I have been doing the few tricks of the trade that I heard Andrew Huberman talk about - the sigh where you breath in fully, take another quick breath in and then breath slowly all the way out, together with the shorthand EMDR approach where you move your eyes from left to right, up and down, and then to the bridge of your nose. Maybe coincidentally, since I have been doing that several times a day, I have noticed a quieter mind.
It's not to say that I don't get triggered when I can't get some peace because that still happens. Yesterday, I was confronted with too many things to consider or solve from too many people, and I couldn't access that quiet mind. However, when I can have a bit of space to myself, I notice that even if a difficult emotion is there, it's quieter. So, even anger, is quiet. That's unusual, I think.
I'll be honest. I am in my last hours of being in my 60s and it's confronting. Is it the big 0 birthday that's confronting or just my birthday, period? In so many ways, I could be 40, or 50 or 60 or 70. It doesn't feel that much different to me. I'm still me to me and that's ageless.
I wonder if, being with a man all my adult life, I am going through a spell where being with myself is quite enough. That awful Eharmony site that I was on for a year offered me three looks at men for free and I scrolled and rejected the three persons within a minute and deleted the email. I just don't want to go through it again. I think that somehow, I need to meet someone in person, and I have to feel something before I can engage again.
I hear from time to time about those bunkers where people are in silence for five or so days, with no stimulus at all, and whilst I know it wouldn't be a walk in the park, I think it would be soothing, like a mini death.
In Bali with my husband in 2024 one of the meditations we did, with light strobes and didgeridoo electronic music led to me having a death experience where I was underground, not able to access my family but able to feel their vibrations.
There was a tinge of sadness I couldn't be with them, but I processed the death experience as okay, and after that I was in the company of Buddha sitting quietly on top of a mountain that was a rich shade of red. I was completely awed. When I relayed this experience to one of my sons, he asked me what they had given me to drink, and then I realized they had offered me a welcoming drink. Hmmm, anyway, it was an amazing experience.
I think it's a bit like that now. What could be offered to me in a period of silence where I didn't have to respond to the world's needs of me? What would be offered to me if I left the world for a little bit and just disappeared?
Well, I can't, I can't do that until financial things are sorted and that's about two months away. Maybe by the end of the year, I can get on a plane and go and be somewhere where nobody knows me and I can just rest.
There's a little voice inside me that whispers 'you really should arrange to see a psychologist, you know, talk it out'. But there's a stronger, wiser voice saying, 'it wouldn't change a thing, you just need to be free of cleaning up other people's messes, that's all, and you will be, you will be'.
One day I said something to AI like 'when will this feeling end?' and it said something back that it won't end, not to think about when it will end. I know this is a faulty thought of mine, to wonder when something will end. The point is that I am holding on, holding on for an end to a situation that is uncomfortable when the real antidote is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
There's no good or bad, or right or wrong - no dominant or submissive at all times - no control or lack of control - there's just what is. In essence, there is surrender to life as it is playing out, doing what one can, but allowing for a time frame one can't necessarily control.
These are random thoughts today, not well constructed, but getting at something important. There's a big part of me that wants to control outcomes and maybe because that's there, there's the part of me that wants someone to come along and provide the space for me to surrender to his control - to provide experiences where I simply must let go.
Spankings or beatings, call them what they will, even in a fantasy, give me relief. I engineer the fantasy such that it's more, much more than I would enjoy, because I want it demanded of me that I release into the situation - effectively to have NO control. This discipline is my kind of 'cigarette break'. It has always been this way and as you now know, I've been here rather a long time.
Do you sometimes wonder what it is you are meant to be learning? I think I am meant to be learning how to be at peace when there is no peace.
