Warm Bath of Awareness
"Water shower" by nick@ is licensed under CC BY 2.0
I want to share a little gem I came upon through the wonders of social media:
Rupert Spira responds to a woman who asks how to handle contractive feelings and this is his gorgeous response:
Yes, invite the contraction to come and make its home in your Being, in the presence of awareness. Offer it—this knot you feel in the body—offer it to this warm bath of awareness, and just leave it there soaking.
If you're impatient with it, that impatience is just another little contraction, another little I don't like!
Be very careful not to touch the contraction. You take this very gentle, loving approach with it. You notice it, you invite it to come in, and then you let it feel it's just soaking in you. It's like getting into a warm bath: you leave this tension, this knot of me in the body, just leave it soaking in the presence of awareness. Let awareness take care of it. And let it take as long as it takes.
It's not just one contraction; the separate self is a network of contractions. It's laid down in layers of contraction in the body, each one a little more subtle than the other. Just let the whole network— leave the whole thing soaking.
As it soaks, the top layer will gradually dissolve and that will reveal a layer underneath which is a little less easy to name. It'll be a little less formed, not so easy to identify as anger, etc... an ancient feeling of sorrow that has accompanied me most of my life. It takes awhile for that to come up. And underneath that, this almost formless 'something is missing.'
It is not necessary to name them—just let them come up, layer after layer. Don't touch them. Just leave them soaking. Awareness will take care of them in its own time. And it takes time.
These habits have been imprinted on the body, embedded in the body. The body is gradually being washed clean of them. Awareness is washing the body clean of the separate ‘me’ feeling. If you expect it to happen overnight, you'll feel like a failure and this is one more of the layers. Don't have expectation of a time in the future when there'll be no contractions. Feel what needs to be accomplished has already been accomplished: I am this open luminous presence of awareness.
Just submit all of your experience to that. And allow it to gradually be dissolved, in that, and by that.
I find this beautiful. Rupert Spira has a way of cutting right to the truth of things, and here he provides good advice for essentially any discomfort or pain we might encounter. Submit your experience to awareness. In other words, notice what is happening to you, and let it.
