By accepting one’s own shadow one gives unconditional love to all beings. — Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan;
Alchemical Wisdom
Yesterday I didn’t come to write my daily ‘report’ on how things are going with the experiment because I had my son and grandson visit us for the day and right after I went out with two old friends of mine and we had an amazing evening. Coming home at 2 o’clock in the morning I wasn’t really able to write anything anymore 🙂
Playing with my 2 year old grandson is a total delight of unrestricted feeling – so much so that when we were playing “We’re getting a fit together” the feeling wave crested so strongly that Monay, that’s the little guy’s name, needed to hide and re-assemble in his fathers arms. Not that he was scared, I’d say, more like the ecstasy was a little overwhelming… and for me it was interesting to “having a fit” on his level.
Singing songs or better, getting into rhythmic word-singing, for instance me, “Schuhe” (German for shoe), than he, “shooe”, me “schuhe, schuhe”, he, “shoooe, oooe,” me picking it up “ooooe, schuhe,”…
Hanging out with Monay is a wonderful delight of ‘unrestrictedness’.
In a way you could say that I don’t really treat him like a 2 year old is usually treated; I just feel into what goes on with both of us, and quite naturally everything turns into little games full of pleasure – we’re equals, in a very special way. Yes, I’m grown up and have gone through 55 years of life already, and maybe I gained some length, weight and wisdom, but when truly meeting anybody this doesn’t play a role. What does is, “Can I be with this?” feeling whatever is flowing between here and there unrestrictedly.
With a little guy like my grandson this isn’t difficult. He doesn’t hide anything, and the “bad feelings” just come out like the good feelings. Nothing held back, all is bare and clear. And there is a lot of energy in me afterward. I don’t feel tired, rather I feel inspired.
There is a quality here that gets so easily lost when we’re hanging out or working with grown-ups. But it needn’t be. The challenge that I face is just a bit bigger than with my grandson (or children in general): One has to be wise in what and how to express oneself; but allowing oneself to feel the field (me, you the surround) without restricting it is key. And the half day with my grandson is a wonderful confirmation of the deeply resonating rightness of that.
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In the evening on to meeting old friends and after having dinner together some serious drinking and not so serious talking. We haven’t seen each other for quite some time – used to hang out in the “ashrams” of my teacher together, do some serious drinking and have serious fun, even went into philosophy!
There is a drunken beauty to life that comes out when one is doing the rounds like this. It is taxing the body, though. Today, when I needed to get up early, I felt drowsy and not so clear, to say the least. So I took the opportunity to study that particular feeling world of being ‘pooped’, of recuperating from being in lots and lots of smoke – because there is still some places in Berlin where people can smoke unashamedly (I’m a non-smoker, 96% of the time; only on occasions like this I smoke 1 or 2). Some would say today, the day after, is detoxifying day. And they are right. But it really doesn’t matter what makes me feel whatever it is I feel, it opens up a possibility to continue with my experiment.
When a bit drunken (I could still talk and walk an almost straight line) I noticed: the feelings don’t flow that easily and unrestricted as when sober. That’s amazing because I remember that in the past (I think I was last drunkenly doing the rounds a couple of years ago) this used to be quite different; I felt that I could really let it out, be a nuisance maybe, and all of that.
And also when drunken feeling doesn’t run that deep – or maybe my consciousness isn’t able to run with the deeper aspects of feeling. Everything is mainly ‘loud and noisy’, and frankly, when drunk like yesterday, I couldn’t care less of how I feel (and nevertheless when I noticed that I tuned into the couldn’t-care-less a bit)… I think that the carelessness I felt was a much appreciated characteristic of drunkenness in the past.
So as I said, some of that spilled over into today, and it is only at around noon that I feel the depth and multidimensionality of the feeling-field reappearing. What I find, at first internal glance in the morning, is a kind of shallowness that is impenetrable almost; and turning up the volume of this sense of shallowness, the feeling is, “something’s missing.” An amazing feeling in itself, “There is something missing but I don’t know what it is.” Yet, it also is a feeling I forget again to really enter into as I keep fading out, fading away into shallow daydreams (I couldn’t give you an example, because I forget) of no consequence at all.
Yet, within all this there is an easily activated sense of sympathy with the people I meet even if only passing them by. Seems like the same shallowness that doesn’t allow me to enter anything deeply allows me to like people very easily. Shallow, nice and liking seem to be a family of feelings. Reflecting on that right now I think being sentimental is the deepest member of that little family. Yet it’s very clear that I don’t feel with the people, I feel about them.
This seems to be the social glue, the kin of feeling that is acceptables, easily ignorable – so we can get on with our own little thing, whatever that might be. I would have said, before I started this experiment, “You can’t have deep feelings all of the time.” Now, I’m not so sure about that.