In the last post from this series, we went to a place so esoteric and obtuse that it almost fails to be useful. Now, there was a more practical directive stuck in there at the end, but it isn’t lost on me that generally speaking, the things we talked about don’t serve all that much immediate function. You’re probably not going to change your entire worldview after reading one post from a random guy on the internet. That’s okay. Like I said, I’m aware of the shortcomings of operating at such a meta level. I still think it’s valuable to spar with the harder-to-grasp stuff from time to time though, even as a beginner. The metaphor I’ve used in the past is that of speeding down an empty highway. The second you take your foot off the gas, your car will start to slow down. You won’t roll to a stop in 2 seconds, because you’ve got a lot of inertia continuing to propel you, but so long as you don’t step back on the gas, eventually the car will stop moving. That’s why I feel like it’s important to engage with all the higher level ideas from yesterday – because even if things don’t click immediately, the second you put them in your brain and let them start marinating, you’re taking your foot off the gas so to speak.
All that in mind, today I want to be direct.
Imagine your current state of knowing/feeling/thinking is a bucket of water. When you can drink from your bucket, the things you desire you’ll be able to manifest. But right now your water is dirty. So how do you proceed?
If the only issue is a couple big rocks at the bottom of your bucket, then the process is going to be easy. Just reach in and scoop the rocks out. Now your water is drinkable. But maybe it isn’t rocks you’re dealing with, it’s sand. Still, that isn’t the end of the world. Just run your water through a fine mesh filter and you’ll be good to go. I’d liken scooping out rocks or filtering out sand to using SATS or some other visualization exercise in isolation. When the water isn’t that dirty, you can just change its composition without much trouble. As in, you can just choose to hold a new state.
But what if your water is filthy? What if it’s got arsenic, and lead, and e coli, and radioactive waste in it? This is the equivalent of having deeply held, intensely felt negative beliefs. You can filter the water, boil it, sterilize it — you can do everything possible to try and clean it up, but it’ll take an awful lot of work. And no matter what you do to it, it still might not be drinkable.
A much easier solution is to simply dump the contaminated water out, then fill your bucket up with clean water.
This brings us to the title of todays post.
Get only by releasing.
This was a technique proposed by Lester Levenson, a teacher whose methods overlap significantly with Neville’s.
Essentially, what releasing means is when a negative feeling or aversion arises in you, instead of repressing it, resisting it, rationalizing it, or getting sucked in and feeding it further, simply let the feeling be there. If you don’t have an agenda with it, and see it simply as a feeling, eventually it’ll just run out of you.
The reason it can be useful to get by releasing is that the negative feelings which arise are what prevent us from manifesting in the first place. Think of it like this — any negative reaction you have to a thought or experience is something that was already inside you. When faced with something that triggers your negative junk, you’re provided with a valuable insight. Often times when we’re taught to change our belief or hold “positive states” we get in the habit of fighting our negative feelings or seeing them as failures.
But the arising of aversions, fears, or any general negativity is actually a good thing. Each time it happens, we’re gifted an opportunity to release — and when you stop fighting your reactions and just let them run out, you’ll come one step closer to manifesting your desires.
Experiment with this for just a day. Anytime you feel a pulse of negative emotion in regard to your desire, see it for what it is. Don’t resist it, let it be so you can release it. With a little practice you’ll find that released feelings fade away easily and it’ll be much easier to hold your desired state.
In short, you’ll be dumping out your water. And if you’re afraid by acknowledging your negative feelings they’ll end up manifesting, don’t worry. By resisting or repressing them, you allow them to run in your subconscious 24/7. When they pop up into your conscious mind, that’s when they’re vulnerable to being released.
Good luck!
Along with the concept of anxiety states manifesting things that further induce anxiety, I realized something a couple days ago that was along similar lines. The idea being self hatred, I've been so burned out, and frazzled, and generally not having a very cash money time, and this is going way back to childhood type stuff, but my first mental inclination when something is an inconvenience or blocker or just appears to be this looming hazard of existence, is to have the words, "I should kill myself," or some similar variation. And I got to thinking. If anxiety states keeps spawning anxiety states, then, these states of overwhelmed apathetic burnout or the like, will continue to cause more scenarios to have my first thought be of the suicidal nature.
So my bucket can never be cleansed, if I don't fully release a lot of this built up depression type stuff, and it makes sense that this huge mental load is hindering the efforts of something new because it was so dug in.
So, I'm cleaning my bucket.