Found the courage again to allow the disturbing reactive annoyed feelings to be felt. I go into the feelings and just sit in stillness with them, and the sounds themselves, with no accompanying thoughts trying to add a commentary. Slowing thoughts in only increases the reactivity.
First I turn the series I am watching off and be directly and fully with the sounds.
My insides are churning and not used to this direct raw exposure. “Get this away from me, it’s unbearable, make it stop, do something, bang the ceiling, leave the room”. I notice and I drop the thought.
I sit and breathe and feel these disturbed feelings. I stay with the feelings and breathe. I notice the thought response to it and pay no attention, so they drop. I stay with the swirling angry sensations of feelings in the body. Moving though my trunk up to the neck.
Yes, ouch this hurts. I remind myself that while uncomfortable, it’s not going to harm me in any way. I can and will do this. After a short while I could see that while very unpleasant indeed it wasn’t unbearable. I see I’m not harmed by it.
Then after a few minutes more I am getting a little excited and loving that I can do this. And then and I’m starting to welcome it. An enjoying of the opportunity to face this storm of disturbed energy. Moving into acceptance. The noise goes away. When it comes back I turn off the iPad to be with it directly. Yes, still a very uncomfortable near instant response to it of fiery fight or flight energies. And as I move into allowing and accepting…..less and less so.
It’s going on again right now actually at 7am, and has been all night on and off, and woke me at 3am again. I am okay with it though.
I’ve been lightly playing with this again recently, I know it’s inevitable that I arrive here and face myself. I’d found ways to live with the noise, and create antidotes – I might move room away from where they the noises are into another room, listen to something and I wear earplugs to sleep.
I recognise the seemingly perfectly designed choreography. How the sequence of events is miraculously designed for me to overcome my fear here.
All these years until recently, the noise has been at consistent times of the day. That was a help to initially overcoming the reactiveness as I could prepare myself in advance knowing when they would arrive.
Now with the people upstairs requiring so much external help so a lot more footfall and mechanical walking aids, the noise has multiplied 100 fold and it’s now almost all day and at totally unpredictable times. What I thought of as dire adversity before now looks like a walk in the park!
Thats how it works. We are given opportunities at low levels of pain and if we don’t use that to alter our trajectory, the pain is turned up till we do.
The way the noise has been before allowed me a time an opportunity to overcome the misophonic response initially to the extent that I didn’t even notice the noises after a while. I used Michael Singer’s audiobook to talk me through it and it gave me the courage initially. I used a certain passage of his over and over again, till I could do it on my own. I somehow lost that though. So the lesson has got harder.
The willingness has to be there all the time or old patterns will re-establish themselves. I have to consistently 100% surrender up my right to be annoyed.
It’s not the doing of it that is difficult, it’s finding and remaining in the willingness. It’s a direct assault on the ego’s belief that it can and should be in control of the environment. It believes the environment should be arranged in a way that keeps me comfortable.
Learning to Rest with it All 