Chink in the Armor
If armor is the container of being that houses individuality, a chink in the armor is a weak spot that leaves one vulnerable. In reference to our intimate essence, it could be any number of beliefs or deeply ingrained habitual mental patterns—conscious or unconscious. One such belief or deeply ingrained habitual mental patterns is “there’s something wrong with me.” There was never anything wrong with us, however, when awareness meets discomfort within be it mental, physical, or emotional—all one and the same at the level of totality—at times that habitual mental pattern is activated if resiliency isn’t robust.
If negativity finds its way into the chink and we believe it about ourselves on any level, there is a reaction to self or essence. The mind’s reaction to the negativity acts like self-poured concrete whose main ingredient is self-doubt, further solidifying the chink. Wise ones say, where mind flows energy goes. Energy becomes matter. After many years of this it can leave one with a hunched posture which is a way to protect the heart, or other bodily manifestation.
The solidified chink acts like a dam that restricts energetic flow. It makes it difficult to experience clarity, guidance, intuition, knowing, or sovereignty on any level. We become subject to the whim of strong currents of reaction. Self-doubt or lack of trust in self is an eroding force to our roots into source, and as the chink becomes more concretized, the distorted filter of self-perception that “there’s something wrong with me” becomes further solidified. As existence is perceived through our filters, life begins to appear more and more this way. Life will show us what we believe, distorted or otherwise.
Found beyond the din of the mind’s whims that are laid down like a frenetic superhighway that is exhausting to navigate, abides the neutral force of pure awareness, pure presence. It is contiguous with the neutrality which burns the sun, hurls stars through space, gives rise to the tides and phases of the moon, and is the doorway into and out of this life from the great mystery that abides in our cells underneath the din.
The neutrality of awareness or presence is that which softens the concrete in the chink, that which eventually heals and seals the chink, rights essence back into its fluid receptive state. When the neutrality of awareness or presence meets the felt sense of discomfort within, an alchemy, a metabolization occurs. It requires a strong muscle or willingness to remain with, to abide in the felt sense of discomfort without reacting to it. The muscle of awareness to be with need be strong because the chinks, the distortions, have gained great strength and velocity as they’ve traveled since the dawn of mankind.
The neutrality of pure awareness and pure presence isn’t a cold sterile force. Within it is the unconditional love of being—the same love one feels for a child, that is elicited when hearing the song of the mourning dove, or felt when the heart meets the silence of dawn. It is the same neutrality inherent in death as we exhale back into the mystery from whence we’ve come. If the distortions that give rise to the discomforts and chinks are met with the unconditional love inherent in the neutrality of pure awareness, the concrete in the chink softens, and the chink heals. The chink is, after all, the place where the light gets in. Awareness to discomfort within. Breathe. Stay. Without reacting. Equanimity, it is called. There might come a time when the armor itself is no longer needed and that within is in a fluid exchange with the love and beauty inherent in existence.