Soh Wei Yu: What do you think?

Questioner: In certain situations in life I feel blocked by a fear which prevents me from acting. How can I be free from this obstacle?

Jean Klein: First free yourself from the word, the concept, 'fear'. It is loaded with memory. Face only the perception. Accept the sensation completely. When the personality who judges and controls is completely absent, when there is no longer a psychological relationship with the sensation, it is really welcomed and unfolds. Only in welcoming without a welcomer can there be real transformation.

We are in essence one with all existence; when we truly observe ourselves there is ultimately no observer, only observation - awareness. In simple openness which is welcoming you will come to accept and get to know your negative feelings, desires and fears. Once welcomed and nondirected attention to these feelings will burn themselves up, leaving only silence. — Jean Klein

Soh Wei Yu: By the way, have you seen your email?

John Tan: What Jean Klein said is very true. However, the naked awareness must be practiced to quite a great stability to achieve that. It has to penetrate to the depth of our consciousness, otherwise 'fear' will continue to surface and we would have to again accept the sensation till the "personality who judges and controls is completely absent" and that is being naked and bare.

Soh Wei Yu: I see.

John Tan: What you asked in the second question of your mail is true. All the 3 aspects of self-liberation are regarding 'the sense of self'. But it is again a form of perception shift that resulted in effortless liberation.

Soh Wei Yu: I see. How about the other email... the very long one, have you read it?

John Tan: Because it is very long, I have not. Hehehe. What are the 3-2-1 about?

Soh Wei Yu: Hahaha...

"You're not going to feel fear, you're going to feel, 'I hate you so much I want to kill you' or 'I'm so angry at you I could rip your head off' or something like that. So that's the way that you can - to some degree, on your own, and at least as a sort of introduction/initiation into it - you can get a sense of your shadow, because it's really helping you feel almost the opposite of what you think you're feeling. Like I say, just feeling your feelings and getting in touch with your feelings and all that, that won't get you in touch with your shadow, because your shadow is the opposite of what you feel, and that's just a pretty good definition of what the shadow is - the opposite of what you're consciously feeling..."

"One of the things that's great about shadow work is it doesn't just have you say, feel into your feelings, get in touch with feelings, how do you feel about it, etc. It actually takes the opposite of how you feel and says 'OK, feel that.' Because that's pretty much what your shadow is, is the opposite of what you're consciously aware of. So as I say, using the monster example again, if you are out of touch with your aggression, your anger - and, incidentally, for Buddhists to say, 'well, you're never supposed to feel anger,' the point is, well, if you're unconsciously feeling it, you have to consciously feel it first, and then you can try to transcend it or transmute it - but for you to just go around saying, 'I'm not going to feel anger now,' that just seals your repression. So the worst possible thing you can do if you have repressed negatives like anger or aggression is to get caught up in one of those practices that say that aggression is the root of all evil because your shadow loves that kind of stuff."

Ken: Well, that's probably not your shadow - you're just getting in touch with the primary mood of the separate self, and the self-contraction just is a feeling of suffering and a feeling of fear, that's just sort of all it is; and so there's no specific shadow content to that. If you're just on the verge of entering a causal or a nondual state the fear is just fear of dying, it's just fear of death. It's with specific content elements that the shadow 3-2-1 process is meant to work, but there are all sorts of other negative emotions and so on that don't really have this specific type of shadow content, and so 3-2-1 wasn't meant to cover those and wouldn't cover that.

"...So a shadow element would be some part of you that is inducing fear and gets something out of it; but in any event you want to just try to increase it, because you are generating these feelings of fear but you don't know how you're doing it. Fritz Perls used to say it's like somebody coming in and they're pinching themselves, and you can see them pinching themselves, but all they tell you is, 'I've got a pain here, it hurts.' And you say, 'Well, stop pinching yourself!' 'I'm not pinching myself!' [both laugh] And you go, 'OK, try to make the pain worse.' In other words, if you can see that you're producing the pain of pinching, once you see that you're doing it, you won't ask how to stop. You'll just stop! Because it's a voluntary movement, it's like once you see that you've got your hand in the air, you can put it down."

John Tan: In summary what is it trying to convey?

Soh Wei Yu: I think it's about becoming aware of some of our unconscious parts of our ego identification/momentum?

John Tan: By?

Soh Wei Yu: Huh?

John Tan: The way of sensing, what did they suggest? What is shadow?

Soh Wei Yu: It says, "Because that's pretty much what your shadow is, is the opposite of what you're consciously aware of. So as I say, using the monster example again, if you are out of touch with your aggression, your anger - and, incidentally, for Buddhists to say, “well, you're never supposed to feel anger,” the point is, well, if you're unconsciously feeling it, you have to consciously feel it first, and then you can try to transcend it or transmute it - but for you to just go around saying, “I'm not going to feel anger now,” that just seals your repression."

John Tan: So what does that mean?

Soh Wei Yu: The internet says shadow is "the part of the unconscious self that a conscious mind sees as undesirable and tries to define as the 'other'."

John Tan: Good. And the solution?

Soh Wei Yu: By feeling/being it?

John Tan: Yes and no.

Soh Wei Yu: How come?

John Tan: It has to be like what Jean Klein said. That is just the first step. This is a form of practice like vipassana; however, the true insight does not arise yet. It is just like practicing insight meditation does not equal the arising of non-dual insight.

Soh Wei Yu: I see.

John Tan: But once you are truly non-dual, then you know it is like that. Just like Sim Pern Chong, given enough time, whatever he says will be like Buddha. But he need not read what is taught by Buddha.

Soh Wei Yu: I see.

John Tan: However by reading it, it may help him and speed up his progress.

Soh Wei Yu: I see. Did you ask him to read the sutras?

John Tan: The difference is he does not like to be labeled. Nope.

Soh Wei Yu: I see. Labeled as a Buddhist?

John Tan: Anything. As for me, I don't mind... hehehe.

Soh Wei Yu: Lol. By the way, have you read Jean Klein before?

John Tan: No. But I think someone posted some posts before.

Soh Wei Yu: I see, where?

John Tan: Don't know... I thought it was in your forum? If it is not in your forum, then I don't know. Maybe not. Lol.

Soh Wei Yu: Jean Klein is an Advaita one. Not Buddhist. I think one of Nisargadatta’s students, not sure.

John Tan: I see.