Liberating Insight

The Way of Liberating Insight ~ Session 5 Notes

See the exercise on “Unhooking Toxic Emotions” at the end of these notes.

Returning to “Only Awareness”

Have some time each day where you’re grounding yourself in some of the early “only awareness” exercises.

The foundation of it all is the ability to touch into stillness and into that intimate but nonattached awareness. The awareness that’s looking at me right now is always free and unattached. Exercise your ability -- like building a muscle -- to keep touching back into the ground of only awareness.

The 4 Inner Arguments

There are generally four inner arguments: arguments with yourself, arguments with others, arguments with life, arguments with God. These are four ways we are resisting and judging.

Most people have some amount of argument with themselves most of the day. It’s part of your superego, a parental kind of ego, that’s talking to you in a judging kind of way.

You can’t really gain deep entrance into your emotional life as long as you’re arguing with yourself.

We often reserve our most powerful emotional arguments for the people who are closest to us.

If you hold on to your arguments, you’ll continue to suffer. We often think our arguments are legitimate, that somehow we're going to win our arguments, but we just don’t. If you buy into those arguments, you’ll just be arguing forever.

We look at the way the world is and often think that our arguments are valid. But what’s missing is that everything and everybody -- the world -- is simply the way it is.

Freedom can be defined as no more argument with yourself, no more argument with others, no more argument with the world, and no more argument with God.

Resistance Inhibits Transformation

The very things that you want to change the most and resist the most are the things that never seem to transform.

When we oppose the "what-is-ness" of anything, we lock it into our system. It doesn’t allow transformation.

If you don’t have resistance, your experience will be energetic, bright, and loving. If you are in an argument, your experience will be conflicted, angry, or sad.

Believing in your story of resistance emotionally traps you in the thing you resist.

Ask yourself, “What am I saying no to?” You’ll see that your resistance to what is, or what was, is what is causing your upset.

Liberating Insights

“No one is making me feel the way I’m feeling.”

“I can create optional responses to my emotions.” The way you react isn’t set in stone.

Peace and love underlie all of our emotional responses, even if we’re angry. You wouldn’t feel angry about something if you didn’t care about it. Peace, love, and clarity is our natural condition.

Touch into the unconditional sense of well-being and calm before doing deep emotional work. Then you can connect with what is arising.

Have compassion for what you’ve gone through if you’ve gone through something really difficult in yourlife.

True discrimination comes from clarity, not resistance.

Acknowledging & Opening to Your Shadow Side

Whatever inner energy or emotion you have not acknowledged within yourself, whatever shadow, becomes a kind of demon -- not a demon as an entity, but it starts to feel like a dark force.

If your insight goes deep enough, eventually your shadow side will reveal itself. If you’ve repressed it all your life, it can be quite shocking and overwhelming. If you don’t acknowledge it, it starts to own you.

Emotional health is never found by casting out parts of yourself that you don’t want to acknowledge are there.

When you start to acknowledge difficult energies within you and let them open, eventually they start to give rise to their opposite.

Anger turns into love or clarity. They’re actually bound together. When you let the energy reintegrate within you, you’ll find a deep kind of caring or kindness.

It’s humbling to admit the fullness of your humanity -- the angels, the demons, and all of it -- to be able to remain conscious without going into commentary, judgment, or story, when difficult emotions arise.

There’s no such thing as successful repression. Its energy is going to leak out.

Many people try to use the clear space of awareness as a place to hide from their difficult emotions instead of allowing them to arise.

There’s a detachment and intimacy together in opening to your shadow side. It’s a paradoxical experience. You’ll feel close to what is arising because you’re not trying to run away from it, and you’ll feel detached from it in the ground of your being.

Caller 1: Responding to World Violence

It’s wise for anybody to be aware of what’s going on in the world. But we also have to be wise consumers. The part we really need to be clear about is that when we’re taking in difficult information, to ask, “What’s happening within me? What are my responses? Are they coming from a clear space?”

We can disagree, but we don’t have to be disagreeable.

We can take something in and be upset about it, or we can take it in with a deep sense of caring. If we want to help what’s happening in the world, being upset doesn’t stop the violence or do anything to help.

If you feel called to take action, you can imagine, “I could act from my deep caring and compassion, or I could act from my angry, bitter resentment.” What do you think is the more constructive way to respond?

Caller 2: Arguing with Life vs. God

Some people’s arguments will be about life, and some will be about God as a separate deity that’s planning and controlling everything here on earth.

When you turn on the news and see something, or maybe with your own suffering, you say, “Why did life do this to me?”

Your argument with life and God are basically the same argument, depending on which thing resonates with you.

There’s not “a puppet master up there,” but there is an intelligence.

Hopefully we can grow into a more mature concept of God, and then finally, out of all concepts altogether.

Caller 3: Releasing Judgment

Do you know with absolute certainty that you shouldn’t have done something you did? Where is the proof that you shouldn’t have done something in the past?

What’s true is “I did what I did.” That’s certain. Whether you should or shouldn’t have done it, that belief is in the unconscious.

Come experientially into that foundation of “only awareness.” Feel that sense of calm or clarity that’s already present in your awareness. Go slow and let your body feel that grounded sense. Then from that place you are already not as involved.

Notice that awareness itself is simply allowing it to arise. The awareness itself isn’t resisting. You’re evoking awareness to become more and more conscious. Feel its openness and clarity, and then you can look more deeply into the reactivity.

Caller 4: Feeling the Whole Spectrum of Emotion

Can you feel there’s a quality of sadness around it when you judge yourself? Underneath the sadness and sorrow is a sense of real compassion.

The thing about all this is that you’re not doing this just to eliminate judgment and how you feel, but you’re allowing yourself to feel the whole spectrum of emotion.

When you feel the compassion and love, this already starts to change the judgment.

Feeling the whole spectrum of emotion is really important. If you just feel the tip of the iceberg, which is the painful part, you’ll feel like you’re going in circles. You can get stuck in sorrow, but if you keep opening, you’ll come to a deep feeling of compassion. Then you’re experiencing the full spectrum of emotion beginning to get liberated.

Caller 5: When Others Don’t Forgive You

If you tie your well-being to someone else’s forgiveness, you’re setting yourself up for some pain.

We have to have enough compassion to allow someone to pull away if they feel like they need to. But that doesn’t need to change your feeling of compassion or make you pull away.

Caller 6: Healing Regret

Regret is a result of not quite coming all the way back into knowing that you just operated from the given framework that you had at the time.

Underneath regret is that we really deeply care about that person that we weren’t so skillful with.

Your resistance to having done what you did is what causes the regret. When you let yourself feel your caring and compassion and you don’t resist, you just know, “I really love and care for this person, and I did something unskillful. That’s my reality right now.” And you just let yourself experience that.

Regret is not being able to accept our imperfection and our humanness. It’s a kind of arrogance that we can’t fully accept our own imperfections. When we’re accepting our imperfections and our unconsciousness, we’re admitting to ourselves that we’re part of the human family. Then the regret can wash away.

Caller 7: Dealing with Overwhelm

The first thing when you are in extreme overwhelm is to tell yourself, “I can’t work with all of this all at once right now.” Tell yourself, “I’m only going to take a little piece of this angst.” Then you’ll start to evoke the part of it that you’re ready to encounter today.

The instinct to be done with it may arise, but you’ve got to be more patient and deliberate. Just assume that whatever arises in that moment, that’s the part that wants to be dealt with.

EXERCISE: Unhooking Toxic Emotions

(Excerpted from the Study Course Q&A “Toxic Emotion Attacks.”)
Here’s a concise method to unhook and embrace toxic thoughts and emotions. Keep in mind that one cannot simply read and understand this method; it must be applied, each and every time you get a toxic emotion attack.

Identify the exact thought and emotion that is occurring. As an example: “judging thoughts and unworthy emotions.”

Once the thought and emotion have been identified, remind yourself that “This thought and this emotion is not me, nor is it other than me. It is simply the current emotional weather pattern that is occurring.”

Notice that the current emotional weather pattern is arising within conscious awareness, like storm clouds arising in the open space of the sky.

Let go of focusing on the thoughts and emotions (which does not mean to deny or repress them) and notice the space-like quality of awareness. Take whatever time is necessary to acknowledge and get the feel for conscious awareness.

Notice how conscious awareness is not caught within the thoughts and emotions. Take a moment to really feel and know this.

Notice how conscious awareness is not separate from thoughts and feelings -- not caught but not apart from them. Every thought and every emotion arises within conscious awareness, never apart from it.

From conscious awareness kindly and lovingly say to the thoughts and emotions, “I am not you but I lovingly welcome you into the space that I am.”

Feel in your body the welcoming and the embrace of what has been repressed and resisted.

Allow yourself to feel the safe and quiet quality of conscious awareness.

Repeat as needed as often as is needed.

Remember that you are not trying to be perfect at this exercise, only consistent. And part of the resistance to what is arising will be to resist doing this little exercise at times. And even that resistance can be embraced as part of the exercise.