I’ve been caressed and hugged by the words of Michael Singer recently. It is exactly what I need to hear and learn right now, tools to transcend being a puppet to my reactive primitive mind.
To experience equanimity no matter what is going around me. Even when what I don’t want is happening and what I do want leaves. All the responses, rage, fear, jealousy….To allow the energies of the emotions to arise unimpeded without me trying to change the world to make me feel okay. The end of being driven by wanting wanting wanting.
I have misophonia so this has seemed a near impossibility. Certain noises instantly evoke intense fear, disgust and anger and a compulsion to do something to block the sound or get away as quickly as possible. I’ve had this since I was a child. I can go from calm to panic in an instant. All it takes is someone clicking a pen in a room, or sniffing repeatedly, or eating noisily. And there are others.
A daily torment is the creaky floorboards in the flat above. The thought fills me with dread of the time every day when I know they get up and it starts. I put the radio on instantly so that I can’t hear it and I don’t have to feel the intensity of the energy of the feelings.
He got me excited about the possibility of actually using these disturbing feelings of aversion as practise opportunities. I do not want to spend my life ‘trying’ to be okay by manipulating what is happening in the outer world into getting what I want and avoiding what I don’t want. All to avoid disturbing feelings.
I started right away with the main exercise. Instead of changing something that infuriates/annoys me, let he turmoil of it be. Sit back behind it and allow the energies to arise and give them over, surrender them. Relax. Let go.
Instead of putting on the radio loudly when the floorboard squeaking started from the flat above, I let myself experience it. And as I experienced it, I surrendered it. I sat in the seat of my being and let it blow through me and past and I stayed put. It was actually exciting! I watched as the temptation arose to collapse into it, to revert to ‘I can’t handle this’ and put on the radio so I didn’t have to feel these feelings which is my normal response. Instead I decide to experience it, allow it, and I don’t try and suppress it.
Years ago a coach I had wanted me to define goals and desires, and I told her that my goal is to be okay with whatever happens. To welcome what the universe sends me, and trust that it is exactly perfect. To surrender to that. And paradoxically I have noticed repeatedly that when I let go of my desires, I get even more than I even knew I wanted.
My resistance to reality causes so much suffering! So here goes with a new inner project. To withstand the temptation of being drawn in and to play with it. The draw, the temptation to stop and fight the energy. I will look at the energy and see it’s primal and become comfortable with it. I don’t want to control events so I don’t experience it. To sit inside comfortably while the draw happens, to watch and experience the intense draw to control.
Regardless of what happens outside, I want to sit comfortably steady inside. Just sit there and experience a ‘wow, look at that, what an interesting thing to be going on’. A hurricane inside I can witness without changing anything, without even flinching.
I am so excited about this possibility and so very grateful to Michael Singer. The neighbours get up in half an hour and I welcome the opportunity to practise.
“You just make a game out of relaxing in the face of its melodrama. You simply learn how to release the tendency for getting drawn into the energy.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
“You must look inside yourself and determine that from now on pain is not a problem. It is just a thing in the universe. Somebody can say something to you that can cause your heart to react and catch fire, but then it passes. It’s a temporary experience. Most people can hardly imagine what it would be like to be at peace with inner disturbance. But if you do not learn to be comfortable with it, you will devote your life to avoiding it. If you feel insecurity, it’s just a feeling. You can handle a feeling. If you feel embarrassed, it’s just a feeling. It’s just a part of creation. If you feel jealousy and your heart burns, just look at it objectively, like you would a mild bruise. It’s a thing in the universe that is passing through your system. Laugh at it, have fun with it, but don’t be afraid of it. It cannot touch you unless you touch it.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
Learning to Rest with it All 