Meet the Symptom Maker

At the Portland airport on the way to the Bay area, I read a book on relationships from a Process Work perspective, and did a "meet the symptom maker" experiment there and then.

The symptom which is most alive for me is fatigue so I decided to explore that.

I can see the energy being sucked out of my human self, drawn out and down. I see how it is all drawn out, every little bit of what is there, until nothing is left. There is just emptiness.

Exploring that nothingness, I see how there is clarity in that nothingness. Clarity, and capacity for the whole world. There is no "I" to resist anything. No "I" to set anything apart from anything else. No "I" to make anything into something fixed or separate. It is just the play of God, the fluid play and manifestations of whole field of what is.

I become nothing. God is all. Or rather, the idea (and sense) of I drops away, and the seamless field of what is - arising outside and inside of my human self - appears as it is.

I see how this symptom maker appears as a demon to my human self, but is really a very skillful bodhisattva. This face of a demon is one of the infinite and temporary faces of Buddha Mind.

This process was very powerful to me. I have had a sense of this going on previously, but it was still a surprise when it happened. And it did definitely help me find another relationship to the fatigue. Now, it may be a little easier to welcome it when it is there. To be with it. To befriend it. To see it as not separate, as just another manifestation of life, the universe, God, Spirit. And a helpful one even. It is all just a part of the infinitely larger process of life, of the universe, of the body of God.

I also see how resisting it is to resist this process of becoming nothing. And then the current phase of the process predictably persists, or comes back in other forms.

In every way, it makes sense to surrender to it. To put myself under its influence. To allow resistance to fall away. To be with it, and to be it. To throw myself into the experience of the fatigue when it is there. To allow it to unfold within awareness on its own.

And of course, this particular meeting the symptom maker process just scratched the surface. There is a lot more there that can be explored as needed.

Of course, all of this relates to the meaning dimension of the symptom. That still leaves room for exploring it from any other angle as well, including diet, exercise, bodyoriented practices, kundalini yoga (which I have found helpful recently), relationships, and just noticing it as one of the many fluid phenomena arising in the present.