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BASIC FEAR, BASIC LOVE Our purpose as human beings is, in the words of the Sufi poet Hafiz, to desire the Beloved. This is the evolutionary call to Wholeness and it provides us with the developmental “juice” to help us grow and develop. It is the foundation of our motivation. The Inner Critic or Spiritual Super-Ego does not turn us into better people, and no amount of struggle produces freedom from the limits of ego. The struggle just makes the ego stronger. The concept of Basic Anxiety, from psychiatrist Karen Horney, has as its foundation the belief that we all are alone and that we suffer. However, not everyone functions in this way. For those who have a meaningful spiritual life with direct experience of the world of spirit, we know that we are not alone and that we suffer only when we experience ourselves as separate from Source. In the teaching of the Levels of Development, we understand the levels as a measure of how deeply identified we are with fear and our personality structures and defenses. Basic Fear drives us down the levels. Basic Love supports us as we go up the levels and become increasingly conscious, increasingly flexible and free. Oddly enough, the dissolution of fear feels like the dissolution of self to the ego. The little self with its continual mental activity does begins to dissolve and we panic. But if we just keep breathing and paying attention, we discover that there is more to us than mental conversations and then we feel begin to feel the spaciousness that is characteristic of living in Presence, in the Now. Here are a few helpful steps to establish a practice of opening up to Presence in your own life: AWARENESS 1. Learn to pay attention to what is happening in your body at the moment. Since your body cannot exist in the past or the future, grounding your attention in the present experience of your body lets you move into awareness of Now. Eckhard Tolle suggests simply closing your eyes and finding your right hand without moving it. Then find your left hand. Now feel both hands while you find your right foot. Slowly you can track your awareness to all parts of your body. 2. Learn to “breathe into” specific parts of your body. Psychologist Doug Moore suggests thinking of your heart as having gills on the outside of your chest. Those gills take in breath as you focus on breathing into your heart. The air comes in your nose but it also seems to come in through the gills as well. By breathing into a place in your body you can focus your attention there more deeply. 3. Notice sensations that are occurring in your body right now and breathe into them. 4. Now become aware of images that may also arise along with the body sensations. Sometimes those images will help you understand what the sensation is communicating to you. If you sense a heaviness in your belly, you might ask yourself if that heaviness seems dark or light, large or small, if you are inside the heaviness or outside observing it. 5. Ask yourself what you are feeling emotionally: are you sad? Mad? Glad? Alone? Afraid? Try to use just these simple words to identify the emotional experience. 6. Begin checking in with your body several times a day. You will become more and more proficient in noticing changes in your inner state and can more accurately name what they are. ACCEPTANCE 1. Once you have learned to notice and name your experience in the moment, practice accepting whatever the experience might be, whether you like it or not. Just say to yourself that whatever this experience is, it is part of my life and does not have to be changed. 2. Notice your resistance to accepting the things you don’t like or the worry that you will lose the things you do like. 3. Resistance to acceptance is one way the ego or personality keeps a false sense of being in control. 4. When you can accept your experience, you can allow yourself to feel and be whatever you are. You don’t have to fix something that is “wrong” because it is not “wrong,” you just don’t like it. ACTION 1. As you just stay focused on whatever you are feeling and do not resist the experience, but rather accept it, notice if you feel motivated to do anything. Don’t look for long-range plans or resolutions for change, just wait for any sense of wanting to move or act. Let your actions arise from the stillness. 2. You mind will protest and want to take over. However, as you practice and begin having longer moments of staying in the present, aware and with an empty mind, you will discover that life flows more easily.
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| ©2002 Enneagram Institute of Central Ohio | |
