This morning I created a list of all the feelings that have come up in my explorations these last 5 days. I created it because I was utterly tired of it – being with my feelings. It’s maybe somewhat like training some muscles that you know you have, that you are using occasionally and now you use them on a daily basis; or it’s like when I shifted the computer-mouse from my right to my left hand, after 5 days I was about to change back because it was ‘such a pain in the… hand’; but I didn’t and now I’m almost as good with my left hand as with my right.
What keeps me at it is to simply focus on the “being tired of it”, in itself also a persistent theme or melody in my life, one that I know very well.
But back to my list. I think I can reveal it without thereby getting in the way of anybody wanting to also do this experiment, precluding it. So here it is:
- The fears
- to be left alone / behind
- being at the mercy of people / groups / circumstance
- not being good enough
- to not deserve good things / to deserve the bad things
- to be caught by higher authority
- of the unknown
- The powerlessnesses
- helplessness
- suffocation
- feeling paralyzed
- The aggressions
- irritation
- anger
- sudden freak-out
- Shame
- Grief
- Self-pity
This is not a comprehensive list; this is rather a list of the feelings that I have found to be an important part of the characteristic melody of my person; they are part of my character, or if you want to put it like that, these are the shades of my shadow, the feelings that I used to disown (thinking that they don’t belong with me!), and that now I dialog with in an “I-Thou” fashion (like indicated in this comment to my post on day 2).
So today I was asking myself countless times, “How do I feel right now?”
And I was taken again and again by the connective qualities of the feelings – never mind if they are positive or negative or even neutral. Feelings connect, or maybe are born out of connection, or indicate the quality of connection. If I don’t take them to be a comment on the situation but welcome them as I would another person that I’m open to, than they make the connection or relating deeper and more encompassing.
Buddhists I met, and Buddhist literature often speaks about seeing oneself in the other; but how about embracing the other as utterly unique, different and, well, other? This caught me a couple of times today whenever I met people, and then also when I met my feelings – opening up, really feeling them, hosting them as I would a dear friend.
“Ego’s appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by entering into relationship with other persons.” This quote is by Martin Buber, I think. Relating to what are supposed to be negative feelings they become ways that deeply reconnect me to the present flow between me and whatever and whoever you are. It actually might be that similar to conciousness that is much more akin to a non-local field feeling might be like the ocean that embodies sentient beings swim in.
With this in mind and heart I finish the 5th day of my experiment, happy that I allowed the tiredness to just be there and be the feeling it is in the morning…
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