Lost My Cool: part II

Well, I'm not sure I'll be able to get it back again.  It may be gone for a while.  That happened to me last year when I moved in with my Mom.  I was doing okay before I had to be around her all the time.  But after having her in my face day in and day out whether I felt strong or weak, I didn't have enough personal space to regain my composure and I lost it for over a year.  Amazing how moving out of her space put me right back where I needed to be within hours.

I finished "The Four Agreements".  It feels very much like a measuring tool for me.  I can tell how free I am by how much or little the pictures he draws of "Heaven" seem feasible.  Right now, I'm seeing more obstacles than I saw two weeks ago.  I can remember how freedom feels and how easy it is, but I can't get there from here.  There is a gap and I can't find the bridge.  I am no longer in the deathless lands. 

I'm sure it's possible to get there.  It's not an intellectual achievement.  It's a product of certain habits of awareness.  Habits that take more than practice alone and more than good genes alone, but a certain combination of the two.  I think the ability to achieve and hold higher states of freedom is partly physiological.  The brain must be capable of building those habits or pathways.  Some just aren't.  And I don't know if that's an evolutionary adaptation or a simple matter of health vs. defect, or if there's even a difference.  But some time last year I began to realize that eventually I would be able to do it and hold it so it's not just some fluke mountain-top experience. 

But it also takes a certain kind of motivation, I think.  One's motivation for expanded awareness will color one's quality of awareness.  It will determine the limitations of it in some way.  One can have expanded awareness and still be an asshole.  'Tis unfortunate, but true.  So, I guess the kind of limitation motivation determines is a moral one.  I guess that's the word.  Maybe there's a better one.  But I had to overcome my prejudices about other people's motives for expanded awareness in order to even begin to pursue it.  I'm still working on that.  And now that I've felt it's benefit, I have to sort out the new reasons for pursuing it from the motives I've previously been suspicious of.  Even calling it "Freedom" pushes alot of buttons that my smaller self is very invested in.  I have to detangle from things like that.  If I am indeed a Borderline, then my amygdala can get overly charged from such triggers. 

I'm seeing a different way of feeling about what happened at the House Meeting.  I don't know how else to describe that.  I KNOW that I don't HAVE to feel entitlement and resentment about it.  I can feel differently about it.  I can take the perspective of the other people involved.  But something is in the way.  The patterns that have been laid down (from what Ruiz would call "the Parasite") are still very deep and persistent.  They are still "poisoning" me.  My motivation for moving away from those patterns is very, VERY important.  If I move away from them for any reason that might resemble rejection of the small self - even remotely - I will fail.  So, I have to be very careful with the metaphors I use, consciously steering clear of polemic.  Most of the teaching and literature and tradition uses polemic for such pursuits, so I can't really just trust myself to those packaged versions of enlightenment or whatever. 

So, as long as I don't make any threatening movements towards my small self, it will lower it's shields and lay the weapons down willingly.  I think that is why Jesus did what He did, instead of leading a military revolution.  The institutions that were "protecting" life as they knew it were getting in the way of emotional and spiritual progress, and they were all created within a military context.  More weapons would only escalate the conflict.  He had to make another way.  I have to allow my small self to do what it feels it needs to do to anyone who threatens it, even if those threats are in the name of progress or freedom.  My small self knows that true progress cannot be made if it is not allowed to function the way it was designed. 

I think that's what Ruiz means by choosing another dream.  He doesn't subscribe to the usual metaphor of "waking up" and staying "awake."  I'm not sure, but I think the "dreaming" metaphor is more ancient or maybe it's from a different brand of ancient. 

Someone who would know is sitting about 10 feet away from me here at my Coffee House office.  He's been to South America and the Amazon and studies the ancient cultures and how they are sustainable and such.  He's got amazing stories to tell.  When I think he has a minute,  I'll ask him. 

But the "dreaming" metaphor seems friendly to the sort of idea I have of enlightenment, which is: awaken to what it is like to not need to fight so that you can go back to sleep and pick your battles more carefully.  Because only a teeny, tiny percentage of people are awake enough to their own inner dualities to not be hipocrites. 

Americans seem to be in this frothy limbo right now where we're awakening to our impulse to fight, and we're almost ready to leave it behind, but not quite.  it still seems like the right thing to do sometimes.  It was only about 100 years ago that we didn't even question that at all.  So, currently, even the war protesters are waging a policy war on the govt., believing that it will eventually accomplish what they want and are totally asleep to their own active war-impulse.  I haven't yet met one who seems to be in a more intentional place about it, they all seem to deny it and deflect the suggestion as if it were a threat.  A truly expanded awareness wouldn't do that.  The truth is, we are all war-mongers.  The challenge is to be free to direct that impulse to where it will actually do good and do no damage.  Right now I don't think the war protest movement is really doing much good and it actually damages the credibility of intelligent and sensitive people.  Spending next month's paycheck to buy bombs to blow up the office today.  ...but that's my well-versed amygdala talking.  It can pull hundreds of justifications for not rejecting the lower impulses out of its hat. 

...Yeah, he says the idea of dreaming is one of the most ancient in the world.  Which begs another question.  Maybe that's one of the reasons the idea of awakening was so profound to begin with.  But it's clear that dreaming is not just a metaphor, but literal.  It's how the Shamans determine what is going on with people spiritually.  Perhaps some people in ancient India found problems with that and used the waking state to solve it, thus putting a new value on the the conscious mind.  I can see how it would suck if you had your eyes gouged out because you dreamed of screwing your neighbor's wife.

So, choosing another dream can be more friendly to the lower impulses than mere awakening and then staying awake.  Unless you really get that point that Pema made in her book, "The Places that Scare You" about awakening TO the lower impulses, not awakening FROM them. 

So, I want to punish the Staff member at the Shelter because of her sense of entitlement.  Yes, I do.  Because I feel entitled to satisfaction.  She too feels entitled to punish me for non-compliance.  But I am the one who is awake to my sense of entitlement.  She is not.  Our sense of entitlement ties us to alot of drama and suffering.  It is a totally weak and powerless position to be in.  That means she too is experiencing weakness and powerlessness.  Thus the need to punish.  Entitlement is all about being utterly unable to provide for one's self the thing one needs so we feel forced to find a way to extract it from others at any cost.  I've invested wasted years of my life trying to solve the puzzle of entitlement from inside of it.  It is impossible.  As my most recent Shrink told me, childhood is over.  You can never go back and get what you missed from your Parents or get them to undo what they did.  Justice cannot repair that sort of thing.  The patterns have been set, we are used to feeling cheated.  Even if justice was done, it would not remove that sense of being cheated because that sense is now hardwired into the system.  One has to disconnect from The System for a while before one can really have a choice about how to maneuver inside of it. 

~~~

I've changed locations.  I ran out of money buying tea this morning, so when I finally got hungry I had to go back to work where my money and food is stashed and let myself in and eat.  Empty building.  Me in the kitchen with a bowl of cereal.  So, now I'm at my favorite Pub down the street sipping a large Guilder.  LOL  This is the kind of life I would live if I were travelling in Europe.  I always thought I had to be wealthy to afford this.  So far today, I've spent no more than $7.70, total. 

So, another thing that happened is a client/friend stopped in at the Coffee House where I was and we talked.  While I was helping him, I helped myself figure out the crux of the matter with me and my Staff member nemesis: We are both people who work hard to help people and we both feel entitled to some decent respect and consideration for that.  I feel as if my worst, most difficult to overcome character defects should be tolerated by the people I live with because I'm trying so hard to get over myself.  No doubt, she feels the same about hers.  That's where we're at.  Same level.  Same agenda.  Only, I have awakened first.  I beat her to the Finish Line.  So, at the same time, I'm awake to my sense of competition.  LOL  A Bonus!!

There are certain luxuries that only the Mentally Ill can afford.