Growth?

Saturday 19Apr08 4pm

I've been moving slow and trying to listen within for the next steps. I'm learning to be more patient with the process and reminding myself of some of the things I have learned over the years.

The main learning that I've been focused on is that I can't make any major decisions when I'm angry. Especially when it's an explosive anger, which it was about a month ago. In my explosive anger if I make a major decision it will be to shut down the shop and get the fuck out of dodge. But as I calm down and take the time to think I realize that I need to be practical and line up my bowling pins and get the focus needed to knock them all down with the one ball.
It isn't an easy thing to do. Our society is notorious for instant gratification and boy oh boy as my sister in law used to say, "God grant me patience but I want it right now!"

I'm realizing that I need to take more silent time. That I don't need the things that help me to avoid what I'm feeling like television or alcohol. In fact, since I've started doing Kundalini Yoga, I've noticed that when I think of buying beer on the way home from work I talk myself out of it. I haven't gone to the bar for a month. My internal voice reminds me that alcohol and heightened emotions cause people to do really stupid things, and who needs that? And the crap that we call television shows offer no real inspiration and help us to picture stupidity and violence and all sorts of negativity that we can't help but to attract more of it in our lives.

So I pull a boatload of books off my bookshelves. I read beginnings of books or flip through books or pile books on my desk for future use. I'm a little restless but I know it's part of the process. I either sleep too much or wake up after an hour or two of sleep and can't get back to sleep. My dreams are vivid and a tad weird and sometimes disturbing. Well, only one disturbing dream! I finally realized yesterday that if I can't sleep, I need to listen within and hear what it is that I need to hear.

One of the things I'm hearing within myself is about my stubbornness. Two days after my explosive anger I woke up with the sore neck and shoulders. I immediately made a Shiatsu appointment and as I was on the table and Julian was working on my neck I said without thinking about it, "all my stubbornness is in my neck." I was stunned about that in that , 'who said that?' way. After the treatment (getting beat up, as I jokingly told Julian) I wrote in my journal, 'my stubbornness is in my neck. What am I being stubborn about?' I still haven't written about it in my journal but it hovers in my mind as I go through each day.

I can of course be stubborn about my anger. Rehash my thoughts about a situation so I can't move forward nor forgive. So as it sits now I'm in full fledged coping mode. I walk with the protective shield around me. Which means that I share with limited people. I'm personable but keep most issues at arm's length. I'm in deep thinking, trying to make meaning of some of the issues that continue to pop up in my life. Stuff as far back as my childhood.

I face the jealousies. The first jealousy that I can remember was from my step sister who is also a Pisces. As children, I didn't get that to her, I had moved into her space. She was the oldest daughter and she had her father. When I came around, I became the oldest daughter and I had her father. Of course because she never lived with us, she didn't know the hell that was my daily life. She didn't witness her father's violence or demands or full out fuckery. When she and her sister came over for weekends and weeks at a time in the summers, the unspoken rule was that everything had to be perfect for my step dad's daughters. If he and my mother seemed like they were going to have an argument, he would drive his daughters back to their mother's house, then drive back for the argument. I never understood my step sister's need to compete with me especially since I felt no need to compete with her. But of course when you think that I am living some charmed life you're going to be bitter when you think it should be your charmed life.

Those type of jealousies have been popping up with me and although it is laughable, it really is quite disturbing and disheartening. What I notice is how some people are focused on keeping track of what I receive as if it's so much more than what they are receiving. The laughable part is that these people live in big houses, go on expensive vacations, have materialistic things and they are somehow jealous of me where it borders on a form of insanity. Seriously? When have I been on a fucking cruise? EVER!

I'm contemplating the childhood jealousy and the fake reality that my step sister was fed. And I'm contemplating the adult jealousies. I try to look for ways to reconcile all that is swirling around in my mind. What in the world does anyone have to be jealous about where I am concerned? Except for that small fact that happiness is free. You don't have to have material things in order to be happy. You don't have to go on cruises or backpack through Europe or hang out in some $80,000 a day room in Dubai to be happy. You can just choose to be happy for the simplest reasons. And that may be the rub. It took me three weeks to get rid of the all consuming anger that was raging within me and ultimately the only answer that keeps popping into my sometimes stubborn brain is to be happy despite the bullshit. Keep practicing Kundalini Yoga cuz it makes me feel good and calms me inside. hmm! And keep going for those Shiatsu treatments that take me out of my head and bring me back into my body.

EY