liberation

Living as Becoming : the emptiness project # 14

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Helen Keller

“Like a snake, my heart
has shed its skin.
I hold it here in my hand,
full of honey and wounds”
Frederico Garcia Lorca

Living from the Unarmored Heart :: Birth of the Self

As a vehicle
for giving birth to the Self,
live from the unarmored heart

1. Replace “identity” with conscious suffering
2. Trade conscious suffering for “unarmored aliveness”

“Attempt to build a nothingness tree
Which carries its heart leaflessly”

When we live from the unarmored heart,
fragments of memory,
fragments of childhood,
break through into conscious awareness

When we live from the unarmored heart,
childhood memories –
colors, sounds, smells, images, feelings –
arise from beneath the armor of our identity-cocoon

Our identity-
our name,
our defensive configuration,
our “who i think i am”-
falls away

We become instead:
arising sensations,
arising feelings,
arising memories,

arising insights (!)

experienced by conscious awareness

Arising sensations, feelings, memories, & insights
replace identity’s compulsive arising-thoughts

The direct, unarmored experience of the world
includes “suffering,”
as conscious awareness replaces identity

Our “suffering” represents the originally-unbearable,
early-childhood experiences
that forced us to create an identity
as a flight from overwhelming sensations & feelings

All the pre-language body memories
of overwhelming childhood sensations & feelings
which led to the creation of our identity

can now re-emerge into embodied awareness = birth of our Self

As our identity transitions to embodied awareness,
everything becomes more intensely felt

We are opening ourselves
to our “childhood” : our direct bodily experience of all arising sensations, feelings & memories without escaping to our identity

Living can function either as a defensive flight from sensations, feelings & memories into compulsive thoughts,
in which case we are living from identity,

or living can function as a path to embodied sensations, feelings & memories = unarmored aliveness

When our identity surrenders to “feeling everything,”
unifying sensations, feelings, memories, & insights,
past, present, future,
personal, cultural, archetypal,

then living functions as a vehicle for the birth of our Self

Sitting in & living from the “chaos”
of arising sensations, feelings, memories, & insights,
we are able to shed our identity

= “Déjà vu” breaking through = sensation-memories breaking through = “reality” breaking through = the Self breaking through

Sitting in our “chaos”
is a way of eliminating our need for
dissociative armor

We replace our identity-armor
with embodied consciousness
which directly experiences sensations, feelings, memories, & insights
without the need for dissociative flight

This allows the unarmored aliveness
of our Self to emerge

Our Self is born from out of its identity-cocoon.

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” 

Helen Keller

Empty the Mind, Fill the Belly

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  • It always starts with inhibiting conceptualization (arising thoughts) in order to experience the underlying, previously unconscious sensations generating those thoughts
  • It’s as if the thoughts are the symptoms (discharge mechanisms) of the unconscious sensations, as if the sensations want to be expressed
  • The thoughts are attempts by the sensations to reach consciousness
  • To expand the parameters of experience
  • Until there is no separation between thoughts & sensations
  • We’ll call this “insight”: in which thoughts are woven through sensations & sensations are woven through thoughts
  • We’ll call this “the birth of the self”
  • We’ll call this “liberation from self-estrangement”
  • We’ll call this “unarmored aliveness”
  • And the price of admission is consciously experienced primal suffering
  • Because the sensations are unconscious for a reason
  • They originally caused pain
  • So the price of admission is opening to the pain
  • That’s the crucifixion
  • That’s the path
  • That’s the yoga of the self process
  • And it always starts with inhibiting arising thoughts
  • And experiencing the underlying sensations
  • Empty the mind, fill the belly

    Picasso: The Old Guitarist

Seeing

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“There is an abiding beauty  
which may be appreciated by those
who will see things as they are
and who will ask for no reward
except to see.”
Vera Brittain

 

 

 

 

 

 

The heart doesn’t break,
it wakes up to what it always was:
the earth’s wound,
unencumbered by illusion

Formlessness, emptiness, the Self,
awakens to the earth’s wound,
unencumbered by illusion

Experience stripped of language,
experience stripped of identity,
experience stripped of hope,
= the Self experiencing the world
of unarmored sensation

By embodying impermanence,
by integrating hopelessness,
the Self eliminates the need for hope,
eliminates the need for identity
as a flight from impermanence

Hope is a symptom of identity

As identity falls away,
as hope falls away,
as hopelessness falls away,
an empty vessel remains:

A conduit
for experiencing the world,
for seeing the world,
as it is

vincent-van-gogh-mulberry-tree-c-1889_u-l-o4qkl0
Mulberry Tree