Sensations

After my last post down there, you may not be surprised to find out that there were a lot of sensations that came up around all of this. I took this as a bonus opportunity to practice with my meditation. I am doing The Presence Process and I've been reading a lot of Pema Chodron and some other stuff. One of the messages of all of these sources is to breathe into sensations rather than avoid them or try to get them to go away. And it's kind of like a trick, because if you breathe into the sensations, allowing to them to be there, they tend to go away. But if you attend to the sensations with getting them to go away on your mind, they won't. So you have to be sneaky (mainly just not attached to the outcome) if you want to use this technique to get sensations to dissipate.

Anyways, one of the things Pema Chodron talks about is how our culture avoids endings. We celebrate beginnings and tend to ignore the fact that an end is actually a new beginning. We dread endings. So while I was feeling the sensations in my body, I recognized that they were actually the sensations of my relationship ending, which is at the same time, the sensation of a new beginning. That lifted my spirits and made me feel happy. So I went back into the sensations, feeling them tingle in my body, felt tears on my face, and recognized that they were indeed the sensations of me embarking on a new beginning!

And there's more! Another thing Pema talks about is how we can use a sort of meditation to breathe into someone else's pain and breathe out peace. If we aren't feeling strong enough to do it for someone else, we can do it for ourselves and spread it out so that we feel we're breathing in the pain that's shared by all the people who are in that situation. So rather than feeling like I was isolated and alone after breathing into my sensations, I felt a connection to all of the people who are also late in letting go of their past loves, all of the people whose hearts are broken, and even though I couldn't see them, I could totally feel them. It made me feel not alone at all, but really in the middle of a large group of people.

Refer to the sidebar if you notice feeling sorry for me or thinking I'm taking forever in getting over what was actually a relationship that had been souring for many months and maybe was never really on strong footing. This to me is a huge victory. I used the sensations to further my awareness of myself and to bust up old patterns. Because those sensations and that sadness had little to do with my most recent relationship ending. I know I've had that stuff with me for ages. And like letting go of a bad habit or addiction, common sense doesn't make a difference. Knowing that it's time to stop doing it doesn't make it so. Something else has to happen. I know, because I've done it before with other bad habits.

I know I may not be done, but it feels again so great to have a big clearing. When I quit smoking I went through a similar process - there were big gaps and then a big smoke fest. And when I did finally quit smoking, it was spontaneous and just happened after much consideration and trying. And when it went away, it left. I don't manage my behaviour or avoid certain situations or people or anything. I simply don't have the craving or urge or any remnants of that in my mind space. So whether I'm done with feeling hurt and sad or not isn't the victory. The victory for me is that I see the coin - it has both sides. So the feeling of sadness there is so connected to the feeling of happiness and openness and that's what I've been sitting in today.