Repeat of Fighting the Lilliputains

 Last week, I recounted an interesting shift in my awareness in which I felt that Paul (my “I”) was no longer the center of my life or my awareness. The feeling has continued to come and go since then. One thing I found myself increasingly aware of this week is best describe by referring to the Lilliputians—those small being who tied down Gulliver with hundreds of small ropes in the classic book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.

I saw that what has been holding me back was not some heavy chain that needed to be cut through some heroic act of faith or unlocked by some miraculous intervention but thousands of fine chords, one of which could be found in each thing that I thought, that I needed to systematically break. All of the small practices around eating, putting things in their place or having attention while talking to God took on a deeper meaning. I wasn't doing them for theoretical reasons but because I could see my self-centeredness—this Paul who functions in the material world—more clearly. Paul could go on with life as normal, but he too wouldn't be as tied to acts that made no sense to him either—things he did that gave him no pleasure but caused webs of complications that he became lost in.

For example, I found myself eating a dessert and counting twenty little chews whose taste I actually didn't enjoy to only one where I did. I saw each time in my tendency to not put things back in their place, the parallel that I didn't keep my material life in its right place in relation to my spiritual life. While walking down the street, I could set aside the little irrelevant stories my mind automatically made up about people I passed on the street. Each was harmless on its own but a part of the web of threads tying me down to this complex “Paul” character that I had become so used to.

The Lilliputian image helps me keep this practice of cutting a little thread wherever I see it. I realize that it is a more graphic version of the more sophisticated idea of what holds me back: neural networks of synapses in my brain cells. The result is the same: whether to cut those little cords or reeducate my synapses. This week the Lilliputian image is stronger, another week it might be neural synapses or some other image. My struggle with self-importance that I have been tracking in recent months simply continues in this way, ready to change form when an image or task loses traction.

My purpose in this newsletter is to encourage you to stay focused on the little ways you can cut what I am calling the the little ropes, starting with those things whose grip on you seems quite unnecessary and even contrary to what you really like. Take one little thread away at a time and you'll soon free a finger, then a hand, then an arm, then your head so that you can see what needs to be done.

By focusing on things your messages point out, you'll be sure to find the area where you can get the most spiritual help and where your chances of success are greatest.

Please click on the link http://www.decodeyourmessages.com/content/repeat-fighting-lilliputains to add the images or practices that you use to visualize and counter the influences that keep you tied to patterns of thought and action that give you no pleasure or consider to be not like the way you really are but you continue. You can also click on the link http://decodeyourmessages.com/node/add/experience to add your experiences directly to the website.