Necessary Pain

Occasionally, instead of connecting to the Cosmos and letting my mind dissolve into its Oneness for fifteen minutes when I've got home after a long day talking to computers, I allow myself a period of rage.

Sitting padmasama before my meditation altar with myrrh or benzoin heating in a brazier, I will, from time to time, let the images of past horrors arise, in all their gory detail. For I have an exceptionally gory past, and sometimes I let my mind deal with it on its own terms, rather than the world's.

These are not happy sessions. The angst and disturbance that remembering what a truly fucked up human I am capable of being - as we all are, make no mistake - is hardly likely to lend itself to blissful egoless connection with the All.

But it's necessary. The received wisdom is to have compassion for all, including,most emphatically, oneself. But it has never been easy to work through so many godsdamned demons.

Still and all, it's a task which must be accommodated, and I allow the memories and images to just flow, without attempting to stop them in their tracks, until they're done for the moment.

Acknowledging these demons, and their intertwining in my soul, their identity as very much a part of who I am this time around, allows me to move forward- slowly but inexorably -in the life's work of knowing Who This Is that resides in this body and this juncture of space and time.

And though I squirm - and come close to hating myself at times and for brief periods -I know this is good therapy, and required before I can even start to have that essential Love for the immanent deity I call myself. Which is in itself a prerequisite for knowing the Love and compassion which moves the sun and other stars.

Pic: Taranis knows all about it