A Cellular Dance Of Oneness II

Kürzlich veröffentlichen wir den ersten Teil eines Interviews, das mit Florian Schlosser geführt wurde. Hier geht es weiter mit Teil 2, für mich nicht weniger interessant als Teil 1: Über unseren Körper und unsere (möglicherweise ungeliebten und abglehnten) Körperempfindungen, über Bewusstsein, das den Körper und seine Erfahrungen integriert ... Ich empfehle: Selber lesen! Das Interview ist wieder in englischer Sprache.

Joe: Does the awakening take place on its own? I mean, it’s not me doing the awakening because what I consider me would not know how to do that. Who is doing the awakening? Florian: The 'sense of I' is the narrow focus itself. How can a narrow focus overcome itself? It can’t. It has to let go of this narrow focus, and then it dissolves in that widening. You relax the focus. The body feels tight when the focus is operating, so all you need to do is to listen to the body. When the body produces a feeling of tightness, narrowness, a sense of pain. I call it 'Ow'. Joe: In me, there seems to be a certain level of 'Ow' that my body seems to be happy with, and it doesn’t even generate the thought that there is anything wrong. Florian: Exactly, that is the problem. We are so used to living with a certain degree of pain, of contraction, that we can hardly imagine that we can ever possibly be at ease. It’s almost resignation. We have made ourselves relatively comfortable in life, but that’s it.  It’s like we are bouncing back from the possibility of being at ease and peace that seems to be almost unreachable for the human mankind. Just to clarify: having a comfortable life and feeling relatively happy is not bad. It is just not the end of the line, as we could see recently all over the world amidst the crisis. I am not speaking about having a relatively comfortable life, with a couple of experiences of ease. I am speaking of being free and at genuine peace which is far beyond having a comfortable life. Joe: What if I don’t hear the signals my body is sending me because I am so used to this level of contraction? Florian: Let us explore this. Most of us don’t feel much. We are fairly numb, and our bodies are kind of frozen on a certain level. Our nervous system has lost its capacity to be fully alive. It is not fully insensitive, but it is also not fully sensitive. Life is there, but it often is experienced a little lukewarm. We can sense that a certain elasticity, a certain transparency, a certain receptivity of the body is not there. The body is only used to control life, and there are layers of fear and shock energy in our nervous system that have not been met. As long as these have not been consciously experienced and met, the body freezes at a certain stage of aliveness that usually people never overcome. It’s not bad, but it is also not really juicy. This is a very tricky level of experience, because when we become aware of that level in our bodies, we have not a clue what to do with it. The body feels frozen, and what we do, we try to stimulate it with all kind of external or internal stimulations. The body wants to be alive. As it is not alive the environment we live in offers, invents or substitutes something to generate a temporary sense of enjoyment and artificial aliveness. This can be achieved through work, drugs, sports, sexuality, and other external stimuli. Also with contemporary spiritual and religious means like concentration, meditation, singing, breathing techniques, prayer and so on, you can stimulate your system and give it kicks of certain senses of aliveness. Yet the bottom line is: all of this is a product of doing, will and effort. We’ve got to do it, and it only works as long as we do it. Joe: So mundane and spiritual activities are somehow the very same. Florian: Yes. When we stop doing it, the level of non-aliveness reappears sooner or later. As everyone who e.g. meditates knows, after a couple of hours of meditation, the whole structure returns again. Then we have to extend. We have got to double the doses. And after a while the nervous system even gets used to that; and we have to kick a little harder, meditate a little longer, take more drugs or need more stimulation to come to the same level. We are caught up in a 'more-loop'. In more of it - more seeking - we are reinforcing the desire for more. Underneath, the system remains numb. That level of frozen-ness that is actually a shock reaction in the body mostly has never been met. It can be quite shocking for us when the focus starts to widen and we realize that everything is still there, and that  it was just over laid with any kind of activity. When we are mature enough, we may meet someone who is able to meet us on these levels of experience. We have a chance to finally, slowly and gradually give a little bit of attention to those layers in the nervous system so the body literally can de-freeze from its own frozen-ness. Joe: That is what I find so valuable in your approach. There are a lot of people I like who speak wonderfully about consciousness and awareness, but your approach gives me the experience of spaciousness and freedom inside, not just up here in my mind. Florian: I am happy to hear. Indeed noticing your self as awareness - which is what people call realization of the Self - is not automatically a synonym for being free. As long as this realization is not fully embodied, and the body has not re-integrated into its natural state of ease and peace, there can not be the human experience of freedom. There will be an experience of freedom as awareness which is in fact fantastic. But the experience of BEING FREE as an embodied reality can only be experienced when the body is fully included. Only when we slowly ease through these layers of disintegrated stress in the nervous system will the body feel safe. And when the body feels safe, it freely opens up automatically. Suddenly the whole system opens up to all of life instead of only consciousness. Then there is a direct, all-inclusive experience of oneness. Then the body feels one with everything and IS free. It is not only up here (showing to the head), but the whole cellular structure starts to be available to feel life around us freely and joyfully. Joe: Now you are answering my real question that I could never word, because if you asked me, are you the Self? Are you Awareness? I would answer yes I know that, but I still don’t have the everyday experience of freedom. Most of the time my body doesn’t know that. It still feels like it lives in a hostile environment. Florian: Exactly. And that hostile environment may not even be here now. But as the cells of the entire body carry neuronal memory of various moments of overwhelm and unfriendly environment in itself, they produce a constant repetition of a sense of threat though it may not be there in reality. It just appears and feels so real to us, that our whole behavioral structure responds as if there is still hostility around; and we unconsciously are in a way, and mostly act against of what we know to be true. Joe: I can see that it is all fairly clear, at least to the mind. Florian: Yes, we know it's not there. We have it clear in our heads. But for most of us - even after we have realized that we are consciousness - the body continues believing that there is hostility around, and we’ve got to protect and defend ourselves, though we already know better. Joe: You are saying that even after we realize that we are consciousness, a process of integration must still take place in our body? Florian: Absolutely. The first step is one single moment of realizing consciousness as the only reality. In that immediate opening up, suddenly consciousness becomes aware of the entire structure of the mind - but of also the body, with all of the sensations it is still carrying. Yet including and meeting the body is not what we are used to and feel safe with. So we instantly exclude it again, deny it or forget about it. Mistakenly we believe, once we realize being consciousness, it’s all over. In fact it is exactly the opposite. You actually realize that everything you did before was trying to get away from your own experience. If this is clear - which is a tremendous disappointment - and we may have the willingness to drop back into the human body. In that descent of consciousness back into the body, it starts to meet all these dysfunctional layers of discomfort, stress and disintegration that have never been met before. In that meeting - which means giving it a little bit of attention - the body can begin to ease and discharge stress, discharge old 'holding on' and fear energy that may have even been inherited from generations. That descent of consciousness dropping back into the human form is when consciousness embodies. That is what I call: the body transforming into an expression of consciousness. Joe: So what you say is that after 'awakening' there is a profound integration process needed in order to be genuinely free. Is that right? Florian: Yes. In the beginning, when this recognition of consciousness happens, it is like a big 'Wow'. It is a full expansion, immense widening and letting go of everything the system held on to. All is seen as unreal, and all concepts drop in one single instant. Yet to the degree the body is not fully and genuinely included, the void - the absence of any objectified experiences - this spaciousness becomes a new reference point. Suddenly, the 'sense of I ' subtly sneaks back in and takes the void as a new reference point. The space that we ARE becomes an object. We walk around claiming that we do not really exit, that nothing is real and all that stuff. The 'sense of I' has identified with nothingness. It has turned being space into an experience rather than BEING IT. Then being space unconsciously becomes a disembodied space out, and we begin to lose contact with normal life. Though for some it may be a lovely space out, it is a space out, and there is pain in it. Normally in that space out, we lose contact with things that are a normal part of life, our families, the capacity to earn money, the body. All of a sudden it is all considered being nothing. If you now are lucky, you get into trouble. If you listen to the trouble you get in - and I got in trouble with my wife and other aspects of daily life - and if you let this in, you realize that spacing out wasn't it. It is like falling from paradies. You start to realize that hanging out in the void is just another illusionary projection of the mind, that has cost you genuine contact with the richness and fullness of life being experienced by the body. In that moment there is a willingness to drop back into the human form, and the quality of consciousness becomes a living human reality. We could call it heaven comes to earth rather than hanging around heaven and having no roots anymore. I think many people who have been on the spiritual path these days are becoming suspicious of hanging out in a bliss bubble - in that void - not fully connected.  There is no experience of oneness. It is an experience of space, but it is not being free and feeling ONE with everything. Joe: Is there anything specific required other than drop back into the human form? Florian: If you are mature and willing enough to explore deeper, you will question even the void. Only then and when you really begin to listen to the body, the dropping into the human form can happen. You fall back into the human experience, but it is returning as consciousness into the human form, as before 'you' were living as the 'sense of I'. That is when the whole circle becomes complete. When self realization sets the body/human experience free. Then there is the realization of consciousness, and the experience of freedom in the body. Only when they go together, can this be a living reality. This is what many, many so-called spiritual people miss. In dropping back into the human form, you actually reconnect with life. The body returns to its own capacity to be genuinely alive, and to be safe with the full impact of life. We start to feel everything around us as our own self. Joe: I had that experience in your meeting and workshop I attended. I could feel that depth, that clarity. It was beautiful, and I felt it in my body. Let me finally ask you this: Is it your experience that when the pain and stress energy in the body is gone, is it gone for good?  Florian: Yes. Once it has discharged from the system, it is gone. That means that the body returns to its natural functioning. The nervous system cellularly transforms from disassociation to association. Many wise men, over the last thousands of years have said that being genuinely free demands a full transformation of the entire neuronal structure, back from stress to ease. That’s what is fully include in the meetings, workshops and retreats. It is an invitation to everyone to realize themselves as consciousness, but also assisting people to slowly drop into the body because there they can experience freedom. When they go together, there is peace. Joe: And that is a great value for me in going to your meetings, because it is modeled for me and I get to immerse myself in the experience of it. I need that. Florian: Yes. But in fact it is the body that needs it (laughter). The body demands inclusion because in including the body, we are including life, we are including the earth, we include everybody. Then this experience of oneness is. It is not made. It is not thought, not a concept or philosophy. If we bring this invitation to the people through our conversation, and generate a little curiosity, then I think our conversation was really of value today. Then we can together enjoy the Cellular Dance Of Oneness. Joe: Thank you, Florian.