Same again. This is how the tools are learned.
After noticing a slight unease inside, I went down out of my mind to the sensation felt in the body. A little tight around throat and chest area, mostly throat. I go there with my attention and give the sensation/feeling space and almost a permission to be there. I relax – not the sensation itself, it is communicating anxiousness. I can relax about it being there. Lean back inside and allow it to be there without me contracting away from it. I instead relax, and allow. Magic.
I’m much less afraid of my own feelings now that I’ve learned to turn towards them like this. I’m more honest due to being unafraid to look now too. More able to talk openly to others about the feelings. One small exercise can create all that benefit.
Talking of which, I am reading a book recommended by a client which I also recommend called Into the Magic Shop. An easy read autobiography of a neurosurgeon, from meeting a lady as a kid (from a deprived background and with alcoholic parents) who taught him to meditate to how he became a surgeon to intimate details mid operating on a child. It is a new experience reading an actual paper book again…a few chapters in bed before sleep. I like it a lot.
The weekend was just fine. I went with a friend to my mum’s art exhibition which she invited us to. Tick. Couple of clients. Lot of resting and reading.
Lot of chat with my son yesterday. It occurred that anger is never discussed really and that there’s a direct relationship between anger and depression often. Freud said it was anger turned inwards. So I Brought up the topic of anger and that snowballed and led to a good discussion. Ended up us discussing how it could be let out, perhaps a letter of rage to those who had failed him as a child with difficult consequences for him….including me.
And his girlfriend would write one too – her mother walked out after at birth, she was brought up by her dad. What to do with the letter. The writing of it is important. Not the sending it. A special burning or tearing up and floating away in a river or stream ritual could be designed and executed. It was a great very interactive conversation and all by text. I could hear I was onto something by the vigour of the responses.
One therapy client talked to me yesterday via phone video link sitting on a hillside on the edge of the sea way up on the Isle of Lewis. Only place she could get a signal! We talked about consciousness expansion, about relating to others as we change and grow, about not needing to plan so much as direct knowing when and what takes over.
Rest of the day was walking outdoors. A lie in a field looking at clouds in the afternoon. Grounding and caressing the earth. Being with it in stillness. A fellow dog walker arrived then a lot of squishing through mud in wellies. Then back out in the dark at 6 for another one. Happy dog, and a happy body here.
One of the men just called to ask for a new warm jacket, of course. Oh yes I have a garden construction business! Always grounds me. The temperature is plunging now. 3 months of winter ahead. we have work till mid January. And I’m working on lining up one for after that, which is a difficult risky job. Note to self-price appropriately. No need to go down in flames. I’ve got what I owe suppliers down to a low sum. Could bow out anytime. I’m giving myself the freedom of that. Though I could be a year or two away from doing that. Let’s see what The Force says.
A few from the afternoon and evening walk.
Learning to Rest with it All 