The Contraction Is Always Self-Originated
La contracción siempre se origina en uno mismo
A reflection on how contraction arises from within, how we project its cause outward, and why taking responsibility for it is essential to both spiritual growth and personal development.
The Contraction Is Always Self-Originated
A reflection on how contraction arises from within, how we project its cause outward, and why taking responsibility for it is essential to both spiritual growth and personal development.
We create beliefs based on our past, based on trauma, based on society, the world, or any number of external sources. When we choose a belief, what usually happens is that we experience reality in accordance with it. What I am saying is this: look at why the contraction happens, because you will clarify that it is not triggered by something external. There is a choice happening. And in that choice, we can own the contraction. It can become a part of our internal reality.
Undoing the split between "I" and "not I"
What this does is undermine the split we create when we call something "I" and something "not I." The mind itself could be cast as "not I." Some people talk about the ego in the third person. There are all sorts of ways in which we can pretend that the contraction is outside our volition. That is why it is important to look at why we contract, why the contraction is happening: to undo all the beliefs, all the ways in which we fail to take responsibility.
You could look at it from two sides. One is the spiritual side. Today there is a strong calling to non-duality, and from that perspective you can see that the contraction is supported by a belief in duality, a belief that there is something outside of me causing it, something I have no power over. The other side has to do with simply wanting to grow up, to develop, to outgrow limitations. From that perspective, you can see it as taking responsibility.
Conditioning and the residue of contraction
The contraction is always self-originated. However, it can happen that there is a memory issue, a kind of conditioning, where you notice that you are contracting but you cannot stop it. If you make your hand into a fist for two minutes and squeeze as tight as you can, then start to let go, you will see that there is still a remaining tension. That tension is not created by anybody other than you, by your own body at the level of the body. It is similar when we start to pay more subtle attention to contraction. There is a period where we can begin to sense: yes, this is a deep contraction originating in myself, but it needs time and attention to undo, to relax.
That is a really good place to be. From there, we can start to pay attention and taste the feelings and emotions that may come up as the contraction becomes undone, as it unfolds. The contraction exists in service of not feeling something, something we have not yet become comfortable feeling.
What the contraction is protecting
For some people it is going to be anger. For others, anger is very easy, so it might be loneliness. It might be some form of fear, or pain, or a sense of emptiness, or a sense of boredom. It is a very personal, very intimate thing. But the contraction is always organized around a sensation, a body-located feeling or emotion that we are deeply uncomfortable with. The contraction numbs that feeling. Then, once the contraction is in place, we project the uncomfortable sensation as being caused by something outside of ourselves.
From that point on, we worry about controlling those triggers, controlling what we experience as the cause. All of our energy goes into managing that which seems to trigger the contraction, which seems to be its source. But the actual cause is that there is a sensation there that we are numbing, and we are walking around with it.