Do notice how some people continually fall into the same habits, even after making seemingly monumental leaps in the direction of their dreams?
Question: When you do manage to move forward and abandon old, worn-out paradigms, how do you prevent regressing?
I'm going to answer this a little differently than most:
Answer: By giving the body the opportunity to catch up with the mind.
When we move forward into the next phase of life, it takes time for the unconscious belief systems that were keeping us stuck to collapse. These forces can feel like gravity drawing us backward. When people make leaps, and find themselves back where they started, again and again, it's because there is not enough forward momentum to overcome this gravitation pull.
Accessing the unconscious is notoriously difficult. It is difficult to shift unconscious beliefs in part, because we don't know what they are. (They're unconscious). It is extraordinarily difficult to witness the self, let alone to understand the mechanisms that we consider integral to it, with all of the filters and machinery in place that hold the durable, fragile ego together. For each mechanism we have running, there are 10 mechanisms holding it in place, and a mechanism that keeps it out of sight, and a mechanism that justifies its existence, and a series of backup systems.
Fortunately, there is a way to navigate around this whirlpool.
Touch the body.
The body becomes the tangible expression of the unconscious. Once you can hone into and locate where in the body these beliefs are manifesting, and how, they can be revealed, adjusted, shifted, and moved. Sometimes they are revelation and the adjustment occur at the same time; sometimes they are staggered.
There are certain practices you can engage in that ensure that the unconscious beliefs shift with the body, even if you don't know what these beliefs are. Vipassana is one example, as are certain therapies with a somatic component. Most of them only skim the surface, unfortunately, though they plant the seed of eventual deepening.
The body consciousness is unaware of linear time; time is a construct of the mind. So touching into the body can be like time travel.
For instance, I once moved a client's leg, by twisting her foot slightly, and she remembered almost drowning as a child. Her body didn't 'remember' it; it re-experienced it. There was no present / past distinction (just as there really is no mind / body distinction). After she shuddered and shook and her face briefly took on an azure tint, the physiological pattern cleared, and lifetime patterns dissolved, including a fear of intimacy and of drowning.
Often, things we've heard a thousand times and we 'know' to be true are only delicately floating in our awareness, ready to be torn away by the gentlest breeze.
The truth is, until you viscerally experience something as truth, it is not yet your reality. It may be a seed, lingering on the fringes of awareness; but it has not yet found its ground.
The visceral realization of truth happens via the body. There is no other instrument through which 'reality' can flow into our perception. So adjust the perception by adjusting the apparatus that perceives, and the perceiver itself can surface. This is a profound experience, most easily referred to as 'awakening.'
Honor the body. Not only is it the bridge between you and your reality, it is the expression of your reality. Nothing occurs without your body. Not this one wild and precious life; not these theories you move in time to; not your religious beliefs. Nothing.
Translate theories into truth by moving your bones.
And remember the flowers.
In truth,
Steven Budden
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