There is a way of looking, or adding onto the experience while looking, that can in fact intensify the energetic component. At a certain level (using the term as a way of speaking about this, but not assuming), stories can come up, Velcroed to bodily sensations, and then one jumps to the conclusion that something has been found. For instance, an image of Mom or Dad, or a small bewildered child is seen, and the body sensation can get very powerful. If one looks at the image, and watches the mind add the words, “core wound,” or “unresolved childhood issue,” or any psychological, conceptual overlay, there can be a kind of unseen dramatization of something that is much simpler.

There is some usefulness in seeing these images as a way to unhook them from a larger deficiency story. In other words, once seen the impact is diminished, and the belief in the power of the tragic story loses its appeal. So the childhood images come up, unbidden. It happens all the time. Just look. And listen to the words. Can we let them go and just experience what’s happening as it is, without this overlay? The simplicity lies just underneath that complexity.

 The inquiries are not therapy, not psychological shovels. They are a way of seeing through these age-old assumptions. I am this way because…It is an argument with the past, fighting with ghosts, and ultimately reaffirms separation and suffering.

It is a tremendous relief to be freed from the idea that the past irrevocably warped us in some way, and then to take that a step further, unencumbered by family or relationship drama, and step into this wide open space, into the simplicity of what is happening right now. Can you feel that without the past? Without the psychological assumptions? Go ahead and cry, but keep looking…is that really attached to the sensation, or does the mind want to complicate and make special what might otherwise pass right through, without fanfare?

Perhaps we could use the more neutral term, “conditioning,” simply pointing to the mind’s tendency to conceptualize and add identity to every experience. Just notice the tendency.

This is not to suggest that the past be ignored, suppressed, or altered in any way. Nor is it a suggestion to “get over it.” It is instead, a way to be free of the past, free of the idea of “damaged goods.” Maybe you are not that. Maybe you are something far grander and not limited, or wedded to, any psychological definition of what hell might look like. Heaven is found right here, right now. There is nowhere else to look.

This Be the Verse

By Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

 

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

 

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself.