Transcript from a meeting with Jim Eaton on 30 August, 2020
Jim: How are you doing?
Q: Shaking . . . butterflies in my stomach. I had a dream last night. The story wasn’t so important, but there was a lot of rage in it. I mean apocalyptic rage.
Jim: Yeah, apocalyptic rage. I know that one! (Both laughing)
Q: And of course when I woke up it continued, and was still coming up. There is a sentence in my mind; something like: “I want to get myself out of this.” But not out of this retreat. I mean, out of THIS.
Jim: Yeah. Don’t censor it, let it all come, “I want to get out of this. I don’t want to be here anymore.” (Q sighing). Allowing that voice to be heard.
Q: It’s like a hate. I hate everything, everybody.
Jim: Yeah, letting that hate be here, letting it fill your system, whilst you stay rooted, grounded . . . Sensing your feet on the floor, breath, feeling the energy of wild hate . . .
When we’re unconsciously lost in it, and possessed by it, it can be hugely destructive, yes; that’s why we learn culturally to suppress these wild energies. But in doing so we then operate on only a small percentage of our full capacity.
Now, in feeling our feet on the floor, sitting bones on the chair, noticing the breath, allowing the body to stay soft and open, we can let this energy flow through us without being possessed by it . . . “Mmmmm. Thank you for this red hot fire.” It’s a kind of, ”Raargh” A wild roar. In doing so we reclaim our natural strength and power, that’s needed to act authentically in the moment . . . Just let it move through your system, reclaiming that fire.
(silent connecting)
Q: I feel like something wants to block it in my chest. (Q touches chest)
Jim: Yeah, place your hand there gently . . . supporting, welcoming the blockage: “I hear you blockage. I’m listening.” Can you feel the energy in the blockage?
Q: Yeah. It’s a sadness, a grief.
Jim: Yeah, grief. It’s like when someone we love dies; it can be too overwhelming to really feel the pain of the loss of that person, and so we store it away with a clenching in the body. Similarly we store away the grief for the loss of our own authentic nature—that freedom and spontaneity, that naturalness, that exuberance.
Keep sensing your feet . . . breath . . . So we have the rage and the anger for being abandoned, for being left in this ‘place’: “Why have you abandoned me? Why hast thou forsaken me?” And then the other side of it is the grief, for the sense of loss.
Q: This is painful.
Jim: Very painful . . . Keep breathing, staying with it. If you’re in the pain, then feel this loving holding that surrounds you; or you can flip to being the loving holding, meeting the pain. Either way. Whichever resonates most. (Q moaning) Letting it come . . . Keep breathing . . . As we do this work, the breath can easily become shallow and tight. We keep breathing so that everything can move and flow . . . keeping the body open, the neck, the shoulders (Jim moving and loosening his body)
(silent connecting)
Q: There’s is a voice here. It’s a child: “Where is my mother?”
Jim: Yeah, “Where is my mother?” Being with that child. She’s terrified, alone, isolated; reaching out—there’s nobody there. Stay with her, let her feel this loving presence that’s here, that says, “I’m here. I’m here for you. Always. I see that you’re afraid. It’s okay now.” Love is here. Always. The love that never leaves. Can you feel that connection?
Q: Yeah.
Jim: Yeah, beautiful. Just allow that to naturally deepen. You can invite her: “Little one, you can come home now. Come home to love.” She comes nearer in her own time, no rush. If she feels it’s okay, she can come nearer. Inviting her into you, into love. (Q sighing) That’s the integration.
(silent connecting)
Jim: This is for everyone here who might be experiencing something similar. As we go into these difficult places, the breath often starts to become shallow and the body starts to tighten. So we can have a stretch, loosen the neck, the shoulders, the wrists, and stay awake, alert, keep breathing, allowing the yawns to come, (Q shivering) the shivers to come—whatever the body wants to do. We’re offering this wide open, loving field for everything to unravel, to unfold.
(silent connecting)
Q: I have this guilt. As a child I always felt that they were taking care of me, but didn’t really love me. Maybe that’s why there’s this guilt: there’s something wrong with me. And the contradiction here is that I remember when I was a child, let’s say 3 or 4 or 5 years old, everybody was telling me that they love me, or that I’m so beautiful, I’m so sweet, things like that; but I didn’t understand why they were doing this, because I felt like they don’t love me, they just adore me, but this is not love. I was very suspicious I remember, because I was experiencing that they couldn’t see ME, just my body or my face.
Jim: Yeah, I hear you. We’re looking for that true connection, that true acknowledgement, and in our culture that’s very rare. It’s often a pseudo-identity meeting and relating with another pseudo-identity, and the beingness is rarely acknowledged or directly seen. If we’re sensitive, it’s that true acknowledgement that we long for; so all the words of praise, they fall on deaf ears, because they don’t meet our true need.
So we feel abandoned, left out, and then the rationalization of the young one is that we must be at fault, we did something wrong. It’s too frightening for a child to realise that the parents may not be able to give them what they need; so the safest thing is to conclude that, “There’s something wrong with me.” In that way we preserve the image of goodness of the parents.
This can happen on different levels: in terms of our family system, as I just described; but also on a deeper level—at around 3 or 4 years old, when we first become fully self-conscious, and identify ourself as an isolated figure moving through a big, outside world. It’s the same thing: in feeling isolated, lonely and abandoned, we conclude that it must be our fault, that we did something wrong, that: “I am guilty. There’s something wrong with me.” That’s the rationalization.
Q: It’s very helpful when you say this: that it’s not a fault, that we have to go through it to be a person or an individual.
Jim: Yeah, maybe at some point in the future, when we understand all this better as a culture, then the way our society is structured will be to guide new beings through this process in a much more harmonious way. Currently, once that separation happens then that’s it, we don’t develop beyond that separate-self stage. We just build up an ever more fortified pseudo-identity, to try to protect us from those painful feelings of guilt and grief, and to try to earn love and approval from others so that we’re not rejected.
What we’re talking about is the next step of development. First we become aware of ourself as a separate, individual person; but then we can go further, and use our self-reflective nature to discover who we really are, beyond the separate-self. Then, rather than continue to suppress those painful feelings, we can meet them lovingly, allowing them to dissolve naturally, in their own time, and so rediscover our unique, authentic expression. But to do that we have to explore these hidden areas, these shadows in our psyche.
(silent connecting)
Q: There is this hopelessness. A hopeless child.
Jim: Yeah, stay with her. “Hopeless. There’s nothing I can do.” Feel the despair of that . . . pointless, hopeless.
Q: What’s the point?
Jim: “What’s the point? What’s the point of even being here?” Allowing that voice to be heard too . . . Connecting with the hopeless child, “Yeah, I hear you. You feel it’s pointless, meaningless, hopeless.”
Q: She’s in my guts.
Jim: Yeah, put a hand on your guts there. (Q sighing)
Q: This one wants to run away. Hide.
Jim: Building the relationship again with this character. Meeting her, acknowledging her, just as she is; not trying to fix her, just being with her with that loving, unconditional regard . . . no judgement, no pushing. Really feel her. Let her feel the love that’s here for her.
Q: She is softening.
Jim: Ah, tell her, “I see you’re softening.”
Q: (soft chuckles)
Jim: Yeah, feel the delight in that!
Q: Yeah, because sometimes I turn towards her with, “Get out of here!”
Jim: Yeah, right. So that’s not unconditional love coming in there! (Q laughing) That’s the fixer, or the one who wants to get somewhere fast, the bulldozer.
So, now we’re seeing really clearly how this works. Just like with the anger, the grief, the guilt and the hopelessness, when the bulldozer is here you can meet the bulldozer too, that wants to just flatten everything in its way and get to this goal, this accomplishment, and as soon as possible. We understand, right? We see where that’s coming from too. “If I get THERE then everything’s gonna be fine,” because it doesn’t like being HERE, right? Why? Because it’s afraid. So we meet the bulldozer too, “I see you’re afraid.” (Q sighing) . . . Keep sensing your feet, noticing the breath, staying right here . . .
(silent connecting)
Q: It says, “I can’t be weak.”
Jim: Yeah. What happens if you’re weak? What happens if you’re vulnerable?
Q: They’re gonna take advantage of me.
Jim: Yeah, “They’re gonna take advantage.” So maybe that was true back then, as a little one who didn’t feel protected, so we bow to the intelligence in that. AND now we see there’s a new possibility. Now we can revisit that from the ground of presence, of being. Now we can allow ourselves to explore vulnerability, openess. Let that little one feel the support, “Feel the support that’s here for you. The love that’s here for you. Always and forever. Yeah, it’s true. Yes, it IS!”
Q: Unbelievable. . .
Jim: Yeah, notice the voice that’s suspicious, that doesn’t believe it! That says, “Oh, you’re just saying that.” But it’s true, it’s true! This is the good news! The extraordinary news! This unconditional love is here, always!
Q: It’s so liberating that I don’t have to blame anybody. But really. It’s not just being a ‘good-girl-not-judging-anyone’ character. It doesn’t make any sense to blame anybody, not even my parents.
Jim: Yeah, beautiful. See the the wisdom in that. Who are your parents? They are ‘I’ being your parents, caught up in a particular repertoire of conditioning and patterning that they got from their parents and the environment they grew up in, that their parents got from their parents, and so on and so on. It’s all the same ‘I’, it’s all the same essence dancing, and shape-shifting.
Q: Yeah. It seems like, I am not denying that I’m their child, but there is a kind of softening in the role of ‘I-am-their-daughter’ and ‘they-are-my-parents’. It’s not so rigid. I’m playing the game, but meanwhile I don’t take it so seriously.
Jim: Yeah, that’s it. As we start to wake up more and more deeply to our nature, and more and more of these patterns start to loosen up, then we don’t disappear, right! ‘Jim’ still exists. And so there’s a sort of clue in that, right? It’s not about just realizing who we really are. The game we’re playing here is about realizing who we really are and then shining that into life.
Like in a computer game, you need the character, the avatar, to move around in the game, so that’s still here, but you hold it more lightly. And actually, curiously that enables you to show up more fully. If I’m exclusively identified with being this ‘Jim’ character, then I’m limited by worrying about my Jim-ness, and trying to show up in a certain way so as not to be rejected. But in realising that I’m much much more than that, then ‘Jim’ gets freed up; and so does everybody else, right? You don’t hold them responsible for delivering you your happiness anymore.
Q: Wow. This is a responsibility. And there’s a part in me that immediately responded as you said that, with, “No, no, no!”
Jim: Yeah! It’s like in the matrix, when the guy who doesn’t want to see the truth anymore decides to take the blue pill, to be blissfully ignorant again. So we include that character too: the one that wants to run away and go back into unconsciousness.
Q: Being this character, I mean this ‘true character’ let’s say, is much more vulnerable than the other one.
Jim: Yes, it’s true in one sense: when we’re open we feel much more deeply; as opposed to when you’re contracted, which has the effect of numbing your feelings down, like a kind of buffer.
But at the same time, when the system is open energetically—when we’ve met anger, we’ve met rage, we’ve met fury, and we’ve integrated them—then we gain access to our essential qualities of strength, courage, power, excitement and passion. If a situation then arises where we need protection, these essence energies are now available for us to respond in the optimal way.
If we haven’t yet integrated our anger, then when we feel that red energy rising in our system we suppress it, we block that energy off; but in doing so we also block off our courage and strength too and are disempowered.
So yes, it can feel more vulnerable, but in being able to access the full spectrum of our energies, we’re also able to set healthy boundaries—to say yes to no.
Q: More alive.
Jim: More alive. It’s about coming alive. That’s what we want. We want to be the full, unique expression of what’s possible for us. That’s why we keep exploring, even though we recognize our beingness: because we want to express it, to shine our light fully into life, into the play, into the field . . .
(silent connecting)
Q: Sometimes this numbness is more comfortable than stepping out. It’s very familiar.
Jim: Yeah. Don’t make that wrong. We have to keep saying these same things over and over again. It’s important. If we find ourselves in a place where we’re not up for it: “No, I just want to be numb. I want to hide. I want to crawl under my duvet and disappear.” Then that’s okay. That’s what happens. And so we honour that. And maybe, if it’s possible, we get in touch with that part too, so that it starts to feel this loving support, this holding . . . and then it starts to see that it’s okay, and our centre of gravity starts to shift out of it again.
(silent connecting)
Q: There’s a lot of energy moving. I’m feeling it everywhere.
Jim: Beautiful. That’s it, let it move. As you start to meet all these characters and you allow them to be here, and you allow the energy that’s coming through to be here—you’re not shutting it down, and you’re not acting it out either, you’re just allowing it to move through the system—then you’re reclaiming that energy.
You can let its warmth infuse every cell of the body, like a fire spreading through you—thawing, softening, loosening, opening; all of that rigidity, that stuckness, becoming more and more fluid . . . letting the energy move through, softening everything up, liquefying everything, so all these hard boundaries and edges start to soften and open.
It’s that stuckness, that energetic holding in the physicality, which reinforces the feeling of being separate from life. As that clenching starts to open and soften, we experience more and more the wholeness of the moment . . . You are the sound of my voice now, the image of the screen, the entire three-dimensional space. You, awareness, being all of that. All of that arising spontaneously, here-now.
Q: And as the body is softening, sometimes I feel that the reality, what I see, is also getting more like a fluid.
Jim: Yeah. Imagine if you have a very hard focus on something. In doing so you create this direct channel, with you as a very solid subject at one end, looking at a very solid object at the other. As you, the subject, start to soften and open, you still experience the object, but there isn’t that direct channel anymore; it’s as if the object is emerging IN you. You can try it now . . .
Take any object. Here’s a cup. Just look at the cup . . . So, first of all, the cup is a solid object out there in the world, and I am a solid subject over here looking at it.
Now look again, but as awareness this time, that has no location. Now it’s as if the cup is appearing IN me, awareness; and the supposed subject, ‘Jim’, is also appearing in me. As a result there is a natural softening in the body.
Then you can go one step further and see that there is no gap or distance between awareness and the cup, and no boundary or edge where awareness ends and cup begins; so I, awareness, am being the cup—am being this whole experience here-now.
Then the natural joy starts to flow, because you’re not in that restless seeking mode anymore; there’s a natural easing into being. You’ve come home. Home in the moment.
Q: I have to laugh. (Q laughing)
Jim: Laughter, beautiful! That’s a release as well.
Q: From this opening, I can feel this ‘me’ character. I can feel her much more deeply and be much more compassionate with her.
Jim: That’s it. Self-love. Real self-love. So you can include her, ALL of her. It’s as if you are this presence that’s chaperoning her through life. You’re here to support her to become the best human being she can possibly be. You, as this beingness, helping her to open and to flourish—like a flower coming into full bloom. That’s self-love. Real self-love. That’s why, as we were saying before, everyone else is off the hook, right? Nobody has to give you love. You ARE love. You’re a lighthouse of love.
Q: This is very important for me to see: that I don’t have to get rid of this person.
Jim: No, no, no! You celebrate her!
Q: I have this tendency that I just want to reject her, or control her. But now I see that it’s not possible to get rid of her anyway.
Jim: Yeah. What wants to reject her? What wants to control her?
Q: Yeah, it’s another one!
Jim: Yeah. Our human character is a beautiful creature, one of God’s children. We receive love for the fact that we exist. We don’t need to do anything to earn that love. It’s here-now, unconditionally. It’s so difficult for us to appreciate with the conditioning that we all grow up with. Even if we had perfect parents, who don’t exist anyway, we still have to go through this moment of separation, into becoming a self-aware ‘me’. We all experience this ‘fall’ as it’s called in Christianity, and so we can’t allow ourselves to feel this unconditional love—we just don’t feel worthy of it. Until we DO, right? Until we realize, “Oh, my God. Yes. Of course!”
Q: Celebration.
Jim: Celebration, yeah! And then we become one of those hot coals, that can be placed next to another, and we start to heat that coal up; and so we spread that light, and that truth, and that love, and that knowing.
YOU are that source of love. Yeah, YOU that’s hearing this now. YOU are the one you’ve been waiting for!
See what’s coming for you as I say that . . . this is for everyone now . . . perhaps something like: “No, I’m not. No, you got that wrong Jim. Hmmmm, maybe but . . . I’m a bit suspicious.” (Jim laughing) Or, “Yeah, right. Blah, blah, blah. God, Jim you’re so bloody spiritual!” (Jim laughing)
How do I know that? Because I’ve been there. I’ve thought those same things too. Actually I’m becoming less and less ‘spiritual’ by the day!
Q: Thank God! (Laughter)
Jim: Actually, I don’t think this is even spirituality. I think this is totally straightforward. It’s sanity, that’s what it is. When you feel that love at the source of your being and you know that, in religious language, you are God’s child, that you have every right to be here, that you truly belong, that you are absolutely loved, fully and unconditionally, always and forever, just as you are, no matter what, then what happens? Then you can really shine! If we were all shining, all being ourselves fully, freely and authentically, wow, this would be a very different world.
And there’s no judgement there. You could say this is a process we’re going through. 200,000 years of self-awareness is a tiny speck of time in comparison to the 14 billion year history of the universe! Maybe we’re just going through some teething issues! Maybe we are like engineers working to upgrade the system, to make it more optimal!
Q: Thank you Jim.
Jim: Thank you.
