our desire to punish someone or something over the hurts and unexpressed grief in life are the main barriers to opening up to forgiveness and love.
Consider the possibility that this might be true, or at least an interesting idea to work with, and that it might be possible to forgive, to wake up from our trances. If the possibility of waking up attracts you, know that waking up begins with the willingness to do so, even if conditional at first.
Barriers to waking up
What might get in the way of our willingness? For many of us, the idea of forgiving someone who has wronged us seems unreasonable or impossible. Immediately, our minds fill with memories of exactly what that person did to deserve our anger and maybe even hatred. We feel that rush of self-justification, and our thoughts are taken over with images of just what happened: what they said, what we said, what we wish we had said. Emotions pour through us, our hearts beat faster, our breathing quickens. The inner conversation takes over, and the inner weather swirls with storms.
Or perhaps the images are of a time when we ourselves acted foolishly, when we lashed out when we should have held our tongues or when we betrayed our own standards or even someone else. These images are an aspect of the shadow, the part of ourselves we are so ashamed of and fear so deeply that we usually will do almost anything to avoid looking at it. Many people blame others for this part of themselves they cannot face and want revenge and scapegoats.
When we find it impossible to begin to break up the internal conversation and emotional state that has us entranced, there is often something we are telling ourselves about it that is untrue. Our internal statements about it may be overly black and white, for example: I did everything I promised to do, and they didn't keep any of their promises! They lied, cheated, stole, manipulated and looked down on others; I never do those creepy things!
Telling the truth about the matter will allow the trance to begin to break up. Did you really keep every single promise? Did they really break every single one of theirs? Have you never felt contempt for someone automatically, walking by them on the street? Have you never lied, stole, manipulated or cheated? If we cannot face and acknowledge our own shadow, we will keep finding and experiencing it in others.
Looking at emotional storms
To begin making a change, take a moment and look within your thoughts, your emotions and your body to see what else is present right at the moment in consciousness as you consider a past emotional storm. Recall and recreate that last upsetting incident. What happened within your thoughts, your feelings and in your body - tension or pain? After the anger, or under the anger, is usually sadness, grief or fear. Under the shame is usually sadness, separation or loss.
When we are upset, there is often a body component to it. If you close your eyes and use your imagination to sense inside your body, you may find areas of extra tension. They will probably be located somewhere along the midline of your body, between your throat and your groin, although they may be elsewhere. You may experience this area of extra tension as pain, heat, cold, numbness or some other sensation, or it may have a color such as red, black or something icky. As you examine this area, a little movie or a rush of emotion may flash through your body and mind. Remember to take deep, slow breaths when this happens and to ground and center. This recall is often accompanied by an internal conversation agreeing with, justifying or explaining everything that happened.
In the midst of all the pain, the rush of emotion, the physical sensations, only opening up, forgiving and making a place for love allow an expansion outward from the repetitive emotional spin of fear. It takes a lot of courage to forgive in the face of fear. Remind yourself that love is stronger than fear and that you do not have to love, that you can always do it later and that there will always be enough time for love and healing.
Perhaps you cannot think of an area to begin with or cannot determine who needs forgiving the most. Many teachers suggest starting small at first; perhaps you could forgive that guy who didn't let you into a traffic lane yesterday, or the mail carrier for being late, or the weather for raining when you had no umbrella.
Waking up is painful, and few people begin to do it until the pain of staying asleep drives them to it. While waking up brings enormous energy release with it, it can be scary. But it is not an all-or-nothing practice. It builds over time.
However, you can reduce the pain of life without making waking up part of your spiritual path. You never need to give up any emotional state. You will be able to tell when it's time for you to give one up when you notice how tiring or boring it has become. As long as we are getting more out of our anger than it is costing us, we are unlikely to give it up. For myself, until I saw the rewards of my depression, I could not understand why I wouldn't do the work to control it. I could easily see the costs from the beginning. For most involuntary trance states, either the cost or the reward is unclear, and the lack of clarity helps maintain the state.
A beginning practice
Following is an exercise in two parts, one for forgiving others and one for forgiving yourself. Do both parts of the exercise each time if you can bring yourself to do so. I recommend this because thinking you need to forgive yourself and not others, or the reverse, is probably not correct. We are not reliable sources of information about who or what needs forgiving the most, but we can trust the practice to bring us this information. We exist in our relationships more than anywhere else, and they usually could use some healing in every direction.
This exercise cannot be done by just thinking about it, or by just reading the material, although it is a good idea to read it through once first to get an idea of what it contains. To use the exercise as a practice, record it on a tape, perhaps with your favorite relaxing music in the background.
This is a way to begin to forgive:
Start with the body. Allow the body to forgive. The body forgives by relaxing, by breathing deep into a soft, relaxed belly, by sending roots down into the earth and opening to the heavens, by receiving energy and allowing it to pass through without any tightness or resistance. Do some yoga, dance, sing, release the holding in your body.
Take deep slow breaths, and relax. Look around you. Are you in danger right now? If not, let down your guard. For the moment, stop worrying about tomorrow, let go of yesterday's disappointments, focus on the present moment, right now. Close your eyes and imagine that you can see inside your body. Look around for any areas of pain or tightness. Use your imagination and see your heart opening, see love flowing into your heart from the universe and spreading out to fill your whole body. See the tightness begin to relax. See the pain releasing. Feel the energy flow through.
Flex and stretch any tight or painful areas. Massage them from the inside with your breathing. Use your imagination to send energy into those areas to bring them into balance. Take more deep, slow breaths, and relax. Forgiveness begins with possibility, and you can choose possibility by saying so.
Try it out. Say "I choose the possibility of forgiveness. I choose love." Can you sense the opening this creates? Can you see that from that choice many other possibilities open up? Then say, "I am willing to forgive. I am willing to experience forgiveness in my life." Allow yourself to experience the release from all that you have been holding. Accept mercy toward yourself, and send mercy to others in your life and thoughts. (While this may seem scary, or useless, in my experience it is a way that is always available to each of us at every moment, and you can do it without "believing" it.)
A second step
Now, stretch, release, relax, breath, ground and do this practice: Sit in a comfortable chair, feet flat on the ground, arms and legs uncrossed, eyes closed. If you feel tense or distracted, use a relaxation process to relax. Do a few minutes of yoga, or do this exercise sitting in a warm bath. (There is no right or wrong way to do this. Open your eyes whenever you want; move your body to be more comfortable. Whatever you do, notice what you are doing.)
Recall the last time you were unhappy because of another person. Create a picture in your mind of that person. See them standing there in front of you, or perhaps sitting in a chair facing you. Take a little time and really look at them.
What is between you? Is it anger, resentment, fear, sorrow, annoyance, impatience? Take a deep breath, and avoid resisting the emotions; just allow them to be present and to flow through you.
Now picture good things happening to that person. See him or her receive love or attention or money - whatever you believe that person would see as good.
Become aware of your own reactions. Pay attention to what is happening in your body and your thoughts. If you have difficulty seeing good things happening to the person, don't be concerned; this is a natural reaction. It will become easier with practice. Say to yourself, "I am willing for good things to happen for (fill in name here)."
Don't be concerned about doing the practice right. Don't be concerned if you continue to have negative thoughts and feelings toward the person you are considering. Don't cling to the negatives, and don't put any energy into trying to make them go away. If at any time you find yourself going off track and concentrating on the negative, take a deep breath, see your heart opening and send love, energy and hope throughout your body and to the other person. Bring your attention back to the practice.
Picture the person feeling happy, feeling loved and appreciated. (If you continue to get caught in a swirl of negative reactions, perhaps you have begun this practice with an issue or person that is too big to begin with. Pick another person, someone you are just mildly annoyed with. You can go on to more important issues later, if you choose to. You don't ever have to give up your anger, or other attachment, toward any particular person or experience, and you can choose to given them up when you are ready.)
Think about the role you played in the stressful scene or incident. Imagine how you might reinterpret the event and the other person's behavior. Imagine how the situation might look and feel from the other person's point of view. Take a moment and look at it from their perspective.
You can even trade places with them for a moment if you want to. With your imagination, look out through their eyes at you sitting there. What does the situation look like from their point of view?
Forgive them, and forgive yourself. Let go of it. Let the incident be in the past. Say to them, out loud, "I forgive you. I forgive you for (name whatever it is), and I wish you love and well-being from this moment on." Take a deep breath, keep your belly soft, open your heart and send love to them. See them basking in the glow of the love and energy you are sending them.
Allow yourself to be aware of how much more relaxed and less resentful you feel. Tell yourself you will carry this new understanding, this new freedom, with you into the future.
Now create an image of yourself standing in front of you. See your body; look at your face. Smile at yourself. You can do this in front of a mirror, if you like. Remember to continue taking deep, slow breaths and to keep your belly relaxed. Keep your whole body relaxed. Check your jaw and your eyes. Are they relaxed? Relax them a little more.
Imagine a time when you disappointed yourself. Remember how you felt, but in the beginning, while you are learning, do not dip too deeply into the emotional state you felt at that time. Smile again, and realize that the incident took place in the past and you can choose to let it go, to go forward into a new future, a future where you are wiser because you have lived through these moments in the past. Say out loud, "I forgive myself. I forgive myself for everything I did that I should not have done. I forgive myself for everything that I did not do that I should have done. I forgive."
Forgive at your own pace and as you choose to. This is a powerful meditation, and you have the ability to evaluate what needs forgiving in your own life and whether or not this is something you wish to do. Each time you find something more to forgive, you will find more and more energy available to you.
Allow yourself to savor and enjoy the release of energy that flows through your body. Smile and enjoy the love you are experiencing at this moment. Open your heart and allow the love of the universe to flow through you and out into the world. Allow the love to nourish and heal you and everything.
Now imagine the whole world, imagine the universe, imagine the life force and say, "I forgive you. I forgive you for all the hurts in my life, for all the misunderstandings, for all the confusion, and I open myself to love. I am willing to experience the perfect love of creation. I forgive everything and everyone." Allow yourself to experience perfect universal love.
Open your eyes when you are ready.
A few comments on the practice
This practice can be done daily and need not take longer than 10 to 25 minutes each time, once you learn it. It is an adaptation from many sources and my personal experience. A variation of it is described in Getting Well Again, by Carl and Stephanie Simonton and James Creighton, a book for people with cancer and other serious illnesses. The Simontons and Creighton credit Emmett Fox with the technique, from his book The Sermon on the Mount.
As you gain skill with this technique, you can allow yourself to dip deeper and deeper into the feelings of grief, hurt and rage, if you wish to do so. Only do this as you are able to ground, center and release the energy. Remember that you are in charge at all times and that you can simply open your eyes, focus on the present moment and release the energy any time the experience becomes more intense than you wish. You do not have to delve into memory to release the energy; just ground, center, breathe deeply and release it. Nothing from your past can overwhelm you unless you add energy from the present to it. The past is past....
We have no way of "proving" that any experience we have of reality is "direct," "real" or "authentic." This article is about how far we are away from any such experience, not about whether there is a "real reality" that we can experience or perceive directly. If you choose to try this ritual, I would appreciate hearing from you, in care of Widdershins, about your experiences.
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