Tempest
Overcoming the Emotional Storms of Life
By Kosi
Life was rolling along like it always rolls along—then wham—out of nowhere an invisible tempest shrouded the world in the dark shadow of fear, anxiety, uncertainty, and death. The experts on pandemics saw this coming for years but simultaneously were blind to the incredible speed this plague would spread around the world—a global blind spot. Certainly, it is surreal that a virus invisible to the eye wields such immense power that it brought all of our lives to a sudden screeching deafening halt. But what if there is a greater purpose for this unprecedented change? What if there is a gift in this moment of profound heartbreak and uncertainty? What if it represents an opportunity to discover something much more potent that is also invisible to the eye? For it has been said, and it has been written, for everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose. But what is the purpose of this sudden global stop? How do you overcome the heartbreak of loss and the fear of uncertainty?
The landscape of your life is filled with hills and deep valleys—moments of joy and moments of heartbreaking emotional storms that appear unexpectedly on the horizon of your life. Often the dark clouds of emotional heartbreak can vanish as quickly as they appear, but this is not always the case. The dark thunderclouds of heartbreak and loss can hang over you like a thick fog locking you in a virtual prison of the past for months or even years. The pervasive belief is given enough time the shroud of heartbreak and loss will fade and eventually disappear. But a soldier whose buddy was killed while his body was blown to bits might recover from his physical injuries, but the shock, loss, heartbreak, and pain is frozen in time—the searing memory is locked in his limbic brain.
The brain actually has no concept of time and combined with the innate power of the mind to remember, the mind automatically brings traumatic events vividly into the present as if this unwanted event was occurring again in this moment. The mind tends to keep revisiting the past automatically hitting the repeat button in a futile attempt to fix or change the past to end the nightmare or produce a different result. But this attempt to change the past is like trying to grab a cloud in the sky—it simply doesn’t work. This power of mind serves only to re-traumatize again and again forcing the person with trauma to relive the past in this moment—the heartbreaking agony of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Time simply does not always heal. The deep searing wounds of PTSD can last for years if not decades especially if you are unaware of how your mind and ego work to re-traumatize you again and again. But what if there is something that can break this vicious cycle? Certainly, we are all experiencing a profound moment of loss—the heartbreaking loss of someone you love, the loss of the freedom to do what you want, to travel, to hang out in a café, or go to a concert or sports event. The world is at a standstill. Now after several weeks of this global stop, everyone is starting to feel the proverbial itch to get back to the way things were—the mind is hitting the replay button on a global scale, but clearly this is not possible right now and quite possibly things never will be the same.
The emotional pain moments of loss or traumatic events generate can be so devastating the pain feels physical like your heart is on fire or shattered into pieces. Or you keep experiencing the pain of a past event over and over again in your mind. It is a mental and physical agony that continues over time. This pain can be so overwhelming that you can find yourself contemplating suicide in an attempt to escape from the clutches of this all-consuming pain. Sadly, suicide is one of the great human tragedies. In moments of sheer desperation, it can seem like suicide is the best solution for putting an end to pain. The problem is this does not resolve the pain—it only serves to add to the pain. The pervasive thinking is this is the ultimate escape, but in reality, this is virtually guaranteeing that the pain and suffering will continue for eons—millions of incarnations are required to atone for the pain generated by suicide. This is the nature of karma.
The great surprise of suicide is you might be successful in ending the pain of your body, but you are still present in a different dimension of space and time—you are still present as a subtle body, which must reincarnate to atone for the pain suicide generates. Suicide simply does not stop the pain. It only destroys the body, but are you your body? Really? Certainly, the last thing you want to hear when you are in the grip of suicidal thoughts is a spiritual or metaphysical solution, which you might have already tried with no lasting results. Drugs and alcohol might have provided temporary relief, but ultimately it does not fix the problem—it is a physical pervasive agony that you cannot escape from no matter what strategy you implement to try and get rid of the past and the pain it generates.
The only effective solution is the transcendence of mind and your point of view felt through the senses of your body. This is the ultimate cure. But simply having this information does nothing to address your pain. The words can even seem shallow or meaningless in moments of severe pain or moments of extreme duress. This information simply does nothing to directly address the pain you are experiencing. The normal response when you are consumed in the fog of pain—is a deep belief and feeling that nothing works based on your own direct experience. This leaves you feeling desperate, alone, and only increases your despair and sense of hopelessness, which guarantees, your pain will continue. It generates a cycle or loop in your brain that keeps the suffering occurring over and over again. Suicide simply does not end this cycle. Instead, it stretches it out over many centuries.
The natural question that arises is; how do you break this vicious cycle? Is it even possible? The eternal truth is your awareness is free of any form of suffering. It is free of time and space. This vast invisible presence has the innate power to end any cycle of suffering that has plagued you throughout your life. It is closer than your breath and extends past the milk way and pervades the entire universe and beyond—whether or not you are aware of this vastness. This is the living truth that has been known for centuries. But again, this knowledge does nothing to free you from the endless cycles of suffering generated by your mind and ego. This is the truth. Mind cannot break free of mind. Ego cannot break free of ego. The mind and ego work in tandem in both a conscious and unconscious way, which keeps you trapped in the illusion of the past and serves to keep the cycle in place.
How do you break the cycle generated by trauma, heartbreak, loss, and despair? The answer lives in something invisible to the eye—incomprehensible intelligent omniscience with the innate power to put an end to the pain any suffering loop generates. Just like a mountain remains perfectly still in the midst of a violent storm this invisible presence alive in your heart is completely unaffected by the storms that blow through your life. If you look back over the landscape of your life you can notice that emotional storms that consumed your time and attention in the past have come and gone like clouds on the horizon of your mind. Most storms you experienced simply have disappeared and in some cases are barely remembered, but your awareness—the invisible presence—is still present and alive right now in this moment. The awareness of the awareness represents a radical shift in consciousness.
For this to shift in your awareness to be effective it is important to understand the nature of your mind and ego. The mind and ego have no real substance. It is reflective consciousness infused with your five senses and the invisible power of pure conscious awareness. This reflective nature of your consciousness is like an endless house of mirrors that produces unending sensations in your physical body. The mind has the innate power to generate images or memories that appear real in your mind and is the catalyst that generates your reactions to the tempests that unexpectedly appear and wreak havoc in your life. Reflective consciousness generates the pain simply because your mind and senses of your body combined with whatever you think, remember, or imagine transforms instantly into physical sensations and emotions and reactions. It feels very real. Traumatic events of the past can seem real in this moment—but are they? Is the past real in this moment?
Reflective consciousness generates a visceral illusion of you—almost like a hologram—a three-dimensional multi-sensory experience of you as your body. This grand illusion is automatically generated by your mind and ego faster than the speed of light. This reflective nature of your consciousness is illuminated by the vast invisible electromagnetic consciousness inside of you—the life force or invisible light that animates your body, but it is important to note that this electromagnetic field of energy is not limited to your body. It is a vast intelligent invisible omniscient presence that extends beyond the known universe—it is unlimited. This unlimited presence has the power to break the multi-sensory cycle of suffering generated by your mind, ego, and body.
The knowledge of this presence within you is only the first step in ending many forms of suffering, but knowledge alone does nothing to free you from cycles of suffering or suffering loops that repeat. The hard truth is you cannot end cycles of suffering primarily due to the fact that over ninety-five percent of your feelings and reactions are based on unknown aspects of reflective consciousness known as vasanas or the trauma stored in your limbic brain. In other words, you cannot break a cycle of suffering that you know nothing about or are only aware of certain aspects that you remember. The only solution is to see through the illusion of reflective consciousness. This is all well and good, but how do you see through an illusion that feels so real?
The only way to end cycles of suffering is first to stop, be still, and be quiet. This is one of the gifts of the global standstill—you have time to simply stop and give your attention to the silent awareness alive in your heart. This stillness and silence are essential to begin the process of seeing through the suffering loops generated by reflective consciousness. If you are not silent inside and out there is no space to notice what is really going on inside of you. If you keep listening to the mind chatter of reflective consciousness and keep believing your thoughts are true and real, the pain will continue to feel like it is out of your control—this is the great trick generated by the reflection of your own consciousness—an unending house of mirrors.
To see through this potent visceral illusion you must first confront your ego. What is this physical sensation of the ‘me’ that perceives what you think or feel? What is this ‘I am me’ you feel inside of you? Does this ‘me’ you feel inside have any substance? Who is thinking? Who is feeling? Who is this who? Who is the thinker? Who is the reader? This is a potent first step. Once you see for yourself that your ego is a thought with no real substance it creates the sense or feeling of an opening that allows you to notice something deeper.
This something deeper than mind and ego is indescribable. It is completely invisible to your eyes with the innate power to end any cycle of suffering, but for this presence to cut through the reflective nature of your consciousness you have to trust what you cannot see, taste, hear, smell, or touch. The trust in the invisible omniscience is the ancient key that unlocks the mystery of reflective consciousness. This unwavering trust lives in your heart. It is unseen intelligent omniscience that holds the ancient key to your salvation—the permanent end to eons upon eons of gross suffering—a deep seeing through the illusion of you and the direct discovery of the eternal truth of you.
As you begin to emphatically trust this omniscient depth there is a radical shift in your consciousness that begins to unfold organically. It is a natural evolution. More and more you begin to see through the illusion of you and discover ever more deeply the vast reality of you. This shift in consciousness changes your perception of the storms that unexpectedly enter your life—like any storm it has no substance and does not last. It rumbles through your life like a dark cloud, but ultimately has no impact whatsoever on the stillness of your awareness—pure conscious being—sat-chit-ananda.
In moments when a storm is raging in your life trusting an unseen presence can seem totally ridiculous. Trusting something you cannot see makes no sense to your mind. The mind naturally rejects this as total nonsense that simply will not work. It is important to realize your mind has tremendous multi-sensory power of you and your life until you realize that all of your strategies to fix the problems in your life or the search for something that will make you happy are based on whatever you think and believe, which only provides moments of relief or moments of happiness.
Total trust in the unseen is the essential surrender of mind and ego that enables you to see through the great illusion of your ego-mind and the pain it generates. Ultimately, this is the only way to permanently liberate you from the pain inflicted by your mind and ego. It is like the reflection on the surface of a still lake—a mirror that hides the depth of the lake. Likewise, the reflective nature of your consciousness hides the vast depth of your being that is always unaffected by the storms that rage on the surface.
The permanent end of the visceral illusion of suffering requires that the lake of all your unconscious tendencies—vasanas—be completely drained away or seen through as an illusion. The unknown aspects of your mind simply cannot be addressed by mind alone. But the unseen omniscience has the power to evaporate all unconscious tendencies of your mind. This requires total trust in the unseen and the complete and total relinquishment of the anticipation of a specific result or timeline.
This is effortless—you surrender everything you want or everything you believe is yours, your pain, the past, the future, and your stuff as well as this you that you ‘think’ you are into the vast invisible presence. It is the end of trying to fix or change or get rid of your pain. It is the end of the struggle of trying to make your life move the way you want.
The unseen presence is like the heat of the sun—over time the illusion of the water in the lake, your reflective consciousness, and the lake itself (the body that perceives) evaporates—leaving only pure conscious awareness—you do not do anything except relax and let go of all expectations.
This total trust in the omniscience frees you from the endless house of mirrors generated by reflective consciousness. Ultimately, it puts an end to even the most painful cycles of suffering.
This evolution of your awareness is a bit of a paradox it is transcendent of time, but also requires time for you to realize any lasting results.
Total surrender is the advent of liberation from eons of suffering, but it is only the beginning.
The end of suffering arrives when you least expect the suffering to end.
This is unexplainable nature of liberation—it cannot be forced.
Liberation is a natural evolution of your consciousness.
Tat Sat
<’)
( ~ >