For me, at times, what I experience as ‘me and my life’ becomes problematic, heavy, sticky, clogged, bogged down because of a certain situation or relationship issue. It feels like I’m being pulled down, pulled under, drowning in the personal identification with thoughts and feelings.
It is during these times that focusing on the sensation of just this breath becomes a life raft, if only momentarily, that saves me from going under. And while on this life raft, the breath becomes calm and the fog of personal turmoil (and the urgency to get myself free of it) gradually recedes to reveal the clarity of awareness. In the clarity of awareness it is seen that all these thoughts and emotions have created a separate sense of self who needs to do something, needs to figure things out, needs to understand why, needs to be a certain way, in order to get this mess behind ‘me.’
In the clarity of awareness it is seen that this separate sense of self is only a story of me, my life, and others that is based in past and does not need to be carried into future. All of those past associations, stories, stances and perspectives can be dropped with this one breath. What remains is the empty, and simultaneously complete, present unknowing awareness from which any or no action can arise. The burden of the known story of past (i.e., 'me') dissolves, and the freedom of not knowing awareness arises again and again with each breath.
I have noticed this week that being aware of the stories is very much like just an additional layer of sensation, or biochemical / nerve pathway in me, layer upon layer but yet fairly soft or thin. The stories and the ‘feel-ings’ are related, not just in a causal way but also in how they can both be sensed and felt, and observed with detachment. It is a curious thing, because it is like peering into the machine that I had thought must be what makes me run, the intricate gears of the clock – but this is not so – it is thin, light, soft, once seen easily fairly quickly it becomes translucent or its influence evaporates in the light of being seen. Funny bunch of stories, one upon the other, spun over the years from experiences and a sense of defining the self, the Ken with the stories, both internal and external. The stories are ephemeral flickers of shadows cast by my names and perceptions – so that I learn? Or remember? I’m sure I will still be doing it, but hopefully seeing these as they appear enables some deeper realization to stop creating them to begin with.
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