How to cope with egoic backlashes?

How to cope with egoic backlashes?

Hi Rupert,

Thank you so much for your earlier response, which was really helpful and informative. I am noticing now that there seems to be an egoic backlash happening since that ‘seeing’ happened. Is that possible? Lots and lots of emotional pain coming up, things hurting that haven’t hurt for a long, long time. Lots of anger, fear, everything uncomfortable. It feels like there is a wrestling match going on inside.

Thank you,
Claudia

 

Dear Claudia,

The egoic backlash that you describe is to be expected (in some cases) and welcomed. In fact, it is a very good sign! 

Imagine a deep, dark well in whose depths a number of creatures live in a state of slumber. At noon every day, when the sun is directly above the well, these creatures wake briefly and rise to the surface towards the light. As the sun passes, darkness again fills the well and the creatures return to their previous slumber at the bottom.

The sun, in this metaphor, is consciousness. The well is the apparent person and the creatures are all the dark, uncomfortable feelings that you describe.

Under normal circumstances, the purpose of most of our activities is to avoid having to feel such feelings. However, as we begin to take our stand as awareness, these habitual strategies of denial and avoidance are revealed. Hence your description of emotional pain that been buried for a long time, coming to the surface.

As we take our stand as awareness we find that we no longer have any agenda with the mind, body or world. For this reason these dark feelings are now free to surface unsuppressed and to be fully felt. 

These feelings are the old residues of ignorance at the level of the body. They are habits of feeling which result from our old identification with the body, that is, from taking ourself to be a limited entity. Although it takes a moment to see that we are the clear space of awareness, it takes time for the body and the mind to become realigned with this knowing.

If we subscribe to these feelings we immediately become an apparent person again. However, we should not resist these feelings with will power or discipline. In fact these feelings want us to get busy with them, avoiding them, getting rid of them, suppressing them, whatever….because it is precisely this activity of avoidance that keeps them alive.

There is only one thing these feelings cannot stand, and that is being clearly seen for what they are.

Having understood this, there is no need to be moved by them. Welcome them lovingly into yourself. Allow them to arise, to display themselves fully, to recount their old story and to vanish in their own time. Remain knowingly your self, awareness, throughout.

These feelings rely on our having an agenda with them. Every time they are met with our welcoming openness, as opposed to our resistance, we rob them of their power over us. That is, we rob them of their apparent power to veil presence. In time their ferocity will diminish because they are based on an old story that is no longer believed – the old story of a separate entity.

However, it is important to be sure that there is no agenda with them, that we are not welcoming them in order to get rid of them. The feelings you describe thrive on this kind of subtle agenda.

Once it has been clearly seen that the separate entity around whom these feelings revolve is utterly non-existent, their heart has, as it were, been removed. Only waves of innocuous bodily sensations remain. In due course, those feelings that were dependent for their existence upon the belief in a separate entity will die down. They die of clear seeing and neglect.

Once the mind and body are no longer presided over by the apparent separate entity, they gradually return to their natural state of openness, transparency, sensitivity, availability and love.

With love,
Rupert

Category

You might also like

Philosophy

A Beacon of Light in the Darkest of Times

Published on 10 March 2022
Philosophy

Remaining as Awareness in the Presence of Thoughts

Published on 30 March 2022
Philosophy

Is it necessary to practice Kashmir Tantric yoga on a daily basis?

Published on 1 June 2021