CONSIDERING THE EXCEPTION (UNKNOWING) — PART 2

 

(This part is the “me” experience…)

Without ever knowing how it is that this knowing came about, I found myself intuitively guided to step away from immersing in “healing circles” of people with shared experiences, or working with counselors who are experts or “know exactly (or a lot) about the trauma you have experienced”… and expecting that these will bring healing. Even if there was some engagement, it quickly fell away.

It was somehow clear that anyone who knows or is “trained” is ultimately conditioned and limited (if not crippled) by their knowledge, and frequently by their own trauma experience that brought them to the work, which functions as unhealed baggage. I organically preferred and ended up being in situations or around those who simply embodied exceptions. I even preferred the clueless friend or acquaintance who asked all sorts of awkward and “incorrect” or “damaging” questions, for especially if there was a trigger, it served as the opening to the healing… to clearly see what beliefs and constructs and mental-emotional patterns the mind was holding, thereby withholding the experience of the wholeness that I am.

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CONSIDERING THE EXCEPTION — PART 1

While it is clear that the notallXX type of argument arises from denial (a form of shame), which is indeed integral to the oppression, it can also function as an offer to consider the exception, whenever it is possible to be receptive in that way. If and when it is possible — and certainly not to repress one’s current thoughts and feelings or to gaslight oneself — it is illuminating, from any experiential perspective, to consider the exceptions rather than (yet without denying) the rule.

Have I experienced an exception to this manifest tendency in the world? (Have I experienced an exception to this manifest tendency in this group of people or this specific person?) How does the bodymind feel in those exceptional situations? What else do the exceptions reveal? Is this what a “healed world” looks and feels like?

Looking closely and consistently at exceptions keeps the mind open and unattached, and allows it also to organically and inevitably locate and magnetize more and more of those exceptions. And suddenly, just like that, the perception shifts of what is, as well as of what is possible. And if what is possible shifts in/as the mind, it verily shifts in the manifest.

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UNSEEING THE PROBLEM

In physics, we understand that if we push and bang against a heavy, solid, gross wall with our bare hands, the wall only pushes us back. It is “strengthened” in experience and only ends up hurting us. Whereas if it’s merely a wall of feathers, a nudge with a finger drops it.

In metaphysics, the mind’s perception of the solidity and grossness of something creates the same experience as the solid wall when we push and rail against that something. If we perceive something as historic (time-based), layered with meaning, entanglement, complexity and toxicity, a heavy and gross problem, there’s no way to push against it and achieve anything but the experience of its pushing back, and hurting and trapping us further. (Any “progress” is either a negligible dent or a morphing to a “changed” wall.) Yet the moment there’s seeing through the grossness to its subtlest, feathery, sheer, near non-existence, a mere nudge suffices to clear / clarify the way.

Always unsee the problem having acknowledged and seen it fully. Then see it disappear. This is your superpower (as consciousness). Not to gather more and more gross “knowledge” and rail against, but to allow the vision to shift, relax, (en)lighten. Not to solve but to dis-solve!

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LEVITY AND LEVITATION

In total enlightenment, compassion can look like not taking anything seriously and seeing everything lightly.

[Truth is Paradox series]

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ANTI-DISEASE?

Say a disease is manifest in your body.

How does being anti-disease resonate in the the bodymind?

How does being for healing, health, wholesomeness or wholeness resonate in the bodymind?

(Don’t mistake this for mere wordsmithing.)

And which gets to what you truly desire? Do you wish to be right (against the disease) or be well?

How are your actions motivated or inspired based on the orientation that resonates?

The world is the body of the one mind.

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EMANCIPATION

Discern between an orientation of emancipation / upliftment, and an orientation of victimhood / baggage.

Also see how (a) 99% stuff out there is the latter, and (b) even the slightest of the latter makes it 100% the latter!

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FEEDBACK, ONCE AGAIN!

Believing that feedback (good or bad!) from an (apparent) other is about “you,” a distinct, fixed and separate person, is perhaps the most narcissistic of all the mind’s tendencies! Paradox!

When we let feedback be about an (other’s) experience (of you), then paradoxically, we can truly receive and accept the feedback. Otherwise we are believing in a separate self (and other), which subconsciously resists the feedback while also intellectually believing that this self has to change. All this, instead of simply allowing patterns of conditioning to arise and pass.

This is genuine change — allowing the changing to change, while witnessing as the unchanging One.

Allowing the clouds that temporarily obscure true nature to come and go, and abiding in Self as the infinite and unchanging sky.

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HOW DIS-IDENTIFICATION IS KEY : RACISM AND OTHERING

The paradox is that as long as shame is associated with it, the conditioning of racism (and more generally, all othering) will continue to be either denied, or endlessly solved as external and structural problems, not fully seen and dis-solved within.

For shame becomes associated with the personal self, with identity, and now the personal self must defend itself, even if by attempting to own “faults” and signal virtue as the last resorts to preserve and redeem itself!

Nothing we are ashamed of can ever, ever truly shift! For shame is a form of attachment, of identification.

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VALIDATION

Recently I came across this quote by Brene Brown on a friend’s Facebook timeline, and it inspired a mini (paradox) post on validation… and now this more full-fledged one. This exposition need not be viewed as a “higher perspective.” (In anything I offer, it’s isn’t about higher or lower perspective, but simply direct seeing. As Awareness.)

So, let’s look directly at what’s been said in the quote.

It suggests that we can only totally trust the other’s experience (yes, correct). Giving their account total trust necessarily means we have a blank slate with zero assumptions and projections, that is, we have no idea what it’s like to be them (in their shoes) and we can only simply accept their experience. So, if it’s impossible to directly, inwardly know their experience, no matter how closely we listen via the mind, no matter how well we imagine, no matter how similarly we might think we’ve experienced something, then we cannot possibly validate it, as we can only validate what we know exactly and directly. And if we cannot validate it, we cannot invalidate it either! (Nor can we have empathy in the meaning of “being in their shoes.”) So, “empathy” can only mean simply accepting another’s experience, which can just be called Love, no?

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EMPATHY #2 – “BEING IN ANOTHER’S SHOES”?

A few days ago, I wrote a shorter piece on empathy (on Facebook), and with reference to the obvious villain, the police officer Derek Chauvin, and his horrific act of killing a helpless Black man, George Floyd. This post sparked many questions, one on the post itself, but many more privately. So, here I am, with a second post, to expand and clarify.

While understanding the below may be difficult, once it dawns it also cannot be unseen. And once seen, it is clear how the claim to “be in another’s shoes” prevents us from looking at our own unconscious biases and judgments, and even keeps us complicit in oppression… all in innocence (ignorance), of course!

So, please do see if you are interested in understanding. And if not, I am totally understanding (of that)!

One friend who shared my previous post, got another gentleman commenting in utter incredulity. And understandably so… we have assumed empathy as such a strong value and virtue, and left it unexamined. Everyone uses the word, including the Dalai Lama! So what is this foolish girl on about? The gentleman called bullshit on what I wrote, suggesting through multiple comments that I was bypassing and “washing my hands off of” the heinous crime by sugar-coating with lofty ideas of unconditional Love, and that I was suggesting we should somehow understand poor Chauvin and humanize his inhuman act.

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