An Article by Doug Esse

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The following is taken from an email dialog with a friend regarding three things: 1) that all familiar feeling of powerlessness; 2) powerful base emotions such as grief, anger, and shame; and 3) ways to appropriate those two within the spiritual life based upon living out the Law of One

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Three primary base emotions that can live right there at the core of ourselves are grief, anger, and shame.  They are often interconnected.  The one thing below that in our unconscious is the degree that we feel we belong. So many of us have wounds there. Brené Brown helped me to identify these and her work has been so healing for so many, myself included.  I often link many of her videos to clients and friends because they have been so helpful to me.

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It is quite true that the Ra group mentions several times how silence is the key to moving forward in the spiritual life.  They do not suggest a particular meditation style. Whenever someone feels intrigued to try some meditation is great.  Silencing the mind is a very effective way to allow the unconscious to gain some healing.

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At this point, I’ll share that my own approach to the One Infinite Creator definitely falls within the bhakti idea of devotion to a beloved.  Though I know I am one with the Creator, and I am the Creator having an experience of me, I also choose to relate to the Creator as a Person who holds me inside.  When I am suffering about something I have become powerless to deal with, I fully admit my powerlessness and offer up my pain as a sacrifice. In fact, the word, “sacrifice,” actually means, “to make holy.”  I return the pain in a gesture of a grateful offering.  Sounds paradoxical?  To some, it might, but it is really all grounded in the idea that what hurts is actually the very epicenter, or portal, to my growth.  And growth is measured in how I am transformed in more love so I can hold more compassion for others and for myself.

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I ask the One Infinite Creator to enter me, to enter my heart, to give me the feeling of belonging  and healing that I desire.  I also make a gesture to God that I surrender into God…that I melt into God.  In this way, God indwells in me and I indwell in God.  When I do this, I feel a balm wash over my pain.  It may still be there, but it is muted and the duration of its presence shortens.

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This is how I feel when I do Centering Prayer every morning.  The idea is to bypass the conscious brain so that my unconscious is directly touched by the Divine.  It is an acknowledgement that I am in the presence of Presence, Itself, and then there is no more “I.” It’s just a melding and direct participation in the divine flow.  I sometimes feel a radiant intimacy throbbing right in my heart.  Centering Prayer is boot camp for kenosis or self-emptying and overtime, it has a great effect on healing my pain inside. This is true not only because the silence of mind signals the unconscious to release that which has been bound up tightly and denied but also because there is a “Who” within Whom I can reside and Who can heal me.

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So, this kind of spiritual approach is, in a way, a shortcut through cosmic metaphysics because its primarily based upon relationality. And relationship is THE key force behind the One Infinite Creator’s Creation. Creation is nothing less than the Creator relating eternally with Itself.  There’s really nothing else but relationship in the Octave.  And relationship heals. It is the basis of the Ra group’s well known reminder, “The original desire is that entities seek and become one” (session 20.27).