Finding Your Deepest Nature: It’s all around you!

Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation. Use it! 

Ram Das  

Everyday troubles, physical and emotional symptoms and relationship conflicts have the power to connect you to your deepest nature. Unfortunately we have been taught to view these experiences as problematic and pathological, and often turn up to therapists and doctors asking them to 'fix' us. This fits with a worldview that there is good and bad, right and wrong - a world of opposites and opposition, which only serves to keep us separate from ourselves, each other and the world we share as our home.

The deeper reality is that we are all interconnected, and that 'me' and 'not-me', 'right' and 'wrong' are two sides of the one coin; they cannot be separated, and together create a whole. It is a function of our thinking to create opposites, and this is useful to the extent that it helps us understand and move around in an increasingly complex world. We are constantly deciding 'this is me' and 'that is not me', and as we do so, we create a boundary between one part of our wholeness and another part, and these boundaries can begin to feel so real that we believe there really is 'me' and 'not me'.

Each time we consciously or unconsciously determine that something is 'out there' and 'not me' we split off from a part of our own energy. An example of this is the person who has suffered bullying or abuse and, in order to protect themselves, makes a stand against such behaviour. This is important and appropriate, but sometimes they also disconnect from their own power, unconsciously fearing that 'power' is the enemy. There is no energy in the universe which is bad, only people who have learned to use such energies with poor judgement or intention. The survivor of abuse needs to develop a new and healthy relationship with their own power.

When we suppress a part of our wholeness, that energy doesn't vanish. It remains within the system looking for a way to be acknowledged and utilised. This energy comes back to us through our symptoms and conflicts, our anxieties and depressions. At a superficial level, there is no doubt that these experiences are difficult and problematic. However, through simple awareness, we can access the deeper energetic nature of these troublesome experiences, and bring that energy back to serve our wholeness. In this way, energy can be withdrawn from symtpoms and problems, leaving us with a new perspective, relief from physical complaints, and energy that is useful in our life.

Just yesterday, I noticed the beginnings of a painful swelling in the back of my throat. I decided to take some time to get to know the energy of that symptom. Using simple awareness, I focused on the pain until I had a sensory description of its nature: it felt like shards of glass in the back of my throat. Then I focused on the essential nature of one of those little shards of glass, and as I connected to it I found it's essence was the ability to cut through something with transparency and clarity. And so I wondered to myself, what is that energy doing in my throat? An inner voice then told me, "Get clearer in your communication, find your voice and cut through people's awareness with transparency and clarity". This made sense immediately and I began to put this new awareness into use in a couple of writing projects. I also booked in to see my Acupuncturist to get some herbs and help the symptom along (NB: seeking complementary or traditional medicine is always recommended with any physical symptom).

This morning I awoke to find my throat back to its normal state.

Learning to Listen to Your Deepest Nature

Coming to know your deepest nature immediately brings you into tune with the greater nature of the world, and allows you to live the experience of interconnectedness. In the above example, the energy of clarity and cutting through are wanting to be brought out more fully, but something in me has marginalised this capacity in myself. The symptom reminds me of my ability and need to get clearer and from this, other things in my life begin to flow more fully.

Our true state is our Oneness, yet we are bombarded with messages that tell us to view ourselves as separate, discrete, individual. How can we catch the experience of Oneness through our daily lives and interactions? We can do this through a simple shift in attention, where we begin to notice and explore the things in life which disturb, trouble, irritate or interest us - the things that seem to be calling for our attention in some way are doorways back to an experience of wholeness.

If you have anything to do with the online social networking site ‘Twitter’, you will know about ‘tweets’, those tiny chunks of information and news that catch your attention. Tweets are sent out by one subscriber and tuned into by one or many others. Tweets are compact mini-bytes of juicy information. Tweeting is an electronic experience of interconnectedness.

In much the same way, the physical world around us and within us is tweeting at us constantly, sending us little messages, updates and newsfeeds. A dream 'tweets' at us in the morning, our body symptoms 'tweet' at us during the day, our relationships are 'tweeting' too, and our environment 'tweets' away, grabbing for our attention. A 'tweet' is really an energetic message that catches our sensory attention; however, we often do not give these tweets our full attention.

All these tweets are designed to bring us back into full contact with the web of interconnectedness. All these tweets highlight our deepest essential nature as it wants to be lived in the moment. Any one of these tweets can be accessed, unfolded, or tuned into to bring great meaning and richness and well being back into our lives.

This is equally true if you are an individual, a couple, a community or an organisation.

Amazingly, as I write this the local birds seem to be having a moment of particularly festive birdsong. They sing to each other back and forth; each adding the next note in a harmony that is written by each of them, and by something beyond them. LIke them, our lives our songs that can only be written together, finding a harmony with all the tweets coming from those around us.

This is how life is. And we humans are not separate from this, although we have increasingly attempted to disconnect ourselves from nature in the pursuit of science and technology. Of course, we can never escape the reality of our total engagement with nature, because it is so absolute. And so, science and technology have beaten a pathway all the way back to interconnectedness. 

Quantum Physics and Twitter are testament to this circular journey. 

Consider the following stories:

A woman is at home with the flu, listless and unmotivated. She can’t afford any more time off work and is struggling with her lack of motivation for what she describes as ‘a perfectly good job’. She’s also upset because a colleague has attacked her for 'taking too much time off’ in recent months. In working through, the following connections are made: Firstly, in picking up the accusation, she realises that there is a part of her 'absent from work' and not interested in being at work. She actually wants to live and work overseas doing similar work as she is doing now. Her energy changes as soon as she talks about this, and suddenly the symptom of listlessness makes sense - her body has already left the country! She resolves to stop procrastinating and get saving to make the move. Interestingly, the colleague resigned from his position not long after the attacking comment – apparently he was also marginalizing his desire to be elsewhere and so felt compelled to attack the absenteeism in his associate.

A woman in my office is working on her relationship with her brother. She is hurt around an incident where she felt rejected by the brother and wonders whether to try to broach it. Her fear is that due to her siblings extreme nature, this conversation might possibly bring an end to their relationship. She vasillates about what course of action to take. So I ask her to use ' dreamy attention' to notice a tweet in the room we are in. She says that a handle on my desk has been tweeting at her since she arrived, but she had marginalised it until I asked about it. Unfolding the energy of the handle, she says it is ‘robust, solid, heavy, old, permanent’. We then discuss how this is true of her relationship with her brother, and how this helps her decision. She says that she has been through all kinds of trouble with him since they were kids, even times of not speaking, but there is a sense of permanency and solidity to their bond. She says "We will always be a part of each others lives!" and this feels like a revelation. This realisation, brought forward by the tweet in the desk handle, allows her to drop the petty conflict and focus on their enduring connection.

The only reason you do not see and live through the insightful mind of your bigger self all the time is that your little self feels sentient* experiences are unnecessary, incorrect, or incomprehensible. Arnold Mindell

Keep a look out for Tweets in your life and unfold them to their deepest essence for amazing insights!!

Warmest wishes,

Michelle

*So many ideas in my articles are informed by the pioneering work of Arnold and Amy Mindell. Arny talks about 'sentient flirts', which are very subtle signals, barely noticeable with our ordinary attention, but able to be picked up with a kind of 'dreamy attention' as described in the example with the woman and her brother, above (See his books, Dreaming While Awake and Earth Based Psychology). My use of the word 'tweet' refers to not only subtle sentient level experiences, but experiences on all levels of consciousness that disturb, interest or attract our attention.

Ken Wilber's writing has also inspired this article. His book, No Boundary is a fantastic read for anyone interested in awareness, psychology and health.

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