Day 17 conclusions:

  • Holding on to the perceived offences of life for days, weeks, months or sometimes years will only cause me harm – like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.
  • Letting stuff go is a matter of following the signposts of my emotions and reactions, then using my tools intuitively to watch them pass.
  • And there’s no need to go hunting, the signs will appear when I am ready.

Why

 I woke up abruptly this morning, startled and alarmed, having drawn myself out of a nightmare. The clock read 4.25am but I was unable to find sleep again. My brain was wired and my whole system on alert. The dream involved me involved me in a heated argument, threatening to leave if the other person didn’t let go.

“How long has it been?”

“Twenty five years.”

“Then don’t you think it’s time to let go?”

“I can’t!”

The other person was sobbing. It seemed they didn’t actually want to hold on, even that they know it was causing them harm but that they didn’t know they could or how. I eventually left, dragging the hand of a young child. This was when I woke up.

I felt desolate and it occurred to me that the nightmare was about my own relationship with myself. What was I not letting go? Whatever it was, the ‘holding on’ was causing me grief. After over an hour of searching, sleep was still alluding me so I decided to follow my intuition and use my tools (the lesson I had learnt yesterday). I got up and did a round of the Dru Sun Sequence, EBR2 and some breathing practice, and felt completely revived. Sitting was next.

While I was sitting and focusing on love some relationships gone wrong came into my mind and I started to go down the old path of imagining exposing the people who I perceived had done me wrong or seeing them expose themselves – catching them out gossiping about me or some such injustice. This is the mind of someone who feels bullied.

What would this achieve? Would it stop them from doing it? Would it change their mind about me? Or would it simply give them more reason to justify their behaviour? Most probably the latter, if for no other reason than to hide their embarrassment (that’s if there had been any reality on which to base my imaginings and I have to entertain the idea that maybe there wasn’t).

In the space of my   love meditation, I watched these desires for revenge sugar-coated in justice and then watched the train of questions that followed and by the time the last carriage passed the station of my observation the wind had gone out of my sails and my mind was tranquil again. I was reminded of the joy I feel when I feel love and held the people concerned in the light of love. I had let go of the emotion.

The nightmare and ensuing were signposts that something needed to be released from within my own psyche, the tools of asana with pranayama and meditation allowed the ‘stuff’ to gently rise, be observed and released. Relationships, intimate or platonic, don’t always go along the tracks I might want them to but holding on to the perceived offence for days, weeks, months or sometimes years will only cause me harm, and letting them go is a matter of following the signposts of my emotions and reactions, then using my tools intuitively to watch them pass.

And finally, there’s no need to go hunting – the ‘stuff’ will arrive on my path when I am ready.

I think this is living in love with myself – another gift of my Experiment with Love.