JOURNALS_
No.1
2024
Author:
Max Masino
Sometimes we get so far away from ourselves. We lose a sense of who we are, but what does this mean? My experience is that the parts of my ego take over. The parts that want to please, to not be in trouble, to do things the right way. I lose an ability to just be and this takes me away from the present. It can feel like it is too hard to come back to myself. The layers of fear, tension, and anger feel like too much to go through, so I run further. I run and I run and I get further away from my natural state. This happens until I realize that it's happening. Once I become aware of the process, I have to develop enough courage to sit down and let it all move through. I can have these moments of clarity, but I'm not always uncomfortable enough to want to face it. I think “this is manageable, I can handle this.” Then I dip back into an unconscious state where everything that is happening, good or bad, gets laid in my stomach and throughout my body like layers of sediment, burying my awareness, my connection to everything, but at a certain point, often just after I’ve woken up from sleep, I realize that I cannot keep going like this. I know. So I sit, close my eyes, and I focus on my breath. It’s so easy to get pulled into my internal drama. I hear it all start to play out. “You didn’t do this. You’re not taking care of yourself. You’re nothing, absolutely nothing.” I sit and I hear it but I don’t engage it. I stay with my breath and allow this locked and misguided energy to start to move. As the energy moves sometimes my head whips back and forth and my stomach will double over with contractions. It’s easy to judge this process. To get pulled back into the drama. The ego, which lives in the mind, is a brilliant trickster and all it wants is for my consciousness to be pulled back into it, but as I watch my breath, I am the witness. I can see that the trickster is trying with all its might, and sometimes in the most subtle ways, to pull me back in. I can recognize that any judgment, or desire, or fear is just trying to pull me, the conscious witness, back into it. So I sit back and I allow everything to push forward. The energy is actually quite good at purging itself and moving as soon as I, the witness, step back. Then it is a waiting game. I wait and I allow everything to move. Sometimes it is 10 minutes, sometimes it is an hour. Sometimes I sit and I sit and the energy never ceases to move and extrapolate. Depending on how long I have been building those layers of sediment, the process can take days or weeks. But if I keep identifying with the witness, eventually my system clears itself. I return to a state where I can be here without having to run. As things happen, they pass through. I return to a state that I never actually left but simply lost awareness of. Oh the joy of allowing it all to pass through, until something doesn’t. When I’m in that space I have the opportunity to deal with it, but that trickster can appear to be me “I can handle holding this, let me turn on the TV, how about a movie?” So I start the process over. My ego pulls me deep underwater, holding my breath. How deep will it pull me? How long will I hold my breath? I hold my breath until I am too uncomfortable with not breathing. It will keep pulling me down until I realize that with one stroke I can float back to the surface. The swim back up to the surface can be long and it can be scary. Panic can set in. Will I make it back?
Yes.
JOURNALS_
No.2
Coming
Soon...