It was bound to happen. After all my excitement recently of putting myself out there, of following my inspiration, I was going to have a ‘bad’ day…
Which was yesterday.
But it wasn’t a bad day, only a thought that could make it so.
It was what it was.
In the same way that you get dark menacing storm clouds one minute and white fluffly cottonwool summer clouds the next….
I had felt ‘off’, you know those days when you bump into things or drop things or keep missing the mark somehow. Tiny things set you off balance and signal that you are not quite in the flow. I was feeling sad but not knowing why…
And then I fell over. On concrete. A full toe bending, on my knees, corker of a fall that left me shaken, very bruised, and in a lot of pain, pain that kept changing throughout the day.
In the past I would try to come up with reasons why all these things were happening, discover what it all ‘meant’. And what I was supposed to do to ‘correct’ it – change my behaviour, buck up my ideas, take action, or have a rest. And I might even have googled the metaphysical significance of falling, of bruises, or perhaps even of toes.
On top of this I would judge myself as being too slapdash, too impatient. I would spin stories about how useless I was, how there was definitely something wrong with me. I would overwhelm myself with all the things that I thought I had to change. Leading to a complete downward spiral ending in thoughts of not being able to carry on because it was just all too much.
In a matter of minutes I would give up. On myself. Because I’d been listening to a few thoughts….
I would do anything but actually feel what was happening.
Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.
Being aware of how quickly my thoughts could lead me astray, yesterday I made a conscious effort to prevent this.
I decided to stay with everything that I was feeling and experiencing.
I didn’t have to solve anything.
I didn’t have to fix anything.
I didn’t have to change anything.
I didn’t have to know what it was about.
It didn’t have to have a meaning.
I didn’t have to be anything other than how I was. In every moment. Sad. Angry. Feeling sorry for myself. Physically hurting.
I didn’t manage it completely. At one point I found myself in the car, tears streaming down my face, going to the shop to buy chocolate fingers to sooth myself. But I was OK with that too.
When the thoughts take over, when we think we are just our minds, when we don’t even realise that we are a body too, sometimes it helps to reconnect with all of ourselves by looking in a mirror, or touching our face.
So I looked in the car mirror. And instead of the ugly ogre that I imagined I would find there I was surprised to see a pretty little face.The face of a small, lost and vulnerable child who temporarily had lost her way and needed compassion and comfort.
Who needed to be seen.
By me.
Feelings that come up can be a result of our thinking.
But often feelings are simply old energies leaving.
By resisting them, by trying to stop them, change them or prevent them they just go
underground and come back again. Usually in a more marked way.
But if we witness them, have compassion for the part of us that is feeling the emotion, rejoice that an old, out-dated part of us is ready to move on, know that they are only temporary and will pass, without having to do anything at all about them, then they will eventually leave, of their own accord.
And sometimes the associated behaviours or patterns that are kept in place by our resistance can also dissolve and lose their power to trigger us.
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