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charakterpanzer
March 2009 
Enlightening the Passions - Day 14
Mushin
(Tomorrow some editing - now I'm too tired to do so...)
Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky. -- Chippewa, translated by Robert Bly
What is it about listening that is so amazingly difficult?
Listening to my heart - that place where many feelings reside - can be amazingly difficult, especially if it's sound is not to my liking. Exploring what I feel today I notice that often time it feels like there is a restriction around my heart, something that tightens it up and makes my breathing a bit more shallow as if not to feel it.
But that doesn't help.
It reminded me of the thorns around the heart that you see so often in Christian icons. You wouldn't want that heart to expand into the thorns, would you?
But exactly that is needed. As sordid as I find a religion who's main character is depicted as dying on a cross in its temples of worship (especially since the message is that "He is risen"and not "He has suffered and is dead"), the truth I find when giving in to the pain and difficulties - feeling whatever it is that comes up in this situation now - can lead into a greater flow of life; a feeling of being saved and held by some greater Grace that I cannot understand.
Actually when I'm not in this incredible flow that was so prominent yesterday, and still somewhat touches this day, especially during sharing what's truly on my heart and mind... when I'm not in that expansive flow then very often there is this more or less subtle constriction in my heart area, or the more or less tight knot in the stomach and all the other phenomena that I've dived into these last two weeks.
Clearly, as I stated yesterday, I find that there is no unconditional this, that or the other. So what about the basic premise of this experiment that I want to be with my feelings unconditionally? Am I willing to admit that I failed? Have I failed?
I can't say, certainly, because the experiment isn't over yet - I promised myself to keep it up at least 3 weeks (creating new habits, it is said, takes 3 weeks to take a hold). But I found something that is a bit closer to what feels true: Unrestricted feeling (not in the expression but in the feeling of) is a necessary basis of all truly human connection.
To know about my connectedness with you I need to feel you in the field, and I also need to feel my e-motions, those motions inside of me - I need to be with the feeling-field as much as with the knowing-field, and probably even more so.
Wilhelm Reich, the 'father of bioenergetics', and one of the deemed infamous students of Freud, coined the term "Charakterpanzer", character-armor, which, according to him was bodyparts hardening and storing the traumas that we experience in life. I'm not a fan of bioenergetics, but I feel now much more what is meant by Charakterpanzer (pronounce kuructarpuntsur - "u" as in understand). And I actually feel it as pain, constriction, suffocation, separation, denial and all its many subtle and complex modifications.
What I want, no, what I absolutely need in relationship is an unrestricted feeling-flow. In relationship with myself, with my partner, with the people that are dear to me, and actually with everybody.
The Western imagery of pointing out the heart as the center of our feelings seems to be very fitting, although the body-feeling-field is much larger and would, in my experience take in everything in between my guts and up to my throat (my sexual organs being a 'special case' in that is is much more a sense-organ than an area of what I've called feeling in these communications about the experiment). In speaking about the feeling-center I don't mean the heart-chakra; I've felt it shine and feel it sometimes still, but that's of a different dimension or level, not as closely connected to the affairs of life as what I'm working with and working through these days. When the flow is there it seems that my heart is at the very center of this flow...
So today I've been with the restrictions or constrictions of the heart when they appeared. And I found what is my basic practise: I would call it "unrestricting myself" so that I can be with the feeings, my own and those of the people I'm with. Not stop or restrict them; not even by going with "O, I know what you mean" because really, I don't - often. If I give myself time instead of restriction, if I give the other time... flow is a natural consequence.
So unrestricting myself again and again and again, or being with the feeling dimension of every and any occasion, has come up to be the most wonderful practise - something you might want to try..
Access: Public
What a delightful practice, Mushin! I call it the 'goddess' practice, because in those moments when I manage to embody her, that's exactly what it's like - it's a relaxing into - a surrendering - to the fullness of the feeling in the moment. Whatever it is. And what more worthwhile and meaningful moments to do it in than when we are in relationship. There is a posture that goes with this - an opening of the chest - a baring of the breast, almost. A dis-armouring which allows us to meet the world heart first, and just breathe in - and breathe into - whatever is arising in the fleld.
I am so thankful for your discipline in keeping up this practice, Mu. You are an asset to humanity.
the following is largely a pm that I just sent to a dear friend who will not mind I am sure that I am sharing it with you. The synchronicity of your experiment and the contemplation I have been pursuing for the past month is extraordinary.
Intense days indeed dear Mushin.
First, I can feel the congestion of emotion (say fear, ok?) that surrounds you (us) as, with little effort, I find myself in the same spot, back to the wall, sliding to the floor, hands and head to my bent knees, just waiting for the latest xxx to pass. I sit with you, just there in such a place.
In that moment, I try this:
I face the fear, really, or point my attention to whatever direction it might be coming from, ie:
“OMG, what-if… “ fears in the future? - directly ahead, the “portent”
secret liabilities in the past? - behind me “the shadow”
taxes, fascism, control freaks? - off to the right (the “righteous”)
temptation, decadence, corruption? - off to the left (the “sinister”)
Pestilence, lightning, deluge, Abrahamic God-smiting? - overhead, the “mighty”
Lucifer, loss, death in the family, lava, snakes? - beneath our feet the “scurrilous”
All day, every day, we face a little bit of all of this shit though we rarely admit it or are even aware of it. Literally, we are surrounded by fears. They press in on us from these 6 vectors all of the time.
So, face the fear that is preoccupying by acknowledging it as specifically as possible:
“I am afraid that my best friend is going to friggin' die from cancer right before my eyes and there is nothing that I can do about it and i will be left alone to contemplate my own mortality and soon it will be my turn to die miserably and alone.” (out loud works best)
Try to imagine, using the 6 vector approach described above, to identify the direction from which the named fear is pointing towards you. Once you have named the fear and followed your attention out to where the fear is approaching you, turn and follow where the fear is pointing into your heart center. When you get the point of the fear's arrow to coincide with your heart center, imagine that it is turning on a switch that ignites the furnace of God's love for you that is ever-burning there.
The light that then comes on is like a 6-rayed beacon of indescribable power (the real, and only CROSS imo) blasting v-shaped rays of white light off in these 6 cardinal directions.
Acknowledging the 6 directions, follow the one direction that leads back out towards where the fear was approaching you and observe the light displace the darkness of the fear. Rejoice! Offer gratitude to Shiva. Repeat as necessary.
Works for shame, and powerlessness too.
love,
Michael
Thank you dear Helen - I like it, the “goddess process”.
For me - at least in my refections on this process and what it is I'm doing - it's mainly about “stopping the restriction”. So any time that has happened (I'm getting closer to 'catching it when it is happening', but not quite there yet) I find my breast to be bare, to use your wonderful metaphor.
I'm so much trained in discarding my feelings that I often, when maybe restricted in some way, “What is it I'm feeling right now?” This immediatly reconnects me to the feeling-field and through that with the person or situation I happen to be with/in.
And thank you for your continual encouragement…
Love,
Mushin
Dear Michael,
that's a most interesting practise you describe, and I do like the 6 directions orientation. The short sketch you've given makes a lot of sense.
I don't know what I'll be up to in a couple of days when the experiments official period ends - I might look at using/co-creating such a 3D mandala for my negative feelings… and then I might look at it in a different way seeing that what I call negative in one situation is somehwo positive in another.
This goes for 'smaller challenges' like distrust and curiosity, for instance, but I don't know if the same holds true for the more intense ones like jealousy after the fact…
Also you write “acknowledge it as specifically as possible” where I would say that I go only for the headline, and not the story. But most likely, and from what follows, I gather we're speaking about the same procedure. “Get the bloody thing on your radar in its entirety!”
I find the rest of the procedure also very interesting, and I think that approach is very helpful.
My discovery is that the feeling itself, when welcomed again and again in the way described in these blogs, is somehow transmuting - at least some of it, and this transmuted feeling-aspect works its alchimical wonders on the wholeness that is me.
There is a strong element of surrender in 'my' process; and strangely enough, when I reflect on that I find this statement, “You don't surrender to the weather, and even accepting it is not a great thing at all; you just behave appropriately.” So with surrender I actually mean the acknowledgement that my feelings are flowing/happening all of the time, mostly without any awareness on my part. That is fine, I think, but right now I'm in the mood to become aware of this constant flow and I decide to not deny any aspect of what appears within my feeling-field (or on the horizon of my feeling-awareness).
And that in itself seems to be an alchemical procedure in its consequences.
Thank you very much, Michael, for sharing this
Love,
Mushin