Observing the Mind of Dissatisfaction

I have discovered a new favourite method of emotional cleansing & clearing. I've only just learned this method some seven months ago, when I did my very first Blessed Herbs colon cleanse. I take baths, ritually, preparing the space for me to do some deep healing work on myself, culminating in several rounds of enemas. I gather all the necessary tools; bath salts, essential oils in the water, music, water, tea, smudge, but most importantly - the enema bag. I do my first round with half coffee - half water, following on subsequent rounds with pure water. I've grown to love doing three rounds of the coffee enema ritual, and have taken to doing maybe once or twice a month, as needed - when the need to clear out some heavy-hearted emotions arises. The most incredible meditations come through when I'm releasing with the enema. I squat on top of the toilet and release both waste and emotions. And the magic, I've learned, comes in through a deep state of relaxation - both in the mind and in the sphincter muscles. As I relax deeply, the colon releases more and more completely, and I go deeper and deeper into a profound state of meditation. It has become one of my favorite spiritual practices, because it facilitates opening up and surrendering and releasing the mind & thoughts & hurts & pains & frustrations. And I always seem to emerge lighter and brighter than I felt in the hours before. In one of my recent bathing + enema rituals, I had a major realization about the source of my pain. The realization came to me like a voice of pure light clarity as I was relaxing into a deep release of my colon. I had been asking "Why?" and the answer came as my voice speaking back to me: 'I don't like this,' 'This food is not good,' 'This place feels weird,' 'I don't want this,' 'I don't like these clothes' and on and on. I was hearing a litany of my voice coming back to me, speaking to me all the ways in which I have told reality that I don't like such and such, or don't enjoy being in this environment; in general the voice of dissatisfaction and complaint. It's a voice I know only too well. I'm sure on some level, many of us feel irritated and aggravated because things aren't how we want them to be. We want things the way we want them. We want our food to be as we like it, we want our environment to be suitable to our liking, etc. As a teenager, my parents began telling me how it became difficult to listen to me any longer, because everything that came out of my mouth was a complaint. I had to realize that it was true; I wasn't happy. I spent the first 18 years of my life in Ohio, unsatisfied, unhappy and lonely. I will never forget an incredible lucid dream I had four years ago. In the dream, I was in a room, with my legs on the floor, and I began feeling myself stretching and stretching further and further away from my feet, until my legs and feet were far away and I had separated completely from my body, and was flying towards a portal in the sky. I knew that I was dreaming lucidly by this point, and when I emerged out of the Portal I asked to visit an ancient culture - specifically the ancient Mayan civilization. Soon, I was flying over large stone-masonry buildings that were in the shape of mounds, and there was no one to be seen. I touched ground and ascended the steps of a stone building, and walked right past my grandfather, who had been deceased for more than 10 years. His face was so perfectly clear and lucid, it was hard to not stop in confusion and speak to him, but I was magnetized towards a table in an open air courtyard. I passed my uncle, my father's younger brother - also visually clear as day, and as young looking as he was when I was a child. I sat down at a table with my two brothers and my parents. It had been years since I'd been a child sitting around a table with both parents eating dinner. My brothers had returned to their teenage selves, but the most incredible thing occurred in the dream. I began hearing everyone's thoughts. And every thought coming out of every family member around the table was a complaint or a judgment. I heard my brother make a judgmental remark about me, and my other brother make a judgmental complaint about the food. I heard other judgmental inner dialogue thoughts as clearly as though they were being spoken. And at moment of melting out of the dream, I observed myself uttering the same caliber thought form of complaint. And it was at that moment that I had my 'Ah-ha' realization, and I returned to my bed. In the years since that dream, I've done a lot of healing work on myself, but still that part of me that is dissatisfied and wants to complain is there. I've finally begun to look at it honestly and not be in denial that it is myself, my thoughts, my mind that is creating the dissatisfaction - not the external. It's a big thing to reckon with and own. I've observed that I don't like that part of myself; it is an ugly, frustrated aspect of myself that creates and maintains a low energy.Last night, it returned - in a much less overwhelming state than usual, but the circumstances of my situation were such that I began observing my mind go into nit-picky irritation. We were at a dance gathering. After some time of dancing in a very quiet, internal & meditative state, I sat down and enjoyed a relaxing meditation time blissing out to the music. And it was after the song changed that my mind tweaked. I realized how freezing cold I was, now that I wasn't dancing as much, and my body desperately wanted warmth. I walked up and asked if I could turn on the heat. He consented; until he heard the booming heater begin blaring from the ceiling. Feeling bad, and growing irritated, I turned it off. After that, the switch had been hit, and I was less energetic, less dance enthralled, and my mind began tweaking on various unnecessary details. As I was crawling into bed, I pulled out a copy of Lama Yeshe's incredible book: Becoming Your Own Therapist. Lama Yeshe is one of the most famous and revered Tibetan Lamas in the last thirty years. It's a printed copy of various public talks that Yeshe gave in the West during the 70s. He says:

"The dissatisfied mind is the fundamental element of human nature. We're dissatisfied with ourselves; we're dissatisfied with the outside world. That dissatisfaction is like an ocean. According to Lord Buddha's psychology and lama's experience, sickness runs deeper than just the overt expression of clinical symptoms. As long as the ocean of dissatisfaction remains within you, the slightest change in the environment can be enough to bring out a problem. As far as we're concerned, even being susceptible to future problems means that your mind is not healthy. All of us here are basically teh same, in the our minds are dissatisfied. As a result, a tiny change in our external circumstances can make us sick. The basic problem is within our minds. It's much more important to eradicate the basic problem than to spend all our time trying to deal with superficial, emotional ones. This approach doesn't cease our continual experience of problems; it merely substitutes a new problem for the one we believe we've just solved."

I'm so grateful that Yeshe confirmed that this is a universal suffering, and that it is complex and vastly spread out into the hearts and minds of so many. I don't have any answers for anything these days, because like Daniel Pinchbeck, my general state in the world is that of "I Don't Know." But the one thing I have come to know is that when I feel intense, it's important to practice using the tools I've learned to clear internal energy; like doing baths and enemas, or even better: Making Sounds with my Voice and Using the Body as a Vibrational Sound Chamber. I'm very grateful that I've learned how to wield self-healing tools, because for so long, I didn't know how to access healing tools or how to use them. And instead, like everyone else, I bottled them up, held them in until I was sick, and then began using substances to ignore my feelings. But now, I'm committed to moving through the energy in the moment, and not holding on to the energy, or covering it up with intoxicants, but letting it go, through prayer, movement, and sound.