In the Beginning

In order to understand the nature and flowing references throughout my blog, I recommend reading my initial post The End of the Beginning first.

8.05.2013

What You Resist Persists

...and What You Embrace Dissolves.

Typically my posts are an amalgamation of processed learning over the course of time. As an introvert, this is how I integrate then articulate my healing journey. This post is different, a real-time experience that happened in yoga class tonight.

I have posted before on the healing powers of yoga nidra in my Pursuit of In-Bodyness. I've not been to a formal yoga studio class in quite some time, having lately been consumed in the process of moving and changing jobs. I returned tonight to my home studio for an hour of bliss-filled mindfulness and it far exceeded my expectations.

During deep relaxation I had an experience that brought me to tears. Yoga nidra is usually a time of restful, floating dreaminess filled with pleasantries of the mind's eye. However, tonight I could not settle. In a state of body steadiness my mind could not relax and the visions it produced were anything but pleasant. It was filled with dark images: spiders, monsters with open mouths full of sharp teeth, a virtual black hole of sorrow.

These visions were centered in my drishti gaze, directly in the front line of my field of closed-eye vision. I found myself avoiding these dark images with all of my might, searching for some place of light and solace in the periphery. As I attempted to look away from these images they only grew darker, scarier, and more vivid. I felt my physical self succumb to the body stuff of my dissociation, mostly heavy arms and elevated heart rate approaching panic.

Exasperated, I simply let go. I looked right at them. I stopped trying to control them and instead stared those demons right in the eyes. And all at once, they melted away and transformed into a beautiful lotus flower. The dark images were replaced by light and soft color. I found peace.

We come into this world full of love; it is our natural state. It is this life, this world, and the illusion of separateness within it that creates fear. The way of the Buddha is to stop resisting fear and to instead embrace what it has to offer us. It is the only way to reclaim vitality and thus, our true nature.

Even our demons give way to beauty when we embrace them as an essential part of ourselves and our journey. Only then can we truly Overcome Fear.


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