Sunday, December 5, 2010

ten remembrances

I am doing my best to apply what I am learning in the hope that I will begin to establish a virtuous cycle. I have learned that the first step is to stop doing what had been keeping me busy wasting time and getting sicker. Being involved with someone else before I am healed is dishonest to me and to someone else. I am certain that this consists of a shared, complicity of dishonesty, but it is not for me to schedule another person's life realizations for them; it is only my job for me to be responsible for my own growth and emotional/spiritual health.
Is there any difference between the emotional and the spiritual? I doubt that there is much difference at all.
Second, I am learning that it is very productive for me to do nothing at all but feel and observe my emotions. This is the act of my allowing my inner self to be paid attention to, and it is something that I have been hungering for. Starving for. Getting more ill due to its lack. This is the beginning of the process of my cultivation of intimacy.
Third, every experience of my life up to this point has been a partial lesson and preparation which I can draw upon. I learned that the delusion that God can do this for me is just that: delusion. I will observe that back in my days of membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, my observation that the church attracted the emotionally ill proved to be quite accurate. But imagining yourself in some dutiful relationship with a conditionally loving, exterior deity does not bring healing. My feverish intellectual search of Joseph Campbell's writings freed me from this literalist understanding of an anthropomorphic deity. That realization was an essential step which has ultimately led me to be forging ahead to my anticipated breakthroughs which I am working toward today.
Another example is that I believe that my logical mind needed every unsuccessful relationship of my entire life to fully convince me that I will not find what I am looking for in myself by an escapist relationship with an imagined mother/lover/sexprovider.
Fourth, I am learning that my feelings can get uncomfortable, but I can pause, breathe deeply, have faith that they will transition, crest and pass by, and that I will get past those moments into more livable moments.
Fifth, I am developing the belief, based on my logic, that this is ultimately going to be beneficial to my physical health. I will achieve more integration, more calm, more peace in my soul and in my own company. Maybe I will get better at being with others, but that seems to be a way down the road, because right now that is challenging, especially in person.
Sixth, I believe that I am going to develop some core level trust in life and fate. Prayer to a literal god never brought this.
Seven, I need not compare my story with anyone else's. Mine is mine, and it is good, and I will have much that I have learned from my experience which will cause me to find compassion inside. I will come to know the difference between masked dependence and compassion. I will come to prefer solitude to dependence of any sort. I will only allow dependence which has been freely offered, and proven over time.
Eight, I might find that without the need to continually bribe a date with dinners, gifts and trips that my finances may improve over time, giving me more options to spend my money in ways that I choose to improve my own life.
Nine, I am grateful that I have found a therapist. He is fallible, very human, old and of limited time each week. But he is my therapist, he is extremely experienced, gives me nice positive feedback, and encouragement. He helps me to hear my own voice and my own thoughts.
Ten, I can accept my own strengths, be humble and private about them, and give myself credit for them.

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