I allowed the recent lessons and experiences to settle in yesterday, let the stability arrive in properly. I took the advice of the therapist and watched my urges to treat my self with wine/food/chocolate. I watched the sensation of neediness arise last night, I identified behind that grabbiness, was the fear of a void, of nothingness. I identified the urge to fill it with something, food, booze, chocolate, almost anything.
So I turned with caring attention towards that scared little me. I located the emotion in my body, sat with it, meditated with it for a few minutes, gave it space, and then moved it slightly. I did this quite a few times as the impulse arose. I ended up not drinking or overeating, and slept well, and felt good in the morning. Also down a couple of pounds too.
I am learning that I can be ‘beside’ myself as I experience the various emotions and sensations that come and go. No need to be alarmed or to resist. It is okay. Like a caring wise parent I am always able to present – if I remember to be – as a stable energy, even as turbulence passes or rages through me. I wonder if this is ALL I need to learn actually. Is there anything more important than learning to be a friend and a chum, and at times a warm reassuring presence for ourselves? The knock on effect of this is that life flows. Life happens and we respond consciously, not in reactiveness. We make wiser choices. We are kinder to others. We judge ourselves and others less. Yes, this seems to be the crux of the mission. It is love at work.
I think I needed to be reminded that I can do this, its like one of the controls in this space ship that i forgot I had. This is where it is useful having some others to chum me along. We can help remind each other of the ‘ship’s controls’ we haven’t been using. I felt very reassured by the chap Im doing some meditation/therapy Skype sessions with. I had gone into feeling alone and lost my nerve and got scared again. This guy is helping to remind me of the controls, which are always there for me if I choose to use them.
To simply observe and not get caught up in the changing flux of sensations and feelings and thoughts. They all come and leave again without a trace.
On Agitation by Kim Eng
“Q: What do I do with the agitated state I experience?
KE: Agitation is interesting. Something is stirring up, wanting to be changed. And the mere asking of a question about it implies that there is some resistance to agitation, some form of non-acceptance. Somehow we’ve learned to not be okay with what arises within. However, life becomes much easier if we can learn to accept whatever arises, instead of denying or resisting it. It’s what’s in your field of consciousness. But it’s not who you are.
The tricky thing is, what we tend to do with agitation, is to identify with it. It’s not who we are, but we think it is and act as if it is. Now, of course, we know that is not who we are. We may even want to push it down, thinking “Oh my god, this is who I am. But, of course, we know deep down that we’re the infinite I, yet we trick ourselves into believing that something impermanent that arises is who we are, that it is an unchanging part of our identity.
My recommendation: Come into stillness and just allow this agitation (or whatever emotion that is arising). Allow it to be here and tell yourself, “Okay, it’s here. Yet I am the field, the space of consciousness” and actually feel it. It may even be signaling something, stirring something, perhaps stirring for a change.
Of course, what may happen, is the impulse to want to just vent it, for example, at the next person who comes along, because we don’t like this feeling inside. But if we can just say, “Okay, here it is. Wow. What does it feel like? What is it stirring? What is stirring inside me? Is there something that needs to be changed?” Or it just a question of accepting what is? And, without trying to think about the answer, just allow it to kind of percolate and allow it to arise. If it doesn’t arise in that moment, maybe it’ll arise tomorrow. What is of primary importance, is that you remain still, alert, present.
And in this stillness, there comes a kind of trust that the wisdom that you need, will come in its own time. This is the spiritual life—living in the unknown yet knowing deep down that whatever manifests, is impermanent, always changing, and is of secondary, or relative importance. But who you are deep down is primary. Nobody and nothing can agitate you unless you let it.”
Learning to Rest with it All 