Interpreting and intertwining an expanded spiritual practice with an updated version of the 12 step program for Recovery?
Our issues lay in our tissues
In order to go beyond our conditioned selves to find the dimension of ourselves that “is recovery” we have to go through the body. Our whole existence here in the physical world is an accumulation. What we have gathered as mind, body, experiences, and energy system make up our physical being in the physical world. There is a part of us that lies beyond all this that we generally have forgotten. This dimension of ourselves is what we are trying to recover. This dimension of ourselves is recovery itself. How do we go about opening ourselves up to experiencing this dimension for ourselves that is recovery?
Spiritual practice
First of all we learn and practice a specific kind of somatic therapy that balances, opens and releases what we’ve accumulated throughout our journey through life. This involves doing a specific simple kriya practice daily that starts to release what we’ve accumulated on a cellular level. Our issues, conditioning and trauma always get embedded in our tissues and stay buried there until we do something to open the system so they can start to be released. This is the first step.
The second part of the process is self inquiry
What are the things we look at in the self inquiry process and why?
The seven residual emotions and their shadow sides
Attachment/Freedom
Illusion/Insight
Lies/Truth
Grief/Love
Shame/Willpower
Guilt/Pleasure
Fear/Survival
There are seven things that align with the seven energy centers in the body. The emotional body is intertwined with the energy body. So, we are looking at these seven things, or stages, in the inventory/self inquiry process. In AA and other traditional 12 step programs, they only deal with two—anger and fear. I’ve found that this is grossly insufficient, especially when being brought up in a guilt and shame-based environment. So, we have to take this process further. How we respond to the world in order to survive is a result of what we have learned or accumulated. In recovery, just to survive is never enough, as we already have come to the realization that our lives are not 100% manageable anyway. We have to go deeper than survival in order to recover. The residual emotions that are accumulated and expressed through our learned and conditioned experiences affect how we respond to the world. Each emotional response clogs up our energy channels in the body. When the energy is constricted and clogged, it keeps us from experiencing the deeper levels of consciousness required for our growth and recovery. The seven emotions and their residual shadow sides are what we have to look at. They line up with the energy system in the body. We are all one inclusive energy but fail to experience this directly as a result of logic, the learned, and our self-protection and preservation mechanisms.
The Energy Body and Emotional Body Intertwined
When we continually respond to life and our relationship to life through the filter of the residual emotions, we never receive the gift and freedom of the other side. This self-inquiry process is about realization. The realization of who we are so as to bring balance to our existence through alignment. We must bring balance and awakening to ourselves before we can bring balance and awakening to the outside world. Even so, we will never completely balance the outside world. There are too many other forces at play. The only thing we have power over is transforming our inner world. Our inner life defines and creates our outer world, so we take a look at our inner world and how it was created and, in turn, how it creates our outer reality up to this point. We have to see how we respond to life from our accumulated self and how it affects our energy flow. The whole process of physical practice and self inquiry is about this.
Our energy system is like a creek. The water flows through a creek much like the energy flows through our bodies. If you look at a creek bed, there are pools where the water swirls around and gets trapped by sediment that is accumulated through the environment. These pools are like the chakras in our own energy body. There are seven main energy pools in the energy body. When life gets messy, things fall into the creek bed and clog it up. This blocks the energy flow. The sediment that is accumulated and keeps the water from flowing to its optimum potential is residual accumulated emotions, responses, survival skills, losses, failures, successes...and on and on. If we open the paths between the pools, the energy flows to its optimum level.
So the work we do is on our relationship to:
Fear-Guilt-Shame-Loss-Lies-Illusion and Attachment
so as to experience
Survival-Pleasure-Willpower-Love-Truth-Insight and Freedom
in a more complete, balanced and profound way.
The second part of the process is self inquiry
The second part of the process is self inquiry
The are the things we look at in the self inquiry process and why?
The second part of the process is self inquiry
