I’ve come a very long way from the inwardly ungrounded young man who barely registered the existence or relevance of other people and outwardly could only make intensely intellectual and philosophical conversation from the mind and had no sense of how to dress or groom or even brush his teeth and put deodorant on.
With disassociation comes ungrounded expanded psychic perception, and merging consciousness with other life forms like a shaman. I use to keep a stack of black books where I kept channeled writings with different spirits and entities. I would astral project and work on healing the earth with other older psychics coordinating on earth via myspace.
All of these super-spiritual things look nice but were simply a symptom of my utter disassociation and lack of embodiment. Thankfully now that hardly ever happens: a sign I am much more in my body.
I now have a stronger sense of personal self and the body. I wash, I groom, I feed myself well. I am able to connect with my own feelings better and can register and value others, although I can’t completely feel what’s going on when two embodied people share.
The process to get even here was grueling. As my body came out of the rigidity of a freeze response so bad multiple second opinions put me on the autistic spectrum, I became even less functional! While I was totally disassociated and lived a completely mental existence, my ego and psyche were unbothered by emotion. I could present to others intensely philosophical and mental, maybe a bit rigid, aloof, arrogant, and cold but at least I could interact. As feelings started to bubble up my intellectual and indifferent and apathetic personality crumbled into neurotic projections. Over a decade of therapy got me functional and feeling and with a much-reduced tendency to disassociate.
Literally what I am aspiring to be able to do!
Spirituality now is being super simple and present. Not talking about spiritual stuff. I must admit I still have a spiritual fetish for spiritual stuff and can easily get ungrounded if I go to deeply into it. There is also real love in it too. Devotion. Still, I need to get away from chakras and deities and be more Zen, yoga and embodying.
https://tarabrach.libsyn.com/reconnecting-with-our-lives-healing-from-dissociation-2016-06-22
Tara’s podcast here really describes my inner state very well. I notice disassociation faster and avoid consummative behavior like Netflix binge-watching, Instagram reels, and computer games by uninstalling them when it gets compulsive.
A big takeaway from her talk is the issue of a lack of self-trust. It makes sense to me know why I am so plagued with self-doubt….
Another important insight is being not doing too much too soon. I remember years ago before I even started therapy, I attended a vipassana retreat. I was so psychosomatically overwhelmed with fear in my genitals I constantly thought I had to pee. That plus feeling all the internal organs pulsing all at once. I was totally unprepared to feel into my body.
We disassociate from feelings because we are unwilling to experience precisely because we take them personally. I relate shenpa to the basic desire of personal consciousness to experience something or not experience something. From that basic binary arises the emotional, psychological and context dependent reactions. So long as we are identified with a personal position, feelings have a reality for us, and from those feelings arise our thoughts, habits, reactions, behavior. Being able to impersonally be present with feelings helps with staying in the body and not going in action – just staying as awareness.
The whole point is to see through the lies and negative self-beliefs what form the witch’s brew of the personal self’s imperfect self-knowledge. While I may go on fixing my personality: my attachment style, my conditioning towards women and sex – true wellness is coming to unconditional self-love.
Gangaji says something very interesting: that escaping and fixing fall into the same category of activities postponing simple unconditional openness and impersonal self love of that lovelessness in us. You don’t have to fix or fight the ugly in you. Call off the war. You just have to meet it and be with it impersonally and be with it.
The personal self, or rather identification with the personal self, is only possible by – can only exist as – limited love. Meeting the limits of love in our personal self – something we don’t want to experience – and finding unconditional love for the lovelessness in ourselves is itself the key that unravels the lie of limited love that is itself the personal self. Coming to unconditional self-love is awakening.
My continuing practice to not disassociate:
- CBT has helped and I would like to continue treatment.
- Yoga and exercise in the morning really help bring consciousness into the nervous system.
- cold showers – Being with the difficult feeling of being physically cold in the body is a good practice for being with difficult emotional feelings. It also helps develop an impersonal attitude towards sensations – you personally dont want to be there – but you stay and just be impersonally aware. This depersonalization of the body and sensation really helps experience emotions with a pure impersonal awareness rather than a personal and reactive consciousness.
- A morning vipassana body scan meditation – after yoga. Vipassana was too effective for me in my 10 day silent retreat. It overwhemled my nervous system with psycomatic charge. That however proves its uselfulness in dredging up and combing out unfelt feelings. I think a short practice in the morning after yoga will help me better connect to my feeling state and slowly and safely help me clean up my subconscious.
- I’ve adopted Tara’s RAIN meditation as part of my daily practice. It really helps choosing to stay with the feeling and be present with it but also to grow in sensitivity to what I am feeling.
Further viewing: