I’m little by little getting used to this new sense of expansiveness and openness of heart. I presume it’s due directly to less fear (of me not being able to ‘handle it’ if things don’t go as I want) holding it down.
It sits there all along unnoticed and held back from surfacing by a fear induced vigilance that is on edge and wants to make sure everything is ‘right’ and comfortable. When that fear is removed, up it arises. That’s why it feels so natural – it’s our true nature. Love, generosity, kindness, creativity and joy.
Fear seems to cause a tightening, and an inner clenching feeling, and that drowns out experiencing love and expressing it authentically.
When fear is absent, there’s a delightful at-easeness in the whole body and physiology – an openness that is starts to stay around for longer stretches at a time. For me it only stays when I’m no longer living in fear of something outside me causing me to feel disturbed.
What a joy to know that we can hone this new skill of being with the disturbance. We simply have to reverse the urge to tense up against the disturbing feeling, and instead accept that we feel disturbed and relax with feeling disturbed. That disturbance can be anger, anxiety, sadness, disappointment, fear or any other feeling that is unpleasant. We are not relaxing to get rid of the feeling, it’s relaxing to be with it. It will move on by itself if we relax.
Another bonus of getting relaxed with disturbance is the new ability to experiment with different habits and behaviours, new courage really. Now that I’m not so scared of feeling disturbed. It’s not quite second nature to me yet, it’s still a pause, slow down and breath and give conscious attention to it.
The noises upstairs, my annoyed disturbed reactions to which used to torment me, largely pass by at their regular intervals through the day without much fuss inside from me now. What a contrast to the inner drama I’d whip up 6 weeks ago. Thank you Michael Singer for your Surrender Experiment, I’m on it and loving this new inner adventure.
Learning to Rest with it All 