The Wisdom of Ruminations and Tugs

Subtle pointings to what’s driving your reality

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Sometimes I feel like a broken record talking about how the imprinted energy information stored in our consciousness creates our reality. It informs the perceptual lens that is determinant for how we engage the world and might even contribute to the underlying substrate of everything we see.

The Ancient Indian Scriptures the Vedas and Upanishads discuss the universal principle of “As Above, So Below.” One interpretation is that the outer world is a reflection of our inner world. Mahayana Buddhism posits a similar belief that at the most fundamental level, the external world is a projection of the mind. As your consciousness expands, this possibility becomes more evident based on the increased coherence between your inner and outer experiences. When the coincidences start to become too coincidental, you start to wonder - what is actually going on here?

I think the most practical way to work with this dynamic in order to improve your life is to discover the contents of your inner material. There are countless methods and modalities to do this. My preferred method is to use my response to life. Behind all the layers of energy-information that you’ve accumulated by merely existing, there is a deeper, divine Self. It is fundamentally whole, content, and peaceful. The consciousness journey is about removing the obstructions to rediscover and then embodying the deeper Self. Many traditions call this union Self-Realization. 

The path of using your response to life to do this starts by noticing anytime your reaction to life is unlike the natural state of the true Self. Practically speaking, this looks like monitoring when you’re disturbed, triggered, and/or resisting what is unfolding. This dissonance serves as a pointing to go inward and investigate the underlying energy-information that is being animated by life’s events, pulling you out of your natural state. Once you’ve accessed this, the energy-information can be transformed to move you closer to your original essence. Simultaneous with the upgrade of the information in your perceptual reference library, your overall ability to see ultimate reality more clearly expands. This is growth in awareness : ) 

Wisdom teachings have been describing methods to take aspirants through this process for hundreds if not thousands of years. What’s encouraging is that the latest science of transformation has now validated a similar process of permanently shifting the information in the subconscious called memory reconsolidation. Although it’s explicit use still feels nascent, it seems to be gradually working its way through the therapy and coaching world in the form of various modalities which is wonderful.

I like using my response to life as an initiate because I don’t have to go to a therapy office and wait weeks between sessions to make progress. I can do this everyday, working with multiple formations a day. You probably need to work with a teacher to familiarize yourself with the concept which has always been the role of wisdom traditions. But once the student has been taught to fish, they no longer need to pay $200 out of network every few weeks for fish.

The more you work with the practice of working with your response to life, the more acute your ability becomes to notice resistance. At first the only first resistance you notice might be some form major triggering that happens in the external world. Maybe you get impatient and are curt with someone. Then as witness consciousness emerges, you start to notice inner turmoil like unprojected anger and uncomfortable bodily sensations in your inner space. You expand the library of experiences that you work with to include these more pronounced inner experiences. And then you start to learn to differentiate the texture of thoughts and mental processes that are being driven by unsupportive information in your subconscious. Great examples of this are ruminations and persistent “tugs” to do things. These are more subtle experiences that represent great opportunities to transform the underlying energy-information into something more supportive.

I’ll give you two recent examples that came up for me. Someone recently sent me an email that exuded behavior that didn’t resonate. I wrote a brief response and then hours later I noticed thoughts arising about my response. Was it appropriate? Should I have responded? I was ruminating.

A few days later, I felt this compulsion to reach out to someone who I haven’t done a good job staying in touch with. It arose multiple times throughout the day, containing a texture of “should” that kind of felt like guilt. The thoughts were tugging at me.

In the absence of the root energy-information driving them, I’d simply be moving through the world without the mental weight of ruminating or dealing with compulsions. This makes it easier to remain in the present moment and the natural state instead of being jerked around by involuntary mental formations. In my opinion, this is the highest form of freedom!

For most of my life, dealing with these types of experiences was done by taking some action in the outside world. I call this outer responsibility. In these examples, maybe I would re-read the email I sent, complain to my partner for comfort & validation, and then reach out to the person who’s been drifting in order to alleviate the guilt. Stopping here is like trimming weeds without pulling out the roots. It may alleviate the inner experience in the moment, but the next time a similar external circumstance comes around I’m just going to thrust back into the same situation.

When you learn to work with your response to life as your main teacher, these mental experiences become opportunities to take inner responsibility first and THEN potentially outer responsibility. When you notice subtle indicators like a rumination or tug, the call is to explore your inner terrain. If you can still your mind and drop into your body, you can use a variety of methods to access the energy-information behind these experiences and even discover the root imprint. Once accessed, you can transform it by feeling into the energy, letting it move, and then inserting new information. This impacts your response to every potential future experience going forward. I’d say that’s a worthwhile investment! 

Next time you notice yourself ruminating on something, jot it down on a note on your phone and bring it into your next meditation session if you have a practice. You can try the methods described here. I am going to start sharing more meditations for this type of stuff so that people can find easier ways to work with these experiences. More to come soon. 

Nothing has had a bigger impact on my consciousness journey than working with my response to life.

You don’t have to go on a retreat.

You don’t have to change jobs.

You don’t have to ingest any substances.

All you have to do is begin noticing and become the chief investigator of your inner space.

When you start to work with life this way, the responsive reality brings you a steady stream of continuous growth opportunities to your doorstep every single day. This is your curriculum which is perfectly orchestrated. All you need to do is pay attention and make it a priority to get the lessons. And in the absence of receiving them, my experience is the lesson will keep coming until you finally get it. Over time the compounding growth that comes with this type of daily transformation is remarkable.

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