On the path

Dream. "I am with Noel Chomsky, and he is showing me how to make a bomb, which can be used for terrorism and for sabotage. He is quite ingenious at his ability to make a highly effective explosive advice. He puts the bomb on my notebook, and it explodes, without damaging the notebook."

I awoke feeling very tired this morning. I went to gym twice yesterday, and did 3-2-1 Body twice. This morning, I awoke feeling very tired, and almost too exhausted to move. Luckily, I only had to work tonight, so I could really take the day slow. At first, the dream had no relevance to me. I couldn’t work out what it was about. This afternoon, I listened to two talks. One was Genpo Roshi and Ken Wilber, talking about the Big Mind process. Then, I listened to Carolyn Myss, talking a little about archetypes. I started to put the dream in perspective. I recently read a Naom Chomsky book, which was a collection of his talks where he discusses power in American society, and about how power is misused at the government and corporate levels to maintain and preserve selective interests. In a sense, I view Chomsky as a dissident, sabotaging the current power structures with his commentary. Then the dream made sense. One of the archetypes Carolyn Myss discusses is the saboteur, which is an archetypal pattern of behavior where we sabotage our success, our power, our greatness, or our higher possibilities, due to a fear of change (I think there are other reasons to this too). The last month or so, I have had a lot of growth and development in my meditative practice, yet I periodically go and get drunk, or smoke cigarettes, or eat junk food for a day or do something stupid, even though I am committed to health and well being and (light hearted) responsibility. Recently, I have been really curious about this pattern as it’s played itself out many times in my life, where I throw away all my hard work for a short term ‘false’ gain. After such a period, I usually commit to being healthy, and then become ‘healthy Bruce’ for a while, until the pattern kicks in again. So, the dream made sense. I see my saboteur emerging in consciousness, and now that it’s clearly emerged from the unconscious into awareness, I trust that through an act of grace its hold on me and my identity will be released.

After work tonight, I went to gym. I did 3-2-1 Body, and then did my twice weekly 5km run. Walking back home afterwards, I reflected on how much this process of unconscious patterns emerging into consciousness hurts. Every time a pattern emerges, its felt as discomfort, tiredness, pain, confusion. Every time I have to return to the basic principles of dream work, shadow work, and I need to give the new emergent my full attention for a day or two. I am tired of this process. All I can do is keep working with what arises, and do my best to move through it. This process of healing and liberation has been going on continuosly now for about a year and a half, with the last nine months there been a significant weekly release. I have a day or two of clarity, of feeling okay and feeling high, and then another pile of shit comes through the fan, and it carries on and on. There is directionality; it’s a different issue each time, and the same ground is rarely covered twice. Still, it’s a continuous and relentless process, that never seems to end. I am not the same person I used to be. I exist in deeper and deeper states of surrender, of letting go. Sometimes I am angry with God, with my higher self, as I have had times and miracles occur, yet there are times when I exist alone, feeling abandoned and without communication with my higher self. The things that were important fall away more and more, and what am I left with? I no longer know where this all will end up. I simply continue with this path and with this direction. I have my dreams and my goals, yet the driving forces are changing, and what held me no longer holds me.

I friend told me that could see that I have compromised a lot on this path. I have compromised love, family, career, country and many of my dreams to follow this journey, and I have felt the pain of letting each of those dreams fall away. It’s been a painful process as my attachments to those dreams have died. I always felt I would find certainty and fulfillment in my dreams, and my future would be one of happiness and fullness and love and prosperity. As I have followed this path of liberation, those dreams have been pulled away from me as they have been seen to be untrue homes for my self, and I have slowly grown towards my true self. Sometimes I think back and I cannot believe how painful it’s been, and how much I have given up. I don’t think anyone can really understand this unless that have been committed to a path of liberation. Still, I am thankful for all the difficulty. It has forced me, driven me, to grow and to transform. You have a choice to open your heart to your suffering, or to close to your suffering. Through opening to your suffering, you open to different facets of the human experience, and you connect to all people in this world who have experienced a similar fate. This is one of the jewels of suffering. The less you become afraid of pain, the more you connect to others who have experienced similar things, and the greater your love, and your compassion. Life becomes an experience of opening, of expansion, of embracing more and more of this wonderful frightening earth. The only way that you can embrace is to find the experience of the other within yourself, and so you have to open, again and again, to the truth, be it glorious or terrifying, of your own experience.

I wish spiritual growth was just a wonderful comfortable thing. If I had known how challenging all this was going to be, I am not so sure if I would have gone down this path. Yet, I realize that I had no choice, and I believe it’s the ultimate path that a human being can venture down. I guess that any adventure always carries with it the promise of beautiful lands and incredible experiences, yet often presents a lot of difficulty and challenge which needs to be overcome before the goal is reached. Without the challenge and the difficulty there is no growth, and you need to be pushed, or to push yourself, beyond your limits, to break those limits so that new growth can occurr.