A Portal of Understanding

The present moment is a portal of understanding, ripe with possibility and potential.

Through it, I can enter a world of hazard in the form of pure potentiality and access what was previously inaccessible. In other words, the present moment brings about choice.

Divine will enters through choice.

If the true ability to choose facilitates Will entering my world as action, then I work to enter into those present moments of understanding in order for that to happen. The present moment allows me to see my own conditioning and gives me the opportunity to act in advance of the takeover of said conditioning.

I have found that doing the work of leaning into the present moment has provided me with countless opportunities of this kind.  Each time I participate in this seeing and enter the portal of Understanding, I can choose.

My level of freedom is revealed by my ability to choose in a given moment.

When my system is in conditioned override, I am powerless to do that and must, therefore, struggle in an effective way.

Conditioning is almost like being in suspended animation. My logical brain sees my particular action as unskillful or undesirable, but I am unable to choose in the moment how to be. I act in a habitual pattern and can’t escape. I then regret the action, thinking it was a bad decision in the moment, when in fact, it was not a decision at all, but an incapacity to choose.

I have worked with certain themes or chief features for many years, uncovering subtle persistent layers that have kept me from having appropriate responses with others. These responses range from lack of healthy boundary to the inability to claim my right to space or even my own existence in no uncertain terms.

I have in the process watched reactions disappear. I have witnessed the growing strength within me taking charge where there was none. I have challenged my own fears of leadership. However, just when I thought I had uncovered the base layer, something arises within me in a given moment or interaction in which I am powerless to act as I know I want to.

For me, it most commonly manifests in the inability to say no. A recent incident provided massive understanding into a phenomenon that has its last vestiges of power over me. It surprised me and caught me off-guard.  

I saw the mechanism in action in a way I have never seen before.

I knew and recognized that it was a “flavor” of an experience that has happened over and over in my lifetime. Suddenly in this portal of Understanding, I could connect all the experiences and understand the takeover of the conditioning.

However, this time I recognized the finesse with which it was working within me.

It appeared in a tiny insignificant moment relative to life, but it also became one of the greatest moments of understanding. It was a portal of Understanding and Grace.

I can explain to you from a logical perspective that as a survivor of sexual abuse, things became hard wired in the department of lack of personal boundary, and the inability to say no. I may be able to explain to you that the limbic system overrides the logic of the cerebral cortex again and again when inconsequential events trigger its response of freeze within me. I may be able to explain the illogical perception that somehow, I am not accepted if I don’t do what people want me to do.

I may be able to know from reading about these subjects, or working with my own clients for many years, that all of us create coping mechanisms that can last a lifetime. These mechanisms are a result of the need to survive. However, we can’t do much with working to disable them simply by intellectually understanding them.

I have to work to know them in the moment, through consistent work with awareness to allow the awakening of my consciousness. I only know the dissolution of this mechanism by recognizing it in the moment from a completely different place within me. Doing this, I reclaim and integrate “I Am” until it becomes substantial enough to act.

This is how I chip away at the mechanism.

As I do this, something gradually takes the place of said mechanism.

From this new-found freedom, I remain vigilant for any remnants that appear in subtle tones.

Catching myself on this level makes way for large quantum leaps.

In this sense, saying no to a relatively small thing can remake me.

Let me know of situations in which you were powerless to act in ways that you wanted to. What is the predominant mechanism in your life? How are you working with it?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Love,

Molly