Transcript from a meeting with James Eaton on 26 June, 2016
Q: I really resonated with just everything that you said yesterday. I’ve had a lot of old pain, and sorrow and new trauma and all this kind of stuff going on, and I’ve had to really sit with it for the first time, because there’s been such a long time impulse to shove it down or wish it away or be advaita about it: “it’s not me, it’s not me” (laughs)
James: Well said, well said.
Q: And the rage; I had it come up one time. I knew it was sort of behind me, like a thunder cloud, and I tried to go for a jog, like literally to get away (laughter) and then I got back into my car and it just hit me like a train, and it was an enclosed space in a quiet road and I was just like… (screams)
James: Fantastic.
Q: I screamed like never before.
James: Wow, yeah. And it’s so important to allow that rage, to feel into it with kindness, to love and honour it, really, it so desperately wants to be acknowledged, and all of your power and strength is in that. And when it’s held down and repressed, your power and strength is held down and repressed. So to honour that rage, to really love it! “Ah, look at that, wow. Look at the energy of that!”
Q: Well the loving hasn’t come until recently. I felt like I had all these open wounds and, it’s only just now, literally, that I’m able to see the pain and just accept it as part of me. And sometimes it’s delicious!
James: Look how you grow, look how you grow with that, it really is digestion. It’s true nourishment. It really is! Instead of splitting off, denying, using spiritual wisdom to push away – ah, we start to open, and we gather it all up, and we take it in, we digest it, we eat it. And we grow, we grow in compassion, in kindness, in understanding. We grow in love. We can finally acknowledge ‘what is’, fully. And then the sense of separateness begins to dissolve, because there’s nothing that’s being pushed away, nothing.
Q: And it feels like freedom, because there is nothing to push away.
James: Exactly, that’s real freedom. Thinking you’re free but denying rage is not freedom, it’s the belief in freedom. When rage doesn’t need to be escaped anymore, when it’s welcome like everything else, when there’s nothing that you’re beholden to, nothing you have to try and cleverly avoid, that’s freedom. Nothing partitioning up life, creating boundaries and locking things in.
Q: When you said yesterday: “why hast thou forsaken me?” I felt that grief from lifetimes.
James: Yeah, absolutely. It’s the big fall.
Q: And it’s only now I can see how compassionate life has been. Because I felt like: “Why is it putting me through that?” (laughs) And now I see what a gift it was, to bring up all that pain, so I could just love it.
James: Yeah, so you can grow and be this compassionate wondrous experience, this ever increasing circle of compassion and love and care. It doesn’t come for free it seems. It’s only when you really feel your own pain, that you can really feel into that world of compassion. Otherwise there’s always judgement. If there’s judgement for oneself, there’s judgement for others. It’s like a reflection. When we’re still splitting off from aspects of our ‘inner’ experience, we’ll still be splitting off from aspects of our ‘outer’ experience. And so, as we open fully to whatever we discover in ourself, we open fully to life. It’s real Love, capital L: the ability to acknowledge ‘what is’, fully, all of it, just as it is.
Q: I like how you were doing this (welcoming gesture). When something comes up that I don’t want to feel, it’s like a pushing away, I don’t want it, it’s not me. But then this (welcoming gesture) is like, “it is me, welcome”.
James: Beautiful. And you see your heart expands wider, deeper, to take that in, and that in; your proportions of compassion grow. Ah, and that too, and even that! (both laugh)
It’s as if life is providing, with absolute perfection, exactly what’s needed. Everything is offering more opportunity for that growth. And that, for me, is where the shift comes: the shift away from the wilfulness of the separate me, of “I’m going to do it my way”. Because ‘my way’ is always to try and hold together my version of myself, or to upgrade it, to make it appear more shiny. And as that wilfulness starts to dissolve, there’s a completely different movement. And if we’ve begun to acknowledge that life is offering us all the time, opportunity for growth, then it’s somehow easier to let go into that new movement. You just see how much more awesome it is to be moved by life, rather than this ‘little me will’ that’s trying to be seen a certain way. The tables begin to turn.
Q: It feels really new, it’s like I don’t want to touch it too much in case I…
James: Yes, you’re absolutely right. Let it bring itself on in its own time. There’s nothing that needs to push it. That would be going back again, to the separate me that needs something. “I am gonna use my wilfulness now to get in line with the universe and be universal will”. I mean that just doesn’t work! As soon as I want something I’m back in this cycle, grasping, reasserting ‘me’ as a separate individual self, divided off from everything else, isolated, alienated, vulnerable, fearful, protective. That’s the price we pay for that belief.
And then we just come back into this wholeness.
Yeah, beautiful. Being it, being it, now. ‘This’ is what You are! Here you are, all of this.
Q: Thank you
James: Thank you
I love what you said at the beginning there about, ‘advaita it away’. It’s amazing how ingenious this holding on to everything can get. It can even use these spiritual teachings to say “there’s nothing here, there’s nothing to work through, there’s nothing to do, it’s just illusory, it’s nothing. It’s just awareness, it’s all awareness”. And of course, that’s true, ultimately that’s true; as we start to really step into this, yes, what you really are is already everything, always was. And yet, there are all these beliefs that still cling on to a very different version of events, and just theoretically saying, “there is nothing to get, there is nothing to do”, it counts for nothing. It’s only when we actually courageously start to really step into these difficult feelings and sensations, and they start to open, that we’re walking our talk, we’re really walking our talk: yes, I am Love, I AM Love. And Love doesn’t split off from a difficult feeling, saying “it’s nothing, it doesn’t exist, it’s illusion”. Love welcomes it back into wholeness. And then all that talk starts to dissolve away.
