This process of surrendering is unfolding in marvelous ways… The new block to giving up that I discovered this morning is desire/wanting.
For a few days now, I have been working with a primal felt-sense of an early life significant parental relationship issue. There was a sudden seeing that due to a marred relationship with a parent, I had subconsciously blocked all such relationships, where somebody might have wanted to be a parent-like figure. In fact, even my Ishta was not allowed the role of parent, but always remained Beloved (Krishna) or impersonal feminine life-force (Devi).
Since I saw what the issue was, there was the desire to let it go. And thus, I’ve been sitting for 10-15 minutes simply allowing stuff to arise, noticing associated resistance to letting go. As I saw it arise this morning, I could see my pain and anger held in place by a stubborn unwiilingness to let it go. My psyche was attached to it, it gave me a subtle identity. I desperately wanted to let go of the stubbornness but it didn’t budge. An hour later, I was sitting with a book and a cup of coffee. Suddenly, the block to letting go was clear - it was the desperate wanting to let go. Letting that wanting drop resulted in a sudden and explosive heart opening, a dam bursting and bringing tears of surprise and relief.
Samyama, as I’ve come to understand it, is the process of letting go of desire. Wanting or desire puts a space between the thing and “me” - it is a thing to be had, as in (subconsciously): “I don’t/can’t have it”, or “I’m lacking.” Letting the desire go in the form of a sutra is really healing this sense of lack with a (subconscious) affirmation of: “I am worth it” or “it has always been available”. Thus, being in a state of equanimity where it’s ok to have or not have paradoxically and miraculously allows it to come to fruition.
Thus, the primary blocks to surrender are: (1) obsessive desire for it to happen, (2) a hidden perk in the form of attachment to the thing we are trying to surrender (e.g, being the victim or false sense of satisfaction in holding on to pain) and (3) guilt/shame about having this “un-holy” trait. For this last one, there are other associated issues - vanity or pride in having gained some sort of spiritual level, and lack of courage and willingness to dig deep are the obvious ones…
So the lessons continue…
This thread is so relevant to my life experience right now. I’m working through many of the same things. Will definitely take your thoughts to heart. 
This is a trap that I’ve fallen into many times. When I feel identified (when the material world feels so very real and solid), I try to return non-identified awareness by pretending I’m not real and by discounting whatever I’m feeling as not valid. It sets me up for all kinds of grief. The best I can do to avoid this trap right now is to check whether there’s a mental story going on. If there’s a mental story, then there’s a human being participating in that story, and whatever that human being feels is valid. Then I put my attention on that feeling and try to follow it back to it’s source. I’m finding all kinds of things related to a victim mentality – the story of “they did this to me.” This stuff is really hard to put into language…. I admire your clarity. 
Parental issues here too… This is something I’ve been struggling with for some time. I can’t imagine the divine as male. Anytime someone refers to “Him” with such loving devotion, I just feel gross. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to feel such devotion to a male ishta. I tried reading the “Course in Miracles” and gave up. I knew there was a message but I couldn’t open myself to receive it because the divine aspect was only referred to as male. It’s such a deep, stubborn block in the heart (a true heartache). I’m sure it’s related to a victim mentality, but there’s such difficulty dissolving it.
Funny thing is… I don’t think it’s all mine – meaning, I don’t think all of this block comes from any specific experience I had sometime between birth and now. There’s no experience I’ve had that could explain or justify it…
There’s much work to be done.
[quote=“whippoorwill”]
This thread is so relevant to my life experience right now. I’m working through many of the same things. Will definitely take your thoughts to heart.
Parental issues here too… This is something I’ve been struggling with for some time. I can’t imagine the divine as male. Anytime someone refers to “Him” with such loving devotion, I just feel gross. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to feel such devotion to a male ishta. I tried reading the “Course in Miracles” and gave up. I knew there was a message but I couldn’t open myself to receive it because the divine aspect was only referred to as male. It’s such a deep, stubborn block in the heart (a true heartache). I’m sure it’s related to a victim mentality, but there’s such difficulty dissolving it.
Funny thing is… I don’t think it’s all mine – meaning, I don’t think all of this block comes from any specific experience I had sometime between birth and now. There’s no experience I’ve had that could explain or justify it…
There’s much work to be done.
Thanks very much for you're post whippoorwill and to kami, In reading your post it occurred to me that your thoughts about non-identification and being with the "memory" of it instead of the actual experiencing of it sounds valid. I too identify with this referral to past moments of clarity and then overlaying them on my life only to discover a veil or a haze as the lessons of life continue to emerge, waiting to be seen through, but greeted instead by a memory of how it "should" be, given that I now have this new "clarity". Which, as it turns out is masking the real moment of now and substituting it with something from the past. I would be interested in hearing what you think about the fact that as you are engaging in the beautiful work being described above, that you are, in those very moments of awareness of, being a victim, of feeling the feelings in the body of being aware of the thoughts and sensing the body, that in these moments you are living and experiencing non-identified awareness. There may not be the "wow" factor that one can experience as the result of a big shift, but nevertheless I would see the work you are engaged in as living and being with non-identification in a way that we humans can, by going in and out of it, back and forth from memory to now, memory to now. Does that make any sense? :slight_smile:
Thank you for reading and sharing, Liz. I’m always astounded that so many of us seem to be working on identical things at any given time… The proof of resonance.
Yesterday afternoon, I decided to open the “A course in miracles” book, read a bit and let it settle (see about resonance?!). The particular issue I’m working on is forgiveness. So, here are my observations on forgiveness. Say we have had an “awakening” experience and come to believe there is nobody to forgive, nothing to do. Consciously, this “knowledge” forces out accepting that our behavior does not actually reflect whatever it is that we gleaned from the “awakening”. We continue to have issues with parents, spouse, Government, pharmaceutical industries, terrorists, you name it. We keep spewing about one thing or other on a constant basis, but the “knowledge” that there is nothing to do and nobody to forgive blocks all seeing of all these issues (that are obvious to everyone else). Thus, the first thing to do is to let go of “knowing”, starting at any given moment from we are, not where we think we are. So, when any knowing on my part was dropped, it became obvious that I have not forgiven. Immediately, there might be a thought arising along the lines of “oh but there is nobody to forgive…”. Each time this arises, it is dropped, surrendered.
And the next step is to see what is holding the “not forgiving” in place. I stayed with that feeling, without labeling it but allowing it to arise. It was astonishing what arose next - it was the belief that “I am unable to forgive”. When inquired into, it turns out that in truth what my psyche is saying is, “I will not forgive.” Why? Because if I do, then there will be nobody else to pass the buck to. Plus, I have the false sense of holding the other person “accountable” by not forgiving. Deeper still, it was the fear of seeing that I am indeed that powerful, that I do have such a choice. A-ha!! This whole time, I have relinquished the power to the “wrong-doer”, falsely believing that I “cannot” forgive. It was as if another dam broke, allowing a lifetime of pain to gush forth. And after the intensity of this seeing subsided, then, the cellular knowing (not merely intellectual) of “there is nobody ‘there’ to forgive” came forth. It is all in me. Nothing is out there - not the wrong-doer, not the consequences, not the pain, not the holding. So who am I forgiving? Clearly nobody out there!
And thus, more blocks to letting go (in addition to those in the previous post are): (4) knowledge, as in “I know already”. This is why the beginner’s mind is so valued in Zen and yoga, and (5) false belief of “I cannot”, which in reality translates to “I will not” let go.
I can relate on the “it’s not mine” thing - some images that come up in deep inquiry and in asana practice are not familiar to me. Yet, it doesn’t matter, since it is causing discordance… Whatever it is, it needs to be surrendered.
Thank you for sharing this journey.
Much love.
Hi Sparkle,
Yes, that does make sense.
It is not that I have not been working on, say forgiveness, before this. The process I was using is what you describe. I would bring up the issue in a detached sort of way while residing in awareness, and it would not even make sense why it was an issue. That is the incredible power of spiritual bypassing. Falsely, I believed over and over again that it was let go. But it was not, since there was still coloring there - a subtle wish that it had not happened, of how I could have behaved differently, etc etc. Not overtly, but deep within. And in retrospect, it was because I had the arrogant belief that “I know already what to do”. My life lesson was to learn to surrender that “knowing”, as described above. As the veils are slowly lifting, I can feel gratitude for the way all those “undesirable” events of the past that have brought me to this present moment. Once again, not a “this is what I should be feeling” sort of way, but a deeper, more spontaneous and cellular thing.
Not sure if it makes any sense?
The process of surrendering has taken on a new turn over the last day.
While inquring deep into the nature of thoughts/emotions/memories, there was a subtle shift of identity from me as this body/mind, to me as spacious awareness. The body-mind arises “in” awareness which has no boundaries… The body-mind does not contain the knowing awareness, but the other way around… all thoughts/emotions/memories flow by in a stream, each devoid of any inherent coloring, each arising randomly, with no inherent goal/purpose to fulfill. Each memory/thought/emotion is merely a packet of energy. In that instant of clarity, the body, thoughts and emotions were all seen to be identical in that they all comprise of energy to arise, be sustained for specific periods and dissolve - into this knowing awareness.
So it got me wondering - what if I had never known the concept of good/bad, pleasant/unpleasant, pleasurable/hurtful, etc? Anything that happened would be instantly forgotten, forgiven. What makes it so personal is coloring of the event with all these pairs of opposites. And so when I inquire still deeper into the coloring itself, once again, it is devoid of any inherent quality - it is my mind, with its learned concepts, that gives an arising, inherently empty phenomenon a specific color or quality. Furthermore, it is only because I’ve taken them to be “mine” that they are an issue, that there is someone else (or “myself”) to forgive, to DO something about it. If the inherent emptiness of stuff is seen through consistently, the attachment to it as “my pain” or “my issue” drops away automatically. Not in the sense of rejecting it as “not mine, but Yours God”, but that there is actually no substance to any of it, including the sense of “it is happening to me”.
To go deeper, I began to investigate the sense of “me” - not thoughts or beliefs or ideas, but the actual felt sense. What does it feel like? Where is it? Is it in the body? Out of it? Some specific chakra? And once again, the felt-sense does not have an inherent “quality” of me. It is not “within” my body, it goes to the farthest corners of the cosmos where the mind/intellect goes. I cannot be sure it is “mine”. It is sensed as simply “here”, where everything I am experiencing is arising, including people/events/objects. Could the “me-ness” be my neighbors’ “me-ness” as well? Essentially, I cannot “find” the “me” when I look for it. Hmmm… So, if there isn’t an actual “me” with inherent qualities (of something this entity has by its own merit), what about all the colorings arising within the entity? And if none of this is actually what it seems to be, what is it that needs to be surrendered? And by whom? We will see…
Meanwhile, there is a sense of lightness… and of healing…
A strange, “obvious-in-retrospect” observation. Of healing…
For many years, I’ve had a condition known as Raynaud’s phenomenon, where the fingers and toes when exposed to cold will turn completely white, numb and in short succession, very painful. It had progressed to the point where, over the last two years, even in the peak of summer, reaching into the freezer section at a grocery store would immediately result in the vasoconstriction (contraction of the blood vessels due to spasm). I had looked into autoimmune disease etc and not found anything (very common in this condition). In fact, I had started thinking about taking medications for it.
Two weeks ago, after this process of inquiry and surrender took off and in the middle of the polar vortex many of us have been experiencing, I rushed out of the house one morning forgetting my gloves. It was a day I needed to get gas in the car in subzero temperatures. Dreading it, I got out and stood by the pump, waiting for the tank to fill. The numbness began immediately. But instead of squirming around, I stood completely still and watched the sensation without labeling/rejecting/attaching coloring. Simply noticing. Removed from the “me”, it was a fascinating observation. Within minutes, the sensation changed, turning into warmth and gradually went away. Gas filled, I got in the car and drove away without the usual drama of “need to thaw my fingers” that could normally go on for about 30 minutes.
That day, I began to ask, “show me where this comes from”. Two days later, an image appeared out of nowhere - of me standing at a bus-stop on a very cold day with no gloves, nearly 17 years ago. That was the time I had arrived in the US and was living in a little Northeastern town. Extenuating circumstances had led me there, where I was renting the attic of a kind couple, working three jobs and had just enough money for one strategically thought out meal per day, and certainly no money for warm clothes. Until then, I had not known temperate cold weather, or the experience of utter, total despair and loneliness, with my family and friends thousands of miles away. Every evening was spent sitting alone in the attic, thinking incredulously about how I had gotten here, from being a star student, a high-school valedictorian and a role model for so many younger kids. Every morning, I waited for the unreliable bus service, sometimes for two hours, with no gloves and fear of frostbite. By the end of that year, the tears had dried and fortunes shifted; but the pain was never forgotten.
So it was shown - the memory that held the belief of Raynaud’s in place. The memory colored by the pain of loneliness, of a sense of failure and utter despair. And as it came up, it was seen to be just that - a memory that existed no “where”. It was inherently empty. The only thing arising in the present moment was a thought about the past. Yet, it had been carried as a deep belief and - a very real disease.
It has been a week and I have not worn gloves. Last night I walked a long way to my car in the biting cold, got in and looked at my fingers - they were cold, but not numb or white or painful.
The incredible power of letting go…
Hi Kami,
That is a beautiful story and understanding.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks so much for sharing like this Kami.
Little by little I’m finding the letting go practice starting in my life and I need it soooooooo bad!
So loving of you to affect my life the way you do and many others too for sure. Thanks.
Jesus Christ, that’s beautiful. Very strong.
Miracles happen every day. Thank you for sharing.
thank you for sharing dear Kami
Thank you for reading Maha.
Although the following doesn’t necessarily pertain strictly to bhakti or karma yoga, I’m adding here since the process and insights were facilitated by bhakti/surrender…
Last week, there was a quiet shift. As the inquiry continued, it went like this, each step looked at deeply and directly - “this thought causes pain?” –> “oh but wait… the thought itself is inherently empty” –> “what causes pain then?” –> “I am attaching emotional coloring to it” –> “where does the coloring come from?” –> “from me” –> “who is this me? Does this me have attributes of its own?” –> (after going through the process of eliminating one by one, the body, mind, thoughts, etc) “no, it does not have any attributes of its own” –> “so where is this me that suffers?” As it came to this, the me could not be found anywhere. And with “what is this me?” it became crystal clear that this “me” was merely a concept, a thought/belief.
Quite nonchalantly, there was a radical shift that resulted in spontaneous sobbing - in the instant recognition that I am not what I thought I was, and seeing the limitlessness of “me”. Over the next few days, the inquiry continued - “so this is me, but what is all this other stuff - this body, mind, thoughts, people…?” And once again, none of those “others” could be found any “where” when looking from the perspective of this I. Body, thoughts, mind and everything else is seen happening “in” this I and yet, as this I, I remain pure and untouched. Past and future, here and there are - mere concepts… Additionally, this I is the I of everything and everyone and thus remains pure and untouched. As this I, I simply am. What is more astounding is that this I has always been… Even before meditating, attempts at purifying the body/mind, even before it was known that there was something to seek, being a sinner and being a saint - this I could care less! In the past, with any opening, there was a slight and subtle anxiety about “losing” it. But there is no such anxiety for now - even if I begin to think of myself as this limited body/mind again, nothing can ever be lost. This I will always be. No fireworks or energetic surges or visions - simple, and the most obvious thing there is.
Hi kami,
I usually appreciate topics of personal sharings quietly…
But for once, I feel like dropping by and let you know
Thank you for taking this touching journey as you do and sharing it here openly
Thank you dear Omsat for reading.
Much love.
Just amazing kami
Thank you so very much
Pure and mellow. Not sad, a serene joy in your voice.
Thank you.
Thank you Jonesboy and Anima.
No sadness… Discovering I am that which I was seeking is beyond joy… Sat-chit-ananda… The peace that passeth all understanding.
The mechanics of spiritual bypassing…
Discovering this I, the “I am” is like falling in love. With myself. Eager to discover the mysteries of the Beloved, this me. Bhakti has shifted suddenly from devotion to an Ishta to devotion to this me. Daily living is like being in a lucid dream.
And yet, stuff comes up - fleeting glimpses of pain or hurt… In this, the mechanics of spiritual bypassing are becoming clear… It came up over the last day in an interpersonal exchange with a friend whom I love and respect dearly, whom I share every spiritual opening with and who has been a steady presence in my life. However, in many of our conversations, it had become apparent that he didn’t place the same “value” to this relationship. The way I had dealt with it in the past was to repress the sadness that brought up, or in states of expanded consciousness, bypass it entirely (which is just another way of repressing). After it would pass, we would continue with our exchanges. This occurred once again over the last few days, and this time, attuned to deep inquiry that has been ongoing, I was forced to look at it.
So, here I am, as this I, my true nature, from whose vantage point, everything like this is silly and meaningless. Yet, as in a dream, it sure feels real. What is the underlying cause of it that makes it seem real? As I let go into this, it became clear - I was projecting my need for a special relationship with this person. He didn’t see it that way because it isn’t his need or experience. As I let go deeper, I wondered where this need arose from. And it was revealed that it arose from a sense of lacking driving the need for approval from him, whom I had emotional coloring attached to. So I decided to look for this needy one. And she was nowhere to be found. Each thought that arose about it was inherently empty; the coloring itself inherently empty and finally, the needy one merely an empty thought. As soon as this was seen, the thought-feeling dissolved, once again leaving behind the I am. Radiant, peaceful, eternal, joyful. And finally, from deep in my heart, I was able to let go of him in total love and acceptance. And in a flash of deep insight, it was startling to see that there is no inherent “value” to any relationship. Any perceived value is just that - a perception. Whose? Mine. Where is this me? No “where”. So this is nothing but a thought/concept/belief of “me” giving rise to yet another thought/concept/belief of “value” in a given relationship. If this isn’t madness, I don’t know what is!
Spiritual bypassing happens like this:
- Opening into one’s true nature - which is mostly intellectual to begin with, for most of us. For this to become an ongoing, ever-deepening living reality takes time and ongoing inquiry.
- Because it is mostly intellectual, stuff related to the identification as the limited self happens/comes up.
- When it does come up, the easy escape route is to deliberately revert to #1, with a quasi nihilistic attitude of “there is nobody here anyways”. However, once again, because of #2, it doesn’t really quite gel and there is a huge chasm between where one really is (mostly intellectual knowing) and where one thinks one is (experiential knowing).
- The chasm and rejection of what comes up to be (prematurely) “nonexistent” results in bypassing, aka, repression.
- Because of the premature illusion of having arrived and not having processed the coming up stuff, the stuff keeps happening again and again and again.
The cure for this (from my experience) is to: - Acknowledge that this is the case.
- Know where one is (even if the initial knowing of one’s true nature is transformative, it isn’t complete).
- Take the stuff that comes up to be real (because it sure feels that way), and worthy of inquiry.
- Inquire deeply and surrender to the nature of the stuff, working backwards to the felt sense of “I suffer”, and finally “look” for that suffering I.
- Do this as many times as it comes up, knowing fully that in complete and experiential knowledge of “I am”, this can’t arise. Thus, it is merely an invitation to know the Beloved more intimately.