After working with people one on one almost daily for the last number of years, and reflecting over my life and watching myself throughout the day it has become quite obvious that all the ways we abandon ourselves, all the ways we avoid meeting ourselves, all the ways we run away from ourselves are simply just survival mechanisms to avoid totally living here and Now.
This can be so subtle and yet become so obvious, when we begin to see our habitual patterns are simply just ways of pulling us away from Here. The avoidance of meeting ourselves exactly as we are, Here and Now, is by my observation probably the largest cause of our suffering and dysfunction as human beings.
If we have feelings of anxiety, of depression, trauma, anger, wounding, physical pain, whatever it is the first instinct is to "DO" something about it, to escape, to heal, to change it or to distract ourselves from it.
The moment we run on that compulsion, we have abandoned our true Selves, and once again we are lost within the world of compulsive doing.
I see this compulsion play out in spirituality, in non duality, in addiction and alcoholism, in religion, in consumerism, in different healing modalities, in work, in sport, in relationships, in compulsive thinking and worrying, it has played out my whole life in infinite ways which is why I know it so well.
We can and will use absolutely anything to avoid being exactly where we are, to avoid just stopping, and gently sinking into the moment.
This movement away from ourselves is not wrong, it has created many amazing things, it has driven our human potential to create things that we would not otherwise have been able to create. But at a certain point it becomes self destructive. And it is so clear to me we are at a crisis point as a species and we are self destructing.
When we stop, and enter this moment the first thing we usually meet is resistance. The resistance is due to the fact that all our unmet pains, our unmet karmic energies exist right here within our system. They are the fuel that is driving the whole world.
So what kind of ways do you avoid fully meeting yourself? I have seen so often the interest in non duality and enlightenment and the concepts of "no self" as just another way of avoiding whats happening within them below the surface, saying "its all just a story, theres no one here" and its quite obvious it has become another escape.
Its the same game, the same problem, the same compulsive movement away from themselves that they started with only now it is done in the name of enlightenment. This is why I don't speak about awakening often, and I will continue not to speak about it and continue to point people toward whats actually driving the seeking, I won't offer you an escape, sorry, because as Rumi said so beautifully "The cure for the pain, is in the Pain."
I have probably tried most things out there with this same intent to get away, I ran and ran and ran away until I exhausted all options, I nearly died countless times trying to run. And at a certain point I saw, and continue to see the futility of the escape. I can never get away from Here and Now.
We can consciously choose to begin to meet ourselves, we can't choose not to run ever again, but we can choose right Now, to meet ourselves, to meet the parts we have been running from, Right Here, Right Now.
And right Now is the only place this seeking and escape can end.
Peace,
Matt Nettleton
Senior KI Facilitator and Trainer
www.mattnettleton.com