By Jelelle Awen
Note: This is a series of blog entries sharing experiences and conversations I have while meditating and opening myself to the frequencies of Kuan Yin, a female form of a Bodhisattva or enlightened, ascended teacher and face of the Divine Mother. To read the first in this series, please go here.
I have taken a certain pride in being embodied and ‘grounded’ in my body. My weight has been at a healthy place for a few years now and regular physical activity is just part of my lifestyle living off-grid Shovelling, weeding, watering, cob building…it all lends itself to being in the body. I also experience great pleasure from making love with my mate Raphael, which is grounded in our bodies, connected in our hearts, and expanding more and more into our souls.
So, I haven’t been interested in being ‘out of the body’….until recently I have been. Well, what I am more interested in is a balance where I can be healthfully and vibrantly be in my body and also deepen my experience of out of body realities such as astral travel, Samadhi and other enlightened states, kundalini energies, etc. I do believe a balance can be made and that’s what it feels like some people are seeking through the Hatha yoga path.
Physical ailments usually accompany my major spiritual or emotional movements as toxicity moves out, as Kathleen also talks about in her blog. I take note when this happens because I rarely get sick and have never broken a bone or had any kind of major injury or illness. So, the physical issues I do have are small and move quickly, but they can often be connected to my process.
As I am meditating with Kuan Yin today, I am feeling a particular ailment in my body that is minor but still irritating me. As I start with the “Ma Om” mantra (described here), Kuan Yin can feel my attention and focus moving to my body.
“I’m sorry,” I quickly apologize. “I’m getting distracted by discomfort in my body.”
“You have a body. You are not your body,” is Her immediate response.
Ok, I take that in and let it be a kind of repeated mantra.
I have a body. I am not my body.
Eventually, I have to ask her to clarify what She means.
“Your mind thinks that you are your body. It thinks you are a body shell and it fuses to that reality. This is very limiting. You are not your body. And, you are not your mind either.”
“Then, what am I?”
She seems to light up then. “Now THAT is an interesting question. Also, interesting is the question: Who am I?”
“Yes, what and who am I, then?”
The image of a lotus flower blooms in front of me. I can feel immediately that She has sent it to me. I take its beauty in.
“This flower knows more of its essence than you do because it doesn’t know anything. It just is,” She replies.
I meditate on this and feel how right she is. I have spent over ten years in a pretty radical and intense self healing path that has led to the diving into the depths of my previously subconscious emotional and soul wounding. I have been asking the question, “Which part of me is feeling this?” in a dedicated way over the last decade. I have been through a series of subpersonalities over the years and through this incredibly effective process which allows for separation and objectivity from reactions through feeling them deeply, I have had more and more experience of the authentic expression of my being. What you can experience of your authentic being that is since it is very difficult to pinpoint as it isn’t related to a role or self image. But, I can feel how even what I have attached to as my ‘authentic self’ or ‘higher self’ still has a dualistic filter around it.
“I just am,” I respond, trying it on to see how it feels.
“It’s ok you do so much defining and sorting of yourself, J bird. You’ve needed to do it and it was good. You are in a new phase now where you want to dissolve the “I” more so you can experience reality without separation.”
I feel a slight wave of panic come over me at the thought of ‘dissolving’ myself, especially as I have spent so much work and energy to uncover my seemingly most authentic expression! My previous spiritual teacher used to say about the ego maturation process that happens through parts work and then the ego obliteration process that happens in sagehood practice is like having a Maserati sports car that you work very hard to get and then proceed to drive it off a cliff!
Kuan Yin feels this hesitation in me and a wave of compassion from her washes over me.
“Your mind resists this. Your body resists it too. Even your ‘authentic self’, as you say, resists it. But that’s OK because you still are what you are and aren’t what you aren’t,” She says, smiling.
“Buddha taught that it is our sense of ‘I’ and our sense of separation that causes suffering. I have healed a lot of my suffering through the path I’ve been on but I am still curious about deepening what I have experienced beyond the mind and beyond the body. And, I guess, even beyond the ‘I’.”
“Who is saying that?”
I reflect for a moment. I immediately want to go to my usual mode of scanning for a part of myself that might be speaking but I know that isn’t what she is looking for. Finally I settle for, “I don’t know.”
She nods and smiles at me. That feeling of not knowing who I am because I just am is a strange one and vibrates through me, loosening my mind and I can feel, jarring a little bit of my attachment to my body. A surge of energy moves from my crown chakra at the top of my head and down to the base of my spine and eventually out my root chakra.
Another lotus flower appears before me.
This time all I can do is laugh out loud, although I couldn’t have told you why.
And Kuan Yin laughs with me and says, “That’s better!”
Jelelle Awen is co-creator and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit SoulFullHeart Way Of Life for more information about staying at the Sanctuary and virtual sessions. You can read her tweets here and become her friend on facebook.
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