When I started this work that “Real Healing” revolves around, there was me (read: my monster) hoping beyond hope that somehow my life would get easy.
Don’t get me wrong, I have been privileged, I have had good fortune in some cases and I can’t really say that my life has been hard in comparison to many… It just never seemed to flow that well. I have made some bold decisions in my lifetime which I would say have paid off in terms of learning, but in terms of stability, I still seem to be lacking that.
Feelings of instability were heightened after a most intolerable year at work and the death of my father in July of 2021.
I’m not going to use this blog as a platform for releasing my emotions about a subject…. We have “expressing” for this, and is one of the tools I use regularly to keep my energy flowing properly. What I will say about this year is; fucking yikes! LOL
Certainly not the ease that my ego has been craving. You see, the ego wants easy, it wants its comfort zones, its routines and certainly despises being challenged. What my teacher has got me finally to see is that these unknowns, these challenges and stepping outside the comfort zones is what builds us and grows us.
I wrote an article recently which is entitled “Narcissism”. I am wondering if the correct term I should be using is those with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). I am also wondering as I write, whether this impinges on one of my other disciplines which is NOT TO USE LABELS. As NPD is a recognised psychological term, I believe we can let this slide.
If any of you have worked with these types of characters then you might understand what kind of chaos they are capable of bringing to a working environment.
In hindsight I am extremely grateful for these disciplines I have learned. It certainly helped me deal with the unprecedented amount of stress I have experienced of late.
I wouldn’t say I’m through it by any means…
In actual fact I’ve hardly started to face all the staggering emotions.
I found that as 2021 unfolded and situations became more intolerable and stressful, that it was all I could do just to get out of bed and go to work, and here came the relapse.
My spiritual disciplines faltered. I was taught to work them all into my day and to deal with things as they arise. I found myself letting one after the other situation slide and not dealing with the emotion in that time. As I have written about many times in my blog, these unexpressed emotions can sit within us and interfere with us on a number of levels i.e. physically and energetically.
With the sheer consistency of stress, I became tired, and the disciplines faltered more.
I could feel that my balance was slipping away.
The one thing I did find useful is talking things through with my partner (who was all too willing to express to me what she thought of our newfound colleagues). This is expressing in a way but I was always taught NOT to make my emotions someone else's problem. Not that I was trying to, but I have a feeling that just being mad in front of someone is not as effective as fully getting into the emotion on ones own. I will try and write more on this subject in a separate post.
I find it fascinating as I write to see the mechanisms of stress and emotion leading, in ever decreasing circles, to an eventual pit of suffering and ill health, and I’m not keen to admit how much work I have ahead of me to get back to the path.
As my balance slipped, I cut more corners in my disciplines. My ego wouldn’t let me see I was in trouble and would certainly not permit a call to my teacher, so I let it go and I let it go, further and further into a minor abyss.
My yoga disciplines went. I am not a big exerciser, rather dislike it to be honest, but yoga kept me somewhat in shape. The job I had (yes, past tense) was physically demanding and yoga helped me balance physically from that. Not surprising that when we subtract things from our life that benefit us, we allow room for other activities that do not.
As my exercise went and the stress mounted, I became more tired. All I started to look forward to at the end of the day was something tasty (i.e. not healthy!) to eat and, well you may have guessed it by now, my old nemesis, alcohol.
Alcohol. Worthy of it’s own blog post.
Now I don't drink outrageous amounts, one could say not out of the range of what may be considered normal for a British person of my age. My disciplines have certainly helped me not to turn to it immediately, though there is a definite trigger pattern here for me. Thinking too much… have a beer. Upset or angry… have a beer.
Now that my disciplines were not so disciplined, after work I found myself retreating to my man-cave (a very nice greenhouse my boss had on his property), to twiddle on my phone and drink some beers. The amount ranged; not enough to make me pissed but enough to feel it and numb the senses a fraction.
I knew it wasn’t the correct course of action, I just seemed to be overloaded with everything and didn’t have the stamina to do the necessary work to drag myself out of that hole.
I wasn’t great company during that time, the best part of half a year I would say, so maybe it was better that I took myself away from my partner, but I am sure there was a lot better things I could have done than sit on my arse and drink beer.
My teachers words from many months ago used to ring in my head “I’d can it (alcohol) completely as a starting point!”. And here would have been the precise time that my ego monster would kick in and make me feel worse about what I was doing.
It is so clear to me now how people can get stuck in a vicious circle featuring stress, the ego, bad habits, addictions etc. In 2021 I found it hard not to, and I’ve been taught!!
To temper this slightly bleak post. I want to mention a couple of things that I was grateful for this year.
Lessons: God how my eyes are open. Another level of naïvety has been scraped away. Shocking how, but the experience has revealed to me that my gut instincts are strong and real. I didn’t mention that at work we had a definite feeling about our colleagues that was uncomfortable. I will explore those feelings a bit more with you I am sure, even I haven’t quite sussed those out yet myself.
I’d say that this year has toughened me up somewhat. I still hate conflict ever so much but am more likely to call someone out if I can smell the bullshit. It’s almost a feeling I get now, and this is one of the side effects of doing energy work, the ESP is certainly heightened.
I did maintain a fair amount of “objectivity”. This is something I have certainly gained from my energy work. Objectivity seems to be something that some people just have. I have my theories about this. I didn’t, but now I do…. And thank god. It’s super important. Let’s come back to this in another post!
“Objectivity”
Despite everything my partner and I (whilst living and working together) did not turn on each other. It would have been so easy to do, and yes we probably had a few blow-ups, but this stress was definitely relationship-ending levels. We did somehow manage to soldier on through.
I mentioned the job we had in the past tense…. We did eventually quit. There really was little else to do. It was a humbling experience this year to realise just how powerless we can be in certain situations. This in itself was monster food. My ego monster was convinced every day that I could make a plan to somehow “win” the situation. Most of my plans would have probably landed me in prison, so I’m glad I didn’t act on them. And here again was a great lesson. I see how people can be driven to violent acts oh so easily. I also saw how utter ignorance/narcissism/evil can be an utterly huge influence on anyone it’s near and how this in turn is how it spreads. I’d say that evil is a force in the world that only spiritual work can really mediate, but that’s also a subject for another time.
Ironically enough, on the day that we quit, that night was the same night my father passed away, quite unexpectedly. Stunned as I was by that time of year, looking back I was blown away by the timing of it. I can’t say why I felt the need to mention that, but it has something to do with the way life unfolds, and it certainly does. My gut feeling is that there's a greater force driving the big events in our life. It takes a fair bit of courage to follow this without the ego needing to know why things happen and what will happen next.
All this talk of 2021, and I haven’t even mentioned the coronavirus pandemic! I’m not sure yet how this topic fits in on a spiritual blog, maybe it doesn't, but there’s definitely been a palpable sense of stress, fear, and anxiety in the collective conscience since it began. We are all influenced by this to some extent, and especially when one does the energetic work required and becomes more perceptive. It’s yet another thing that our disciplines teach us how to handle.
I do jump around a bit whilst writing my blogs. I do hope you can follow with ease.
It was one of the things that took a hit during “the relapse”, my blog writing! This is the first post in quite a few months, I am encouraged though as I have learned a lot this year and have thought of many more things I want to share, even by writing this one post.
Even as I endeavour to wrap this post up, I can sense the monster with it’s persistent noise throwing up such questions as “what if you don’t pull yourself out of this?”, “how can you be writing a blog with advice if you haven’t mastered yourself yet?” and so it goes on. We just tell it “STOP”, face the emotion it brings up, and welcome in the unknown, and the next set of challenges as it all unfolds.
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