Facing My Bad Mood
Coming off a couple days of living in the bursting forth of spring in the hills of Appalachia with Pat, Monday found me unexplainably in a bad mood, a testy disharmonious mood. As I sat with this in my daily review last night I found myself asking, “Does Pathwork even work!?” Mid day, as Patty and I worked a bit on our series that begins next week I had felt muddle-headed, confused.
But most of all I felt disconnected, as if in the water after a shipwreck, flailing and splashing about, grasping at planks, inner tubes, and other debris floating around me, but not another human hand within reach. I am alone, sensing or feeling no real human connection.
In my daily review I realized that the disharmony was with myself. I felt no triggers from all my interactions with others that had filled my day. I was just feeling my sense of muddleheadedness when compared to the lives of some of the others around me that are seemingly coming to clarity and order about their lives. And in this comparing I was not jealous or envious, just aware that something felt out of harmony at my core.
I took up the disharmonious feelings again this morning in my meditation. There I was feeling my sense of aloneness, separateness, being on my own. Ah, then I felt again my confusion, my sense of not knowing what to do or how to be in all that is going in my life — the upcoming series, life with Pat and with my family, the many Sevenoaks administrative matters up in the air, and so on. There I was again, in the sea, debris all around me, no one within reach! I could just feel this and stay with it a bit. It is a familiar place, though often pushed down into my unconscious.
But here in my meditation I could come to realize that I was in my dualistic consciousness, experiencing the formless, the chaotic, the not-knowing side of duality. And knowing that the answer did not lie in my ego’s capacity to apply form and “pull things together” into an orderly way of being that would give me a false sense of control and security. Form, the other side of formless in the either/or world of duality, won’t help. Rather form would only further separate me from life, and I’d find myself swinging between form and formless and back again, remaining in this dualistic world we live in.
I turned to surrender as an alternate possibility. Can I learn to surrender to what is right here right now? By contrast to what others are dealing with, my issues are inconsequential, I know. But my issues are my issues to work with and learn from, so that when larger issues arise I will have had an experience of surrendering that will have taught me the surrendering process and perhaps given me the courage to “leap” into the unknown. Not pseudo-courage from a wishful-thinking belief system, but courage from a faith built up from experiencing life as it comes.
I relax into this surrendered place a bit. How does it feel? What is this surrendering experience like? What arises first is a sense of curiosity. Curiosity about what this all means and what will indeed unfold and emerge from this formless side of my experience. I discover that life is not about being swallowed up in the ocean, failing to grasp a saving plank or hand. Nor is it building form, a rigid structure of ideas or beliefs that “save” me from my experience of surrender. It is all about living into this moment, this moment of surrender, not some future moment.
My thoughts turn to visualization — visualizing feelings that will arise at Patty’s and my series next week. Then a big NO comes in. A “NOT YET, Gary.” Rather, for now, experience living fully into this surrendered space of not knowing. Enter this space of not knowing with curiosity. Experience that it does not kill me! Life is benign in this moment.
I breathe deeply. The cloud of my bad mood seems to lift somewhat. I relax into a position of trust. Trusting Life, my Essence, the Plan of Salvation, God. Not theoretically, but experientially. So from here I jump into the unknown as I begin this day. And WOW, on this other side of dualistic consciousness, this other side of the either/or swing between form and formless, perhaps only for a moment of felt unitive consciousness, I see all the possibilities of a richly lived day before me. No grasping, just living. I’ll let the day unfold from here, but not with pressure to hold on to this beautiful launch feeling. No, just live, just LIVE.