An interesting question is, "What do I do do when I don't like what I'm feeling?" Our society tends to reward or encourage avoidance. Go have fun, exercise, socialize, numb, watch TV. Most of us have been brought up in an environment where attaining goals, ownership, accomplishments are what defines desirable behaviours.
The writer Anais Nin put it quite boldly:
Running from self can be so desirable. In my own experience, exercise has been an effective escape. For years! Marathons, duathlons, gyms, yoga classes - all done for the purpose of escaping. Yoga didn't work well as it kept bringing me to myself. The problem with these various forms of escape is they inevitably fail. What haunts you returns. Actually, it never left. These various efforts to escape simply throw a temporary, thin veil over the emotions, at best.
It's like standing in the river on the log - how long can you balance? To allow yourself to face your own emotions requires being a fearsome warrior. You are in battle with your reality. Facing it, understanding it, accepting it but also knowing that, no matter how much you want to deny it, it is your reality. It is the acceptance of what is. The choice comes not with denying the reality but in deciding what, at this moment, will you do. Your choice is only at this moment.
By observing the reality you can know it. You can build a relationship with it. Alternatively, you can try to balance and hope you won't fall. Our truth will come forward no matter how many times we try to push it back. In knowing our truth, can we come to accept and love the self - the really you? Do you fear knowing that person? Many of us do yet we cannot escape. We can only pretend the real you is not present.
This becomes very hard when there are things about the real you that you hate - something done or not done - that brings shame, guilt, sadness. Even those emotions cannot be ignored. They will be there. It is that journey which is the most difficult and the most liberating.
The writer Anais Nin put it quite boldly:
“Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
Running from self can be so desirable. In my own experience, exercise has been an effective escape. For years! Marathons, duathlons, gyms, yoga classes - all done for the purpose of escaping. Yoga didn't work well as it kept bringing me to myself. The problem with these various forms of escape is they inevitably fail. What haunts you returns. Actually, it never left. These various efforts to escape simply throw a temporary, thin veil over the emotions, at best.
“That's the funny thing about trying to escape. You never really can. Maybe temporarily, but not completely.” (Jennifer Armentrout).
It's like standing in the river on the log - how long can you balance? To allow yourself to face your own emotions requires being a fearsome warrior. You are in battle with your reality. Facing it, understanding it, accepting it but also knowing that, no matter how much you want to deny it, it is your reality. It is the acceptance of what is. The choice comes not with denying the reality but in deciding what, at this moment, will you do. Your choice is only at this moment.
By observing the reality you can know it. You can build a relationship with it. Alternatively, you can try to balance and hope you won't fall. Our truth will come forward no matter how many times we try to push it back. In knowing our truth, can we come to accept and love the self - the really you? Do you fear knowing that person? Many of us do yet we cannot escape. We can only pretend the real you is not present.
This becomes very hard when there are things about the real you that you hate - something done or not done - that brings shame, guilt, sadness. Even those emotions cannot be ignored. They will be there. It is that journey which is the most difficult and the most liberating.
If we do not spend time
With ourself
With our soul
Then we become the stranger within
Relationship is based
Upon Connection
Yet we choose
Coffee Shops
Meetings
Colleagues and Friends
Drinking and Eating
What if we spend time
With the one relationship
That is Always
with us
The one relationship
That defines us
How do we build a relationship
With Us
With the I
That is always within
© Peter Choate, 2016
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