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Quotes from "Healing and Recovery" by David R. Hawkins,
M.D., Ph.D.
The acute catastrophic experience is a key learning
opportunity that teaches us to go to the very core, to the very essence of the
experience, to see what it is and handle it at the level of experiencing within
the energy field of consciousness itself. There is the willingness to surrender and to let go of
wanting to change what happened 'out there'. There is the letting go of wanting to control by thinking
about it and trying to handle it with the intellect and the emotions. There is the willingness to surrender
to the essence of the experience without calling it anything, or labeling it,
or putting names on it. There is
the willingness to handle the energy field of it and go directly to the inner
experience. The surrender to the
inner experience is the open doorway to the experience of something greater
than the small personal self.
How could a person be grateful for what the world considers
a terrible catastrophe or a dreadful, progressive illness? What they learned
out of the catastrophe was of such a great dimension that the price was worth
it because, through the realization of truth, they discovered the reconnection
with the essential core of their beingness.
All these major life experiences have something in common in
that they all represent an acute catastrophic loss to the mind and a threat to
survival.
The problem to explore is how to convert them into acute
gains, how to maximize them, and how to use them as springboards for major
leaps in consciousness.
What is really being registered is one’s experience of the
experience (ie “the experiencer”). We can handle anything if we address this
exact focus. If we focus on where
we are experiencing experience, we can handle things with precision.
It is happening within consciousness.
One could not put their finger on any particular place where
experience is happening. It is
simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.
The problem is not the event that happened or we think that
happened, but the way we feel about it.
The fact is only a "fact", a nothing. How we feel about the fact is therefore
the only thing we really ever have to handle about the events in life.
The problems are not handled on the level at which they seem
to be occurring but on the next higher energy level. Higher energy level means greater power.
All we have to handle are the energies of the emotional
overwhelm.
One technique is to ignore the thoughts because the mind
will never figure them out for it does not have the capacity to do so.
A person only
has to go into the feeling itself.
Notice first that the feeling is being felt in a general
way, and that there is an energy below it. Consciousness works this way, as though there is a diffuse
body of energy that really has no name.
The mind will try to figure out ways to escape the emotional
energy as though that will reduce the pain; however, the pain actually comes
from resisting the experience. To handle
this, one just sits down and lets go of resisting it, choosing instead to be
with it.
It is preferable to decrease the form of the energy field
and stop labeling it anything.
People never experience the dented fenders in life, only
their emotions about them.
All negative experiences bring up a shock that is the sudden
realization of our powerlessness, the fact that the will has met a brick wall,
that we are stoppable and have been stopped, and that the personal will cannot
have its way. There was the
experience with the feeling of sudden numbness, the state of disbelief. And
then the unleashing of all the negative feelings.
Catastrophic experiences are the seeds, the very essence, of
the ultimate spiritual experience.
Within it and following it to its very center core, totally walking off
the cliff in complete abandonment, the full surrender to the experience is the
very seed and core of that which the spiritual seeker has been searching for
all along.
The concept of hitting bottom, means to let go
completely.
In an acute catastrophic situation, the mind tries to cling
to that which is familiar. It
tries escapism, distractions, tranquilizers, drugs and alcohol, and various
other ways of trying to ameliorate the situation rather than face it directly
and work through it.
The essence of a catastrophic situation is total surrender
to the discovery of that which is greater than the personal self. That there is something within oneself
that has the power to sustain, no matter how catastrophic the experience
appears to be. We come out on the
other side with the awareness that there is something within, that there is a
Presence, a quality, or an aspect of life within that has the power to sustain
us through the most seemingly impossible situations.
"Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved
at all."
The essential nature of the work is to remain focused on
what arises from instant to instant and become aware of 'what' is experiencing
and 'where' it is being experienced.
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