I don't regret it, but it is kind of inauthentic to only post the feelings, thoughts, conclusions and impressions that I deem "worthy" of the audience. After all, I have titled this blog a search for and experimentation with Truth - shouldn't failed experiments be included in my reporting as well as the successful ones? I think so! So without a long expose', I will shine a light on the past two months.
It's been really, really rough. Not rough because I've been busy at the grindstone, but rough because I've been beating myself up about not being busy at the grindstone. I would wake up, usually at about 1:30 in the afternoon, and think of how pathetic and inappropriate such a late hour was. I'd not feel like going in to volunteer at the coffee shop, and feel like a withholder and feel unreliable for not doing so. I'd sit around the house in my jammies all day, and point out to myself that I am the epitome of white trash. Of course, just about anyone I'd talk to about this would look at me like I was crazy and say, "I don't judge you. I don't think that about you. I actually don't think about how early you wake up, what you do with your time, or how you dress at all... You're fretting over nothing!" Their comforting words would provide temporary solace, but of course, the only true acceptance we can ever feel has to come from ourselves... and I was my worst critic.
I also read a lot of fiction and watched a lot of TV. Hooray for the Mistborn trilogy, the Hunger Games, The Three Musketeers, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Spartacus, The Walking Dead and so on. I didn't like Inkheart that much though, and started reading Inkspell and just couldn't get past the first 80 pages because it was for too young of an audience... This was another tool I employed: fiction/TV mixed with some wine provided a perfect cocktail of numbness and "checking-out." I don't regret this, but have beat myself up about it. Of course, like with everyone else, no one else criticized me about it at all. It was just my own self-reproach that gnawed at me.
I got better at it, but I did pendulum swing. It became about being proud and defensive about all of it. I LOVE that I get to sleep in and pity you because you don't! Or I'm not so shallow as to care about how I look. Obviously WE'RE not on the same level! Ah, the snide nature of defensiveness. I didn't actually say these things to anybody, but I shielded myself with the words. Of course, no one was shooting arrows, so a shield was pointless. All that happened was my self-criticism grew ... and became charged with anger.
I felt abandoned by God. (In this blog post I'm going to call God "She" for the fun of mixing it up. I have permission from God to do this. The "God" I know has no gender.) She wasn't fixing it. Here I was, "giving up everything" and She wasn't doing Her part of the deal. She's betrayed me again!
Do you know that I went through 48 hours of pure hell because I knew my bank account was short the $0.93 needed for an upcoming automatic withdrawal, and I had the $1 bill in my hand, but it was a weekend and I didn't know the PIN to my new debit card, so I couldn't deposit the $1 through the ATM? I mean, it's pretty ridiculous in retrospect, but it sucked to live through. I knew it was ridiculous too, but I feel trapped, bound, worried, and betrayed. God said She'd provide for me ... why was even the simplest thing soooo haaarrdd!?!?
And finally, in the spirit of transparency, I awoke last Tuesday, and laid in bed for about 2 hours, finding comfort in the thought of death. Death wouldn't solve my problems, I knew, but it would at least change the scenery. For the record, I had no intention of actually seeking death, but I did start liking the idea of an "escape."
And then a cat snapped me out of it.
Well, the cat started the chain of events that did. I was house-sitting for a friend, and needed to go feed her cat. I'd just spent two hours in a class where I'm supposed to lead a spiritual discussion, that turned into two hours of me venting about my sense of betrayal (BTW thanks to my two special co-students for hearing me out and offering love and support!!). After my class, I intended to walk into my friend's house, dump food in the cat bowl and walk out. But instead, this adorable little furball named Duchess enticed me into an exchange: she'd get snuggled and loved, and I'd get someone to listen to me vent some more. That got boring after about 30 minutes so I decided to play my friend's Game Cube while snuggling. That got boring really fast, but the cat was simply too perfect to leave behind for the evening, so I looked at my friend's movies, and found an Abraham-Hicks lecture on video. This is the last shot You've got, God. I'll watch this for 10 minutes, and if I don't feel better, I'm done with You.
Four hours later (2 full DVDs of lectures), I couldn't remember how I'd even been so upset in the first place! It was all Law of Attraction - I was focused on betrayal, so my life dished up more time and opportunities to fit into the lens of betrayal. I was focused on justifying my anger, so I had an experience of ever-increasing anger. And so on. The only difference between Eeyore and everyone else in the Thousand Acre Wood is where the sad little donkey puts his attention -- his attitude -- right? (Thanks FB friends for winning me over to the philosophical power of the Pooh stories!) And I could believe it was real because the minute, while watching the DVD, I looked at my situation through a lens of maybe this is actually a fun experience, it started looking pretty fun. And funny.
Then I read over the next few days Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue by Neale Donald Walsch, which is rocking my world, and helping me see that all of the negativity I was drawing from my "spirituality" was because I was kinda seeking the failure as a means to justify my anger. I wanted to be angry. I still do a lot of the time. But I feel empowered to accept that there may be a better way. Instead of seeing this life as a challenging task of overcoming the ego, Conversations with God has helped me to see it as my personal creation of a story of Ascension. That has a better energy to it, right? It even sounds ... (dare I say it??) ... fun!
So it's been a good week :)
It took about 3 days, but after conscious attitude shifting, and taking a little accountability for my life, and enjoying the mystery a little, and especially asking for help with an expectation of receiving it, instead of with anger for needing it, things started turning better. I feel hopeful and even a little delighted, and the perceived entrapment has faded out.
And now I have that off of my chest.
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