Running from self

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:

“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

Avoidance

Let's face it - we don't like to face emotional pain. There are numerous ways to avoid it from outright denial through to suppression of emotions and just keeping very busy. We live in the world of "FINE!" Many of us have been socialized to not talk about how we feel. The teaching of emotional literacy is also not that common. Children are not given the opportunity to develop a good language to describe what they feel. As a result, the repertoire of emotional descriptors sounds like "I'm angry - happy - sad - depressed - upset- excited" or variations on those themes.   Yet there are many more complex ways to talk about what we feel.

Source: Pinterest

It is of course, more than just having a language of emotion. There are 2 other important factors - connection to what we feel and permission (particularly from self) to express the emotion. These three elements are essential for emotional literacy.

Knowing our emotions is connected to meditation. In this way, we spend time with what we are feeling. This need not be long, deep meditation but the sort that allows you to stop, connect, feel, describe and express. When we take even 5 minutes per day for this, we grow our emotional knowledge. 

Look, she said
It's there
Back there
I couldn't see it
All I could see was what was in front of me
She said, "No, No
It's over there
You have to look behind
You'll find what you're looking for back there"
But I didn't want to look back there
I was sure
That what was back there
Was terrifying
She said, "You won't know
Until you look
So look
Look
And See
See what you will find

© Peter Choate, 2016

Silence and self

Silence is tough. Take a second and think about the last time you sat in silence for more than a few moments. Most of us avoid silence for any particular length. We need to do something. Thus, when I ask about silence, I ask about the space where there is no noise and no activity. This is true silence - just being. The Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh puts it beautifully:

I have the impression that many of us are afraid of silence. We are always taking in something - text, music,radio, television or thoughts - to occupy the space. If quiet and space are so important for our happiness, why don't we make more room for them i our lives?

Keeping busy is a wonderful way to avoid what is really going on for us emotionally. Of course, keeping very busy is seen as a sign of success. How often have you said or heard something like, "Wow, I've got so much on my plate right now I can't keep up." We reward people who work long hours and rarely find time to take days off. It's a status symbol. Why is that we do not reward taking time to be just with who you are in order to better the relationship with self? Why is it we don't demand that time?

Part of why we might buy into the "busy" is in order to keep the self at bay. Really coming to know ourselves is tough and uncomfortable work. I recall some years ago being taught a therapy approach that required going through the therapy itself. I dove in only so far as I feared what was too far inside. Mightily resist I did. Yet I continue the journey.

When we look inside, what are we prepared to see. Silence gives us the space for the journey. So, we need to give ourselves permission to trespass our inner self to know it.

To look is to consume

To consume is to edit

In each of our gazes

We decide that upon which we will focus

By definition each gaze 

Avoids something else

Each perspective consumed 

Eliminates another view

Each turn of our gaze

Takes us away from another sight

What we see we take to be truth

But we see only with our perspective 

Wee are wilfully blind to things

We do not wish to see

We edit out

That which is painful

Change is in seeing

What we have previously unseen

© Peter Choate, 2016