It all starts with your feet on the ground, your eyes open, saying "I don't want to close!"
Michael A. Singer
I feel myself closing in reaction to certain life circumstances...to the accumulation of them at least. I am forced to realize that I have hit maximum closing becasue I started getting chest pain again yesterday after a stressful incident, ( something my mind judged as stressful) . For weeks now, I could feel the other components of the physical reaction of closing. It usually starts in my gut ( the other brain) as a twisting knot. I feel my jaws clenched, my shoulders up close to my ears, the sloping of my body forward ( iliopsoas response to stress... an instinctual protect - the- vital -organs reaction to a perceived threat), I drop my gaze and automatically switch into cold mechanical mode which my daughter absolutely hates. I cringe and turn inward...a tight ball of shrinking flesh. I have before this point of chest pain been feeling "exhausted and drained" by the last three weeks dealing with a life threatening crisis in my sister and my daughter's issues. ...not to mention all the other little or medium sized stressors. ( again...these are judgements made by mind). And now I have chest pain off and on.(My angina, with the exception of a few break through clusters, has been well controlled for almost three years now with the medication I am on and my yoga practice...being "relaxed" is the answer for most issues in our lives).
I haven't had enough opportunity to relax...last night I only slept for 2 and a half hours because I was up all night texting back and forth with my daughter. So I am tired which makes a wonderful situation for the pain to emerge. It comes and goes...not just with exertion. It is relieved by the nitro but I am so mentally overwhelmed by all the external stressors that I am reluctant to take it...part of me, literally, wants to just succumb to whatever my heart is doing in protest, "I can't give anymore!" . If I am sick...I don't have to deal with everyone's demands of me. Yes mentally and emotionally I am completely overwhelmed and this closes my heart, almostly completely...figuratively and literally. Hmm!
I found myself scribbling this down today as I listened to the podcast linked below, (Just a scribble...not yet a poem. )
Tightly, the fingers of my resistance
wrap around my heart,
squeezing, squeezing, squeezing
as the obedient Balifs,
follow the commands
of the gavel pounding mind.
I curl forward,
shoulders hunched up
towards my ears,
jaws and sweaty fists clenched tight.
My defendant points to my shrinking form
as farther evidence that I am nothing more
than a frightened animal
lal laying down submissively
in front of the predators' fangs,
in an act of learned helplessness.
The jury gasps in pity.
The authoritative judge
reclaims the courtroom
of my experiencing,
c condemning,
in confident tones,
the events and imperfect beings
that flicker past,
images on a video screen,
that can be played over and over again,
evidence for my victim status,
while the the struggling "others" who
have been accused
of poking and prodding
at my insides with their own pain
call out their self-defense verdicts,
to no avail.
The judgment will be made
in little me's favour,
T Circumstance and the others
will be made guilty
And with every "bad, wrong,
and shouldn't be"
I hear,
instead of feeling the relief of justice,
my heart shrivels and constricts
tighter, tighter, tighter
until I can not breathe.
until just a slither of light,
a tiny breath of Life,
can flow through.
This rigged trial
is too much for
my weary consciousness.
I must raise my hand
and let the jury know
that it is I
that have hurt myself.
I have closed my own heart,
Those "others",
they are about to
condemn and sentence,
are innocent players
in this game I play
against myself.
Dale-Lyn, 2023
Sigh! All is well.
Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe (March 26, 2023) Learning to Stay Open.https://tou.org/talks/
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