Sedona will always be a place people come for inner peace, meditation and healing. It’s a place where you can naturally reconnect with yourself with little effort. You want to take the effects of Sedona home with you. However, if you don’t really start looking at how the ego-mind runs your thoughts, ideas, and concepts, you will stay in the prison of your own mind. This is what is called inner work, or shadow work. Whatever you call it, it’s about releasing the effects of the ego-mind on our lives to reveal who we really are. And that, is Love.
I had a dream in which I was looking at a picture hanging on a wall. All the people in the frame were moving – just like in a Harry Potter movie. There were rows of prisoners, sitting on benches. Weaving in and out between the inmates was Ramana Maharshi. Ramana was a Hindu meditation master who taught that everyone could increase their faculty of discrimination so as to discern the Real (the eternal infinite spirit) from the unreal. The prisoners’ faces looked relaxed, peaceful, as they listened to Ramana. Abruptly, each row of inmates got up and walked back into the prison.
Still dreaming, I was staring at the now-empty picture frame when an unknown man appeared and asked, “So what do you think of this picture?” Tears started to come as I said how sad I felt the inmates were returning to prison. The man emphatically said, “You’re too much in the story!”
Too often, we are wedded to the ego-mind’s way of looking at things. The dream reminded me of a time when I felt I was in love with a wonderful man. It didn’t last. I was very saddened by it, and was grieving this loss.
Couple days after this breakup, I bumped into an old friend from when I’d lived in a meditation ashram. (Really, the Universe sent him to shake me up). I poured out my break-up woes, expecting sympathy. Instead, he quietly said, “Wow, Vishali – you jumped right back into maya (the illusionary world).”
Well. My friend was right. I was able to jump out of the illusion, hearing his words. Now, it’s not as if I didn’t still feel the grief from losing such a fun relationship – but I could finally see all the grief wasn’t about this man, it was just the energy of grief.
How many times in this lifetime have I felt grief? A LOT – and that’s just this particular lifetime. How many lifetimes have I felt grief before and just carried it to this lifetime as well?
If I want a return ticket, I can pack it up and take it with me to other lifetimes, over and over. You know what? I don’t wanna do that anymore. But people do, over and over – they die, clinging to ancient resentments and hatred. Surprise! When you’re born again, all that stuff comes with you, and old dramas re-play. Same stories, different faces.
So when my friend pointed out I’d dived back into the illusion, it was finally easy for me to see the grief for what it was – something to let go of and to heal.
I realized I’d wanted that relationship, more than I wanted to wake up, more than I wanted God. (at least while we were together). That’s how we stay stuck in our story. The ego-mind makes the story seem so real, we can’t help but stay there, spinning our wheels. We actually believe we are nothing but these characters, in this dream.
Look, it’s perfectly normal to love another person madly. However, in the midst of that, it’s crucial we keep our eye on the ball of seeing everything here as a tool to awakening. Don’t get caught in gratifying the ego – the ego is NEVER satisfied, it’s an endless black hole of want. Rather, use emotions and situations which come up as vehicles for introspection, letting go, and for spiritual growth. Enjoy the love, but release the ego-attachments.
All of us are in a prison of our own mind, with our myriad ideas, concepts, beliefs, fears, keeping us in the world of duality and separation. It takes a teacher such as Ramana Maharshi, or an unignorable inner calling to find our way through the trappings of the ego-mind, and out of the prison.
How many times have we heard this world is a dream, an illusion? Every now and then, some of us may have visceral experiences of the unreality of this dream-world. But those experiences tend to be fleeting, and unless we start to undo the thought system of the ego-mind, we fall right back into the dream-world, convinced it’s the real world.
It’s a tricky place, this planet. So much is happening all over the world, conditions seem to be spiraling out of our control. With the outside world seeming so out of control there’s nowhere to go anymore but inside.
We can stay in the story, if we want. It’s a helluva compelling story. In fact, the story is deliberately designed to be compelling, so as to make it seem more real than our inner peace. But…we’re too much in the story. We can choose to be less involved in the story and still act in this world from love, from peace, from forgiveness and compassion. From that point of view, we choose to be in the REAL world of God/Spirit. ©
Isn’t Being Disillusioned The Point?
Vishali Shahin B.S., R.N.
Spiritual Mentor
Certified Meditation Teacher
Spiritual Journey Tour Guide
Quantum Touch Energy Healer