Thirsty (for some wisdom) Thursday

Better day today. Wonderful chat last night with my mentor. Hit on a lot of stuff that's been hounding me lately.

He was emphatic that I need to express the raw emotions and my experience of it all to someone during the times I'm really struggling. He made sure to differentiate between healthy expression when I am really struggling versus being an every-day-complainer/victim. Big diff (I like abbreviating words, drives my wife nuts, which makes it more fun!).

I explained to him how I feel really emotionally alone during the really tough times and a part of me wants to express how I am struggling to my wife or a friend, but then there's often a greater part of me that wants to remain in painful isolation. Some curious type of masochism. 

He related and explained how we both have this similar challenge due to the way we were taught (or not taught) to express raw emotionalities as a child. We didn't learn at an early age that there could be support from someone else during tough times, so we went at it alone and are still carrying dysfunctional remnants of this today.

His delineation helped me connect the dots to this as my main pain body. It feels like I enter an alternate universe during these times, because energetically/emotionally the ways of lil Jed resurfaces and takes over. Some of this seems challenging to put into words, so I hope it makes sense.

Another one- "Am I okay with having physical limitations at this point in my life?" Honestly, no, not really. I still fight this. I feel like I should be able to do certain things that I used to do with no problem at all years ago, or for no good reason I just assume I should be able to do a certain thing because I want to.

It's this Resistance that I still have to Surrending to my life situation that bites me in the ass. Not surrender like "giving up," but surrender as in Acceptance. Eckhart explains this stuff perfectly. "For now, this is my situation and limitation, but I know this will progress and change because life is impermanence." (That's what my higher wisdom needs to be reminding me when I'm about to do something dumb and over-do it.)

He went on to explain that once I aquiesce to my physical limitations aka showing care and compassion to my body, then I am fostering an environment for true healing. That's big. Learning how to tune into the many subtelties of my body and really feel how it is feeling. Getting out of my monkey mind and paying attention to my body has been the name of the game for me lately. Chris Bale has taught me loads about this area.

Back to expressing needs/voicing myself...I had an impression the other day, "I feel quite disempowered in my life." Wow, that's not great. My People Pleasing aka Nice Guy Syndrome (nod to Robert Glover) so often keeps me from speaking my mind because I don't want to create conflict or offend anyone or hurt anyone's feelings. I choose others over myself far too often. I guess you could call it toxic humility, or distorted humility. I experience such strong inner resistance sometimes when I want to speak up about something. It's painful to silence myself. Working on this all the time, and continue to progress. Just feels slow. 

All for now. Ciao.