John: In this next image, I walk over to a table to borrow their huge platter of meat. Apparently there’s not enough meat on my table. It seems to me that the platter has a rack of prime rib. In doing this, I see myself as feeling a bit defensive; I’m concerned that others will be upset seeing me grab their platter of meat.
In other words, I can sense a possessive energy in me when I go up and ask if I can borrow the platter and I see the reaction of the people at the table. In being able to sense that possessive energy, as opposed to my doing it in an unconscious way, I’m able to catch up with how I’m affected energetically.
Saying it another way, sensing that energetic enabled me to see myself better and to touch a relief in both places simultaneously, i.e., in the people at the table and in myself. It alleviated the possessive trauma pent up in me a bit by the simple act of returning the platter, still with plenty of meat on it, because someone else needed it more than I did.
This image enables me to see how I still let a particular mannerism interfere with a natural flow. When we are afflicted with a negative energetic, we carry that energy in us, which causes us to act upon it in a way that is outside of the natural flow.
When energies move in us in an unconscious way – perhaps anger, guilt, or a feeling of inferiority – it has its sway over us and we may do or say things that we really don’t mean or might regret later. If we have an awareness of them, we can choose to consciously act upon them, or we can choose to consciously disregard them. Our consciousness keeps us in the driver’s seat of ourselves, and, therefore, our lives.
One teacher described this process by revealing that he has to spend a great deal of time holding himself in a particular neutral state because a person can come up to him who is afflicted with some neurosis in their vibration. He has to let go of that energy that he encounters, or shake it off, or not let it touch him, because he doesn’t want to take it on in himself.
On a spiritual development journey, particular mannerisms, or neuroses, can become more and more subtle. Depending on the level of development in the teacher, these subtle vibrations that can still affect the teacher and he or she must be very careful about that. But when a teacher is very, very advanced, they basically can just click their fingers together and the vibration can be cleared, or relieved – it’s almost effortless.
Yet we all have defense mechanisms, no matter how subtle, that will arise, which act as veils between us and the overall, between us and Creation, between us and something greater in life. That’s one of the reasons why it’s just as important for the teacher to have students as it is for students to have a teacher. As the relationship deepens it can get to a point where you are they, and they are you; it becomes a dynamic dialogue (unspoken) that plays out.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I was at a seminar where I began to feel completely weird in myself, for no particular reason that I could understand. When I walked into a dining hall, I saw the teacher sitting there with his back to me, talking to someone. As I walked out, I suddenly felt healed; the feelings of weirdness just evaporated.
As we become more and more conscious of our established patterns – by recognizing their appearance sooner and sooner – we can begin to lessen their effect on our experience, and also on the experience of those around us who pick up on them unconsciously, but react to them in a conscious way.
