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I used to listen to heavy music when I felt heavy inside. It brought me a certain comfort. Growing up in the 80’s, I liked “hair bands” and their precursors. At the time, I would drive my little fixed-up blue Datsun pickup too fast and recklessly, music blaring, to work out my frustration.
It was dangerous in more ways than one.
I understand now what I was really doing; I was looking for an energy vibration that matched the one I was feeling. When I found the match, I felt what was like acceptance, a “rightness” that felt like permission to stay in my funk for as long as I wanted. It felt comfortable. It felt safe. When the emotion had expended itself like a wave breaking on a lonely beach, I emerged once again into myself.
So, aside from putting myself and others in danger, what’s the problem with this?
I’ll answer this with another story.
The other day I had a world-record funk and, for a guy like me that has struggled with a bi-polar condition, that’s saying something. Considering the experience and how I’ve historically dealt with depression, it occurred to me that I am not alone in this practice of seeking “like-for-like” energy to match my own.
I’ve done it in relationships, starting up with someone for the wrong reasons.
I’ve done it with food. Who hasn’t eaten a box of Twinkies when they were down? (OK, maybe you have a neighbor who has.) At any rate, “comfort food” is a thing for a reason, right?
And I’ve done it with careers. My first career out of University as an insurance agent was done entirely to please my father, who had done well in the industry. Needless to say, I am no longer there and it was a detour from my Soul calling, to say the least.
The problem with this practice is that we end up building a life based on disparate, temporary and usually lower-vibration emotion, rather than on Soul, Path, and Calling. If we are unconscious in this way for long enough, we can endanger ourselves physically and spiritually and miss a lifetime of opportunities to fully bring our gifts into the world. A deathbed realization about the value of time, family, love, and human existence is a small consolation.
As Roger Waters of Pink Floyd sang in Time, “The time has gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say.”
So, how do we break this cycle of identification with the emotion of the moment and become grounded, acquainted with our gifts and empowered to use them? I know of two complementary ways: meditation and ceremony.
Meditation gives us practice in both seeing and releasing. If we have a consistent meditation practice, we can arrange pillows, guided meditations, silence or music to our liking in a quiet place at home. We start the timer and see our thoughts come and go. We release them without judgment. We can easily access the inherent peace of our souls.It’s important to keep in mind that this is called “practice” for a reason. I tell my spiritual transition clients and myself (over and over) that, like a professional sports team, our meditation practice is done in a controlled environment to prepare for the “game time” that begins when we leave the meditation cushion. Will we have the ability to avoid creating a life that chases mood and emotion at the expense of Soul?
It depends on the strength of the habits we create when we’re in a controlled and safe environment; when we aren’t triggered and therefore tempted to engage in actions that are not in alignment with the soulful life we want to create.
Ceremony, whether it’s Christian communion, a Laika Illumination, a Vipassana retreat or a Lakota sweat lodge, has the effect of giving us a view of the possibilities of a life soulfully lived. If taken with intention, each of these ceremonies can help clear obstacles, reveal our gifts and further empower our journey of light in this place and plane, which is in need of as much light as we can possibly bring.
Furthermore, many ceremonies have the effect of engaging the subconscious and can thereby unravel some of the energetic effects of the traumas and difficulties we all experience in the course of life. When subsequently triggered emotionally, we are enabled to remember and even re-experience the peace we felt while in ceremony. And, as with the thoughts in our meditation practice, we’re empowered to see and release the emotions that once derailed us. Greater health and happiness are then easier to more frequently and consistently experience.
Why is this all this important?
My friends, we’re in a place in time where we need all the soul we can get. We need health and healing. We need light and joy. And we need each other’s gifts, as unsullied and pure as we can get them. We need pure water and good food, and entertainment that aligns with the arc of our Callings as humans seeking and finding depth.
Even if we do -occasionally- indulge a Twinkie and crank some heavy music.
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Photo: Unsplash