Cl: My mother died and I haven't felt grief, and she was clearly one of the important people in my life. I haven't felt much about that. And it raised a serious question that I had before that. How much sensitivity, how much depth, kind of like, "Are you a cold fucker underneath?" Or, "Am I a frozen fucker underneath?" As I say that I feel like N. did, it feels like something broke open. I kind of feel like there is a river but there is a hell of a dam also. That there is some kind of block there. I don't even know what it is.
Dick: I know what you are talking about. I have a clear sense of what you are telling me. It is a thing that is so hard to understand, because you see, there is not a block. Yet I perceive that something is blocking you. So what am I saying here? Am I saying don't trust your own perceptions? Yeah, that is what I am saying, Don't trust your perceptions. And I hear the question right away, What do you mean don't trust my own perceptions? My perceptions are all I have to go on. Yeah, that is absolutely true. So go on them, but don't imagine that they are the final truth. Do you see what I am saying? There is an order of Buddhist monks, one of the founders is Thich Nat Hahn who wrote Interbeing in English that lists the fourteen rules. This is the order who opposed the war in Vietnam. And they were persona non grata both in the North and South because they wouldn't take sides. They were the people early in the war who were dousing themselves with gasoline and setting themselves on fire. Unbelievable that anyone could do that but they did. Their first precept of the fourteen precepts that they are supposed to live by is: Don't be idolatrous concerning any beliefs including the beliefs of Buddhism. It is all I have to go on. If I wait until I have final knowledge, I will wait a hell of a long time, like maybe it will be the year 11,000 or something like that. So I have to act with the knowledge that I have. But not for me to imagine that this is absolute truth.
Cl: I have that sense that both things are true.
Dick: So you have the sense that you are not blocked too. Let yourself go into the middle of it. Just feel it without judgment, neither good nor bad, just one more tension. You've had hundreds of them in your life, this is just one more. Give yourself permission to be aware of that. Even say that, "I give myself permission."
Which is also a way to perceive the block that you know is not there. I give myself permission to feel this block. (client repeats) Take your time. And you can do another thing. You can do another thing. You can turn this over to your unconscious mind for resolution. You don't have to try to resolve it with your conscious mind, and that is good advice because you can't resolve it with your conscious mind. So just make it your intention. Use an image of putting it all in a basket and handing it over to your unconscious. Or just say I hand this over to the unconscious. And when the unconscious accepts it, how will you be able to tell. You want to know if it is accepted or not, right? Well, there is a sign that is given you. You will feel an onset of relaxation. That sometimes has been called the autogenic shift, and you can feel a kind of shift in your consciousness, which involves going into a state of relaxation, you suddenly feel this relaxation. And when that comes ,it is tantamount to your unconscious holding up a flash card saying "assignment accepted, work begun" And as you experience that, you will be able to notice the relaxation spreading to various parts of your body. Your jaw, for example may get so relaxed that you find that your mouth has opened and you are breathing through slightly parted lips. You may feel that relaxation in your hands and feet and various parts of your body. But this signal, "assignment accepted, work begun", involves a great many other things. It is very, very involved. One of the things, and this is one of the things that you can use, is you will notice that your breathing pattern changes, and you will simply be aware that it has changed. Another thing that you will notice is that your heartbeat will slow down. Now you may not be aware of that, but what does matter is that it does slow down, usually from a normal of about 72, down to 70, to 68. You may go even slower than that, down to 66 or 64, which is a pretty slow pulse. And you can go lower than that. And as that is happening. There are other things happening. Some of them you may be aware of, some of which you have no way of being aware of. If we have a blood pressure cuff we could measure that your blood pressure is dropping. It drops five points, ten points, maybe fifteen points. It goes down a little bit, and that happens because of something else is happening. Your autonomic nervous system has shifted gears. You have shifted form the sympathetic, which is the tensing, getting ready for fight or flight aspect of it, to the parasympathetic, which is the letting go, the relaxing. These signals say that everything is Okay. And we know that happens because one of the functions of the sympathetic is to tighten up on the veins and arteries and one of the functions of the parasympathetic is to loosen them so that your blood pressure goes down. And you may notice some other things too. For example, you have biofeedback machines which could readily determine that this is part of the signal.
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