Metta View: I can’t see me.

.As I was twisting around in the mirror, turning lights to reflect illumination on the upper quadrant of my back, I thought about the ideas of “seeing” and “flexibility.”

I was bitten by a brown recluse spider three weeks ago and part of my morning ritual is now to go stand with my back to the mirror holding my phone on camera and trying to set up a clear shot at the inflicted area.

Almost immediately after I was bitten, the two puncture wounds showed themselves but over time with strong antibiotics and tetracycline cream, it is down to a distinct area of red. However,  I am under compulsion to view it. It is “behind” me. I cannot reach it easily. I cannot see it clearly. The ritual of self-protection is built in the monitoring of my body.

The entire OCD driven idea of assessing how I am at this moment, how my past decisions and actions impact on my physical, emotional, spiritual energy, is the place I have landed in my life.

The bite is no longer spreading. The dark ring around it is no longer turning black. The center is beginning to collapse inward as the online information had predicted. But what about the rest of me?

I keep coming back to the idea of blind spots or black boxes. There is an obstruction in knowing the self and it is held in the steel-like neurons that form a spider’s web of concepts.
I know I cannot turn easily to look at my spider attack but that information goes into the basket: “Must do yoga- I hate yoga.” It is filed away.

I watched a video today by a 92-year-old weight lifter who began his self-improvement beyond the age of 80. As I watched, I felt the flush of the warmth of excitement and passion for what I in my secret most heart want for myself. And as time elapsed I filed the intention in the: “Must work out more but don’t feel like it now” basket.

The issue I explain to my patterned self, my toy train on a track self that goes round and round and reaches only the same train station as it ever reached, is that I have a bankruptcy of using time.

Time is energy. Time is optimism. Time is the ultimate expression of the physical. Since I have been retired in 1999 I was outer directed as an artist. I prepared for shows. I worked to deadlines. I spent money in the hopes of making money. I “was” something.

over view

And then I opened the Airbnb for eight very successful years. I was once again outer-directed. The customers coming in would trigger action. The six to eight hours a day spent making beds, doing laundry, wiping down surfaces was not negotiable.

Now, at 75, I have my debt paid down. I have all the time in the world. The Pandemic has turned off the switch of the impulse of action triggered by the outside world and I twist around attempting to see myself.
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And what I see is the problem with “float”. I float in time because “I deserve it.” They tell me that. The inability to look forward to appointments, to trivial meetings with others, to pleasurable strolls through thrift stores to buy things I have no use for and store in the dark peripheries of my house has left me bereft.

Issues such as age, the constant mirroring back to me of what I am expected to do or be as a senior, an inborn faulty setting due to years of being a workaholic and one who has trained herself to jump for the reward cookie held in someone else’s hand haunt me now.

But when I drift in the mornings, I do it listening to coaches, watching videos, reading teachers.

training the mind

I think of the trips I took to Europe and how I spent so much time buying maps when I could have been learning a new language.

Always, always, always my mind runs like a sheep dog herding up scattering thoughts. I come back to the knowing surety that I am a construct. The habits that I build create my choices.

So can we ever know ourselves? How can we twist around enough to get a clear view?

I can only register in my mirror the actions that I am taking. Some of them are shaky, unskilled, full of frustration. But some of them have removed countless moments of drama and struggle that used to occupy my ego.

The spider bite is healing because I followed doctor’s orders even though the antibiotic was very unpleasant. The food I eat is kind to my body and supports my health. The friends I have around me are loving and supportive.

Each day is another construction site. Each day is another laying down of more track for my train to go further, to explore more, to not be so tightly wound.

Ultimately it is a better use of my time to focus on the use of my time instead of looking behind me to see if there is any scarring from past poison. I see my mind grabbing at me for security and I understand the fear that drives that grasping.

Can I loving schedule my time so that I am being rewarded for each minor victory? I begin. I begin again. I begin each every now. Eyes forward.

Looking at “the self.”

First I have to say (because I am forthright if nothing else) that when we no longer hide, we are now in a position to heal. A door opens. We no longer try so hard to not feel, to not hurt, to not show our human weaknesses. We speak, or take action, or redirect our thoughts from a deep place of knowing who we are, or who we are attempting to become.

Trusting others is the way we build our confidence in ourselves. When others are allowed to see us as who we are and meet us in that open place, we see that we have a shared vulnerability and humanity. The struggles are not unique or signs of failure. Every soul born in a body has to face the same challenges.

It helps us to move from an adolescent place of posturing and the fearful wearing of a mask into a greater connection with our own personal power.

The feeling that we will die if others don’t accept us is normal. I believe it comes from our ancestral memory. Being shunned meant no one would allow you “in”. Being alone in the forest, without food, shelter and clothing meant you were condemned. There were predators in that unprotected place. The teen years are when these feelings are most intense.

Throughout my life, the people I trusted the least were people who are wearing a mask. It is probably why I failed to trust myself for so many years.

So how does an individual become real?

Somewhere in the mess of habits and emotions that we call the self, is the “sweet spot”. It isn’t about revictimizing ourselves (although we have been trained to do that brilliantly). It isn’t about self-loathing that leads us to punish ourselves because we are not good enough. It isn’t about killing off the core soul self to prevent others from rejecting us.

That is why I grew to be 178 pounds when I was alone in a tiny apartment one summer in university. Because I feared and was at war with my body, I put on weight. Because I put on weight, I only felt in control when I was eating. I had no distraction from the searing imprint of abandonment in my childhood other than punishing myself. By unconsciously deforming my physical presentation, I was showing I was in control.

self

And, finally, it isn’t by resigning to pain, to dysfunction, to the operating system of past habits that a person can end the struggle between the static and the dynamic self.

(That is my gold medal stuck place. I will tell myself I did well enough. This new resting place of reset is as good as it can get. Just settle in. I am not on the podium but at least I didn’t trip on my own feet and fall on my face.)

Finally, we are merely mortal. We can only take ONE thing and focus on that. It is up to each of us to figure out what keystone habit will change our entire construction of reality.

For me, I was driven into a corner to face myself by debilitating Rheumatoid Arthritis. I was deforming, unable to sleep, in constant pain. My war with my body could no longer be ignored.

When the specialist told me I would be in a wheelchair, I cried the entire hour-long car ride back to my house. And then I got angry.

I got angry at myself for not paying attention. I got angry at the medical system for not understanding more about mental pain and physical pain. And I sat and began to research for eight hours without taking a break every medical journal, world wide study, and methodology I could find.

Three doctors said I could never live without pain.

My attitude was, “Fuck you.”

I did research. I ordered DHEA on line myself. I followed the Norweigan study’s procedure and fasted for 12 days with only water. I went to a hormone doctor and got my hormones balanced. I became serious about meditation practice and watching my mind. I began to honour the entirety of myself. I paid attention to my masked rage, my limitations, my childishness, my yearnings, my gifts. I went on a path of soul retrieval whereby I accept all of my complexities. I was only human.

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We live in a society that had a good-until-date on our bodies. My yearly testing indicates that I “read” as 20 years younger than I did seven years ago. My body is dynamic. It shifted as my relationship with it shifted.

Traditionally the system gives up on us…. oh you are 50, or 60, or 70. Of course, you are hurting, growing increasingly weaker and the best you can hope for is to slow down your own disintegration.

It is simply not true. My reaction was, “Fuck you.”

I started reading about DNA about telomeres about stem cell experiments. I began to look at Ted Talks and YouTube videos of senior body builders.

It used to be believed that Tuberculosis could not be cured, that Polio would deform, that longevity was 50, then 60, then 70.

Everything changes.

I am a dynamic set of habits and thoughts. Society is a construct of ideas. Science no longer is a thick leather-bound bible of facts.

Finally, who we are is a field of energy, a collection of beliefs, a structure of habits. The place of magic is to be open and curious. Who am I? Who am I now?

And to get to this place of possibility, we first must not be encased in a sarcophagus of identity.

In addition, people around us create who we are. Thirty-five years of longitudinal studies prove that If others in our “social amoeba” are eating poorly, we will eat poorly. If they aren’t proactive and are in a “survivor’s mode” so will we be in a state of constant struggle.

We fall for old habits when the new habits are not hard-wired. We fit in with the social reflections around us.

Take for instance the habitual problem of losing my keys. I spent 30 years not knowing where I last put my keys. And then one day I stood in the doorway furious with myself. It was only then I set an intention. I got a key rack and taught myself to put my keys away.

The study of neurological pathways shows that 66 days of repeating a behaviour until it is hard-wired is a step to a new life.

This person that we stand within is NOT the best we can be. It is a leftover of past thoughts and habits. It is a leftover of the mother’s story and the grandmother’s story back for seven generations.

So somewhere between resignation, victimhood, inward-directed anger is the ability to calmly and carefully rebuild ourselves.

But in order to do that, we have to research the most effective manner to go about it. We don’t decide to rebuild our bathroom without watching youtube videos or hiring a plumber. It is not crowbar work. Self needs finessing.

When we give ourselves as we are too much credit and ourselves as we are becoming too little, we deny ourselves the opportunity to live a more peaceful, a healthier and more satisfying life. And it all starts with desire.

Sign up for change. Find articles and study them. Figure out who you want to be and do everything you can to lovingly guide yourself there. The self is a dynamic construct.

Fear Investment Policy

What exactly is a fear investment policy? From where I sit, I see it building strength daily. On social media I am watching conspiracy theories sprout like the seeds I push into potting soil, water carefully and place in the sunshine window.

The most important factor that uniites all of these paranoid systems of belief is one central statement.

Four people who have no similarity in their understanding of current events all post, “They want us to be afraid. We can’t be afraid.”

After a lifetime of study of PSTD, I absolutely validate what these weavers of alternative realities are holding up. If you are already in a state of panic, if you are already wounded and torn apart, you literally cannot handle any further sense of insecurity. And so you stand in the semi-dark with a weapon of reaction and shoot anything that moves. You blow it to smithereens before it can hurt you.

It is called trigger happy. Veterans of war, battered wives, men whose fathers broke their bones… all of those who had endured “too much” are now shooting at anything that moves.

One stage of grief is denial. The difficulty with denial is that it does not lead to an amelioration of the central problem. I once broke a bone in my hand with a hammer and did not go in for an x-ray for several days. My childhood taught me to simply stuff away pain and cut off the feeling.

And so, currently, we see so many people that simply don’t understand that they are stronger than they know. We are witnessing people who have no mindfulness practice. The irony is that undealt with pain makes us run to the story of victimhood. Unprocessed assaults on our own sovereignty make us easy to control. High levels of anxiety and fear shut down the prefrontal lobe. The adult part of the brain is now on mute.

And we will be like children. We will say, “It is too much for me. It is a lie. I hate it when I feel fear. I fear feeling more fear.”

The paralysis that results from over the threshold pain makes us perfect victims. We freeze in front of the attacking tiger. We refuse to stare the truth in the eyes with the confidence that we can solve problems.

And so the pandemic is bringing out the childlike reaction in many people.
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“Authority figures, like my parents before them, want to hurt me. Authority figures will lie to me, manipulate me, try to control me.”

The final reaction is the ultimate victim: “You are not the boss of me.” This is what a young child will yell out.

What is so very true is that we are capable of dealing with challenging times. London endured the bombings. Some individuals endured the Nazi Prison camps. We read Goalcast posting about people who were born severely handicapped whose lives are satisfying and joyous.

But when we are in the throes of terror, we cannot centre. We cannot breathe deeply, feel the solidity and safety of our own bodies. We cannot trust our own minds, or our own ability to sit calmly and study a difficulty without blowing its head off.

The pandemic which is sweeping the world is giving us a chance to grow up, to grow beyond our hyper-emotional cry, “You can’t make me be afraid.” Because… that makes no sense at all.

Fear does not cure fear. Calm, patient waiting for facts helps us trust the universe. Knowing that we do not need to know right this very minute, leads us away from a toddler like grip on an answer from the surrogate daddy or mommy.

Some times the strongest we can be is to simply do the next thing that might save others’ lives. Sometimes the wisest we can be is to understand we are not wise yet. But saying, “I refuse to look at the problem,” will not create a solution.

Fear is the biggest problem because it shuts down the mature brain. Ground yourself and be curious. Knowing what is going on will not kill you. People did not stand under the bombers in London and say it was a hoax.

Think about that for a minute.

Clearing my space. Day 23

Shut in

Today, I sat and read the ridiculous writings of people pushing back on restrictions. Celine Dion is the head of a satanic cult, there is no virus just what I call “body bag actors”, the state wants to lock us up or out or down. Fire bans and stop lights are all enroachments on human choice.

We don’t like to be thwarted, or given rules particularly new ones. And so I unfriended some of the most challenging to my mental health individuals.

And then I went through my objects collected in my upstairs space once again. Yes, it is my third pass through in an attempt to off load the ridulous.

Only this time I was able to let go of ten year old lipstick and five year old prescription medicines. I poured creams and liquids together from two or three bottles into one. It wasn’t a massively productive day but I did something to move toward my goal of a more peaceful space around me.

I put all of my plants on the deck to harden them off and then winter came bullying in again. Snow fell, the wind was slicing. By the time I paid attention, some of my plants were very, very depressed. I apologized to them as I took each container back into the house. I told them I would take better care of them in the future. I will check them later tonight to see if they have forgiven me for exposing them to harm.

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I went to the shed with the intention of bringing order but the cold air and chaos was not something I had the strong enough heart to deal with. I moved a few objects around, threw out a stack of papers and returned to the house to eat dates and feel irritated.

So alternating feeling irritated with eating dates is apparently my new hobby.

“At least I am getting dressed everyday,” I say to myself.

Celebrate the victories.

 

Day 22. But who is counting?

Through this 22 days of semi-isolation I watched myself cycle up and down in energy. One day I am out in the garden walking 10 kilometres while hauling dirt and cleaning out the beds. The next I awaken with a headache and am stiff and sore all over. I have no interest in engaging with this new day. There isn’t enough passion in me for the beginning.

The underlying use of energy to keep myself afloat is obviously syphoning off what I would normally be doing this time of year. But managing the body, the emotions, the spirit take monitoring.

To be able to scan the self and see , “No. You cannot push me today,” written on the gauge means I must respect how the entire system I call ‘myself’ is operating.

Today I sat with a Metta Practice video for 30 minutes and I could feel it clearing me. It felt the same way that sliding an overworked, muscle torn body feels sliding into hot water in the bathtub. There was the first recognition that, yes, I was listening. Then the relief as I could feel myself letting go of even that which I did not understand until that moment had been a weight I was carrying.

As I worked my way through the practice, selecting first those who are easiest to love and sending them my wishes and moved on to those who are more challenging, I was floating in a tub of hot water. Each breath, each thought caused more release from my body. I became lighter.

The spirit craves simplicity. The soul yearns to love openly without worrying about being hurt, or attacked or wronged. We all share the desire to drop the protective shield that we are taught is the only safety.

The conspiracy theories are now plastered all over social media at various angles, They are crisscrossing one another out. This statement is untrue, that statement is untrue. Only we in our cult of reality know what is really going on. We hold the tablets with God’s word.

I see the clinging to groups more and more as we are more and more isolated. Our childlike need for the protection of belonging is highly activated now when we are not allowed to sit face to face.

“Show me you belong to my structured belief system group by posting pictures of black chickens,” someone will demand. We are separated into our families in one isolation chamber or we are floating alone in our homes without pets or other people. We need to prove to ourselves that we still hold social power.

And so we cycle. We talk about how nothing is true; more is true than we will ever know; the monsters are no longer in the closet or under the bed. They are everywhere. They are on the TV screen daily.
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And so surrounded by shadows that we see because we are so frightened of being on our own, we now accumulate more and more conspiracy theories.

The way out of our own, internalized, lies to ourselves and our sense of an unsafe world is through a deep appreciation of the efficacy of self-calming.

return to self

We go back to the child. We go back to the bursting out of our chest desire to love. We go back to making it safe for ourselves to trust and be compassionate.

I got out of the bath and left behind all of the spider webs of sticky thread imprisonment. I came back to the truth of being human.

We want someone to tell us it is safe to love others. We want our martial arts master to say we don’t need the sword; we can take off the armour.

And then I felt so much more present in my own body as I recited , “May you be safe. May you find joy. May you be released from suffering.” I said it for others, and I said it for myself.

Let go. Trust. Be of good heart. Nothing needs to be true except this breath, this now. Come home. Remember to love.