Who wants to play the comparison game? Feels like a lot of us are right now. I feel it in the air, especially as some people are experiencing extended periods of bliss, joy , clarity, alignment while others feel totally stuck in the mud. I read it in peoples’ comments and I feel in my body how many others are falling into this bog. For the most part my compulsion to compare myself to others is beginning to fade. Yet when it comes to joy and belonging, I still get caught in the tar baby. When I see others celebrating in community I feel somehow excluded and alone. Now mind you I am a part of several glorious communities yet I feel like the outsider. I can feel how I create a ring of separation around me when I feel uncomfortable. I am the one that is blocking others from me yet I feel left out. Crazy I know. Then I read about others having “arrive” and feeling prolonged joy. First of all, I have no clue what that means. Others may read my words when I am a place of such clarity and peace and assume I have it made in the shade. My friend Uschi just told me she thought I was doing great from reading one of my blogs. I was for a few days. Now I am back in ughsville. I am very clear what I am processing is a sense of aloneness. It feels heavy and impenetrable in this moment. Yet just a few days ago I felt powerfully connected to family, to acquaintances, to strangers. I am all over the map. I feel in my body how many others are flipping around or maybe feeling constantly stuck in the goo. I have felt the burden of shame and self blame. I am still feeling subtle judgments for not being productive, for not contributing, for not “working” even though in my experience these shifts in consciousness are the hardest work I have ever done. I get it intellectually yet there is a part of me that still wants to sling mud on myself.
When this mentor pointed out how stuck I was in spiritual ego I went into major fix it mode. In hindsight I see how I immediately went into my old belief in a punishing God. Based on something he said might happen if I did not clear this, something that would definitely not be my idea of fun, I went into oh shit, I’m doing it wrong and I will be punished. All these spiritual rules and regulations can begin to feel like Catholic sins with a vengeful God ready to throw a thunderbolt at me if I don’t get it right. Here are some of the “rules”: allow everything, don’t judge, stay out of story, forgive, focus on the positive, focus on Love, Be Love, dive into your difficult emotions, stay out of your head, etc. Exhausting, right? And the cost of getting it wrong? Suffering. No wonder we blame ourselves. It gives us a feeling of control. If the reason I am suffering so much is I screwed up, then if I unscrew up, my suffering will cease. I sense that isn’t so. We were born human, we are transforming into crystalline based and everything unlike that purer energy must rise to the surface to be detoxed. Nobodies fault, no sin, no blame, no shame.
I want to wave a magic wand and stop all of us from judging, comparing, blaming. What a waste of energy. Sometimes I can do it, sometimes not. I love what MattKahn says now, that in order to complete this transformation, all we have to do is survive it. We don’t have to like it, accept it, allow it, just survive, what a relief! Anybody else tired of all the spiritual hoops we have had to jump through? Really, reminds me of my catechism lessons. So I am taking the pressure off and enjoying that at best, with a few stellar exceptions, the most I experience is a quiet joy. Often I have a strong sense of peace and this is an invaluable gift. If you are reading this, and do not feel peace, I beg you not to compare yourself to me or I’ll kick you ass.
I am currently transforming aloneness and the process is definetely not my idea of a good time. Matt Kahn calls it ultimate surrender where one surenders even their preferences. When I first read that I was like, no way, forget it, never. Yet I now see that is the only way out of the prison. My bigest charge and yet greatest offering has always been about Love. I see how I got over having my child, husband, future soul mate be my reason for feeling loved. Yet I transferred some of that energy to friends and a yearning for community. Of course, I desire these things yet they will never transform the emptiness I feel. I get it. I am in the no exit place. I get all the poems, books, teaching that say that ultimately, if we look to anything outside ourselves, we are trapped. I get how formless emptiness is the answer. I get why this saying is so accurate: “why are you so unhappy, why are you so unhappy? Because 99% of everything you do and everything you say is about yourself, and there isn’t one...” That was esoteric bullshit until recently. A friend that I depended on (co-depended on?) was not sure she wanted to come to my ritual but rather preferred to attend another. When I felt how much that shook me up, it was back to the drawing board. My little mind wheels are spinning wildly, trying to figure it out. How does one transform unpleasant emptiness and aloneness to ecstatic formless Presence? That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? I know a million ways it doesn’t work. I know that I don’t know the answer and never will. I either trust the Universe to get it handled or I’m screwed. So I am going to go with door number #1 and do my best to trust the Universe. Yes, it still feels like trying but hey, that’s the best I can do today and that is plenty good enough. Why, cause I love myself.
So I hope you can save yourself some anguish and join me on the the no blame, no shame train and ride off into the sunset happily just surviving whatever arises. Hey if you can do so with joy, more power to you. If not, all is well, all is well, all is very very well. I love you.
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