Stepping Into the Intensity
Adentrarse en la intensidad
The teacher explores the nature of energetic intensity, how anxiety often masks a deeper current of creative and relational force, and why moving toward that intensity is a way of stepping out of identification.
Stepping Into the Intensity
The teacher explores the nature of energetic intensity, how anxiety often masks a deeper current of creative and relational force, and why moving toward that intensity is a way of stepping out of identification.
These energies flow, and as they flow, they become felt. They become present. What you're calling "intense," I'm imagining, is some form of energetic. And that is often where we push away.
That energetic might one moment be about speaking up in a group like this, or about sitting still. Maybe the intensity is to sit still under a tree, like the Buddha under the bodhi tree. That was intense. Christ in the desert: that was intense. Those are stories, metaphors, but sitting still could be the most intense thing you could do. And then another moment, the intensity could be starting a business, or writing music, or creating a sculpture. That can be tremendously intense, because the energy moving is very deep creative energy.
Maybe the intensity of one moment is around initiating some form of relationship. That's the mystery of life.
The context shapes the energetic
The energetic of speaking up in a group where there's a deep commitment to openness, honesty, and vulnerability is very different from, say, a marketing course. In a marketing course you could speak up within a context of saying things that are less exposed. You might still be nervous, but it won't carry the deeper energetic of a group where the commitment and invitation are to be honest, deep, and authentic. That's going to bring up a whole other level of intensity.
These groups carry energies that are more mysterious, more alive and moving, compared to other contexts, even when we're on Zoom. I remember, when I lived in India, I would connect by video call with my teacher, who was in Argentina. I would start to feel this really deep, powerful energy hours before the call. I would get on the call, mention it, and he would say, "That confirms my sense, because I was feeling it too." There's a deep energetic that has to do with relationship, and it really shows that distance and locality, as physics says, are not absolute. Not absolutely real. It's very strange at one level, but it's also very natural.
There's a general anxiety, but there's other stuff involved as well, which made me curious about it. Almost an excitement.
Yes, that's what I'm trying to speak to. The nervousness and the anxiety are more on the surface. That's what you'll notice first, because it's more readily apparent. But what I'm pointing to is something a little more subtle and deep. At some point it might become more of the foreground: this deeper energetic, the vulnerability, what's moving at the heart center. The nervousness and anxiety are just the way the mind responds to, or deals with, that deeper energetic.
The deeper connecting force
It's like the saying, "When two or more meet in my name, I will be there." There is that. Think of it not as a person, or as God. Think of it as a mysterious, deep connecting force, just to call it something. We don't have to name it Jesus. We could call it Buddha, the tree of life, or the sacred mouse, the bringer of joy. The name doesn't matter.
Moving toward the calling
My recommendation, always with the caveat of discernment and listening, is to step into that. When you feel the sense of something calling you in a certain direction, and there's a nervous, anxious response, that's a sign to move toward it. Don't miss the opportunity. It's actually a way of stepping out of identification, stepping out of the known, out of the world of thought, and into the reality of energetics, the flow of the forces of life.