Quote from Sundari: “For devotional practice to really work, it has to include all aspects of the jiva, especially the ones most hidden from us or denied.“
Thank you so much for the clarification, dear Sundari! Those hidden and denied samskaras don’t usually just show up unmasked do they? Although wait a minute they do, it seems, in the relationship with those very close.
Sundari: Our deeper samskaras play out daily, moment to moment, in the form of our likes and dislikes but often the root cause is hidden from us. When it is linked to the deeply wounded inner child, it usually plays out in our closest relationships. Susan Barlettani put it very well:
‘Samskaras fructify in their own time and in their own way. It’s helpful to know that this process is happening in a way that coordinates, interfaces and reflects what is happening in our lives. If we don’t understand this we just try to fix the worldly circumstances, usually through projection, without making the connections to the deeper wound. Maybe we go to therapy and get help with the worldly crisis and that’s helpful but we haven’t come face to face or heart to heart with the source which means it will repeat itself; usually with more intensity next time. The work is trauma work only we don’t know it because the trauma is unconscious. We know it’s there because we are acting it out pretty much as it occurred. It’s not a cognitive memory but it is a memory in the subtle and physical body. We can feel it but we have no context for it.”
Herman: I can be bitter with Rachel, commanding, cynical for sure. The “unmasked” part depends on how clearly I want to look and see, how vigilant I want to be, standing at the gate to see what comes through and shows up. And how am I to include that? In an act of acknowledgement?
Sundari: Seeing and accepting the shadow part of the psyche, and we all have one, is not easy or pleasant for anyone. The ego tries to avoid this at all costs, even though it is our salvation. The only way to truly address a deep inner child wound is first to see it, ‘go there’ and love that part of our personal identity. It may not be real, but it will keep showing up and causing trouble in our lives. Despite the defended ego, that part of the psyche wants to be loved, and it is often very hard to love it. The wounds are so old and so deep. But there is no pass on this one, as I wrote in my satsang you quote from. To be free of the conceptual jiva requires radical acceptance of it, which means we must take down the dam wall we built around it and allow the love that has been trapped to flow from and to us.
We are all perfect children of God and we deserve to love and be loved. If we cannot love ourselves we will never be free of our personal identity. I think a lot of people turn to spirituality as way of coping with wounds that could just not be healed any other way. Often everything has failed, even therapy. But we cannot impose satya onto mithya, so denial or spiritual bypass will not work. There will be a price to pay, for sure. Certainly there will not be freedom from and for the person. And the worst kind of denial is the denial we do not know we have and deny we are denying it.
The first step is to win through to loving ourselves unconditionally. The next step to fully negate the egoic identity requires taking a stand as the witness, which acknowledges both the wounded persona and the deeper source of the problem – ignorance/duality. If we can take a stand as the nondual witness, all wounds can be resolved with reference to Self-knowledge. But this is hard to do when we are deeply hurt or injured. Even advanced inquirers will find reasons to justify hanging on to righteous indignation when the ego is hurt and digs its heels into being ‘right’. Of course that’s a recipe for a lot of pain and suffering, and when having the humility to surrender to Isvara matters most.
Herman: I have been doing chanting the lords name every day in different chants as we learn them in class. Practicing them by myself I find it difficult to stay focussed in devotional practice, staying connected to the object of devotion or to myself. I would describe my love and devotion as coming in waves. When the tide is high there is over boarding love and happiness inside me and a great urge to give on the altar of life; when the tide is low there seems to be no connection to myself or to the object (the loved) at all.
Sundari: Devotional practice is like plugging into God’s electrical current. It keeps us high as long as its effects last. But if our love for God does not include ourselves it will not last. See the duality in your statements –
‘my love and devotion coming in waves’ – love and devotion are the ocean of your being. They do not come and go. The waves are your thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes, which come and go.
‘happiness inside me’, true happiness is not inside of you, though it feels like it is for the jiva. You as the Self, the witness, are primary to all experience, and the source of happiness, so if by ‘me’ you mean Herman, you are inside of it.
‘there seems to be no connection to myself’ What connection do you mean and who does myself refer to? If it is Herman, then the lack of connection means you are stuck in the secondary identity, and not seated in the primary experience as the witness or knower of Herman and his apparent lack of connection.
Have the courage to visit that defended part of yourself and love it. You will never escape it any other way. Isvara is very strict about this because your nature is love. Happiness is your birthright. You are meant to experience this 24/7 not just sometimes when devotional practice or whatever else gets you high enough. What the egoic persona thinks or feels is not about you, the witness. We have a choice in every moment to allow life to express the way it does and not react according to our likes and dislikes. We can drop our story with all its grievances in an instant and live undefended, free of the limited ego.
Much love
Sundari
