Perceived Vulnerability
There are certain times when it's almost impossible to stay grounded. I sense a “must” to hold onto something, because the environment feels so cold, even when it is home.
I wake up at 3:30 a.m. I feel heaviness engulfing me.
The same heaviness I experienced in my last existential crisis.
The same heaviness I experienced during my back-pain seasons, when I saw no warmth in my home.
Loss of energetic warmth.
I lie in bed trying to ground my body, trying to feel the support of my mattress and the touch of my comforter. But my mind easily pulls me out of that transitory groundedness. Every minute or so, I notice my forehead or my eyes tighten. I am taken away by my mind again and again.
What was my mind doing at 3 a.m.? It was not thinking. It was not talking. But it was busy. It was stuck in a state of high arousal.
It was replaying scattered pieces of past situations in which I had felt the same heaviness. I heard voices — not my voices, but others' voices that co-occurred with those reactivated memories.
I was drowning in the relentless memory replay. They were not good memories! They all carried the same heaviness I wanted to escape from.
I suspect that the heaviness is quite general — not about a particular situation, but about a particular emotion that can be triggered by a multitude of situations. What is that emotion?!
Perceived professional weakness.
It feels like a ghost.
How do I ground conceptual ideas, even when they are well-planned and sorted out, in the practical domain, in experiments, and in measurable observations? I went through this in my previous projects in a rather mysterious way. I have never learned how to move through this gap consciously. Right. I think the ghost isn't about moving through it, but about moving through it consciously.
My past project experiences all involved prolonged periods of hopelessness and confusion.
There are two ways to approach it. If the emphasis falls on “perceived”, then I should address the perception. If the emphasis falls on “weakness”, then I should address the weakness.
Maybe it is a big deal because it keeps recurring.
Maybe it is not a big deal because I just need more experiences and more observations.
Walk out of my current frame.
I watched a 3% episode on grief, and it cheered me up a lot.
If I stay, a part of me is gonna leave. If I walk away, a part of me is gonna stay.
Part of you is gonna die anyway. Choose the dying that makes you larger, not the dying that makes you smaller.
Death is expansion.
I was walking in Melon Park at night. I imagined the future me showing up in front of me, cheerful, enchanted and agile. She whispered, Hey, I'll pick you up in the front! And then off she ran, melting into the darkness ahead.
She is defining “forward” for me, no matter what it is. I surrender to the darkness that she headed toward.
Stay attuned.
You will be held.
You will be picked up.
People Are Unfathomably Nice
My second attendance at the Deep Dive Dream Center was timely and restoring. It was a themed night called SPELLBOUND. We were allowed to request spells we wanted for our lives, and the teacher would weave them into his meditation narration. We had a small group that night, and we had our greediness unleashed. We asked for (i) unfathomable abundance; (ii) an unflinchingly open heart; (iii) renewed unity and unconditional love; and (iv) calming serenity.
I noticed, somewhat tellingly, that when I act and speak from a place of abundance, my “perceived professional weakness” seems to lose its urgency and significance.
But the night before, when I had just made a big decision, I had lost access to that place of abundance. I had felt so rejected, lost, and homeless. I anxiously paced through the agitation, just trying to make sure I would love the continent, the country, the city, and then the school, the institute, the lab. All of this was the aftermath of committing without expecting, without knowing.
There is an adventurous part of me who has been spoiled, and usually dominants. But other parts are terrified! To lie in the middle of that aftermath was to lie inside piercing thoughts about the overwhelmingly huge change in living situation and the associated adaptation cost, including grieving what I wouldn't carry with, and what would therefore inevitably be left behind.
SPELLBOUND shed light on the transitoriness of such aftermath, promptly enough that it didn't erode into an extended period of murk.
Y., E., A., R., D., M., B., and my uber driver … People are unfathomably nice.
May There Be No Orphan
Last Tuesday's Community Meditation discussion segued into the mother-wound. A friend raised a point about the inner-child and quoted, “May there be no orphan”.
That's right. That's right. May every child be seen, including the inner-children of all mothers and the inner-children of all fathers.
Once I was able to register with the broader meaning of an “orphan” — that is, an unparented child, where the child can exist in both the ordinary sense and the psychic sense — I could no longer construe the sentence May there be no orphan in the way I used to. Then I knew I needed to listen to the song 美丽世界的孤儿 (Orphan In The Beautiful World) once more and relish its newly found layer of meaning.