Author: ratnadyer

I personally experience that when emotions are unexpressed in me, my mind is often more active. It’s like the mental field is trying to keep me busy and safe from going into how I feel. I can find it hard to sleep when this happens and I find my yoga is more restless and unfocused. Until I listen and acknowledge what’s there; until I voice/breathe out with the truth of my anger or have a good cry or whatever is needed, I cannot settle or sustain a connected sense of presence.

Meditation is a way we might seek this presence, this inner peace, a stilling of the mind, an openness, a sense of calm.

However without acknowledging and processing emotions present, we cannot fully deepen as we are holding off from a part of our experience; judging and seeing it as unwanted.

We need to learn to feel safe enough to go toward our emotional experience. To be deeply honest with ourself about it. To go inside it and truely be with how we are feeling in a welcoming, inclusive and loving way.

Embodied practices like yoga/tai chi etc provide a pathway to listen inwardly through movement and sensation. Yoga has been proven as one of the most affective ways to release and heal trauma.

Our body holds all our emotions and is often a doorway to our emotional experience. Body practices are the most powerful way to learn to be alive to our feelings while staying anchored and connected in the here and now reality of our breath and body. With this anchor we learn to gain the ability to emotionally regulate and stabilise. When we know we can regain stability from a flood of feelings, we are more willing to let our emotions flow, as we know we are safe enough to have them.

Along with attending compassionately and safely to our emotion, we are practicing to remain steady in reality; connected and alive in an embodied state.

If we are simply seeking peace off in some transcendent realm/practice, it will not necessarily translate into everyday life when we step off our meditation cushion. We might lack the bridge to bring that peace with us as we move through our day, as we brush our teeth or attend to the children, or speak to the supermarket check out operator.

Spirituality and personal growth is not about the end goal of not having negative emotions, it’s about learning how not to judge or resist our natural human emotional aliveness.

Increasing calmness and serenity is more a byproduct of this, as our emotions become more harmonised and settled.

It comes in stages. As we grow up we first have to form an ego and an egoic self belief. Feeling some sense of how we fit (or don’t seem to fit) in the world.

As we walk through adulthood we are often challenged and shaken to begin to let this go, as life seems to have it’s own sense of how it’s going to play out.

Here comes a transition, where we can choose to hold tightly to maintaining who we think we are, or we can choose to start learning to see and unlearn all we think we know about who we think we are, to the point of absolute emptiness, a blank slate, an empty canvas, connected and one with the empty canvas upon which all of life plays out.

From here there is nothing to believe and nothing to doubt, there is only knowing of Self as truth, as essence, as presence with no name and no need for a name, as grace communing with grace in a game of consciousness.

Here we cannot fall as we have no standing and self belief is not required. From here we have no fear to be put down or raised up. From here there is no need to grasp at or to avoid any known thing or feeling for one’s sense of identity or security, as it is seen that all is changing and eventually unreliable.

Self belief of the ego is something we can gain. However if it can be gained it can also be lost. It needs defending and maintaining. It is not true self knowing and it does not make for good relationships.

Knowing Self as ever present silent formless awareness/consciousness, one recognises wholeness and truth, and with this, courage and authenticity can walk freely it’s path.

This is true Self belief. Not personal as an individual, but one with the fabric of reality.

When you watch a puppy run and play, the joy of being and expressing themselves is so apparent. Their presence is love itself playing through form.

We look for love as some notion of being wanted or something that needs two to be experienced, however love is the only ‘thing’ (it’s not a thing) that can exist entirely on its own with absolute completeness.

Love is radiance itself. It is the light of the sun, the depth of the ocean, the fullness of the moon. It is the eyes and soul of every creature.

It is there always and already, simply by being; the miracle of existence. Consciousness.

Include, allow and transcend. Not transcend in order to not have.

The attempt to try to transcend something before we have really allowed it it’s place with some compassion and acknowledgement (either imposing that on ourselves or on another) is a common spiritual trap.

We can try to jump too quickly to.. I’ll be the nice person, the bigger person, take the high road, I won’t be needy, I’ll be all those qualities that make me so kind and so zen…
and yet all the while are we really being honest and loving toward the truth of how we’re feeling?

There can be a whole big ignored/unconscious current alive and well underneath that is anything but zen.

Be aware of spirituality becoming another way to measure yourself; forming a spiritual ego.

We need to learn that all emotions are included in being spiritual, and that it is more about learning to be authentic, honest, true and compassionate with all of our human stuff.

That is more of a spiritual maturity than adhering to some idea of what it means to be beyond that, unaffected or enlightened.

We need to be with people that we just know we are safe to be ourself with.

When this is not happening, we can maybe feel like we have to be careful with how we say things. We might feel we have to in a way try and keep the other happy or not offend them. We might feel a kind of unspoken judgement or envy or need from them. We might feel we would like to ask for something from our side and yet instinctively sense that there’s not space for our needs or that we can’t be heard or received.

When we can fully be ourselves, there is an ease, a freedom, a mutuality, a flow. Each cares equally for the other and yet also doesn’t compromise them self in order to try to please.

We know we are respected and loved. We can be vulnerable and in our heart and we can also be exuberant and wild and fun. We can shine and laugh together.

Remind yourself to stay open, and to have the intention to continue to expand.

God is in the field beyond all ideas or concepts we might have of him/her.

Most often we approach our relationship with God/Spirit/Source/Consciousness/Allah/Buddha/Tao/Jesus/The Universe – whichever name you want to give it (I will use the term God here for the sake of ease) – We approach our relationship with the notion that there is God and there is me.

We have ideas of some kind of form for God, around the world with all cultures we have notions of all kinds.

The fundamental notion of God as something outside of us/other than us is already leading us away from true understanding.

God is infinite. I love these words that I once heard Mooji Baba speak:

“Can you stand outside the infinite?”

If God is infinite how can it be that there is God and then there is me? If there is only the infinite oneness creation, then this duality is actually not reality/right perception.

Only our thought process and concepts of God create this supposed separation. Like a layer of film, thought believes we are outside looking in.

Any thoughts process or concept we have of God, at some point on our spiritual journey, will need to fall away in the seeing and direct knowing and being of oneness consciousness; Self realisation.

No concept/religion/name remains.

We can’t know what will happen from one year to the next. Sometimes even from one week/day/hour/minute to the next.

The nature of life is movement. On a microscopic level, our cells are constantly vibrating and moving. If they become still, there is no life force there.

We cannot make things rigid and still feel fully alive.

And as humans, we try to gain control and a sense of stability and security in the best ways we can. This is great in many ways, and provides a quality of foundation. However sometimes life will send us the unexpected, maybe even a tsunami to wash all we know away. And we are forced to learn to swim again.

We need both flexibility and consistency within the energy of commitment.

Grace comes in this way. Some call it ‘fierce grace’ at times. We can struggle to find the gift. But if we stay open, ask for help and choose to walk the path of truth and the heart, we will find our life expands and we can come to a place of some gratitude and more trust.

True change has to come from within.

Being inspired by someone living the way we feel drawn to, it is so helpful and necessary. We need those guiding lights.

We all know that we are not going to trust or follow someone who says one thing and then acts differently. Someone who expects you to behave a certain way when they themselves are not walking their talk.

Role modelling is incredibly important and powerful.

Just by being our best self we are offering this for others.

We have layers.

Lots of movement on the surface, busy, actively engaged with the world, thrown around and impacted by the weather and conditions.

Deeper currents running underneath, where feelings stored hold a kind of power, or long held desires, directions and expressions move in us to find their way.

The ocean floor, a still calm, quiet vastness, like the centre of our soul. Holding all. Allowing all. Intimately one with every aspect, and yet a serenity untouched.

Remember the depth of our being, the multi-dimensional levels of our being, the layers and levels of our experience.

We are so much more than we appear or anything we might say or do.

Slowing down the busyness, tuning in, we can learn to listen to the different depths and levels of who we are.