How to Go Beyond the ‘Story-Telling’ Habit
Comment: "An area of my ongoing 'work' is to watch my reactions to the happenings that come my way. There are never ending opportunities to be alert and especially so in relationships. To reduce unnecessary suffering to oneself and others, one must be aware of one's habit to add 'mental stories' to explain away what is happening. It seems so hard to stay close to the unfolding life, in the present moment. It seems there is an irritation with 'what is' happening, we want to fight it, and it arises because we want/expect things to be different! It seems the best we can do is to accept it ain't going to be how we want it, then to drop our story telling habit - and this is all one can do and needs to do to go beyond it."
It is a good ability to be able to see one's own story-telling mode when it arises - it takes a lot of awareness to see it, to know it's happening when it does and to recognize it. It takes even more awareness to be able to truly let it go and drop it because one has to be willing to not want to do it. I also agree with you that relationships provide such a fertile growing opportunity, and especially when there is conflict. I grew a lot from such a situation a few years ago. (I'm not saying you have conflict...)
I remember questioning the phenomena of 'story-mode' itself as a whole, I wrote a sequence of articles on it, Why these persistent internal dialogs? (These articles are on my website). What was interesting to me, is I knew this talking was nonsense and defensive as I could see that when I looked at the content, it was totally ridiculous stuff and often not very nice to myself or others.
Also I noticed that when it went on too long unchecked, then it would effect my emotional state, stress built up, I would get all wound up, likely would get sick and then was more likely to react at anything with all the force of the built up energy - with my ego. I saw it later as me allowing personality to activate - to get strong, and then after this would happen, there was nothing more to do, then do more meditations and wait until this state de-energized. Depending on how far I let it go on, it could take from 3 days to a week to de-energize. So I am sure you know all this too, having observed it.
For me I was doing the same, noticing it and setting it aside, and thinking it was enough if I just did this, yet doing this often it still wasn't changing, it was still happening - so persistent. I could even go to sleep at night after meditation and wake up in the morning, talking away. So curious how it was, like it had a wheel of it's own, driving all by itself. I felt I needed to know something else about it in a more general sense to be able to get a stronger control over it. Why did I still do this - get sucked in - even though I knew the harm it caused me and others when I did it, it all reduced to the question of:
"What benefit do 'I' get out of it by doing it?"
I realized that one does a habit or behaves in a way, because by doing so, one gets something out of it. To drop a habit, we have to know what we get out of it by doing it, and only then when we see that, will we be ready to make a clear decision to be able to drop being in that way. One adopts a habit at a point in one's life, because it was helpful for oneself at the time one adopted it. The habit we are talking about is one that has been with humans for a long, long, time, so also why it's so hard to change/transmute/drop.
To change any habit, one must see clear what benefit it gives you to do it. Once one sees the benefit one gets - one can only 'observe this' while/when it happens to receive this understanding, it can't be understood intellectually - then one will have a new 'self-knowledge' about one's conditioned habit/aspect in a general way - what we call an 'aha' or leap in understanding.
Once we have that piece of information, then our willingness to drop it will increase and as we practice doing that more, then also we start to spend progressively more time in quiet than in talking, and our perception and ability to be present will be enhanced along with our doing this. Our growing awareness will start to pick up significantly after that - as moments of quiet time increases...
Hint: One must be willing to enter into a totally unknown, still and quiet field of being. At first this is very scary, because one has never encountered it before or been like this before, so being unknown it will take much courage to enter into this darkness.
Betsy
Showing posts with label self-knowledge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-knowledge. Show all posts
Monday, November 3, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Crying is Healing
Where does deep emotional pain come from?
While we were growing in the womb, we were pretty much protected from the changing world outside us, mostly all of our needs were taken care of and we were pretty comfortable. From the time of our birth onward, then we are assaulted with the realities of the world, of unconscious people and start to experience things which hurt us. As an infant we are having experiences and the way we perceive these then, is nearly all as feelings, as our cognitive level and mind has not yet been developed. These early experiences are then laid down as our first teachings and are felt at a deep level and form an imprint which becomes the base of our growing personality. Later we will develop the cognitive or intellectual aspects of our personality, which are laid down on top of the feeling imprint, from about age 4 on up to adulthood when we stop growing. The feeling imprint which was laid down as an infant will have an influence on the mental defensive strategies that are laid down later. All parts effect the others. Then there is the growing phase itself, which happens from conception up until the last wisdom teeth erupt, which covers the physical attributes of our body itself. When growing stops, then it is that the personality is fully formed. After the end of growing, then it is most often the case that personalities are enlarged, but this is another topic….
As we Grow Up we experience Pain
So it is that as we grow up and our personality develops, it will happen to all of us that we have experiences which felt hurtful to us, which can be intellectual pain, emotional pain or physical pain from bodily injury. When we have a hurtful experience, then our survival instinct kicks in and then what we do is try to find ‘a strategy’ to avoid being hurt again. We are by instinct ‘pain avoidant’, so we are not aware we are building a defensive strategy at the time we do it, it pretty much happens at a subconscious level. If our sense of intellect was hurt, then we might change our intellectual pattern, denying to think in the way that hurt us and changing it to something else. If we were hurt emotionally, then we might try to forget or deny those things which caused us pain, perhaps by burying memories or by choosing not to express one’s feelings in an open way again. If we were physically hurt, then we have a tendency to mentally protect that area of the body, by not allowing as much range of movement in it, or by favoring the opposite side. So you might remember limping on a sore foot to protect it, long after the injury was healed. So then as we grow up, we go through different phases of development and depending upon what is our individual perception of our experiences, we will each lay down a unique defense strategy for all aspects of our personality. While we are growing up, for most people we are not aware of the defense system we are building up, this is mostly subconscious and stays in the background level.
Defense systems protect, but eventually they will have to be rebuilt.
The negative side effect of this process, is that it ends up that we don’t let the energy move through our body for self-expression in totality for our physical, intellectual and emotional aspects. What we are doing is channeling or directing energy flows in the body artificially with our mind, emotions and body postures, for the now forgotten reason we needed before ‘to protect ourselves’. In effect, this creates dark spots or unused areas in our body, mind and feelings – where we don’t let energy flow or in converse we create overused areas, repeating things which seem safe to us in body, mind and feeling. If we don’t use an area, then it happens that energy stops flowing through it and this can be a spot where disease in he body starts. if we overuse an area, then it happens that this area ‘gets worn out’, it’s like creating a rut, and in both cases it happens that the energy flows in the body of the adult are no longer free, flowing and balanced in all aspects of oneself. Compare this to how one’s energy was flowing as an infant, totally open with no defense system in place. Over time as this goes on unchecked, imbalances in the body will amplify, eventually resulting in mental, emotional and/or physical health issues.
Breakdown of the Defense Systems of the Personality
The defensive system of the personality has it’s benefits, the first being that it can help a child living around unconscious adults survive, and the second being that it is an intermediate structure which is collecting energy as accumulated experiences and is a stepping stone to reach further steps in our awareness. When the defense system of the personality has grown so large and is using nearly all one’s free energy to defend oneself in various ways, then it is that one has arrived to the point where the armor of defense has become excessive and is now threatening and detrimental to one’s survival to continue to hang onto it. If there are too many restrictions of energy flow, then it will start to harm the organism itself, because there is not enough free energy left over to be used for maintaining a healthy system. This is actually a natural progression of the growth of personality over lifetimes, so individuals will reach this point of ‘excess’ at different ages depending upon their past experiences and all that has come before. At the point it is reached, then it will happen that energy which was used to build up this defensive structure will now start to release. As energy is released from the structure, it will open up more of those ‘blocked’ areas of the body which were prior being used to defend oneself. The newest layers of defense are taken down first, and it proceeds as it goes into older and deeper layers. The older the defense system, the deeper, the more strong it is and the less one is aware about it’s existence. When one reaches the point of ‘enough is enough’ and experiences more pain than pleasure with one’s personality, then this is a turning point where one will start to ‘give up’ and let it go. This can also be seen as the point of starting to dissolve the structure of personality and when ‘awareness’ or ‘spirituality’ begins.
Being unaware of thoughts & feelings (the defensive nature of personality) is what builds up stress
Another thing many of us are doing unconsciously is that we are not aware of our thoughts and feelings at a deep level, we can’t see within clearly and we are not sure what we think and what we are feeling, we are little aware of what is happening in our internal space. So it happens that one’s thinking goes on in autopilot mode, constant chattering in the background with mental arguments and with repeated trains of thoughts. This kind of ‘story telling’ has it’s affects and will generate emotional energy in the body according to the nature of the thoughts. This is how the motor nervous system works, the thinking channel is directly connected to the motor neuron system which connects nerve and muscles cells together allowing for us to be able to ‘voluntary move’ our body the way we choose to with thoughts. Emotion (different than instinctual feelings, because they are based on what we think) is an energy charge built up in the muscles to be used to express oneself in a particular way. If we are not aware of this process, then it happens that stress builds up in the muscles of the body because we are not monitoring our thoughts, then also it’s often the case we are not aware of how our body feels or what we feel either, and so it is that not being aware of ‘how we work’, it happens that emotional charges build up in the body, causing ‘stress’ or held tension.
How is stress released from the body?
The only way to remove the stress charge already built up in muscles is to stretch the muscles and to learn not to accumulate it in the first place. This unchecked stress is like an internal tension, creating an internal pressure, which can’t be contained forever. Just like a volcano that is filling with gas, the pressure is building and as it does this strong force is pushing against that which is containing the pressure (the walls of the volcano itself). From this continuous tension, a crack will eventually form and when it does the pressure inside will release and along with it, there is an explosion as the huge force is released. So stress is released ‘cataclysmically’ in an intense way when it is held at bay for too long. So one should be aware of the laws of nature, that eventually the container will wear out, and especially so when subject to extreme forces. In the case of humans the shell here is the ‘defensive system of the personality’, and so when a crack appears in this structure, it will happen that some of this pent up pressure will be released. The amount released depends upon how large of a hole in the defense system was ‘let go of’ and how much internal pressure was built up.
Periods of Prolonged Crying (Crying Jags) are huge Healing events
So it can sometimes happen when healing that a ton of bottled up thoughts and feelings will come rushing out, and into ‘conscious awareness’, which can be painful while going through it. The more crying, the more emotoinal pain and hurting you feel, then you can know the more pent up energy you are releasing. After big openings in one’s personal defensive armor, it is not uncommon that one can cry every day for up to 3 weeks straight. This is totally normal, this is healing, and should not be suppressed, crying is the vehicle the body and system uses to clear out and release old held emotional energy. So if you are going thorugh this, know it is healing and after it is done you will feel much better. Let the tears of crying wash away the pain of the past and allow you to reclaim your essential energy.
Betsy
While we were growing in the womb, we were pretty much protected from the changing world outside us, mostly all of our needs were taken care of and we were pretty comfortable. From the time of our birth onward, then we are assaulted with the realities of the world, of unconscious people and start to experience things which hurt us. As an infant we are having experiences and the way we perceive these then, is nearly all as feelings, as our cognitive level and mind has not yet been developed. These early experiences are then laid down as our first teachings and are felt at a deep level and form an imprint which becomes the base of our growing personality. Later we will develop the cognitive or intellectual aspects of our personality, which are laid down on top of the feeling imprint, from about age 4 on up to adulthood when we stop growing. The feeling imprint which was laid down as an infant will have an influence on the mental defensive strategies that are laid down later. All parts effect the others. Then there is the growing phase itself, which happens from conception up until the last wisdom teeth erupt, which covers the physical attributes of our body itself. When growing stops, then it is that the personality is fully formed. After the end of growing, then it is most often the case that personalities are enlarged, but this is another topic….
As we Grow Up we experience Pain
So it is that as we grow up and our personality develops, it will happen to all of us that we have experiences which felt hurtful to us, which can be intellectual pain, emotional pain or physical pain from bodily injury. When we have a hurtful experience, then our survival instinct kicks in and then what we do is try to find ‘a strategy’ to avoid being hurt again. We are by instinct ‘pain avoidant’, so we are not aware we are building a defensive strategy at the time we do it, it pretty much happens at a subconscious level. If our sense of intellect was hurt, then we might change our intellectual pattern, denying to think in the way that hurt us and changing it to something else. If we were hurt emotionally, then we might try to forget or deny those things which caused us pain, perhaps by burying memories or by choosing not to express one’s feelings in an open way again. If we were physically hurt, then we have a tendency to mentally protect that area of the body, by not allowing as much range of movement in it, or by favoring the opposite side. So you might remember limping on a sore foot to protect it, long after the injury was healed. So then as we grow up, we go through different phases of development and depending upon what is our individual perception of our experiences, we will each lay down a unique defense strategy for all aspects of our personality. While we are growing up, for most people we are not aware of the defense system we are building up, this is mostly subconscious and stays in the background level.
Defense systems protect, but eventually they will have to be rebuilt.
The negative side effect of this process, is that it ends up that we don’t let the energy move through our body for self-expression in totality for our physical, intellectual and emotional aspects. What we are doing is channeling or directing energy flows in the body artificially with our mind, emotions and body postures, for the now forgotten reason we needed before ‘to protect ourselves’. In effect, this creates dark spots or unused areas in our body, mind and feelings – where we don’t let energy flow or in converse we create overused areas, repeating things which seem safe to us in body, mind and feeling. If we don’t use an area, then it happens that energy stops flowing through it and this can be a spot where disease in he body starts. if we overuse an area, then it happens that this area ‘gets worn out’, it’s like creating a rut, and in both cases it happens that the energy flows in the body of the adult are no longer free, flowing and balanced in all aspects of oneself. Compare this to how one’s energy was flowing as an infant, totally open with no defense system in place. Over time as this goes on unchecked, imbalances in the body will amplify, eventually resulting in mental, emotional and/or physical health issues.
Breakdown of the Defense Systems of the Personality
The defensive system of the personality has it’s benefits, the first being that it can help a child living around unconscious adults survive, and the second being that it is an intermediate structure which is collecting energy as accumulated experiences and is a stepping stone to reach further steps in our awareness. When the defense system of the personality has grown so large and is using nearly all one’s free energy to defend oneself in various ways, then it is that one has arrived to the point where the armor of defense has become excessive and is now threatening and detrimental to one’s survival to continue to hang onto it. If there are too many restrictions of energy flow, then it will start to harm the organism itself, because there is not enough free energy left over to be used for maintaining a healthy system. This is actually a natural progression of the growth of personality over lifetimes, so individuals will reach this point of ‘excess’ at different ages depending upon their past experiences and all that has come before. At the point it is reached, then it will happen that energy which was used to build up this defensive structure will now start to release. As energy is released from the structure, it will open up more of those ‘blocked’ areas of the body which were prior being used to defend oneself. The newest layers of defense are taken down first, and it proceeds as it goes into older and deeper layers. The older the defense system, the deeper, the more strong it is and the less one is aware about it’s existence. When one reaches the point of ‘enough is enough’ and experiences more pain than pleasure with one’s personality, then this is a turning point where one will start to ‘give up’ and let it go. This can also be seen as the point of starting to dissolve the structure of personality and when ‘awareness’ or ‘spirituality’ begins.
Being unaware of thoughts & feelings (the defensive nature of personality) is what builds up stress
Another thing many of us are doing unconsciously is that we are not aware of our thoughts and feelings at a deep level, we can’t see within clearly and we are not sure what we think and what we are feeling, we are little aware of what is happening in our internal space. So it happens that one’s thinking goes on in autopilot mode, constant chattering in the background with mental arguments and with repeated trains of thoughts. This kind of ‘story telling’ has it’s affects and will generate emotional energy in the body according to the nature of the thoughts. This is how the motor nervous system works, the thinking channel is directly connected to the motor neuron system which connects nerve and muscles cells together allowing for us to be able to ‘voluntary move’ our body the way we choose to with thoughts. Emotion (different than instinctual feelings, because they are based on what we think) is an energy charge built up in the muscles to be used to express oneself in a particular way. If we are not aware of this process, then it happens that stress builds up in the muscles of the body because we are not monitoring our thoughts, then also it’s often the case we are not aware of how our body feels or what we feel either, and so it is that not being aware of ‘how we work’, it happens that emotional charges build up in the body, causing ‘stress’ or held tension.
How is stress released from the body?
The only way to remove the stress charge already built up in muscles is to stretch the muscles and to learn not to accumulate it in the first place. This unchecked stress is like an internal tension, creating an internal pressure, which can’t be contained forever. Just like a volcano that is filling with gas, the pressure is building and as it does this strong force is pushing against that which is containing the pressure (the walls of the volcano itself). From this continuous tension, a crack will eventually form and when it does the pressure inside will release and along with it, there is an explosion as the huge force is released. So stress is released ‘cataclysmically’ in an intense way when it is held at bay for too long. So one should be aware of the laws of nature, that eventually the container will wear out, and especially so when subject to extreme forces. In the case of humans the shell here is the ‘defensive system of the personality’, and so when a crack appears in this structure, it will happen that some of this pent up pressure will be released. The amount released depends upon how large of a hole in the defense system was ‘let go of’ and how much internal pressure was built up.
Periods of Prolonged Crying (Crying Jags) are huge Healing events
So it can sometimes happen when healing that a ton of bottled up thoughts and feelings will come rushing out, and into ‘conscious awareness’, which can be painful while going through it. The more crying, the more emotoinal pain and hurting you feel, then you can know the more pent up energy you are releasing. After big openings in one’s personal defensive armor, it is not uncommon that one can cry every day for up to 3 weeks straight. This is totally normal, this is healing, and should not be suppressed, crying is the vehicle the body and system uses to clear out and release old held emotional energy. So if you are going thorugh this, know it is healing and after it is done you will feel much better. Let the tears of crying wash away the pain of the past and allow you to reclaim your essential energy.
Betsy
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