Like many people I talk to about the world of "personal practice," I gravitate towards having a couple core methods/approaches that I dive deeply into and turn toward regularly, and plenty of others that I draw from here and there. This works for me, best as I can tell. I’ve let go of the dream of finding that one method… that one teacher… that one practice that satisfies all of my needs (at least for now….). The Realization Process, needless to say, is part of that core for me. And I reflect quite a bit on why I have such reverence and appreciation for it. As I reflect, I see more clearly the unique support that RP offers and the unique ways it invites us to open more fully and deeply to life. One thing that makes RP unique is what I call the Realization Process’s radical invitation, which I’ll get to in a bit.
There are many reasons why it can be so difficult for us modern humans to consciously live in our bodies… to actually inhabit this instrument of our experience. And there is truly no blame here. We are profoundly conditioned beings. In addition to our early conditioning, the trauma we carry, the power of habit, cultural conditioning, and our disconnection from the earth (the list goes on), there is the reality that most of us live immersed in environments that encourage us (if not demand or manipulate us) to live from only a fraction of our being… from our thinking, conceptual mind. In a world that requires so much of us in the way of processing information, it understandably feels as though safety lies in the thinking mind. And ultimately, the creature that we are moves toward safety. So if the thinking mind is where we access even a faint, temporary feeling of safety (as a place where we can attempt to meet uncertainty and confusion by trying to control, prepare, figure out, manage etc.), then we are going to spend a lot of time there. And most of us do (myself included)... again, without blame. It's almost entirely unconscious. From our managing mind, we feel we can best meet the demands and expectations of the world, whether significant or subtle. This is also where we often feel some semblance of connection to others who are living primarily in this same part of their being.
To describe it another way, not much out there is sincerely communicating to us something with the flavor of, “Hey…. I see you’ve got a whole body over there that you can live in, and it’s safe to do so. I am truly willing to slowwww down for you…. for the tenderness in your heart. I truly want to hear the uncertainty that lives in your belly. Let’s give our minds a break. Let’s just slow the heck down, see what’s willing to soften. Let’s honor our sensitivity and pause to actually feel what’s here.” If you are lucky, you may recognize this quality of voice in that of a friend, partner, or therapist. To feel this sort of message communicated to us regularly, which I would say is a human birthright, is, for most of us, very rare. As I pause to feel into this reality, I feel a mix of emotions: sadness, frustration, despair and longing. I also feel inspired…. inspired to help cultivate spaces where people can disentangle from all the noise and feel what it’s like to receive that message.
And so it takes practice to learn to live in our bodies… to uncover the felt-sense of safety and belonging in our own being. It can also take an enormous amount of patience and support, and sometimes a fierce commitment to ourselves. Endless mercy for our humaneness and fierce commitment to our depths…. at the same time. We believe, often steadfastly and unconsciously, that the more we can manage and control with our minds, the safer, more predictable and better life will be. To settle back and down in our body and develop trust in a direct, felt-sense experience of ourselves and the world is a profound endeavor.
Now, this planning, judging, meaning-making machine that we call our minds is undoubtedly a natural and important faculty that we have developed as humans. And yet, it seems that for most of us in the western world, it has assumed an unhelpful dominance over our lives. We have a largely mentally-oriented experience, filtering almost everything we receive through the faculty of conceptual thought, and then attaching to these thoughts, unconsciously and incessantly. What about the rest of us? What about the receptive wisdom of our hearts? The quiet, clear understanding in the core of our head? The intuitive intelligence within our guts? How do we begin to access these beautiful qualities when so much wants to keep us glued to our thoughts, holding onto our concepts and beliefs for dear life?
I certainly don't have the answer or the solution to this profound, deeply personal human conundrum. I don't think one exists. What each of us needs is unique and the journey of remembering and embodying ourselves seems to be amazingly complex. That said, "What about the rest of us?" is a question that I love to explore, and I am committed to sharing something that has been a profound support for me.
This is where RP’s radical invitation comes in: an invitation to inhabit our bodies… to shift from a top-down awareness of ourselves and the world from our thinking mind (from that sliver of consciousness we often locate behind our forehead and eyes) to actually experiencing ourselves living and present within our body. RP has specific, powerful ways for inviting and helping to gradually deepen this shift. With practice, we start to notice more and more a distinct experiential difference between being aware of ourselves and inhabiting ourselves. Committing to this process can feel like we are coming into ourselves… like a hand slipping into a glove.
This is not just some nice sounding, lofty ideal. And it is not something that happens overnight. It is, thankfully, a process that has no end. It is a gradual deepening and unfolding. And this initial shift – even just a glimpse of this difference between being aware of and inhabiting ourselves – gets the ball rolling. Realization Process exercises are then meant to help us deepen and refine this experience of embodiment.
We are gradually shifting from an abstract experience of life to a direct, lived experience, less and less filtering our experience through mental maps and more and more receiving life directly, with our whole being.
Some days I feel like an infant on this so-called journey, contracted and struggling to inhabit my body, find my voice, or settle toward the earth. Some days I feel quite alive and inspired. I continue to come back to Realization Process exercises to honor my heart’s longing to more fully inhabit this miraculous instrument of my experience and grow in my capacity to meet myself and others freshly... as we are... in this moment. No easy task : )
So, I can say a whole lot more about this invitation and about RP practice, but I know I best leave you to explore this stuff for yourself, if you wish to. Because ultimately, all of the above are just words. Hopefully words that resonate, clarify, or even inspire. Yet they are only words. Transformational power lies in direct experience.
So if in reading you have felt a spark of curiosity or resonance – perhaps a deep calling – I invite you to join me in exploring how this practice of inhabiting our bodies can support the unwinding, opening, revealing and ripening of so much in our lives.
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