The feeling of being pinned down, described here in Jeane’s dream, sheds an interesting light on how we hold ourselves back, or resist, aspects of our spiritual awakening. In this instance, breaking free would seem the obvious next step. But there is a subtlety in this, where the things that pin us down can also be the exact thing, within us, that we need to struggle against – as we proceed on our journey. (At the end of this post there are instructions and a link to download this recording to your computer.)
Jeane: I had a dream in which it felt like there was a force that was like capturing or holding people captive; it particularly would pin down maybe my left arm slightly. And you could try to get free, but if you tried to get completely free you actually made it worse for everybody. It was like you could only get so free and you had to keep part of yourself pinned down, or it made it worse for everybody.
It was kind of an ugly force. I remember it just felt like it was frustrating: how did you struggle against this?
John: That’s a cute dilemma. I did not put it that way, but it’s a cute dilemma.
A part of you that is pinned down and if you break free from that part of you, then something else struggles more, right? The part of you that’s pinned down, is the part of you that’s required to recognize what is going on, from within, and therefore it is cornered or pinned down to terms of what it can do in the outer. And if it throws away this being pinned down, and continues as if it has a role, or an identity that it can’t let go of in the outer, then something is held back.
So it has to accept that it’s being directed, to put its attention upon a change of direction, in terms of what things are about, in terms of an inner conscious unfoldment, as opposed to the tendency to believe that one has responsibilities in terms of placing their attention in the outer as if the outer is everything.
To the degree to which you feel that you’re not able to let go of the outer, is the degree to which you create the sensation of being limited or pinned down. So, the subtle distinction that has to be made is, you are in the outer, that deep down you are pinned down by having to acknowledge something that is awakening from within, unable to continue to do the things in the outer that other people identify with.
So you have to carry this quality of an echo somewhere else and, if you can do that, then things are made better. Your mind, however, tells you that this is not what it’s about.
Well, it was a heck of a Rubik’s Cube, because it was easy to misconstrue what was going on inside, because it would have been easier to say, in a negative way of looking at your dream, that some part of you was missing out on what was needed. But if this were true, then how is it that in this missing out, in terms of what is needed – meaning you’re pinned down – how is it that there is something about this pinning down that is important to the end result?
You could easily be very confused by this dream, by feeling that, okay, you shouldn’t be pinned down, but how do you reconcile that with the fact that being pinned down is somehow or another important to the end result?
The dream can even be referenced to something that points to the bigger schematic of outer life; that in outer life, a part of us is lost and confused and caught up in the outer or, as you would say, pinned down.
And then the recognition of the illusion of that, in other words the recognition that there’s a consciousness that can proceed and find its way out of this self-deception, through the pressure of feeling that you’re caught in it, is the means by which you sort through and figure something out, or go to where you need to go.
You do not go there by following some sort of Yellow Brick Road where everything is all laid out in some Simple Simon fashion. You follow the Yellow Brick Road in which everything seems to be against you, based upon how the outer is set up. And that the outer is always grabbing at your attention, and causing you to feel pinned down with its directives or purported requirements.
And that as you consciously grasp and go through that, is when you come to recognize and realize that there’s a letting go that is realized at some point, and in this realization you suddenly find the simplicity.
So, you feel the pinning down, but you do not identify with it to such a degree that you stay delusional. You feel the pinning down and realize that it’s kind of a means to grow. It may feel uncomfortable. It may seem like it’s a strange joke. However, it gets you through in terms of what it is that you need in order to awaken.
To download this file, Right Click (for PCs) or Control Click (for Macs) and Save: A Means to Grow
