Your Carpet or Mine?
by Eric Dowsett

As I was finishing some energy clearing of a shop for friends. I explained about how each of us creates our ‘reality’ depending upon our perceptions, likes and dislikes. Until we change these patterns, we are just going to get more of the same. I used the ‘carpets’ to help explain the situation as I understand it.

The ‘carpets’ are a teaching aid I use in my workshops. I have several small rugs, or carpet squares that I take with me. There may be a colorful circular rug, a doormat, an expensive hand woven rug, I even have one I use in Switzerland that has two opposing arrows on it, ’this way - that way’???. The purpose of the rugs is to help students understand that we are all on our own rug, the rug representing our personal drama, our ‘reality’.

Our carpet may have many things in common with other carpets. This could be referred to as the beginnings of consensus reality. Many may share one carpet, a common belief pattern, social, environmental, financial, political, ethnic etc. These people are likely to be strongly attached to their own carpet, allowing others, as long as their carpets ‘fit’ each other and each feels comfortable with the others’ beliefs.

So, any time someone would ask me a question at a workshop, I would step onto one or another of the carpets. For a different viewpoint I would stand on another carpet. Each answer would be relevant, depending upon who was answering the question, or rather, which carpet I was on, which ‘drama’ I was currently identifying with.

Enlightenment, to me, is the ability to step off the carpet, to become totally objective about your ‘reality’, and not, in the process, to exchange your carpet for another. Not even one that is perhaps more suited to who you think yourself to be at that point in time, something we have been doing for a long time. I don’t believe that many people actually realize that they are on one of these carpets; people just accept who they are. That their reality is based upon their preferences is not so easy to accept. No one, I am sure, would create sickness, poverty, violence, yet it still happens. I think this is because we create our ‘external’ reality based on who we are, not what we would like to be or even what we want. As within - so without. I hear people all around me wanting to change the world, make it a safer place, make it more just, make it this, make it that. Collectively we make a difference, but how can we expect to make manifest peace on earth if we still have conflict and turmoil within.

My workshops explore the relationship we have with both our ‘external’ and ‘internal’ environments to demonstrate how our ‘reality’ is created. How we affect the environment and how it affects us is a superb bio-feedback method, one that gives instant awareness of the possible effects a particular environment is having upon a person. Through increasing our awareness of the part we play in c0-creating our ‘reality’ we can change that ‘reality’. This is repeatedly demonstrable. I have seen many people use the ‘old’ way of imposing their will upon the environment. The old way is to try to bring the judged environment back to a balanced and harmonious state through the use of various devices, earth acupuncture etc. People who impose their own judgmental will upon the earth are doing so whilst standing on a carpet that, because of the nature of the ‘carpet’ is limited in its knowing. They are still coming from a place of judgment, this is good - this is bad... Yet what is good and bad. Isn’t the environment simply reflecting the state of consciousness of the majority of people who live on the planet?

Yet who says, this is good, this is bad? Nothing other than the personality that has likes and dislikes, feels good and feels bad, prefers one thing to another. So, depending upon which carpet we are on we will try and mould the environment to suit our own needs. History is nothing but the molding and re-molding of reality to suit whoever held the most power.

One thing I have observed about the creation of realities from collective carpets is that they all take a huge amount of energy to maintain. Because, inherently, the personality is coming from a need for security, and hence a desire for more, always more, it can never be satisfied. So energy is constantly needed to prop up that reality, which by definition now has become non-sustainable, because it is taking energy to maintain. Now, when we are able to step outside our carpet, not trading it for another, more comfortable, larger, elaborate or simple carpet, we have just stepped, albeit briefly, into an enlightened state. In this state we have let go of judgment, we have let go of the preferences of the personality. In this state we can allow whatever balance the earth requires. The Buddhist meditation practice of Tong Len allows the meditator to release stress, pain and sickness held in another (person or planet earth) to pass through their own evolved awareness, and by not identifying with the symptoms, the meditator can assist in any ‘healing’ that may be required.

By not identifying with symptoms we have momentarily stepped out of judgment or moved off our carpet. If at any time we resume identification with symptoms, then we have a good chance of becoming those symptoms, of taking them into our own body, manifesting that particular awareness. This is how reality is created, simply by identifying with the experience rather than being the one that experiences. Afraid of ‘feeling’ because our past conditioning has been to associate personally with the feeling, we have blocked out an important part of who we are. The more we identify with the experiences, the more we become the experience, until eventually we have physical manifestations developing and suffer the consequences.

Now, what has this to do with carpets? If I am asked to restore energetic balance to an environment, without imposing my will or perceptions upon that environment, I can’t ignore the part that my ‘clients’ are playing in the co-creating of the reality they no longer find comfortable. (We create who we are not who we might like to think we want to be). For a lot of people just beginning to understand the energetic connection among all life, some support along the way is needed, a helping hand to sweep away the old and allow room for the new. Now, if I want to create a new, more prosperous reality (prosperity can be financial, emotional, mental, spiritual, whatever) for myself, I first recognize that what I have now is a result of my past thoughts, actions and desires. Not intentional by any means, why would anyone consciously create a painful death, for instance? Yet, on a cellular level, I am holding onto information from my past, information that has created the carpet in which I now find myself. Why would I do this?: maybe because I am no longer aware of the memories that shape my present and future; maybe because those memories are too painful or too deep. Whatever the reason, if I am to change my ‘reality’, I must change these inner memories. But, change is not really the right word to use. After all, if all I am is my memory, why would I want to change any of my past? Rather I would release the energetic charge that still binds me to the memories of the past.

Through the simple yet powerful techniques I teach in the workshops, I can safely reduce the amount of tension around my memories. Imagine a ship firmly tied to the wharf. As the ropes are released one by one, the ship gets closer and closer to fulfilling its original function, to sail the seas. Yet it’s not until the last hawser has been cast ashore that the ship is free to sail. So it is with the releasing of any attachment to our past. By gradually discharging the energy stored around our memories, we slowly continue the process of freeing our selves, until one day we have little emotional attachment to who we had thought ourselves to be. Our attachment to the little piece of carpet we have identified with for so long is not so strong anymore. We have less to lose by giving it up.

By releasing more it is no longer so difficult, or painful, or such an unbelievable event to step off our carpet. When we are, even for a short moment, free of our carpets, not reaching out for another, we are in a state of being, of allowing. When this energetic state, which is compassion, or unconditional love, radiates out around us, it will create its own reality, not one based on our fears or preferences, but one that is love based. The only energy this reality requires to sustain it is more love. Not you giving or ‘sending’ love, just you BE-ing love.

Is there an easy way to step off the carpet, a quick way, a painless way, a perfect way, a guaranteed way? Yes there is, but I don’t know it. Yet really I do, so do you - it is to give up DO-ing, let go of your judgments, your preferences. Many are afraid that by giving up preferences they will condone all anti-social behavior. This is not the case. As you discharge the emotional energy around your preferences you cease to create them in your reality. The more people stop creating such polarized energy patterns, the less we will see them manifest in our world.

Simply by being here now, you are on the journey of carpet trading. Is your carpet isolating you from society, is it causing conflict, separation, hostility, elitism or poverty to manifest in your life? Or is your carpet welcoming of others, tolerant and understanding, does your carpet attract abundance and friendship? The choice is yours.

p.s. Wanna buy a good carpet, only used 372,450 times.

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