Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Spirit

I am observing the spell cast on my spirit by my psyche – this is the reality that I have been living for a while. I have felt a vise like tightening in my heart, a cloud of anxiety in every thought that I think, a shadow of insecurity in every feeling that I feel and a loss of Self in every moment that I have spent when trying to live as a witness.

This can only be described as self-sabotage. There is a feeling of amusement observing this consciously unconscious pattern of behavior. There is also a sense of liberation as I see myself emerge out of it. I feel like I am gradually unshackling my spirit after being subject to considerable emotional larceny. Becoming grounded again they say. Stay with the feeling of a strong sense of Self – one that is larger than the daily egoistical, self-serving and self-indulgent identity that I have so carefully cultivated and protected. True liberation and total happiness can only come from beyond concepts of memory, hope and analysis. True liberation has to come from a place outside the mind and within the heart. Where there is no yearning for something that never really was and no projections to something that never really can be.

Is this human nature then? Is this sense of internal conflict what keeps driving us further and further in this process called Life? Is challenge, even at the expense of emotional, physical and mental peace, the catalyst required to really experience life fully – to advance the story? Even Flow can never really be related in entertaining anecdotes, portrayed in high drama or expressed in lucid language. It’s like this child on this flight in the seat in front sitting between his parents. He speaks sweetly and laughs until they fall into a state of unguarded relief – and then he lets out a banshee like screech that could shatter the window panes and hopefully suck him out of the craft. He waits for their shocked, chagrined and helpless reactions - and lets out a jolly laugh. He’s testing the waters, adding spice to their lives, creating chaos and enjoying their reactions.

And that is what happens during a spiritual eclipse of the heart. The ego, revolving continuously around it, waxing and waning like the earth around the sun, experiencing, alternately, warm joy and frigid fear, finally succeeds sometimes to cast a complete shadow – that seems to envelop everything in hopeless darkness. High anxiety and deep fear emerge as the tools that I then use to deal with this temporary loss of Spirit. Everything feels out of whack because of this grand delusion that this darkness is my reality now, and Spirit, temporarily forgotten, can do nothing but wait.

But even a total eclipse eventually ends. Spirit emerges from under the shadows and waits for me to recognize it again as the center of my heart. The temporary delusion of dark emptiness cast by a sadly complex ego, yearning for attention and identity, fades away as the warm glow of spiritual sunshine fills my heart with a strong, soft, sense of Self.