From Self to self?

 

You are the very structure and fabric of Existence.

Alan Watts

I have been feeling this knot in the center of my abdomen since I returned from my trip away (actually, it was there before I even left) that is aggravated and amplified by the thought of having to deal with the reality that surrounds me. I knew what I was coming home to and I didn't want to come home to it.  

Though I go through the motions of 'being there' for others and though I have even taken on more 'being there' roles since my return...I am not really here for others. This knot says pull back and I do. I am hovering over reality in some self-protective hover craft. I am not sure if  I am protecting self or Self but I am resisting the pull into other people's dramas big time. 

Some people are not noticing my lack of involvement because they have come up out of their darkness to some extent when I wasn't there...and have since then, because of getting the external help they needed, become independently hopeful again!!!!  (So grateful and that tells me about how little  I am needed...and that maybe I am even in the way of people getting better.  I am at this point...more than okay with that...I will gladly step completely away etc.  I actually want to step completely away. I just need something to step away into.  My hover craft is only temporary lol) 

Yet, there are others who tell me they are waiting with their wagonload of issues for me to come back to them. They are respectfully patient as I, with gut knot twisting inside me,  say, "I do not have it in me now".  They tell me they understand but then they kindly remind me that they need me and they let me know that if I don't 'help them' soon, something bad is going to happen. 

In my mind I am thinking, "Sorry but I got nothing left.  I am done.  I am just a walking carcass here...can't you see? I do not seem to have anything left for anyone, least of all me. I don't know if  this person you are looking for will ever be back." I don't tell them that but I know they are sensing it.

In psychology terms, what I am experiencing would likely be deemed as 'caregiver' burn out. That makes sense, of course,  but I do not tend to think just in psychology terms anymore, do I? There is, something tells me,  a big transition going on inside me that I do not completely understand.  It suprises me that this transition involves the protection of my ego identity as a 'me', or little self. My practice to date was all about dissolving this 'me' and serving others...now I have this inner voice  (this knot of resistance that gets loud when others ask me to go down with them into their pain) that says 'protect self, serve self'. 

Serve self?  

That blows me away.  I thought I was supposed to serve Self...which would mean everyone and renounce self. Now I am hearing and feeling, I need to nurture and protect this self so the Self can grow. 

Huh?

I suppose I have spent the last 30 years almost meeting the needs of my children or at least attempting to. What types of need was I meeting? Physical, for sure. Emotional and mental and some spiritual.  I guess, I have spent most of my life meeting their 'ego' needs and not enough time meeting their spiritual.  On the other side of that coin, though I have devoted the last few years of my life attempting to meet my spiritual needs, I have not been meeting my own physical, emotional, and mental needs. My own approach was contradictory. Spiritual needs are the most important-true- but there I was expending my own limited physical, mental and emotional energy to serve their egoes, not to help their souls to grow. How much could my soul grow in that mixed messaging?  How much could my higher Self grow if I was constantly trampling down self?

So though in Self is where I want to be, do I need to take care of that self that exists above It before I can let it go, before I can truly fall back into Self? Is that what this knot is all about?  I think so.

I need balance. My service needs to be more balanced.  I am, as a self and as a Self, a part of that which I need to serve. I am, afterall, the very structure and fabric of existence. Hmm!

That is quite a realization. 

All is well.