Some ramblings about step two that probably won’t make it into the workshop…
There is a huge difference between mental believing and bodily experiencing. For most of my sobriety the idea of step two seemed right and one to pursue. More recently I’ve begun to have deep experiences of that truth.
From the Buddhist tale of the dung covered diamond…
My defects of character and my bondage to that dung covered self seem to be the source of a great deal of my suffering. I’ve been doing some training with a man who proposes/teaches a transformative process of direct experience of the diamond. It’s unreal. One second I’m lost in suffering and the next my heart opens up, spaciousness is my experience and the truth is clear and obvious. Joy is radiant and my heart aches with tender compassion for the suffering of all who can’t remember/experience the truth of their pure nature. At first he led me to this transformative experience. Later I’ve become able to self shift more and more often.
A story of this… standing at my station at work, lost in heated resentment of a co-worker’s selfish behavior. Mind racing. Teeth gritting. Stomach churning. Back scrunched up. You know the feeling. And suddenly, “I don’t want to feel this way.” Followed by “I know how I want to be.” The “me” that knows, is a thread that pulls me through the dung and into the pure state. I was left standing there beaming, radiant, peaceful and tender for my own suffering and that of my co-worker. I stayed that way for hours.
I’ve come to believe in an entirely different way that my true self is already restored to sanity and almost any effort on my part to go after that sanity is doomed to failure because I’m doing it with dung covered habitual mind and intentions.
Years of meditation help in this process. Being able to stay with the bodily experiences that pull me through the dung to this new experience of “me”.
This process is how I do Spirtual Direction with the men at VOA. Watching a client for that moment when the diamond appears shining through the dung and sheparding them once it shows up. Working with them on their conscious contact with their already pure self…
Something in your note spurred me to share. If you ever want to sit down together, I can go a bit more into this.
Love to you, rick