Being decisive

There has been a burst of action in my life. I think feelings had been building up  for me for some time so that when I really felt them with full force, action, not words so much as action, was easier than I ever imagined it could be.

For one piece of action, which came more like a decision, a decision to take no further action, it was decisive, but sad. I knew I had to make the decision. I knew I didn't have a choice. I felt strong. I felt a bit like a Warrior, protective of myself, and that part felt good. There was the smaller and more vulnerable part of me that felt sad, but the Warrior won, and I felt proud that that part of me insisted on being decisive and clear.

How it took as long as it did, well that's another story; a painful one. But, the decision was made to end the pain, like a surgeon saying that the patient would need to lose a leg but he could save his life. I haven't heard of anyone that said 'No, no, just leave me to die with everything intact' and I made the same decision.

For the second piece of action, I have turned the other cheek with a friend over the past few years. Conflict avoidant, I had chosen to not speak what I thought, any number of times, although I registered the intuitive thought that something was not right there, in the things she said. She's ratty at times; short tempered and comes across as fragile in a sense, but she's also a strong defender of herself. She has trouble seeing how she comes across and I recognized some time ago that she wasn't going to find a man, because there aren't perfect men/people out there, and that's what she insists upon. She must have gone through a dozen or more in the past few years.

The weird thing is she's good too. She works in the caring industry and she does good work on the whole, as far as I can tell. She does snuff off people along the way because she so wants her own way and most people don't want that sort of conflict in a relationship/friendship, but I chose to ignore the trait, until now. I guess I didn't process how much it bothered me. Or, maybe I was taking the bottom down position yet again and found myself tired of the view from there...

But, she turned on me this evening and said some truly awful things by text over the course of the evening. She sees me as a competitor which I said was a silly thing to do and she just kept upping the ante. The thing is a couple of people gave me praise for what I do, and what she does, and as far as she was concerned any praise for me, even though I am the new kid on the block with loads to learn, was a reason for her to garner more control; ensure I held my place in the pecking order, below her.

In the end, she acted like a domineering, son of a bitch Narcissist telling me what I was and wasn't go to do, and with full clarity and precision of thought I texted back that I wasn't planning to adhere to her demands and that our friendship was over.

(It's the morning and I don't regret this decision although I am sad about it. Something deep inside me tells me to defend that vulnerable part inside of me. My husband, furious about the way she treated me 'I told you she'd do this one day...', wanted to go and tell her off, and you have to love his protective streak, but no, I am standing up for myself.)

I've seen her behave with people in this way before, a number of times, and I kept my own counsel about it, but what's clear is that something has cleared in me.

I can speak up. I can protect myself if necessary. I have agency in this world.

In the past, I've been a Mamma Bear for my kids. I've stood up and protected them. But, it's a very rare day in my life when I stand up for myself in this way, and twice in two days! That's some sort of miracle. There is some sort of transformation going on. I may be growing up.

Clarity of thought

An event occurred yesterday with my husband; something that was intended to be uplifting and positive but unfortunately did not have a positive ending. Intuitively, I knew to remain very quiet all day. I am certain that no-one had the vaguest idea that anything might be wrong with me. They were busy doing their thing and I was busy keeping myself busy. In fact, I was quite productive throughout the day and intent on not being upset, if that makes sense.

I'm not so good at this ethereal/philosophical/Buddhist/spiritual thing that I can repair the event in my mind and end up with an immediate 'everything is as it should be' sort of outcome, but at the same time I didn't say a word about it, to anyone, and nor did I write anything. I recognized that I needed time to process what had happened before I could even think of taking any action, or making any comment, or even just thinking about it in any sort of clear way.

The mind is as the mind is, and thus I had running through it all sorts of thoughts. I've come to a place where I completely understand and accept that we are not our thoughts - that thoughts and emotions come and go, and that we are the awareness behind all of that. In my flawed human way I noticed the thoughts, the tendency to see this event as catastrophic, but I simply noticed that. I had that quiet curiosity about the thoughts, of these invasions of my peace of mind. In other words, turbulent feelings, emotions and thoughts remained but I had a reasonable handle on them.

While I was on the retreat I got into several quite deep and meaningful conversations with a woman we shall call Rachel. She told me her life story and it's one of the most fascinating explanations I have ever heard of the reasons behind a person becoming a psychiatrist. I got to like her, a lot, and respected her as someone who had way more experience than me in these matters. 'I'm tired of Tolle,' she declared to me one day. I thought about it. 'Well Eckhart is a good place to start,' I suggested. I actually don't think Eckhart Tolle ever gets old and he helped me a lot yesterday. Here's what I read:

‘Don’t look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender…
To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This stage is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms tend to improve greatly.’
- Eckart Tolle, The Power of Now.

This passage was a poignant reminder to me that we must not resist our emotions. I was...upset. When I am not sure how I am feeling about something, maybe angry, maybe sad, maybe disheartened, I tend to use the word 'upset'. My mind and my body are upset, not at peace. This, for me, is good enough of a description. This was the truth and undeniable.

The passage reminded me too that I hold myself to high standards. I don't want to be 'upset' and it's upsetting when I am upset. I'm mad with myself. Why can't I get a grip so that I don't experience upset? But Tolle's wise words reminded me that I experience what I experience and that's okay.

It's the next bit of the statement that is really profound - that the moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace is transmuted into peace. This worked on two levels:

When I read this I sat with my non-peace state. I breathed into it, focused on my breathing pattern and within that simple process I could feel my non-peace state to turn into a more peaceful state - a recognition that I would not always be in peace, that it was unrealistic to expect it to be so, but that at my disposal was enough wisdom to see that the non-peace was fleeting...that in my humanness and he in his humanness, we had ended up with an outcome that was...upsetting.

It wasn't the end of the world, or the product of a failed relationship, but simply the product of a failure to communicate. It wasn't as complex a problem as it seemed, but rather a quite simple one. No, we were not ideally suited to one another from a sexuality perspective, but neither were we as far apart as it seemed in the moment. Some skills needed to be honed, for sure, and we needed to devise a way for me to express what was happening to me in a heavy bondage scene, but all of that was surmountable. It didn't all spell the doom and gloom that some of the uninvited thoughts suggested.

Some day when the time is right I will share the three elements required for a successful life, as presented to us at the retreat. I am still reflecting on them myself. But, I think the first is now very obvious to me. To have a successful life one must have clarity of thought. Meditation is a bit like various experiences within a power exchange relationship. I can't really explain those experiences, although I do try on these pages. One learns about them within the experience. Meditation is like this. Alone with one's mind on a regular basis, clarity of thought begins to rule one's life. A still and calm mind speaks it's own language.