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Anthem
1608 Posts |
 Posted - Jun 08 2013 : 2:46:52 PM
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Wanted to put this out there in case others ever find themselves in a similar position.
Yoga, inquiry etc. was very helpful for a long time for me, but then eventually, it was necessary to stop practices due to persistent overload a couple of years back. See this topic for more details:
http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic....&whichpage=1
One of the major stumbling blocks that lead to the overload and imbalance in my situation was the idea of maintaining steady states of bliss/ ecstasy and equanimity through yoga and inquiry practices. These are common themes in the spiritual world, and through the desire to avoid suffering and the corresponding desire to achieve these above mentioned states in perpetuity, painful imbalance was assured. It was just a matter of time.
It was noticed with increasing clarity that the moment there is attachment to bliss, ecstasy and states of equanimity, the desire to avoid their opposites is born. Avoidance is a powerful force of attraction (ironically) and in my case the undesired emotions would find a way to visit with increasing volume until heard and acknowledged.
Another interesting symptom of the pursuit of bliss, ecstasy and equanimity I noticed within myself, was a subtle intolerance for their opposites as they treaded into awareness while trying to *enjoy* these heavenly states. Hence an inadvertent lack of compassion for others suffering at times, when it appeared that it should be easy for them to alleviate their situations. I also noticed I would avoid being around people experiencing emotionally reactive states and it was more enjoyable to be off on my own or with others where it was easy to float in a quiet bliss or equanimity.
The only way forward in my case was to first notice this attachment and second recognize the pain and increased suffering the attachment caused. Embracing or welcoming all the thoughts and emotions that arise has the natural effect of reducing the volume (the intensity of the emotions) and increasing peace and contentment. Not as things that should be pursued, but simply part of the internal kaleidoscope of the richness of life that can arise while just being.
While simultaneously understanding that no thought was true, I still felt a feeling arise of being stuck at times. I often couldn't understand why some thoughts and emotions were louder than they had been for a long time or that there were higher levels of fear for no perceivable reason. It was all due to a subtle avoidance of these things that existed within, which arose by association of doing "spiritual practice" with an expected outcome of what this practice and effort would bring.
Maybe wanting to avoid suffering was unique to me in this context, but I throw this out there in case anyone else finds it helpful. 
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bewell
1275 Posts |
Posted - Jun 08 2013 : 4:14:08 PM
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Hi Anthem11,
I find that over the years that I have felt a deep sympathy with your path, and in reading your post above, this part struck a chord with me today:
quote:
Originally posted by Anthem11
Embracing or welcoming all the thoughts and emotions that arise has the natural effect of reducing the volume (the intensity of the emotions) and increasing peace and contentment.
Yes, this rings true. When afflictive emotions arise, welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm no expert at this, but I'm learning.
For me, one of the "problems" I face is that under some conditions, I easily cry. This has its obvious drawbacks: others don't know how to respond, I feel embarrassed, I try to "get a grip" unsuccessfully -- all of this is resistance. But lately I am learning to pause right in the midst of the tears, relax with the tears, and open out of the deep emotion to communicate with others my subjective truth of the moment. Actually, I did it with my father this morning, in a phone conversation with my mother listening. Monday a week ago he had a second heart attack, and so we are very aware of his vulnerability to bodily death. I asked him if he was at peace with death and listened to him say that he thinks he is at peace, but he still... words failed him at this point.... and soon he was in tears, and I was in tears, and he was saying the tears are a problem, and I was saying that I am learning to accept my tears.
Looking back on that moment, I notice my a fear of my dad crying, and also a longing for the connection that such tears bring. Through the experience, I feel increasing peace and contentment.
Be
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apatride
New Caledonia
94 Posts |
Posted - Jun 08 2013 : 9:05:10 PM
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| Practical question : how do you "welcome" or "acknowledge" pain or an emotion? It sounds obvious lie one should just "allow" it to be, but when it comes to it, it's not that obvious after all; or maybe it is? What is recognizing Is it focusing the attention on it, or just noticing and letting go? |
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Etherfish
USA
3615 Posts |
Posted - Jun 08 2013 : 9:18:45 PM
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It is by fully experiencing an emotion or pain that one can let it go. what works best for me is to put my attention on it, then think about each of my senses. What does it look like? What does it sound like? etc. What part of my body do I feel it in, and what does it feel like?
Of course some of these will be imaginary, and that's fine, experience the imaginary things the same as the real ones. The emotion or pain may move, so just follow it as this means it is starting to dissipate. |
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Jun 08 2013 : 9:29:52 PM
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Apatride, with respect your practical question, I've spent many years working with "allowing" negative emotions.
The Presence Process by Michael Brown is an excellent book about learning to dissolve your resistance patterns to painful emotions, if you're intuitively drawn to that sort of work.
The level of success we have in such practices correlates directly with the level of witness consciousness we have cultivated. Witness consciousness, which might also be termed 'inner silence' is simply the extent to which we know ourselves as formless awareness, instead of being in states of "identified awareness" - identified with the body, mind or emotions.
As witness consciousness is cultivated, when powerful emotions arise, we do not identify with them (and fall into reactive behavior patterns), realizing instead we are simply the awareness to which the emotions, and the thoughts and sensations around them, arise. Then we realize our freedom from the emotion, and it is easy to automatically release in silence with a sense of ahhhhh! release.
This gradually purifies the body-mind of patterns of negative emotional reactions to external events.
A simple way to begin such a practice, would be to take some time alone next time we experience a strong negative emotional reaction, and sit simply watching the breath, and repeating in the mind "I am here, now, in this". Sit in perfect stillness with no moving about. This will naturally engage witness consciousness, and we will become familiar with the emotion and our patterns of resistance to it.
Repeated practice of this kind of technique, in my experience, has eliminated 95% of strong negative emotional reactions. I just don't react emotional anymore unless it's compassionately. Excepting that 5% - There's just a tiny little bit of stuff left that really pisses me off 
Love,
Josh |
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parvati9
USA
587 Posts |
Posted - Jun 08 2013 : 10:29:25 PM
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Beautiful inspirational thread ..
There is nothing in my experience that has the precision and clarity of bliss. It seems to hold the secret of our true Self. The secret of bliss, to me, is that bliss includes suffering. Especially suffering. They are inseparable. The illusion is that bliss can swallow up suffering and suffering can swallow up bliss. They only appear to be antagonistic in this dream that we take for real. When they are realized as not essentially different, then the illusion collapses because there is nothing sustaining it anymore.
When we can hold bliss loosely without clinging excessively to it... When we can hold suffering loosely without having excessive aversion to it...
Then we are complete, whole, at peace. Just my two cents.
parvati |
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Anthem
1608 Posts |
Posted - Jun 08 2013 : 11:27:05 PM
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Touching sincerity Bewell.
quote:
Originally posted by apatride
Practical question : how do you "welcome" or "acknowledge" pain or an emotion? It sounds obvious lie one should just "allow" it to be, but when it comes to it, it's not that obvious after all; or maybe it is? What is recognizing Is it focusing the attention on it, or just noticing and letting go?
Hi Apatride,
Good point , technically welcoming or acknowledging is just a story, so even is the idea of allowing. It is really just noticing without attachment or aversion that I am referring to.
Bliss: impossible to know what someone is referring to when they use this word. It is so relative. From the contrast of deep emotional pain it is intense euphoria, from the perspective of daily living it is normal contentment. |
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maheswari
Lebanon
2520 Posts |
Posted - Jun 09 2013 : 05:40:04 AM
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| lovely thread...thanking you Anthem11 for starting it |
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parvati9
USA
587 Posts |
Posted - Jun 09 2013 : 11:30:04 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Anthem11
Touching sincerity Bewell.
quote:
Originally posted by apatride
Practical question : how do you "welcome" or "acknowledge" pain or an emotion? It sounds obvious lie one should just "allow" it to be, but when it comes to it, it's not that obvious after all; or maybe it is? What is recognizing Is it focusing the attention on it, or just noticing and letting go?
Hi Apatride,
Good point , technically welcoming or acknowledging is just a story, so even is the idea of allowing. It is really just noticing without attachment or aversion that I am referring to.
Bliss: impossible to know what someone is referring to when they use this word. It is so relative. From the contrast of deep emotional pain it is intense euphoria, from the perspective of daily living it is normal contentment.
Hi Anthem11
I agree with other comments and what Etherfish said: it is by fully experiencing an emotion or pain that one can let it go. We need to take care of ourselves, and each other, in all states of mind and emotion. The bolded part of your post is a necessary function of many paths, albeit a relatively advanced stage in my opinion. It may take a bit of rebalancing and depolarizing for some of us to get there.
parvati
[edited for verbosity, reduced content] |
Edited by - parvati9 on Jun 09 2013 1:59:22 PM |
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sivasambho
USA
136 Posts |
Posted - Jun 09 2013 : 11:58:59 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by parvati9
Beautiful inspirational thread ..
There is nothing in my experience that has the precision and clarity of bliss. It seems to hold the secret of our true Self. The secret of bliss, to me, is that bliss includes suffering. Especially suffering. They are inseparable. The illusion is that bliss can swallow up suffering and suffering can swallow up bliss. They only appear to be antagonistic in this dream that we take for real. When they are realized as not essentially different, then the illusion collapses because there is nothing sustaining it anymore.
When we can hold bliss loosely without clinging excessively to it... When we can hold suffering loosely without having excessive aversion to it...
Then we are complete, whole, at peace. Just my two cents.
parvati
Yes, so true. I think this is what they call as falling within ourselves and hold no prejudice against pain or pleasure. |
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emc
2072 Posts |
Posted - Jun 10 2013 : 04:39:18 AM
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Thanks anthem for starting the topic! A great example of spiritual bypassing. Life eventually wins anyway...
I agree to the methods of just being with the emotion once they occur to dissolve them. But how do we find those surpressed emotions? That's where I'm stuck. I beg and beg to be shown my blockages and release the feelings behind them, but they just won't show up. The subconscious psyche just won't release them into actual feelings. Mr_Anderson - you wrote about the book about "learning to dissolve your resistance patterns to painful emotions". Could you speak more of how we can work in the stages BEFORE we actually get hold of the emotion, when it's only resistance and a flat emotional life? (I will get the book too, but perhaps you could expand a little on the topic?) |
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Mykal K
Germany
267 Posts |
Posted - Jun 10 2013 : 08:58:52 AM
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Hi,
I do not know if this is something that will help anyone here, but what works for me is not to concentrate on the emotion, as emotion is not the problem. Our resistance usually is. For me the key was in 'where do I resist something right now?'. If I fully relinquished my resistance, things would usually start happening. It helps sometimes when one hits the wall. Sometimes to get to deeper layers one has to start from the surface.
Hope this helps
Mykal |
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Jun 10 2013 : 09:22:02 AM
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Hi Emc,
Please could you be a bit more descriptive about what you mean by "only resistance and a flat emotional life". What do you mean by this? You feel numb? You feel the emotions but they are dulled etc?
I hope I'm not prying to inquire, but it will be useful to know.
Best,
Josh |
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parvati9
USA
587 Posts |
Posted - Jun 10 2013 : 11:30:14 AM
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Hi mr anderson
I have the same thing going on that emc described, looking forward to your reply. Some issues are so deeply repressed they are not available or accessible to our conscious awareness. Do you know how one gains access to them?
***
My path has involved consciously (re)establishing a linkage or line of communication between bliss and suffering*. Bliss informs suffering, suffering informs bliss, so that both states are helpful and appreciated...and one is not preferred (a whole lot) over the other - due to their inherent interchangeability. (When emerging out of a period of intense suffering, a data entry was made into conscious memory and thus a marker created. Then that marker can be activated through bliss states as needed.)
When bliss naturally occurred, endeavors were made to stay a little detached and not caught up in it, so that the bliss was then used as a light to shine on known areas of suffering [activating the marker(s)]. In that way bliss is used as a kind of tool, perhaps a flashlight. Once a path was traced to suffering, it could be followed back the other way. Bliss is known as a sattvic state of clarity and light.
Suffering is often so tamasic and/or rajasic, it is full of darkness and confusion and/or irritation. But once that pathway has been clearly (re)established, one can then easily (with a little detachment) follow the path from suffering back to bliss. Remaining midway between bliss and suffering involves not getting caught up in either state to the (imaginary) exclusion of the other. But imo it is a rather advanced condition of pure awareness, and perhaps best to let the equanimity happen naturally, as opposed to prematurely forcing it. Nevertheless my intent has been to gently encourage equanimity. Hope that makes some sense.
*They are already linked but, in my case, it was necessary to use the connection route several times for reinforcement purposes.
parvati |
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Jun 10 2013 : 12:24:08 PM
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Ok I think I have some sense of what you are both talking about now.
The Presence Process is a 10-week course (I've completed the process 3 times), based on exactly what we are talking about here in this post: establishing a relationship of "unconditional feeling" with the emotional body.
As infants and young children we receive most of the emotional imprinting that sets up the patterns of emotion which, if unobserved and not effectively processed, govern our patterns of emotion for the rest of our lives. (And also a good deal of what we 'manifest' in relationships and elsewhere, in my point of view - your emotional imprint is what creates your reality AND effects how you interpret you reality)
As children we are overwhelmed by the emotions and have no effective coping strategies, so as you are both saying, our emotions often get deeply repressed - it was certainly my experience.
As we age, our damaged emotional body takes expression in all sort of behaviors which aim to make us "feel better" (and effectively suppress the emotional body):
-Substance use (smoking, drugs, alcohol and so on)
-Distraction (immersing into TV, movies, video games)
-Excessive thinking (getting lost into our 'mental stories' about our emotions, instead of feeling them)
-Over-eating
-Reactive behavior (acting out our 'dramas' - arguments and fighting in relationships, feeling like a victim and so on - instead of being able to calmly and compassionately respond to others, without being a victim or aggressor)
-Types of behavior where we get ourselves into emotional 'highs' in anyway (which we must eventually come down from), often through thinking ourselves into a sort of manic high
-"Spiritual bypassing"
The main, essential method of the Presence Process is very simple:
-We learn to consistently sit down, breathe regularly and deeply, close our eyes, repeat a presence activating statement, and completely feel the emotion, and become aware of our resistance patterns to the emotion.
It highly differs to other meditation types, which often have the subtle goal of moving to a different state of consciousness (bliss and so on). The Presence Process is about being unconditionally, completely here, now, and opening ourselves to the moment, especially when it contains extremely unpleasant emotional experiences - so that with calm breathing and a still mind, we can process the emotion.
So I've made a rather long answer to a short question: How do you get in touch with the deeply repressed stuff, that is not accessible to our conscious awareness?
That stuff isn't going to come up easily (so I can't just say - here's how - you need to do the course) - and this is why the Presence Process (TPP) is a 10-week course. Over the 10 weeks, you consistently, and gently use your intent to allow the repressed stuff to flow into your conscious awareness. It takes you through a course of intentions and breathing exercises which allow all of this stuff to float to the surface.
And believe me: It's going to float to the surface.
I was crying several times a day for no reason, and other times my emotions were in a state of complete rage, but the emotions that were arising were strangely familiar. Things I think I'd felt in childhood a long time ago, during very intense and painful experiences. By the time you are 5 or 6 weeks into the process, the amount of repressed emotion arising into your awareness may be at the very limit of what you can bear.
The after-effects of TPP may go on for a few months after you complete the course, as deeply repressed emotional memories get gradually integrated. For me it was such a powerful experience that it took me the rest of the year to integrate it completely.
However - it's a completely transformative course, I've never been changed so much by anything I've done in my entire life. I do the course once per year, and over that time I've become a completely different person. My emotions have changed so much also - I'm free of that dark cloud of repressed stuff clogging up my awareness. It's hard to even begin to describe how emotionally messed up I was before, and how balanced, calm and joyful after doing the process three times over four years. During my third time through the process, there was also an unintended consequence that there was an 'awakening' out of identification with the body-mind. My intuition also underwent a massive awakening, so I have very keen intuition now, which is always predicting the future and guiding me in the right way.
So my only real answer to activate the repressed stuff is that it requires sensitivity, daily persistent intent over more than a couple of months, and furthermore: TREAD CAREFULLY. In my experience, there was a sh*t-storm like no other waiting to arise, and I, in typical fashion, charged headfirst into the maelstrom. Be patient and gentle - your repressed emotions are like damaged and abused children, crying out for your help.
You can't just barge in and put everything right in a heartbeat, you'll need to learn to be like an unconditionally loving parent to the hurt and abused child living within you.
This is how we restore a relationship with emotions that doesn't involve control, manipulation and repression. It takes time to become really authentic about this, when for years we've been repressing. |
Edited by - mr_anderson on Jun 10 2013 12:32:53 PM |
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parvati9
USA
587 Posts |
Posted - Jun 10 2013 : 2:32:10 PM
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Thanks mr anderson for that explanation. I'll look into getting the book. Reading your post brought tears.
parvati |
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Anthem
1608 Posts |
Posted - Jun 10 2013 : 10:25:01 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by emc
I agree to the methods of just being with the emotion once they occur to dissolve them. But how do we find those surpressed emotions?
Not sure if this was intended to be answered, but it stuck out to me. So I will speak for my self as I write this.
I used to want to find all my suppressed emotions and thoughts, I would hunt for them so I could "heal them", clear my self out, purify etc. All for the goal of achieving something, less pain, more clarity, expanded consciousness and greater sense of freedom from suffering etc.
I later came to see that it was really the goal or desire that was the problem. One made the other. Or another way of saying it, one couldn't exist without the other. It was a perceived sense of lacking that drove the seeking. It was an assumption that I wasn't whole as I was, or that things needed fixing. So I needed to heal, find repressed emotions and all that. Why? For what end?
Nowadays, I am fine as I am, nothing needs to be impressive or notable. Emotions, thoughts and all can do as they need to do. They are all welcomed (seen), no need to improve, change, dig-up, heal or expand consciousness. Thoughts aren't indicators of problems, it's just my mind doing its job, showing me the possibilities of what's happening. Telling the story. Life will show me what needs to be seen, when it needs to be seen. |
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emc
2072 Posts |
Posted - Jun 11 2013 : 02:15:37 AM
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Thanks mr anderson. Great post! I'm looking forward to do exactly that kind of job. To me, it sounds like normal therapy, but with the touch of presence and a clear intent it goes faster and deeper. =)
Anthem, thanks for your input too. I'm glad that works for you. I've had that view for a long time, and it has not brought the process further. For me, that easily becomes spiritual bypassing. I need to heal and fix the human side of me cause I'm not functional in the world and the spiritual progress goes nowhere either. I believe Osho was right: flow glow and therapy. If we have too much stuff we will need some regular therapy (emotional shape up) before we start to flow and glow... |
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apatride
New Caledonia
94 Posts |
Posted - Jun 11 2013 : 04:32:07 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by mr_anderson
The Presence Process is a 10-week course (I've completed the process 3 times), based on exactly what we are talking about here in this post: establishing a relationship of "unconditional feeling" with the emotional body.
I'd like to follow the Presence Process course, I came across this book a few months ago but it didn't ring a bell. After your posting I read it rapidly again, and it seems to meet some of the inner works I'd like to conduct these days.
The way the author describes the process, going from emotional to mental to physical, seems quite correct given my (poor) experience on the subject.
Do you reckon it can be conducted while keeping up with AYP practices, or could it lead to some overload? |
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Anthem
1608 Posts |
Posted - Jun 11 2013 : 09:22:34 AM
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Hi emc,
Only you can know what works for you, I am sure your instincts will lead you in the right direction. |
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kami
USA
921 Posts |
Posted - Jun 11 2013 : 09:23:46 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Anthem11
[br
I used to want to find all my suppressed emotions and thoughts, I would hunt for them so I could "heal them", clear my self out, purify etc. All for the goal of achieving something, less pain, more clarity, expanded consciousness and greater sense of freedom from suffering etc.
I later came to see that it was really the goal or desire that was the problem. One made the other. Or another way of saying it, one couldn't exist without the other. It was a perceived sense of lacking that drove the seeking. It was an assumption that I wasn't whole as I was, or that things needed fixing. So I needed to heal, find repressed emotions and all that. Why? For what end?
Nowadays, I am fine as I am, nothing needs to be impressive or notable. Emotions, thoughts and all can do as they need to do. They are all welcomed (seen), no need to improve, change, dig-up, heal or expand consciousness. Thoughts aren't indicators of problems, it's just my mind doing its job, showing me the possibilities of what's happening. Telling the story. Life will show me what needs to be seen, when it needs to be seen.
Thanks Anthem.
This above is how it is unraveling here too. I've also read the Presence Process, with the intent to "find all that was wrong within and fix it, so I could feel better about myself and consciousness could be expanded".. And innumerable other techniques to this same end. Until it was seen that there will never be an end to chasing it all. In fact, there was a "tighter", more constricting ego (doer) identification with "I" needing to find what is wrong with "me". Upon closer examination, all of it arising, of course, from the mental image of what enlightenment/realization looks like.
Having said this, however, it is unclear if practicing those techniques results in easier "resting" or if it is just how it goes with all this.. Interestingly, learning to rest without itching to "do" something about the mind has been the greatest practice - often, an emotion/thought will come up, is seen with an "A-ha!", several pieces falling together like a jigsaw puzzle (in retrospect, a repressed emotion bubbling up). Trying to find them didn't work as well as simply resting, IMO.
Resting as the knowing awareness and watching it all rise and fall without "sticking to it" lets me see the stream of emotions and thought processes doing their "thing". Sometimes the stream is incessant, at other times, there is nothing. At times, I'm drawn into the story and become the mind process and at other times, I can't be drawn in at all. Either way, there is nothing "I" am actually doing. Not attaching to the stream allows the seeing as a movie, a story as you say. No great need to dig and find.
Being a parent has helped in this tremendously. The whole mind process is so like a little toddler - beautiful, curious, imprudent, obstinate, loving, tantrum-throwing, etc etc.. No matter what, one can't help but embrace one's child, even through all the drama.
Thank you for this beautiful thread. |
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Jun 11 2013 : 10:16:02 AM
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Hi Kami,
I know what you're saying. It's all personal I think, and depends on where each practitioner is along his or her personal process, and what is right for them.
I was deeply intuitively drawn to the Presence Process, and I felt compelled to go through its 10 week course three times. For me, this was exactly what was required. It's a question of whether the intuition is calling us to do it, or the mind thinks it will be a good idea to help fix things. We have to be able to distinguish between:
-the call of the intuition pulling us to do something, which comes from the soul
-identification with thoughts, belief systems and emotions pulling us to do something, which comes from the ego
In the first case, we'll do best to follow the inner call. In the latter, we'll do better to rest as awareness, letting go of identification with the ego's thought-based structure of motivation (which is based on its own self-perpetuating mechanism), thus knowing our true Self, the knower of experience, as already perfectly whole and complete.
Drawing the line isn't always easy. The ego and its volitional self-effort to try and improve things plays a role in this path: or none of us would be here doing spiritual practices. Yet gradually we must of course go beyond identification with the vehicle which brought us here.
Love,
Josh 
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Edited by - mr_anderson on Jun 11 2013 10:23:32 AM |
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kami
USA
921 Posts |
Posted - Jun 11 2013 : 12:29:59 PM
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So very true Josh! Thank you.
All of these musings are only in retrospect - at the time, I clearly needed those techniques since I was led to them (in fact, you, my dear friend, led me to Presence Process ). And I'm very open to the possibility of needing them again, since ego identification seems to go in cycles. Either way, it is all unfolding perfectly, techniques picked up and discarded as needed.
Regarding self-effort, things have shifted drastically here. I just state my experience with it (which may or may not hold true for others).. While self-effort seemed inevitable in the past, it doesn't anymore. Looking back at my life and everything that led to this exact moment, I am unable to find "my" effort in any of it. Every event leading up to this moment was one where I just happened to be at that place at that time, with innumerable other events playing into that particular one. Even the thought, "I should take up meditation" happened due to countless other (majority unseen and unknown) events creating that thought. I can take credit for none of it. Probably the loss of that sense of self-effort has helped ease up the clamoring in this case.. cannot be sure. Divine Will unfolding, that's all. Self-effort, as seen here, is nothing more than that divine will masquerading as "effort" of the specific body-mind.
Much love. |
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Jun 11 2013 : 1:10:48 PM
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Haha, free will, divine will, all a mystery to me
much love to you too! hope to see you at a retreat soon |
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Parallax
USA
348 Posts |
Posted - Jun 11 2013 : 7:54:47 PM
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Hey Josh!
I was drawn to the Presence Process a few weeks ago around the same time I had the intention to see myself more clearly...including some of the "blindspots" that in the past I had worked hard to avoid. I started the actual breathing technique and conscious response about a week ago. Already many thing have come up and I can physically feel some of my internal "obstructions" starting to unwind, so it has been a powerful practice even in the early stages.
Did you do TPP while also doing AYP practices? For you, how long did the "very limit of what you can bear" part last? Did you self pace AYP practices while your were engaged in TPP?
Thanks for all of your insights and inspiration
Anthem, thank you for starting this thread
Much Love
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mr_anderson
USA
734 Posts |
Posted - Jun 11 2013 : 8:40:30 PM
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Hi Parallax!
Did you do TPP while also doing AYP practices? - I think I focused mainly on TPP, and probably was not engaging AYP at the same time.
-The limit of what I could bear part: That didn't last too long! There were maybe 3 weeks that were very difficult. Around the time where you do breathing exercises while in bath. It depends on the nature of your emotional obstructions. I was so emotionally disordered, and had been for a very long time. I mean really, I was very unbalanced (at least compared with my generally calm self now! ) I think this meant there was a lot to be released. If you're more balanced, it may not be so bad - on my third time through, emotional stuff did come up, but it wasn't nearly as bad. There were just 2 weeks that were a little tough. I also dived in and was very intense during the first two times. I didn't know how to relax during the breathing exercises: I think this was a little counter-productive. As a word of advice, whilst you are doing the breathing, if you are feeling extremely intense emotions or heat in the body etc, just be aware if you're tensing up your muscles, and allow your entire body to relax. This way there is release more easily. I believe I'd been holding these patterns of tension in the body for a long-term, with limited awareness!
I had a lot of exposure to violence during my childhood, stepfather violently beating mother etc, and intense emotional strife in our household was a commonality. So there was much to deal with.
I'm not sure about combining AYP with TPP, who knows what effect it will have. TPP is going to facilitate some intense purification on an emotional level, but perhaps AYP will balance it, or its possible the reverse may occur!
I wish you the best! Let me know how your experiences proceed, and you're welcome to contact me if you want someone to discuss with. There were many times where I though: why on earth am I doing this! But stick with it to the end. |
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Letting go of bliss, ecstasy and equanimity
