Witnessing Self-ishness

Can you learn to witness your life, rather than idenitfy with it? 

Wayne Dyer

Sticky Emotions

I sit with the emotions of "overwhem, worry and grief.  And like sticky tape these emotions attract and trap all kinds of other emotions lingering around.  I am feeling guilt for not not driving L. certain places even though I had the discussion with others months ago about what I would and would not do for his sake as well as mine.  Yet I feel guilty for protecting anything that has a "my" attached to it...my time, my space, my health, my peace of mind, my self care, my autonomy. ...even if I see my assertiveness and follow through  as something that will promote his autonomy, his independence, his self care and his peace of mind in the long run. So I am feeling guilt right now as well. I am feeling helpless and powerless in helping another who needs so much more than my help. I am feeling so very sad when I think of the situation she is in.  I also feel anger and resentment when I allow this sticky emotional tape to sweep the environment.  And the worry just triples and quadruples when I look at others whom I  know or love that are suffering. Man...it sucks.  

Everything feels so heavy around me, a bit dark and my body responds to that with aches and pains, fatigue and a desire to do nothing. I am closing down, more than I am opening up.

Though I am committed to my practice of sitting with "what is", it is challenging to feel so many negative emotions all at once. And I use the term, "negative", with some hesitation.

Negative?  

Why is an emotion that brings less than a pleasurable feeling considered "negative"? 

If we were to step back from our attachment to the judgment of " good" or "bad", "negative" or "positive", "pleasure" or "pain"... would we not see as the Buddhists do...that there really is no dichotomy in emotions?  They just are.  Like all things and non-things they are just energy forms passing through our experience of Life.  They just are....both the same and different.

It is the mind that makes the dichotomy. 

Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Hamlet, Act II, Scene II

The Mind Decides What is Good or Bad

It is the mind that judges what is "pleasant "for me.  It is the mind that judges what is unpleasant.  The well meaning mind is just trying to protect me , to protect "form" which includes body and mind from harm and to make me happy in the way it was taught to do through centuries of collective conditioning . It will therefore deflect, push away, squish down or numb from what it has judged as "unpleasant" and it will reach out and grab, cling to, hang on to, wait for...anything it deems as "pleasant". 

And I, in my unconscious foolishness , have come to believe the mind is "me"...that it knows best...so I allow it to carry me away. 

Witnessing the Body

Thank Goodness I have evolved enough to truly realize the body is not me...and I can sit through physical pain now...I can go on doing what I feel called to do without my perceived " disability" and "limitation" getting in the way.  I totally forget both most of the time until the body gets good and loud with its own messages it needs me to hear. I really have come to see that the body is just a suit of clothing I am temporarily wearing...a "space suit" that allows me to experience life.  I want to protect it and take care of it but I am so far from being consumed by it. I "witness" it.

Witnessing the Mind

The mind, however, I am still obviously much too identified with.  I still get lost in thinking/story/mental chatter and therefore at times become overwhelmed with "emotions" and "feelings".  I am working on witnessing the mind in action and I have definitely come quite far in that regard.  I, for the most part, am aware of what it is doing.  Still...I have not mastered it.  Sometimes I forget that I am not the character on the screen but the person watching the character on the screen...especially when I notice how so many people around her are suffering and she does not seem to have the power to help ease that suffering or worse...somehow responsible for it. The acting and the writing is just too darn good...it draws me in. Thus my feeling of "overwhelm". 

I am working on it.  Peace of mind is still my biggest goal.  I honestly, honestly feel that if I truly want to "help" others ...I must start with learning to detach from the drama in my own  head. I do that when I become the "compassionate witness" rather than the main character in this drama.  My meditation practice is essential to me and to the world. So that is why I say "No" to certain things in my care of others, in my care of Self. I still "do" alot...don't get me wrong.  I physically serve in this world as much as I can...but I am learning to say "no" to certain things and am prioritizing my healing practice of learning to witness. If that makes me selfish, well, I guess I can learn to accept that too. 

All is well.  

Wayne Dyer (2020/Post humously) The Power of Awakening. Hay House. Kindle Edition