Loving Awareness

past lives and releasing pain

Posted by matthew on July 28, 2006  |  39No Commentshttp://www.loving-awareness.org/2006/07/28/past-lives-and-releasing-pain/past+lives+and+releasing+pain2006-07-28+18%3A17%3A00matthew

This one is a bit more personal, bringing my own journey. If you don’t relate to past lives, that’s fine. Call it hidden memories, it amounts to the same thing.
Yes, in the last month it feels like my life has turned inside out. Not in a bad way, but where theres a very shifting priority in terms of how I live my life. The relationship I that was starting didn’t; gradually a lot of pain came up and became front and center. [I don't really like going into the details, as it's easy to take sides and look at it from a "whose fault it is" aspect, which I'm totally not about] However, there were a couple of experiences over that time which had a major influence on me; and with both of them images, thoughts and feelings arose that made me feel that a lot of what I was feeling was past-life related.

As a side note, I generally like looking at past lives (if nothing else, past life regression mp3’s are relaxing!), with one important caveat. Any thoughts we have on it are only as worthwhile as how they applicable they are to our lives now. This really is a fundamental tenet to any practical course of change. There are many interesting diversions; learning about lives in Atlantis could be one of them. I’ve received channeled material many times (you can look back in this blog to see a few transcripts of reference to past lives), but each of those only follows under the category of interesting until it is personally validated and incorporated. This, to me, is such a fundamental attitude to have; to validate everything. It’s the only way lessons are truly learned.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling extremely dark, depressed, and hopeless, full of self-criticism and self-loathing. I had no idea why, and decided to head away alone for the weekend. Of course, when you’re in that state, it’s incredibly hard to be present – your entire being screams that you shouldn’t go there. In addition, if there’s any masochism in looking at the state, such as “I should experience that, it’s good for me!”, then it just reinforces itself until escaping behaviour kicks in again. However, that weekend, I started to get real flashes of what seemed to be a past life experience. I felt incredible guilt at killing someone deep inside me, not at all related to anything in this life. I don’t think I meant to at all, but I got a feeling that I’d had a certain arrogance and got careless while being a doctor – and when I saw what I’d done I condemned myself. Deep tears came to my eyes at feeling this, and I felt something let go.

When I’m crying, I always want to make sure I’m crying because I see some new Truth. It’s quite possible to cry out of despair, or pain; but these aren’t the transforming release that comes with deeper tears. What I call “true tears” have more to do with seeing love (such as love for one’s self) anew, seeing’s one mistakes and realizing how perfect everyone is anyway. Knowing these things philosophically is one thing, but seeing them can be so overwhelming that tears come. How many things we build up in our lives based on mistaken beliefs on how little we’re worth or how weak we are that we need to wall ourselves away?

The next time you relax in the sun and enjoy its warmth, remember that this sunlight is actually love. Love isn’t abstract or philosophical. It is as physical as you and me. The light from the sun gives life without expectation. It brings joy without condition. It simply shines without any other agenda. It can be blocked temporarily, but it is not bothered by this one bit.

It’s no coincidence that tears came when I was sitting in the sun (with a view of the lake and the mountains) based on that statement, is it? Nature is such a wonderful place to open up in, because there’s so much free flowing energy without any blocks involved. This is another way of describing love.

Another incident came soon after, with a very final ending note to any hopes of a relationship. It too brought up images and overwhelming feelings that made me think it was past life related, related to being a woman abandoned by a man and essentially left to die. In any case, that doesn’t matter very much; what matters is that after sitting in it, journalling my expression of it (with an incredible amount of pain), I both went through it and saw a lot of buried pain influencing my life. Simply seeing it for what it is also gave me more courage to be allowing of it in every moment; it’s the fear of pain (and fear of fear) which is more unbearable than the pain itself for me. And as I do that, I also get more affirmations, self-love, and momentum for my journey. Loving love is just as self-perpetuating as fearing fear.

Looking into pain isn’t noble for its own sake. To think so is masochism. Looking into what is inside pain and fear is only beneficial because at the center of it, there is always a mistake or misconception. It could be about the world, or it could be about one’s self. (as if there’s ultimately a difference!) Releasing pain literally means releasing the worldview that’s at the center of it all. It doesn’t have to be a rational world view – a frightened kitten hiding in a closet has its own worldview stored in its body. But it is there, and the only way to get beyond it is to give it full attention. Nothing magically changes in this world. Real change always happens through full, conscious attention, always in the present moment.

The events of the last month have brought an even greater conviction of the paradox of pain : that one’s greatest pain is also one’s greatest strength and salvation. Without it, we wouldn’t have the impetus to grow and look into ourselves and realize how we are creators of our own misery. Everyone on this planet is full of mistaken beliefs. In fact, it’s my perception that in order to evolve to a higher vibration of awareness, one has to totally let go of all beliefs and perceptions one has. This is because everyone’s beliefs and perception is in some way mistaken and wrong. This idea of ‘mistaken’ isn’t the same as saying we’re failing a test; it’s merely saying that if we’re in a limited state of consciousness and have things to learn. Sometimes merely fixating on words is a great mistake. No matter how holy the words, they’re just words, and are absolutely nothing compared to direct experience and perception. This is why, when growing, we always let go of something, and never add. We let go of crutch after crutch until we can dance on our own.

butoh, presence and space.

Posted by matthew on July 19, 2006  |  40No Commentshttp://www.loving-awareness.org/2006/07/19/butoh-presence-and-space/butoh%2C+presence+and+space.2006-07-20+06%3A17%3A00matthew

The other day I saw a fantastically wonderful dance performance by a company called Butoh-A-Go-Go. They’re a two man troupe that performs a style of Butoh. Butoh is a minimalist form of dance that emphasizes embodiment of emotions as opposed to forms and techniques. It really is a metaphor for many things about love, which is the reason I’m writing about it. Here are some excerpts from a performance, so you can get an idea of it. Obviously, seeing it live is far more interesting.

The interesting thing to me about Butoh – and why I love it so much – is how, to me, it seeks to express alternate modes of perceptions and consciousness. It isn’t about making a dance with elegant moves such that people will think it beautiful. It is about embodying the entire human experience, often including displays of extreme suffering and facial contortion, and enabling people to see the beauty in that. It emphasizes the dancer’s presence as opposed to strict forms of motion. In Butoh, the presence of the dancer is key. When I see more “conventional” dance I’m always noticing how the dancer’s body is doing amazing things, but the dancer isn’t totally inhabiting their body. I rarely see this phenomena in Butoh.

In my eyes, this goes very parallel with meditation and being simply in the present moment. When there isn’t any desire to be anything other than who we are – even if it is in a moment of extensive suffering – there is often rapturous beauty. It is if we are seeing a great creation unfold in our own lives. With this beauty can come a great sense of community with the human race, and a deep seated compassion that includes self and others, like the bond of seeing a great performance together. Too often, we want to escape from suffering, or have a fixed idea of how life “should” be. While suffering is never fun, it is there (like everything else) for a reason, and it’s usually only when we surrender to the full experience we’re having that we can see the bare truth of what’s going on. This will lead to new senses of freedom from the ability to make conscious, aware choices.

When I am in suffering, and I have glimpses of the beauty of the experience, I often break out into deep laughter or unrestrained tears, both symptoms of seeing a more expansive perspective of the situation. A similar type of experience has happened to me (and countless others) in visiting poverty stricken areas of the third world. There is an awakening beauty about directly seeing others suffering even those near death. I call it awakening because it can both awaken a realization of how much we all suffer, as well as deep desires for the soul to come out and touch the world with love.

Of course, Butoh isn’t all about suffering. I also love the slow, present movements throughout it that are like a walking meditation, as well as any moments of seemingly nothing happening. There’s a space around all the movement and emotions in the dance that enables me, as an audience member, to incorporate and digest all I’ve seen. Space and slowness is something highly underrated in our society. It is like the ‘yin’ energy that’s necessary to profound the foundation for further ‘yang’ activities, to revisit this theme from a past entry. It is about being in touch with the full potential of the moment, so that every choice we make is based on conscious choice instead of a frenetic dance with no consistent direction. It is about creating a space for love and acceptance, instead of forcing one’s self to love by “dealing with it”. To me, this seems infinitely more effective. From an inner world of space and slowness, moving into action and productivity is surprisingly easy. (Butoh has bursts of frenetic action as counterpoint, too, I might add!)

The arts are a wonderful place to give and get senses of heightened awareness. My appreciation goes across almost all art forms, including music, dance, acting, painting and others not commonly thought of as ‘art’.

As comments I’d like to invite everyone to share of experiences and arts that helped bring this sense of beauty at simply being human, warts and all.