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Anxiety Assignment 1 - Batch 10 - Final
3/25/2023

I’m not meant to see ego is negating the joy of witnessing Life unfolding, reframing it as an uncertain future. It generates hope of an “improved” future, then feeds on that energy—you’re not good enough—through to despair, the back and forth concealing the close proximity of joy.
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The very good news about this approach is that while it seems as if it’s three “issues” (negating unfolding and reframing as an uncertain future, hope of an improved future, and the despair of being told you’re not good enough), it’s actually only one—a belief in the validity of “proximity.” If joy is in close proximity, then while it’s nearby, it’s not available now. Something needs to be different—sounds as if that comes down to you improving to be “good enough”—and when that difference happens, joy will be here. Joy is not in close proximity. Joy IS. Joy, actually JOY, is a synonym for HERE, for BEING, for LIFE. So, why is that not our experience? Because we’re not looking at JOY, for JOY, through JOY, In your case it’s because rather than eyes on JOY, you’re looking at something wrong/not enough. “Am I feeling the joy of witnessing Life unfolding?” “No, you’re not,” answers ego. “Joy is not available to you because your future is uncertain. Joy could be yours if your future were better, but since you’re not good enough to create a better future, well, no, not in the cards for you.” Nothing joyful about that, is there? We can make it more concrete this way: “I want to experience red. I really, really want to see red. I so hope one day I will. It would be so wonderful to live in red.” This is what I think about, sitting in a field of red flowers, lamenting the “fact” that there’s no red for me. Want JOY. Give all the attention to JOY and JOY will be yours. Gasshō 
 

"Thoughts Thwart Feelings" When bodily sensations draw attention away from thinking or unconsciousness, with sustained effort, usually results in noticing a buzzing sensation in the middle abdomen. Staying with it, the vibration consumes the body with painless, sometimes profound shaking that usually lasts a minute or so. Gassho.
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How exciting! It sounds as if you’re describing attention moving out of the head, where it’s consumed in unconsciousness, and brought back to the body, where you can actually feel the feeling of feeling alive. You must let me know what evolves, please. The vibration is painless; the body is not resisting. Going to be interesting to learn what egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate has to say and wants to do about this! Ego does not take lightly interference with its program of rendering its “subjects” unconscious! It truly hates it that we’re waking up. Gasshō
 
What I'm noticing: anxiety protects me from doing something that self-hate will really beat me up for. Energy sucked up to maintain it. R/L is an intervention into the process: releasing energy, lightening the heavy smog, caring for the human without judging, cultivating freedom and joy.. begin and continue repeatedly. 
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That’s big. We’re never supposed to see through a hoax like that. Anxiety is protecting you. If you didn’t have anxiety to come in and take care of you, you might do something that you’d get a beating for. What a load of horse pucky! But, until we see it for what it is, it seems/feels real. Lots and lots of people have wanted to convince me that fear is necessary and good because it keeps us safe. “Without fear what would stop us from just walking out into traffic?” I suggest intelligence as an alternative! Little kids are made to be afraid because adults believe they have no other way to protect them. What rarely happens is that someone comes back around when we’re old enough to understand to let us know 99% of the information we got as little kids has absolutely no application in an adult life. Sadly, for that information to be delivered it would require someone who has the information, and almost no one does. Thankfully, we do—now! Gasshō
 
Be the right person or you're going to hell. Seeing the constant low grade, barely perceptible vigilance, tension, fear of fear. Seeing the fatigue that results from trying to control // be the right person. Little things tap into the underlying stream of anxiety. Practicing with recollecting. Releasing. Gassho R/L
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The real information there is: Spend your life trying to be the right person and you will be in hell. It’s truly insane. People are so willing to believe messages that are cruel and hateful, and have so much difficulty accepting messages that are kind and loving. Why? Fear. It’s better to live in hell now than risk not living in hell now and winding up in hell later. The old “a bird in the hand…” just doesn’t seem to cut it. It is for this reason that awareness practice is so essential. No one can convince us of this stuff by telling us. Fear won’t let the information in. But we can pay attention, see for ourselves, prove it to ourselves, and be free. Gasshō
 
Magic trick of energy vibration. There is a sensation of vibration in my solar plexus. Some times a sense of danger. Breathing stops in anticipation of what happens next. Magician moves me to think fast what this means. Then a relief of understanding and now I can breathe again. R/L
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Are you “thinking fast” or are you “seeing clearly”? Is it “understanding what it means” that gets you breathing again or is it letting go of labeling the energy vibration “danger”? Gasshō
 
The theme of the anxiety/fear/ego was last week "Stuck in Ambivalence/Heartbreak," this week it's "Worry about Dental/Financial/Health." Now I see the main headline "Alone, Helpless, Hopeless." 
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Are you also seeing that anxiety/fear/ego always has a headline? Always an assessment of you and your life, and none of them is ever good? There’s no “Brave Human Lives Successfully Despite Ego Negativity.” No “Remarkable Person Survives and Thrives.” No “Person Sticking with Plan to Overcome Ego.” None of those? Nothing like that? How come? What’s the payoff here? Do you know the Woody Allen lament of, “If only insecurity and neediness were attractive”? Just for your consideration: You are clearly not alone. I’m here writing to you. Probably talk with you on a regular basis. You have an entire Sangha engaged in the same process of ending suffering you’re in. You are clearly not helpless. You’re here. Alive. With a computer and internet access! And, finally, you are only as hopeless as you want to be.  It might be time to start giving some attention to all you have and see if the list is longer than the list of what you don’t have. Gasshō
 
It is easier to see snakes and just be in constant terror of them than to deal with the true feelings (and conditioning) that lurk behind those snakes. Things like fear, lack mentality, grief, sadness, and more fear and grief.
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Really? It doesn’t sound easy. Terror of the imagined versus facing what is so? The only reason that sounds reasonable is that you haven’t tried facing it. The woman who was for decades acknowledged to be the world’s foremost expert on grief and loss, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, stated that an authentic emotion doesn’t last more than 20 seconds. 20 seconds! So, what’s happening that people live for days, weeks, months, years in fear and grief? They’re not in fear and grief. They’re in a bunch of stories that keep making them afraid and sad. If you spent all day watching first a scary movie and then a sad movie and then a scary movie and then a sad movie, you would feel either sad or afraid all the time. You just would. That’s how it works. But, if you spent all day with Life as Life is, periodically you would be moved by something that put you in touch with fear or sadness. You would be HERE, you’d be present, you’d see the sensation and the label and the emotional reaction and the behaviors that have been associated with that sensation, and you would see a whole lot about Life and you. Here’s my best encouragement: Those are not “true feelings” lurking behind those snakes. Those are ego bamboozles and they are there to rob you of the beautiful life you will have when you stop giving them attention and instead give attention to Life as Life truly is. Gasshō 
 
Practiced looking at anxiety when I could remember. Saw deeply ingrained patterns of intense pressure to turn away from it immediately with numbing/distracting behaviors, increasing suffering exponentially. In the instances when I was able to STOP, DROP & LOOK, I saw that using awareness techniques brought presence and peace.
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And there we have it! Egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate is desperate to keep us from looking at what is so. DESPERATE. Numbing, distracting, beatings over numbing and being distracted, promises of pleasure, delivery of pain, anything to keep a person from facing what’s happening squarely. Why??? Because we won’t be able to stand it? Because it will be so awful we’ll take one look and die? We will be so injured, so damaged that we won’t be able to go on? NO! All that hysteria is in place to keep us from seeing there’s nothing there. Why is the Wizard of Oz so popular? Not the movie, just the image of the little guy behind the curtain? Because we know that’s what’s going on. Does “knowing” that give us the courage to pull back the curtain? Not right away, but it doesn’t take many of those “stop, drop, and look” moments to give us all the courage we need! Excellent. Gasshō
 
What I noticed in exploring the exercise and the sensations labeled anxiety was how much self-hate and denial of the human being there was in the constant refrain of "I don't want to feel this way." R/L
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Perfect. Precisely. It’s not about you, is it? That’s not you saying, “I don’t want to feel this way.” That’s the quintessential body-snatchers-ego-takeover. We don’t know we’re identified with ego. That identification is so old and so familiar that of course this is me! But it isn’t, is it? It’s a life-taking, energy-sucking system that is using a human being like a crop. Growing the energy through self-hate, judgment, criticism, denial, and negating and then harvesting that energy for its own use. What it sounds as if you’re seeing is “In fact, I DO want to feel this way. I want to feel this way and that way and every way a human being can feel. I am a sentient being and I want to be sentient. I don’t want to be told how I must think and feel and be! I want to be fully alive and live every moment of my life!” Yes? Oh, I do hope that’s a correct reading because, if so, the message is very inspiring! Gasshō