There are many ways to invite in a form of buffering at energetic or soul levels, being held energetically or within the alive presence in ways that helps us get less caught up in reactiveness.

We can fill up the hara through Breema and other practices. We can receive different forms of energy transmissions, such as the bands of power munai-ki rite, that serves as a buffer, filter and protection. (I am noticing the effects of that one right now, which is what prompted this post.) We can invite in the soul level, the alive presence, through prayer and other practices. And more.

The benefits are pretty obvious. Our lives at a human level typically becomes far easier. Fewer things bug us. There is a sense of not being touched by what we previously got caught up in. It makes it much easier to be who we take ourselves to be if we are identified with stories, and it makes it easier for this human self even if we are not. We get a sense of how it is to live released from being in the grips of stories and identifications. We see that something else is possible.

Our human self may also reorganize and stabilize within this new context, releasing identification more and more over time. It may even lead into what we are noticing itself, finding itself as awakeness, and this field of awakeness and form inherently and always free from an I and an Other.

But there are also some possible drawbacks. We can get complacent, happy with being protected by the buffer, not taking up the invitation to explore more in depth the hooks and rings of identification and beliefs in stories. And that is exactly why any buffer is only temporary. It is within the realm of form, it is content of awareness, and as any form and any content, it will change. When it fills, it only does so to empty. And when it empties, it does so only so it can in turn fill.

It is cyclical, as anything else, and throughout it all is the invitation for us to investigate the hooks and rings more closely. An invitation for what we are to notice itself.

Any buffer is a buffer or protection for who we are, for this human self. And the invitation for what we are to awaken to itself is there independent of buffers or not.

As there is an disidentification with our human self, and then finally with the belief in an I with an Other, there is also less and less sense of any beliefs or identities to protect. Ultimately, it leads to an absence of even needing to protect this human self, because that too is something that is just happening as anything else… as the clouds, sounds, trees… with no I placed on it.

At the same time, there is no stupidity here. In the space between awake void awake to itself, and this human self that this awakeness is expressed through, a natural love and wisdom comes up, and this wisdom and love is expressed as a care for any life including that of this particular human self.

As there is a falling away of identification with stories, there is less need to protect particular beliefs or identities. But there is still a protection of life, of living systems at any level from beings and up to ecosystems and planets, even while seeing that there is no separate I anywhere in all of it, that it is all fluid form expressions of the awake void.

This is expressed at each of the three centers. At the head center as an disidentification with any particular stories and objects of these stories, a seeing of stories as just stories and a fluidity among them, a recognition of all as awake void and form absent of any I with an Other, and a seeing of how there is temporary identification with stories and forms which creates a very real sense of suffering. At the heart center as love for all that arises, as the form aspect of this awake void, as the temporary form manifestations of God. And at the belly center, as a deeply felt-sense of trust in life independent of how it shows up, a felt-sense of all as the form aspect of God (and the emotional level as a steady nurturing fullness instead of reactivity).

So on the one hand, disidentification and a seeing/loving/felt-sense of all as God. And on the other hand, a recognition of the suffering that happens through temporary misidentification, and a natural impulse to alleviate the suffering… even if that too is just one of the temporary form aspects of the awake void, God’s play.

And the alleviation can be temporary, in helping changing circumstances for someone, or go more to the core, in guiding them to find what is already more true for them - helping the awake void wake up to itself through them.