Rat in the city
The more open I become, the more surprises I get. There is so much “emotional garbage” in this body, who would have thought! It is very much like cleaning out a basement – behind all the clutter you find even more of it. I never knew it was there in the first place, yet here it is, in the bright light of the day.
The issue with this is one has to “feel” it first and follow the symptom of unease, tension or anxiety. The egoic mind doesn’t want you to go there. It took many years to build up a pattern of avoidance and “not taking notice of it”. So it is a matter of following those little signs of contraction, very much like spotting mice droppings in the basement and getting on your knees to find the nest.
Fear does not always feel like anxiety. Very often it is hidden behind being indifferent. A state that I would previously have called “calm and collected”, I now recognise as actually being paralysed with fear. Not feeling your emotions – well, that is the work of fear.
It took quite some interior detective work to discover the beginning of the rope coil. I found it in a discreet, yet knotted feeling in my stomach and when I followed this energy, it led me right to the rat king. Do you know what a “rat king” is? Its one of the urban myths of Manhattan (where else) – it is a phenomenon of a number of rats becoming intertwined at their tails, being stuck together by dirt, blood and excrement.
Well, I found my rat king which started out as a big hole of brooding emptiness and beyond that all sorts of emotions, protected and muffled by layers of fear. I have been “working” on my rat king for quite a while now, simply by bringing awareness to it and no longer avoiding it, as my “ego” wanted me to. The more I did that, the more it became clear what the defining issues were. Just bubbled up and opened a new dimension. Really early stuff, things I certainly do not remember consciously, but interestingly enough, my body does and the compensatory avoidance drove me in a lifelong samsara of repeating issues.
Funny how that goes, but I think I am now down to the main sticking points of living a life in contraction. All it took was to follow a feeling of resistance and unease in myself and go beyond the alarm signals of the ego. Some got triggered by real live events, some I figured out by enquiry, others just came up. And then it is just a matter of letting go – which is a mental-physical-emotional-energetic process of release – a whole being sensation.
The whole thing is like putting together a broken mosaic. One piece after the other has to come loose, before it can get set in again, in its right place. Everything is becoming clear and decades of compensatory behaviour is being revealed.
After all, no rat king can withstand the fire of consciousness.
The Living Room 
Very apropos. Thanks Marille. You sound different here. I like the image of ” the rat king.
Timetamping is that you? Do we meet again? I am still so pleased with your thread.
I know, I know……. its my ego that’s pleased.
Wonderful observations. To my mind “this is something big” (Even Verizon has some good lines!).
“Fear does not always feel like anxiety. Very often it is hidden behind being indifferent.”…… and other things maybe that also aren’t obvious? I ask because I have recognized that ‘fear’ is still vague to me but I also recognize that it is the foundation of what is making the water muddy. A serious blockage? Or, the beginning of the next big step? The key to “What is it that keeps me from clinging to presence?
“………started out as a big hole of brooding emptiness………” I think I recognize that hole…..a kind of ‘self’ despair without depression? If so, I have been there, especially and most distinctly, in the forums. Oddly enough, if that is what it is, I am actually more present when I am in that state. ??? What is that all about?
Here’s to all of us finding the end of the rope and, finally, our rat king!