Sometimes I am asked how I deal with everyday things - you know, the kind of mishaps, hurts, frustrations etc. that occur regularly in anyone’s life? What friends want to know is how does my dealing with these matters differ from my pre-Tantra lifestyle. They notice that I have become somewhat different, I am the same, yet different. When I ask them what is different, they say you glow more, you seem so happy, contented, you don’t frown anymore …! They notice that I’ m not fazed by things that go wrong or people that do me wrong. So what is it, what has made this noticeable change? How do I deal with things that can so easily make a whole day go sour?
It is so simple – like everything about Truth once you have opened your perception to it. It is about responding instead of re-acting and it is about becoming a witness to the situation.
No one can explain it better than Osho:
“Have you seen a bullock-cart moving? The wheel moves goes on moving, but at the centre of the wheel something remains permanent. On that permanent hub the wheel moves. On that unmoving hub the wheel's movement exists. Exactly like that, you have a hub -- that hub is unmoving; and you have a wheel-like personality that goes on moving. You have travelled far, thousands of miles and thousands of lives, and the wheel knows many roads and many paths, but the hub has remained where it is. Now you can look at reality in two ways: either from the wheel -- then everything is changing every moment; or from the hub -- then nothing is changing….
How to find this hub of life? -- By becoming a witness, one finds it. Somebody insults you, anger arises; you remain a witness. The insult comes from outside, the anger arises on the periphery, and you remain at the centre, watching. Yes, somebody has done something, provoked your periphery, and there is anger on the periphery, and the anger is surrounding you like a smoke cloud, but you are at the hub, watching. You are not identified with the periphery. Then the insult is outside, and the anger is also outside of you. Both are separate and far away. Both are different from you....
When this awareness grows, dreaming stops, by and by. When this awareness grows, the wheel moves slower and slower. One day it happens: the wheel is as silent, as unmoving as the hub. That is the point when enlightenment happens.”
This is exactly what Tantra brought out in me more intensely than anything else I had tried in my life including lots of psychotherapy along my journey to becoming a therapist myself. It is to BE in the moment during my day. Not that I am claiming to be doing this 24/7, but I am in the moment as a witness as often as I can – the exact opposite to doing one thing and thinking of something else or to be mentally in the past or in the future, missing out the moment of time that has just passed.
Brenda Lee, the “little miss dynamite” singer of the 60's and 70's says it in a song quite nicely:
Coming on strong...coming on strong…
I can see the heartache coming on strong,
I can feel the tear drops, pain and sorrow
Ever since you’ve been gone
They’ve been coming on strong....
She is of course singing about a man who has gone out of her life and the feelings this gives her. If we translate the absence of the man to be the absence of knowledge of the Oneness of all Existence – then yes, we do feel the heartache, the tear drops, the pain and the sorrow and if we are a witness to this, we feel it coming on strong. We watch the automatically rising reaction and in doing so are able to transform them into a chosen response.
Now this in itself does not make those difficult everyday frustrations and hurts go away. And they do most certainly not feel any different! What it does is that it allows me to feel the moment more intensely. But, the friends argue, “...that only makes things worse!”
No it actually does not. More intensely means with more awareness. Being aware of the moment, any moment in time, makes each moment you are aware of more intense than the moments you are not aware of. On the one side experiencing the emotion of the moment deeply and clearly and on the other being a witness to my reactions.
When I look at the mighty Indian Ocean from my garden with awareness, I see the colour, I smell the scent, I hear the sound, I breath the salty air and one moment becomes a lifetime of pure bliss taking all this in.
Well, so also with the everyday frustrations. I breathe the moment, I smell it, hear it, perceive it with awareness and become a witness to a stage on which I am a puppet of my own conditioning. Once I have the “witness-perspective” on any aspect of my REACTING to things, it is as if I see beyond the puppet re-actions, beyond to the real heart- felt RESPONSE. These are two totally different things. Instead of simply re-acting an old emotion I become able to respond to the moment.
Even if I feel hurt, the response can be compassion for the person on the other side of the hurt. In my pre-Tantra days, I would have perceived the situation or the person involved in my moment to be the cause of my hurt. Tantra taught me to understand my reactions to be mine. I own them - they come from within, from somewhere deep inside me. Actually they have very little to do with the situation or the other person. The person or situation is simply a catalyser for the emotions I am feeling. I can actually be grateful for this catalysation as it gives me the opportunity to look, once again, at my reaction and see if this is really necessary. It is usually not necessary at all and so I can turn this into a response to the situation.
Just think of this: we grow up accumulating all sorts of experiences and together with the emotional result of these experiences in our individual selves, they are held somewhere in our mind and body memories. We consciously - and more often sub-consciously - call on these memories up when similar events occur and experience what we understand as our personal reactions to things. But is this really us? I say, “no it is not”! It is the result of a conditioned reaction to certain triggers. So understanding this as a mechanism of our human experience, it becomes possible to say, I own my reaction, it is the result of my experiences, my upbringing, my education, my culture – but this is not the real me. This creates a distance to the experienced emotion itself, and from this distance I am able to become a witness to the events and emotions that are taking place within.
So when we do this, we are able to watch the emotion rising and are more in a position to change that emotion and instead of re-acting in the usual way. We become able to respond (as opposed to react). Responding is a matter of choice and we always have a choice.
The “old” way of my anger or soreness projected onto the other becomes in this “new” way my own anger or soreness. There can be no judgment or blame on the other for causing this as it rises only from within myself. Recognizing this adds to the distancing, to the witnessing. I become able to watch as a feeling of rejection or hurt arises. When I watch this a number of things can happen. One of them is that more often or not I am able to laugh at myself. There that old hurt goes again, oh yes I know you, I feel you but I will not project you onto the other. Setting my projections free allows compassion for myself, and more particularly for the other to come through.
Personally I might be part of the situation while mentally I am witnessing it. I see not only the cause of my frustration, I see myself as intensely as all else. I see each second of my reaction, I see my perspective, where it comes from and if necessary, I am able to go right into the uncomfortable feeling in a very deep way. If this is what is in me at this present moment, I want to experience it. I want the fullness of this moment. Only if I can take the fullness of such difficult moments can I experience the fullness of the blissful moments in my life. It is the polarities once again, the one-ness perceived as a two-ness.
So if I make the appearance to my friends that I am happier, more joyful than I used to be – this is what it is. My experience of everything in my life is more intense. I do not push away the hurtful moments. I embrace them as mine and mine only – not caused by some one or some situation. It is always my choice as to how I respond instead of to automatically re-act to something.
Does this make life easier? Yes it does!
Does this make me happier? Yes it does!
Is this part of the Truth we are somehow all seeking? Yes it is!
To get back to the Brenda Lee song - we can "translate" the man that has gone from our lives to our experience of Oneness with all life, with all Existence, that has gone. In this we perceive you and me separate from each other. Only the Oneness has not left us stranded with hurt, we have left our natural perception of the eternal Oneness and have polarized into you and me, into opposites. In returning to the experience of Oneness, all these daily situations are simply showing us where we left the path, paving the way to return at the very same spot. And then the experience of Oneness, and non-separate-ness allows a response which includes compassion, understanding and even love Is this not wonderful? I say, indeed it is.
“The past is yours, the future is yours, and the present is God's. We divide time into three tenses -- past, present, future -- but that division is not right. Time can be divided between the past and the future but the present is not part of time, it is part of eternity.”
I want to share this response from one of my students to this journal entry with you!
The writer is the husband of a young couple with 4 young children that spent an intensive weekend of Tantra work here with my at the KZN south coast last year. It gives you an idea of what Tantra Sacred Massage can do and just how spiritual tantric healing massage / body-work is. Their names have been changed.
" I really enjoyed your latest message on your website and reading about all the latest developments. Its great to see that you are so active and productive!
About the 'turning wheel': In my childhood I was familiar with my 'witness'. I used to think up meditations that I would do at sunset every day and through them I became familiar with 'stilling my mind' and looking inside until I found the 'spark' with which I came into the world. At one point I had a particular name for this 'essence'; a colour, a sound, but now I've forgotten. I do remember the emotion that was there and it was one of completeness, harmony and love. I came into the world wishing it well.
At about the time just before I met Rosanna I completely lost this sense of me. I felt a huge loss, but I didn't even know why (I just thought it was the absence of the sea and not being able to surf for eight hours a day). Luckily I pushed through and now it is slowly all coming back.
It's true isn't it, that most people are simply actors in their own and others' melodramas. We are all victims of our own conditioning. Both society and we ourselves constrained our minds incredibly and the end result is that we become like ships lost in the turbulent seas of our emotions.
What I didn't realise before was exactly how insidious and how pervasive our thought-patterns are. Yoga shows you that action originates in thought, and strikingly Jesus had a similar view, saying that we should go beyond action and strive to cut out the roots of our evil thoughts. With a bit of effort we can cleanse our minds of negative energy and so we gain control of our development and start a positive process of spiritual growth, with increasing love and kindness for the world and ourselves . I think that all faiths contain this inherent possibility, that they can help us merge with 'God' within us, and then we will see that 'God' is also in the world and that both are one. Indeed all dualisms and the agony of separation is then overcome.
But it is so hard helping others to find their 'witness' isn't it? Especially if they are not seeking it. I suppose that it is a journey that each must undertake at their own pace (why the ancient Indians didn't have any 'missionary zeal'!) Luckily for me, Rosanna is also striving to hold on to her witness and to help her 'witness' grow. It takes a huge strain off our relationship, but at the same time I see the value of the period of my life when I had to confront my own emotions, and then just let them go and look inwards once more.
And in a big way the process for Rosanna, and the remembering for me, started that weekend with you.
Hope you continue to do such great work for a long time to come!"
Salvador
Namaste
Leandra
