Conflict resolution & I'm miserable - so it must be working

[Guest guest]

Sat Nam Seva,

 

Your words came from the heart and soul. Thank you for sharing. For me,

the following sentence summed it all up:

"the dark night of the soul" -- Here you discover what the real issue is -

seperation from God

 

The truth of your last observation really brought a smile to my face and

tears to my eyes"

 

"When that is over you are content, self actualised, and know how to give to

God what is Gods, accept maya for what it is at the same time you as you are

able to live your truth unflinchingly without letting people fuck with you."

 

What is that I read on this list not so long ago? "I am Christ and you're

not so bad yourself." If I met Budha on the road, I wouldn't kill him,

would you?

[Guest guest]

Sat Nam Leo,

 

There is something called "dark night of the senses" that almost everyone on a

spiritual path goes through. Essentially it is when everything you are seeing,

hearing and feeling starts to drive you nuts. You begin to experience that the

behaviour of the senses is out of sync with the intent of your soul and it

becomes a battle for which can dominate your consciousness. You seek solace by

finding sensory stimulus that supports you soul - sacred places, art, deep

meditation - but then it is right back into the trenches and the battle rages

on. After a while you begin to realise that the senses have been conditioned by

past lives and the impressions of this life and that what you are really

battling is your own karmic tendencies which, when your soul wakes up, are no

longer acceptable to you. The end result of that is that you break the

attachment to those tendencies by reconfiguring your psyche to support your

soul. That is a process that takes a while but it is the process of becoming

fully awake and also rooting out the hold the past has on your senses. Aspects

of ones life that are a function of that other reality (the conditioned senses)

become confusing and unacceptable and are ultimately purged from your life as

you begin to discover what it means to live at the level of truth you have

discovered within. Following the dark night of the senses there is usually a

dark night of the soul. Here you discover what the real issue is - seperation

from God - and you work through all the dark thoughts, feeling and perceptions

that exist in your subtle body related to that seperation. When that is over you

are content, self actualised, and know how to give to God what is Gods, accept

maya for what it is at the same time you as you are able to live your truth

unflinchingly without letting people fuck with you.

 

Seva Simran

[Guest guest]

Gotta tell ya Seva, I was reading your post and nodding my head and

thinking "he's phrasing it so beautifully". Then I hit your last line

and just burst out laughing!

 

On a more serious note, I had heard of "the dark night of the soul,"

but I was unaware of "the dark night of the senses." It sounds like

what your are describing is almost a 'super-sensitivity' to stimuli.

Is that correct? I kinda got lost when you said "you seek solace by

finding sensory stimulus that supports you soul - sacred places, art,

deep meditation - but then it is right back into the trenches and the

battle rages on." That sounds contradictory to me. Don't we do

meditation to get in contact with our soul? If so, why would it be

self-defeating once we our soul begins waking up?

 

Also, you mention that the senses are conditioned by karma. In my

mind (and I'm quite probably wrong here) the senses are unbiased

regarding soul desires vs physical desires. I would think that it is

how the input (data) from the senses is interpreted. Which would make

the mind or ego the culprit of karma and not the senses. To me senses

are just openings or valves that receive signals. They don't have any

action unto themselves as a response to the signals. But I'm probably

way off base here.

 

Christa

[Guest guest]

It is through meditation and sacred spaces we get in touch with our soul and

also retrain our senses to experience reality through the eyes and

ears and feelings of the soul. During the dark night of the senses this

contrasts acutely with the tendency to experience reality through the

eyes , ears and feelings of the ego and it conditioning. Thus we are both

attracted and repulsed, desire and don't desire, like and don't like,

love and hate, and so on as the battle to win our senses rages on. We crave

sensory stimulus that will remind us of our soul in order to escape

from sensory stimulus that reminds us of our conditioning, known and unknown,

personal and collective. When we actually experience our soul

strongly enough it begins to alter the mind so that the senses serve the soul

and we no longer interpret or experience reality through the eyes

and ears and feelings of our history/conditioning/ego, but through the eyes,

ears and feelings of our soul. In kundalini yoga this is called the

sensory human. The point about the dark night of the senses is that you don't

get there without a struggle to determine who or what is going to be

in command of the senses and the way in which information is intepreted or

filtered. Once you are there your sadhana keeps you there and the

journey is one of seeing and feeling and hearing through a different lens, a

liberated one, free of time's weight.

 

Seva Simran

 

P.S. The senses are capable of taking in billions and billions of bits of

information across auditory, visual and kinesthetic spectrums vastly

greater that what they have been conditioned to take in through genetics

(collective history), samskaras (personal past life history), vassanas

(personal- this life impressions) and the associated tendencies to distort,

delete and generalise information. When we tap into the sensory human

we transcend our identification with that and begin to open up the senses to

their real potential as the eyes, ear and feelings of the soul.

 

> Gotta tell ya Seva, I was reading your post and nodding my head and

> thinking "he's phrasing it so beautifully". Then I hit your last line

> and just burst out laughing!

>

> On a more serious note, I had heard of "the dark night of the soul,"

> but I was unaware of "the dark night of the senses." It sounds like

> what your are describing is almost a 'super-sensitivity' to stimuli.

> Is that correct? I kinda got lost when you said "you seek solace by

> finding sensory stimulus that supports you soul - sacred places, art,

> deep meditation - but then it is right back into the trenches and the

> battle rages on." That sounds contradictory to me. Don't we do

> meditation to get in contact with our soul? If so, why would it be

> self-defeating once we our soul begins waking up?

>

> Also, you mention that the senses are conditioned by karma. In my

> mind (and I'm quite probably wrong here) the senses are unbiased

> regarding soul desires vs physical desires. I would think that it is

> how the input (data) from the senses is interpreted. Which would make

> the mind or ego the culprit of karma and not the senses. To me senses

> are just openings or valves that receive signals. They don't have any

> action unto themselves as a response to the signals. But I'm probably

> way off base here.

>

> Christa

>

[Guest guest]

Sat Nam Seva,

Like Sioux, I was with you from beginning to end! In fact, I found your

words so useful I printed htem out to be refered to regularly. I may paste it

to the front of my Yoga book!

 

Sat Nam, Leo