How does this ‘New World’ work?
4/13/07 1602
All quiet downstairs, but then I’m not too eager to go down and look. I’m just pleased about the quiet, enough to take my chances on what I’m going to find when I check out the hot tub and the downstairs. Connor’s got a friend over. Rebecca was here with her 4, but it didn’t turn out real well for us. Scott and Mason began fighting, this time sooner than they usually do.
I feel worn out. It’s true that I got to bed late last night, almost 1 am, but I slept til 8:30. I’m also on a period, after a cycle that was only 13 days long. So looks like weird things are starting to happen.
I can’t tell if I’ve managed to stay in touch with my Self. It was interesting to consider that this fear about losing this newfound place of comfort and ease may have been a masquerade for pulling back in fear from this new place.
What’s interesting is I’m in a sort of weird in-between. I’m not so much on the prowl for inspiration. The stuff I read in hopes of ‘ah-ha’ moments don’t have the same draw; that is I’m not as hungry for them. The reason is that those ah ha moments were glimpses of what I think were hand-holds to get me up to this point. I have a clearer picture, and not just a glimpse now. I’ve climbed, I think, those rungs of the ladder. Finding those glimpses made me feel full. But the glimpses were hints at what I think has been revealed. So I don’t seek those books with the same appetite. So there’s a little emptiness because I don’t hunger for those, because they are a bit redundant now.
Later
Sigh. I think I make a mistake about trying to ‘use’ this ‘new’ perspective as a means to an end. I have a tendency to veer off into that territory. So I feel troubled if I don’t –if I still have troubling emotions, like my sharp impatience with Scott today. I guess I never really lost sight—for long anyway—of my Observing Witness, but I was probably on a continuum closer to lapses of awareness and just being in the context. More tightly identified with my internal emotions. And noticing they tended toward unpleasant. I’m just thinking I probably had a half expectation that moving into this realm of more awareness of my self from my Self, and also more awareness of my self OF my Self—I’d had an expectation that I would feel happy all the time.
I guess I’m busy learning if this IS indeed a new world; and I’m exploring it’s outlines and interior. I’m asking questions: What does this new world mean in terms of my daily emotions? Of my behavior toward my children? Of my reactions to my children? To Gary? Should I be discouraged if I’m irritated, and irritable, with my kids? Or sink into the context of fight again? If I forget my moments where I can choose? That’s interesting, because its like I forgot that today, the whole notion of CHOICE. I don’t think I’ve even thought the word today. That’s really been kind of key in my musings and ‘discoveries’ over the past weeks, and today I didn’t even remember it, or really pause to consider what my choices were in any given situations. I forgot about the micro-choices that add up to the more complicated ones: complicated by the little choices and their consequences. I guess I just didn’t really have my awareness about me in my moments in life—I mean the smaller ‘structures’ or units of being that make up my day, moment by moment.
I realize I keep acting as if this new way of thinking is a sort of magic charm, a talisman so I can never be unhappy again. I think of it in a ‘step on a crack/break your mother’s back’ way. Superstition. What comes will be taken away, especially if I want what comes. The more I do want it, the more likely it will be taken. That’s an anxiety shut down place: I felt something inside me shrink to a small, dense point at the conception of wanting and getting, and wanting badly and getting.
I’ve felt less in touch with my own generosity today. I think that’s troubled me too. So I felt the hard edge of my irritation with Scott more sharply. I just didn’t FEEL generous when it came down to it.
4/14/07
822
Dream:
I’m at some sort of school. There is a guy who works at the school, or actually, maybe this is a store. My car is in the far side of the parking lot, and its an old car, one I had when I graduated from high school and started college. There is a man who sort of oversees the grounds, maybe he’s a custodian. It seems I might have some trouble with my car, and I approach this man for help. It is a hot day. At some point he touches me in a way that I’m not sure is appropriate or not. It’s in reference to the heat, I think, maybe he’s telling me I’m over-dressed. It seems like there is some atmosphere of concern about heat stroke. Maybe he’s telling me I need to put on other clothes, because I THINK I remember, or maybe it was in the dream that I remembered later, when I was telling someone, that he placed his finger on the zipper of my jeans and then moved his finger up toward the snap. Or, maybe he put his finger on the inseam of my pants, and ran it up to my crotch. It seemed like it was in a quasi-reasonable context and I wasn’t sure how to take this. I went to the store manager to see if I could get clarification, and then regretted it when I saw she was going to take disciplinary action. I’d hoped, I guess, that she’d just advise me on how to interpret it and then I’d know how to respond. But instead it looked like this guy was going to be fired and I felt responsible. Then there’s a part where either Derrick, the contractor we had joins the dream in addition to the custodian, or the custodian becomes him. And there’s a sense of latent attraction with him, but I’m dismissing it because he seems too old. Then I remember that he is only a little older than me. When I realize this then all at once it becomes a possibility; it’s almost like he, Gary, and I are a trio. Although it hasn’t really been acknowledged among us that “Derrick” (the same guy as the custodian, or someone else?) has a similar status to Gary’s. We’re on some sort of family trip where my parents are there, and I’m trying to set up some sort of cooking area, and people all around me are making demands—laying their fights (the kids) at my feet to intervene, my mom wanting to know something about something we might need later in the future. And a little attention between Gary and Derrick, and me feeling a little overwhelemed by the needs and anxieties of people around me.
I put the notebook by the bed last night. I didn’t use it. The few times I did surface toward awakening I was reluctant to surface further to write.
More musings on this –I don’t even know what to call it; I say, “New World” but that doesn’t feel quite right. New Person?
I’m wondering if this is a path that’s been trodden before, others having walked step by step to the awareness of themSelves. If this is like the stages of normal human development, though many remain asleep to it. I want to ask Sharon about that.
Behind everything I think and do, there is a Self that witnesses it. Hiding in plain sight. SomeOne I am waking up to, from years and years of calls. I am just waking up to this.
There was a time I wouldn’t have thought this Self was significant, even if I had been more awake to it. I’ve been vaguely aware of It, but I’ve been asleep. The thought of being able to generate action from There, as opposed to from within my conTENT is the potential I sense for a much more effective and happy life. My con-TENT was the hand I drew. I was born with the nervous system I had and the parents I had, and the environment/culture I had. My life’s central theme was of loss and suffering of some kind. So I played it out in my experience of things. But now I see there is a larger Me who is bigger than the dramas that go with my mind and nervous system. I want to have suffering be less a part of my experience. Not central, anyway.
I was feeling aware that part of me views This as a means to the end of feeling good all the time, the ability to protect myself from encroachments. In other words use This as a tool. I have a feeling it doesn’t work that way. Things just don’t work that way.
I think one thing I’m defending against is void. One thing my writing did for me, as well as help me to get to Here, was to fill time that otherwise would have been empty. I wrote a little about this prospect yesterday. There is a part inside of me that demands a certain ‘presence’. There’s a part of me that recoils against emptiness and tries to defend myself. From it, from boredom. I feel uneasy when faced with nothing. Smoking pot has augmented that empty spot. I guess that’s why I like it because of the euphoria my empty spots are filled with. I like that, and I like the insights that have come from it.
I guess it really did serve as a ‘dulling the pain’ function. To get through some difficult things, like when I’d nearly always get stoned before running races, back when I did that. I liked to do it stoned and part of it had to do with the way the euphoria enhanced the pleasure I could take in from feeling the strength of my body, and it also served as a lubricant so that the tedium wouldn’t discourage me. I get an image of a bubble in between my ‘cells’, billowing out and firm enough to lean on.
This has been part of my ongoing discussion with myself about the use of drugs and if it’s appropriate within this New Framework.
So why am I reluctant to face the empty space?
I’ve gained weight and my clothes are beginning to fit me more snugly. I really like being slender. So I’m uneasy about my feelings about gaining weight. I’m reluctant to go off the wellbutrin because I’m afraid I’ll gain weight. I think there’s a part of me that feels that having desires based on one’s appearance is unworthy. Selfish. And another self wonders how this fits in with this different Atmosphere.
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