Introduction

There's nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater, you realize that you've been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent.

~Dave Barry

This course is a meditation on seeing deeply beneath the surface, releasing, dying, transforming, and expanding. It is about delving into your psyche to uncover the feelings and needs you have repressed, denied, spurned, hated, dismissed, judged, and criticized. It is about learning to be in a loving relationship with every aspect, age, and stage of your evolving being, and, in turn, to be in love with every other evolving being you relate to with compassion and wisdom.

This is a meditation that can help you find, within yourself, the inner experiences you’ve had at different ages, which, together with the stage of development at which you had them, you have banished to the deep inner regions of your being, the basement of your existence, the nether regions of hell within you.

We did this as young beings, when we were too young to cope with the shame and fear that arose from our interactions with others and from encountering the world’s dangers and challenges. Experience led to an inner feeling, accompanied by precognitive beliefs and understandings, and later by cognitive judgments and self-criticisms of ourselves as “less than” in some way.

However, these emotional and cognitive memory states remain buried within the very cells and neural pathways of our bodies, and there is a constant, faint call from their desperate, sad voices in our lives. You have shied away, been distracted, and denied parts of yourself – all the parts filled with pain, shame, guilt, rage, and fear. They can be awakened and brought to the surface at any moment by a current event that triggers the old memory state – just a glance, a look, a sharp word, or a small event like being cut off by a mindless driver. The full force of the original feelings of rage, shame, and fear, along with the beliefs and meanings you made about yourself, such as not being “good enough,” “loved,” “accepted,” or “valued,” are immediately inflamed and awakened. These messages, whether received or inferred from experience as children, become solidified, intractable, and convincingly true with the slightest provocation. They seem like sleeping giants that wake up ready to devour and destroy us and others, but they are the feelings and beliefs of small, frightened parts of ourselves. They are the illusion of our “badness.” They feel and look like ghouls, ghosts, frightening ogres, wicked witches, evil sorcerers, and hairy beasts, but they are merely lonely, desperate, shamed, and frightened child states of consciousness.

As young children, our only point of reference is ourselves, so everything else seems like an extension of that self. If someone outside of us, like Mom, is mad, then we are both the cause and the effect – we are the badness that causes the mad, and so it is our fault when Mom is mad. This is a very restricted, distorted, and egocentric view of life, because how could a child understand the big picture, the multiplicity of factors, experiences, beliefs, and history that go into a mother snapping at a kid on a particular day?

Understanding the world of cause and effect correctly requires a great deal of experience and living in relationship with others. We need to see, over time, that we are not the cause of other people’s choices. We come to understand what motivates our own choices. In this way, we can understand why others choose what they do, based on their old feelings and unresolved beliefs about themselves. We start to introspect and ask why we react the way we do, and, in turn, can understand why others behave the way they do.

There can be no further growth without reclaiming these lost aspects of your being, with deep compassion and great wisdom. Insight must be brought into relationship with old pain, hurt, shame, and fear, as well as with the experiences that caused the pain you would like to forget and relegate to the past. We all thought it could be left in the past, but it is carried into the present moment, hidden deep in the recesses of your being, screaming to be heard, seen, and released from the lifelong prison sentence you deemed necessary when you were younger.

Unfortunately, the past lingers like a dark shadow over the deeper landscapes of your life, and it will reassert itself repeatedly in the present until you notice it, accept it with compassion, and understand why it is there.

This repetition of defensive patterns and thought is known as karma in Eastern traditions or as fate in our Western traditions. The old shame, deep fears, humiliations, and experiences that made you run and fight all your life have led to more fear, shame, guilt, and remorse. The more you felt this, the more you tried to flee or fight – and so the wheel turns from year to year, decade to decade, until you wake up. It is a mistake to think you can live above this dark shadow and split it off from your being. This is what is known as spiritual bypass – the pretense that you are not human. Real growth integrates our human experience of suffering (ego) with our Spiritual Self (Soul) by bringing them into relationship with one another, with the Loving acceptance of our Truest Self – the part of us that has always been and always will be connected to the Universal Energy of Spirit. In this way, in the Christian tradition, you can see yourself as a child of “God,” and as both fully human and fully divine. This is a state of salvation, or enlightenment. Each tradition says the same thing, using different words and mythologies to explain the path.

This coursework is for use at the ocean or any other beautiful spot in the world where you feel the vastness and beauty of the world in which you are a part. Find a beautiful spot in the world and use it as an exercise in appreciation and thanksgiving for this planet and for the planet that is your body. Bring your own earth body into alignment with the natural world and with the Great Spirit of Love and Truth. Learn to live in harmony within, and so without. Our inner condition of inter-being in love ripples out into the world through genuine service and peacemaking.

This requires the deep inner work of reclaiming repressed, suppressed, and denied parts of our lives and experiences, bringing them into the light of our loving acceptance and understanding, and setting limits on defensive ways of being in the world. This limit is what is known as dying or sacrifice of all that keeps us split from unity and integration within our psyches. Everything dark and hidden must be brought into the light of awareness, which is the essential Love and Truth of your own being. The only thing that dies is defense. The only thing that is dismantled is the wall you put up to avoid knowing what lies behind it - the hurt child.

You are your own healer, lover, and best friend. You are the consciousness of Love and Truth, which can be brought into relationship with every aspect of your humanity, both the good and the bad, the light and the dark.

My deepest wish is that you accept the challenge of that truth and live into ever more loving relationships with every aspect of your inner self – all the parts you have denied, judged, hidden, and hated because you have so feared what they mean about you and how they feel. By doing this work, there will be no judgment or hatred within or without. Your own love will heal you and the world.

This teaching is a guide to beginning the inner process of introspection in Love and Truth and can be used repeatedly. Each time, we will see a little deeper into our psyches and gain greater freedom and a broader sense of being. As you practice, you will learn to ask your own questions and develop a genuine curiosity about the amazing world you are in, which is within your vast consciousness and part of the one you are in.

Our physical body is an intricate network of interconnections that must be deeply understood, examined, and worked with. I propose a brief, simplified explanation of your human experience in a body. This is a simple formula, but it is hard to internalize and grasp. Take your time with each paragraph and see how it applies to YOU:

• Firstly, the Body is a perceptual/sensate receiver of external data that results in emotions of fear, shame, helplessness, and anger (to name the core feelings). Something happens or does not happen in the external world, and it is seen, touched, tasted, heard, and seen and smelled by the specialized nerves of the body. Just as a radio receiver picks up sound vibrations in the air, so is our whole body a receiver of vibrations, which are registered in the nervous system.

• In a split second, this information is transmitted to the brain, resulting in an instinctive emotional response. If the stimulus is perceived as dangerous, there will be an immediate emotional response of fear.

• Then there is an instinctive fight-or-flight response to protect the body from a perceived external threat to its integrity.

For example, a small child touches the pretty flickering light of a candle. Pain receptors send signals from the finger to the brainstem. Pain and fear are registered, triggering an immediate withdrawal of the hand and crying for help and attention. None of this occurs in awareness – it is instinctive and immediate..

• Secondly, this data of sensation, emotion, and experience is interpreted dualistically - it is given meaning by the young evolving soul.

Example: In this simple example, the child, in a pre-cognitive, pre-linguistic way, “learns” the meaning of the experience. It could be “fire is hot, dangerous, and bad.” Or “I am wrong, bad, and stupid for touching something that is hot, dangerous, and bad.” In other words, either the flame is bad, or I am bad because I have not yet learned to meet my own need for safety, or the parent says, “I told you not to touch that – serves you right for not listening. You need to listen to me.” The message is implicit but clear: “You are bad and wrong for not listening, and it is your fault that you are hurting.”

• Dualistic thinking encompasses all the relative truths of “good” and “bad,” or “dangerous/safe,” etc., and represents a young way of thinking. From the earliest time, we begin to categorize the world and experiences into two: good/bad, right/wrong, acceptable/unacceptable, and so on. We are internally split, and the world is split.

• Dualistic thought serves to ensure safety and a sense of belonging. If you do “this” instead of “that,” you will be safe, belong, and be loved. The external world will meet your needs.

Example: You are 2 years old and touch a candle flame. It burns. The sensation in the nerve endings travels to the brain, triggering an immediate “fight or flight” response of fear (emotion) and withdrawal of your finger from the fire. Your emotional response to the candle is now fear (emotion) and avoidance (behavior). Very often, it can also be followed by rage and attack after the initial fear - defensive behaviors of Fight/Flight.

• We only start thinking unitively in both/and terms as we heal all the dualities within ourselves.

• In our example above, unitive thought comes with expansion of awareness, where we start to understand that the flame of the candle is both dangerous and safe, both a blessing and a curse, useful and destructive, depending on circumstances and contexts, and my knowledge of how to relate to fire creatively and lovingly. We have the awareness that neither I nor the fire was bad. It is just a fact that fire on the skin causes pain without any added meaning and interpretation of good or bad, right or wrong.

• However, if we interpret only with a limited understanding of one side of a duality, we will continually misunderstand the world and respond in ways that are neither helpful nor creative. If I think fire is only dangerous and will always hurt me, I will avoid it and all the ways it can be useful in my life. Early humans were no doubt terrified of fire and its destructive force until they learned that it is not only destructive but also creative and very helpful to their lives.

• We learn meaning as small children, but if we do not expand our understanding, we will constantly recreate the child's emotional and behavioral responses. We will only have the resources of a child. So, if I continue to think fire is bad and wrong, and that I am bad and wrong for going near it, I will live an avoidant life around fire and never discover its gifts and uses. Every time I see fire without a full understanding, it will reactivate the original fear, shame that I am stupid for going near it, and avoidant behavior. This reactivity and constriction will then be all I can expect of my life. We will live a half-life.

The interconnection of perceptual experience, emotion, and meaning

result in

Instinctual defensive behavior aided by a highly developed brain

Fight / Flight

(Aggression/ Passivity or Victim/Perpetrator Behaviors

Power over others/Control over self)

Take a moment and see if this formula applies to your own experience.

Think of a small issue you have had with someone this week. Someone was rude, criticized you, cut you off, insulted you, didn’t understand you, or listen to you… Ask yourself:

• What did I experience?

• What did I make it mean about me?

• What did I make it mean about the other person, the world?

• What did I feel?

• How did I act?

• Where did I learn this dynamic sequence?

• To what childhood experiences does this go back?

All your answers may be fully aligned with Love and Truth for yourself and the other person. More likely, they are the exact opposite – rooted in fear and deep unmet needs whose roots reach back into childhood experiences, which are activated by the current interaction and then projected onto the current situation.

Until we become aware of this dynamic within, we will continue in cycles of repetitive behaviors that never bring us into alignment with Love and keep us stuck in old suffering created in complete unawareness as a child. Until we see the deep interconnections among all aspects of our bodily functioning, we will never bring them into alignment with our own consciousness of love and truth. Only awareness gives us this choice.

The Hindu system, which explains these dynamics as blockages to the free flow of energy through energy centers aligned with the body's needs, is an immensely helpful and elegant way to focus our attention on the major needs in our lives that we do not yet know how to meet for ourselves with love. In unawareness, we keep externalizing and expecting others to be responsible for, i.e., responsive to, our suffering. We want others to care about our feelings, meet our needs, behave lovingly toward us, and be honest, awake, and aware with us, because we have not yet begun the inner journey of knowing ourselves and relating to all these aspects with the Consciousness of our own Being, which is always loving and demands Truth rather than judgment.

Hopefully, this meditation will guide you in the right direction – inward – and serve as a tool for greater self-awareness. I have written this meditation for a beach – one of the many glorious beaches in Knysna, South Africa. Choose your favorite beach – or substitute a beach, stream, river, forest, mountain, meadow, or lake, wherever you find yourself settling in.

When I became a lover, I thought I had gained the Pearl of God; foolish, I did not know that his Pearl lies on the floor of an ocean which has innumerable waves to be encountered and great depths to be sounded.

~Hafiz