This world we live in is filled with increasing conflict. And the question is, is there any way in which we as individuals can become something that is not a continuation of this suffering so that by our own work we begin to be a different kind of human being? The answer is most assuredly yes, but to do so, we must first work at new understanding.
When we fall down physically, gravity pulls us down. But have you ever fallen down in a relationship, or when sudden economic news came at work, or when a thought revisited you about what mother or father didn't say? When the unwanted moment comes, when the disturbance is there, why do we fall down into the negative state? The reason we fall down into negativity is because that's the best we know to do at the moment. It's mechanical. It's a default action.
Every time a certain event takes place in our life, whatever it is, our response is to succumb -- yield to the gravity in ourselves that pulls us down to the lowest part of ourselves -- which is what we express in terms of being negative, depressed, angry, or frightened because those states, when they appear, convince us that it is our choice to be that way. But no one chooses to compromise or limit themselves!
In the moment of a fear, resentment, or regret -- the moment in which we're carried back to the past with some pain -- everything depends upon what we do in that moment of gravity. Because to simply acquiesce -- meaning, to simply allow ourselves to be turned over to that mechanical, habitual behavior we all know too well -- is to fall down! But there is the possibility in our lives of not falling down. We can learn to fall up.
Imagine for a moment what it would mean to be able to fall up: Someone hurts you, and you don't fall down into hating them. You wake up on the wrong side of the bed and you don't fall down into depression. You hear bad news about your health and you don't fall down into fear. Instead, you fall up. What does it take to fall up? What does it mean to go up?
It starts by realizing the time we change is when this descending falling force is acting on us, because it is then that an opportunity for rising exists.
With that understanding in mind, here are Five Steps to Falling Up When You're Just About to Go Down:
1. Catch the Downdraft
Come awake and stay awake. Be aware of yourself and your surroundings. Be aware of your body, of your emotional state. To be awake is not to be apart from anything. As best you can, be aware of the whole moment so you catch the downdraft.
2. Sense the Feeling of Gravity
It is the awareness of the whole moment that allows you to feel the tug of gravity. Negative states always come in the form of something pulling or pushing on you as a form of gravity. Become sensitive to the tug.
3. Release the First Response
After you catch the downdraft and the feeling of gravity, consciously release your first response to what has come to alert you to, "See what is." Release the automatic "No!" from the part of you that instantaneously gravitates to what it knows to do. This jolt of negativity belongs to an instinctual part of yourself that is a kind of memory to which the body actually becomes addicted. Release that first reaction.
4. Reach for the Light
The fact that you can catch and release your unconscious response in the moment of the downdraft is a gift of the Light. So when you feel yourself falling, learn what it means to be able to call upon the Light as opposed to calling upon a negative state. Instead of getting caught up in that interior whirlwind where you're trying to figure out how to escape a problem, let the Light into your life. Align yourself with it. Give yourself to that Light, to the awareness of the situation, and not to the self that seeks solutions to the problem it has named and defined.
5. Bear the Light
Stay there in the Light, inwardly, letting it be there, doing what it does. You have to bear the reconciling force. This is conscious suffering. It is an actual moment of rebirth, because who you were (meaning that which led up to the moment) has now found itself falling. But instead of going with the negativity that concludes it is necessary, you bring yourself into the Light that reveals the whole process. Integration begins by the action of the Light and you giving yourself up so something new can be born. You have allowed the Light to do what the Light is intended to do, which is to illuminate the moment with revelations that bring into you the possibility of reconciliation, so that instead of going down, you move toward the Divine.
Learn what it means to fall up. When you catch yourself falling down, just remember yourself. And instead of going down, release the first negative response. Come wide awake, remember what you're here for and what you want. Bear what you have to, and then watch as something brand new is born in you. You'll see it for yourself, if you'll do it.
