Go with the flow

When life flows we resonate in attunement. Everything is as it is, and changes as it changes. The process of life and our experiences with it are directly interwoven.

When something interrupts this flow because we cannot integrate it, we call it a trauma. In this moment, it is not the flow of life which gets interrupted but our relationship we have with it. It is a disruption of communication which results in a split, a dissociation. Our awareness, our attention separates itself from the direct life experience.

Then our ego develops. It claims to be separated from the flow of life. But it only serves to protect us from unpleasant experiences of a painful reality. As soon as it has fulfilled this function it could say goodbye and disappear. Yet sophisticated as it is, it starts to talk us into constant vigilance to carefully avoid any similar experience so that the dreadful events at the moment of separation would never happen again. It makes itself indispensable by inventing new dangers and threats all the time. Finally, we take it as the genuine reality and experience ourselves as separated from the flow of life. 

When we are in the cage of separation, we suffer. We feel the tension between the beauty of the flowing life and the separated place to which our ego has banned us. We are like a prisoner who through the tiny window of his cell sees a bird fly by only once in a while and has no stronger wish than to be this bird swaying freely in the wind. Yet the exit is locked – this is how powerful the ego has taken possession of us.

Our suffering turns us into victims or predators. Either we whine because we suffer because we get too little of this or of that etc. Or we accuse others to cause our misery and turn ourselves into offenders. We make them suffer as they have made us suffer.

A small experience: I make myself on my way in the morning and put on my shoes. The shoelace rips, and my connection to life as well. I get annoyed about myself because I have torn the shoelace too strong and why I have let it become so late that I have no time to repair the damage. I turn myself into a victim. Then I scold the people who have produced such defective shoelaces which get torn apart at the slightest strain. It is betrayal to sell such a lousy product. I become the offender. I ruin my morning (by becoming a victim) and make myself believe that it is the others who do this to me (offender). 

Yet when I simply notice instead that the shoelace is broken, think it over quickly whether I have time to knot it or to look for other shoes, I stay connected to the flow. I enjoy this moment and the next to come. 

Many people feel the tension when they are not one with the life they are living. And when they do not want to give up their ego or when they not even want to put it into question, they reduce their tension by reducing their life. When they suffer from something, there is help – anesthesia by habits or addictions, cushioning by drugs or dulling, diversion by circular thinking and meaningless talking. 

Of course, life moves on, but the own part in it becomes smaller and smaller. A feeling of unreality and senselessness arises. The ego triumphs and the suffering has disappeared in a fog of disorientation and confusion. 

What is the alternative? First we have to look back to the origin of the split, to the origin of the ego. Courageously we dare to confront the trauma. We face the terrible and painful event as we know that this is the only way to get rid of our suffering. When we capture the moment of traumatization and stay with our attention and with the awareness in our feelings as dreadfully as they might be, the door opens gradually. We reconnect to the flow of life. We become one with our experience of reality. And the part of our ego which was formed in the dissociation of the trauma disappears. Instead, we have gained a piece of inner freedom and flowing with life is easier instead of commenting it from outside.

Enventually, any comment and any action of our egos is nothing but a part of the huge process of life, but it is a part which does not add anything to the growth of the whole, it only blocks its way.  Yet we have to cultivate tolerance and benevolence towards our shortcomings and learning loops. There is always a time to get out of the victim-offender pattern and to tune into the flow of life immediately so we can swim with it to wherever it likes to carry us.