The Unfolding of a Samskara Digestion

It’s rare that I don’t immediately turn inward when there’s a disturbance in the field, to meet what’s arising, no matter how painful. 

Yet that’s what happened this week. 

My partner had been fairly stressed over the last few weeks as he raced against a deadline to deliver a product for his business. This weekend, he was successful in delivering the product, on generating orders and on garnering leads.

I was ecstatic. Yeah! He did it! Now he can relax and enjoy the process!

At least, that was my expectation. But as I discovered, on Sunday, the day after the success unfolded, my partner was STILL stressed, anxious and worried… only now it was focused on a different “problem” – delivering the product he’d successfully showcased.

When I brought it to his attention, he delivered a very persuasive argument on why he was completely justified in still feeling anxious and stressed.

Yet from my perspective, it was so obvious that his experience was mind-created suffering. It wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t real.

Even though it appeared very real to him, and necessary.

I could feel a gap open up between us as I realised that I have zero tolerance for ANY mind-created suffering. I know it’s unecessary, so when it arises, I identify it, and allow it to dissolve. POOF! Gone.

I felt myself pull back. I felt myself desire space. I noticed all of this. And I also noticed that this apparently small, insignificant unfolding seemed to have knocked me out of orientation to essence nature and into conditioned mind.

There was a heaviness, swirling emotion under the surface, and the colour had drained out of life. Despite sensing the emotion, I couldn’t seem to move toward it. 

This shift into the paradigm of conditioned mind happens less and less, so it was partly a shock perceiving reality in this way, and there was also a sense of curiosity. ‘Oh yes! That’s what being in the mind is like! That’s how disconnected and awful it feels.’ 

Monday was the same. Still the heaviness, also exhaustion, combined with swirling, yet untouchable, emotion and a flat grey sense of the world. 

Tuesday morning though, and something had shifted. I could feel a surrender within that had dropped me deeper into what was happening. That had opened up the inherent sweetness of life – even though the heaviness, swirling emotion and greyness was still present. The promise of relief was there though.

Wednesday morning and that promise was all gone. I was right back, deep in conditioned mind, with no hint of sweetness. I could see it in my appearance on webinars and with clients – I look different when I’m stuck in mind. I was definitely not orientated to essence nature. No fullness, no lightness, no radiance. 

My partner was coming over for the first time since Sunday. 

I was unsure about it. I didn’t know if I wanted to see him. I didn’t know how I felt about us. I didn’t know.

That afternoon, I get a message that my 94 year old Nana is in the hospital. My aunt downplays the severity of it, and says, yes, you can go see her tomorrow. An hour later I get a call from my Dad, just as I’m walking in the door to my house where my partner is busy fixing my kitchen tap. ‘Your Nana just died.’

I was already off centre, lost in the mind, and it’s difficult to centre and ground – to greet my partner with all that is happening between us, to make sense of Nana’s death and what will unfold now. She’s in the hospital one block from my house – literally. I have an urge to go down and sit with her body. If it’s still there. It’s probably not. 

I stay at the house. 

The kitchen is  mess. Groceris to put away. Dishes. Kitchen tap being fixed. There’s laundry in the foyer, waiting to be folded. Dinner needs making. What do I need? Where am I?

My sister calls, from Australia. I thought she’d be upset about not being able to fly in for the funeral, but she’s ok. Reflecting on our childhood she says quietly. ‘It was bad for us, wasn’t it.’ 

‘Yeah, it was,’ I respond. 

No drama. Just truth. 

Later, after dinner, my partner and I walk. I’m not present. I can’t connect. I don’t know where I am. We watch a movie. I feel him beside me, wanting to connect, wanting to hold and be held. But I want to run, or fight, or freeze. Or all three at once. 

The movie finishes. We’re in bed. I know I have to find my way into whatever’s going on so I begin to speak. Verbalising helps me make sense and understand my inner experience. I use the words to find my way there, but I can’t get there.

‘Can you roll a spliff? Is that ridiculous?’

It’s already after midnight, but the fight/flight/freeze urge is so strong that it’s taken everything to prevent my body from acting out all three responses simultaneously. Cannabis has an ability to leap-frog the fear and take me deep enough into the felt experience to reveal samskaras. 

And that’s what happens. We crawl back into bed post-spliff and I’m able to hug my partner and breathe with him. 

Interoception is enhanced. I notice my breath start to dig around in the depths of my being. I feel prana-Shakti moving along the nadis, and some POPS as bubbles surface, and the odd burp or two. There’s a felt sense of surrendering to Kundalini. I’m not blocking anymore. I am surrendering to this. Finally. 

Deeper and deeper into the felt sense I dive, and then it happens – I burst into tears. 

Compact, potent, thick tears long-buried. 

I can feel the way they’ve been compressed in the quality of their expression. My partner is still holding me tight and I sob and sob and sob and sob.

‘Nobody ever came for me.’ There’s the realization, and everything drops into place. 

I see what happened on Sunday. Witnessing my partner’s mind-created suffering caused me to pull back to protect myself from that suffering. It’s not mine – I don’t want it.

Pulling back to protect myself from suffering reminded me of another time I’d done that, as a child. 

I’d pulled back to protect myself from the suffering of my parents… and that action, taken unconsciously, as a child, for protection, had forever isolated me from my family.

That was the moment.

Because no one ever came for me, ever again.

I was unreachable. My own protection mechanism, separating me out.

And so… enacting that same protection mechanism on Sunday had triggered a fear, as my psyche and scanned for patterns. ‘The last time she did this, this happened.’

The fear generated a thought-construct – if I protect myself, I will be isolated. No one will come for me. Ever.

The relief of finally getting to the core of the samskara was enormous. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed as I acknowledged the defence mechanisms (adaptive strategies), fears and thought constructs wrapped around it, over it and through it. 

My nervous system finally dropped out of hyperarousal. There was no longer an urge to fight my partner, or flee from him, or freeze against his touch. I was softened, opening, relaxing.

The threat had gone – the threat of emotional pain. It had been devoured, digested and dissolved. 

I could feel too that this particular trauma – developmental & relational in origin – needed to be felt and resolved in relationship with another. Childhood developmental trauma literally wires our brain and nervous system in different ways, which is why it can be so challenging to resolve it as adults. It often needs to be done within relationship in order to rewire the brain and nervous system.

There was something about being held so tightly, after pulling back to protect myself, that re-wrote the story of what happens when I do that. It allowed me to feel the pain of what HAD happened when I was a child.

There’s more though. Process is still happening. Orientation to essence nature hasn’t dropped back in yet. Family karma is strong. But I’m staying present to it all, while still navigating parenting and my current relationship. There’s a sense of giving myself time (I’m writing this from bed), being soft, just allowing whatever is happening to happen. 

The return to essence nature is inevitable. Nothing has to be done. Nothing has to even be healed or resolved – jit will happen, when we get to of the way. And that’s what was not happening last night – I couldn’t get out of the way, until I could.

Is all of this necessary for awakening and liberation? Maybe, maybe not. It’s an individual journey, an individual process. The level of karma, samskaras and traumas in the field determine much, as does the activation of Kundalini. And then there’s grace. 

What’s clear is the difference between orientation to essence nature, and being in conditioned mind. It’s a paradigm shift in how reality is experienced or perceived. Fear seems to be the defining factor – it catapults me from one to the other. And the way back is always through being with whatever is arising. That’s facing the fear, whilst releasing any attachments or aversions. 

This is also happening less, and less, and less, and less. There may be a time when it is DONE. 

For now though, it’s happening. And it’s ok, as am I.