The Red Hot Iron Ball of Doubt

In a recent Zoom call, a few people in our Energy Collective group were expressing a sense of hitting a wall and needing to face a process within themselves. This honest part of themselves sees it truly has to change. There is an all encompassing deep grip in their core. Something urgent is happening to them, something always there and they know somehow that they must face it. It has been there for so long. They’ve tried to avoid it, or to engage with techniques or ideas or half baked attempts to deal with it, or to just feel better. All of their strategies have not worked. Their comforts or their mastery or their intelligence or their success, even their healing journey has not truly touched this.  This post is about that very sincere and intense and beautiful process.

In truth, as hard as it has been, this is in many ways good karma for people hitting this crucible. It’s a good recipe for touching this process and truly transforming. If it were easy or conceivable, we would have done it already. It must be a process beyond our understanding which we surrender to and allow to transform us. This is called the Great Doubt. And it leads to Great Awakening.

There is really no turning back. 

It is like an itch you can’t scratch, but somehow desperately need to engage with.  

You can’t yet truly meet it, but can’t turn away.

You are up against a brick wall that feels solid.

You’ve tried to run away or avoid or distract yourself.

You’ve banged your head against the wall.

And yet everything in your life is driving you into it, like some arrow in flight.  Like a conveyor belt.

It is like there is a red hot iron ball in your throat you can’t spit it out, you can’t swallow it.

The only way to face it is to turn toward it, implode, surrender to it, and allow it to transform you.  

This would seem to require superhuman abilities to allow this process to come to fruition if it were not trying to happen. But it does require us to make a choice and face it.

This is much of what I am attempting to share with my classes, retreats, and work.  I’m giving people the time and space and permission to learn the internal language to feel this process, and allow their world to go through the oven of metamorphosis.

Some people I work with are in the midst of this. But others have not yet reached this critical mass of doubt to allow the process to truly hook them.  Maybe they don’t have the karma to be able to dive with all of their life energy into this process. They haven’t got the fever yet.  The fever which at a certain point gives us the existential focus to turn our attention back onto our process and allow it to truly transform us.

Others have had some experience, some life-changing turning point, and then they are in the midst of a process which needs to be allowed to run its course. They can’t get off of the boat.  Their body, their total being, is half-way transformed.  The process Is like being ushered, phased into a new way of being. This can be quite uncomfortable.  Often times people leave practice when things get tough, but really there is no escape.  It is so helpful to have a community for support. It is good to have a teacher who has walked this process. 

Or someone has somehow intuitively (perhaps from good karma) summoned all of their intensity into something they have always known is there, something calling to them. Something that can’t be looked away from. They feel led to what is on the other side of the entanglement of their moment to moment conflict with reality. They are magnetized to it, like a salmon coming home to spawn.  

This is all a recipe for real transformation.  The struggle. The intensity. The longing. Feeling a bit like a pressure cooker. At times in this process as the doors begin to open and that existential inner gripping starts to unravel, even just a bit here and there… Little tastes… one can’t tell what is inside or out, can’t tell which way is up or down.  

Just keep going, allow the process to cook you.  Keep up the blue collar work (practice) every day, stepping out into the unknown, testing what is right and what feels like betraying this essence.  Hitting, butting against that wall inside over and over, at some point you’ll get curious and feel the terrain, and sensitively feel down to the molecules, and that wall will begin to become porous as you become porous. That wall will become transparent as you become transparent. Let it bring your entire system into oneness, and the 360 joints, the 84,000 hair pores of our body will unify. Like a huge ball of doubt, bring all of your intensity to this process, like a Red Hot Iron Ball in your throat!

And as the internal momentum naturally shines more and more, being led by the internal energetics, the inner felt sense ability will open up a whole new world of interacting, as inside and outside begin to dramatically change. There will be times of relief and light, more and more light. And instead of not knowing what to do with all of our feeling, all of our intensity, we will see that we can throw all of our intensity, all of our focus, into allowing this light, the internal process to take over.  What a relief!

Please use your incredible creativity, curiosity, honesty, and courage in the most real rubber hits the road way.  Again, I’m not talking about concepts but feeling this with every cell.

And at some point, as this process naturally sharpens more and more, unifies, like a bucket of water shattering, everything will drop, and you’ll have a great change.  You will be forever living from a different perspective.  

But, tasting it is only the beginning.  Wielding the sword of prajna will be a huge life-long integrating process.  You won’t be off the hook just because you tasted it. You’ll have to be all the more sincere in your practice.  The universe will shape you to it.  Believe me, you can’t look away! It’s a lot to learn to process! Ha!

And once again, I am not talking about force in any way!  How can you allow all of your cells to come together without force…?  This will require giving into this visceral process and letting go like drinking down the entire ocean. Please look at this deeply. Self reflect. Be honest.  Have courage!

Keep going!  More to come! Thank you for your sincerity!  I admire your spirit so much!  Don’t get discouraged. No one is left out. 

Thanks for reading. Please share this with anyone who might find it useful. helpful, or inspiring. 

*None of this is meant to be medical advice.  Please check with your doctor if you are concerned about your mental health.  This is not meant to be a substitute for therapy or medicine. Please work closely under a teacher.