I will attempt to see this in a different light. I want to lift the pressure, choose another way, to spend my time without guilt. A return to my journal, it is secret and lacks performance demanding awareness. I make no resolutions, just trying things on. These patterns are ingrained. I acknowledge it takes counter conditioning to break them. I am just one of Pavlov's dogs. I cannot announce here that I will abandon a model I have internalized throughout my existence. Awareness is the first step. Is that an AA step, acknowledging the problem? Group therapy, yes maybe there. Carl Jung came up with this concept you know. He was a wise man.
I have said a great deal, some percolates, some may provide bits of intrigue some is just internal babble. You see my throat is sore. Some healers would suggest a sore throat is the result of holding something back, not speaking your mind. But I feel I've been quite honest. I'm bored with my talking and thinking and wood burning. I look behind me for my old self but can't see her because she's standing too close to the current one (source idea - Mike Chang). My persona is taking a hiatus while my inner conscious explores realms in private, or so I wish. Private is such a strange notion these days. It's becoming perverse even. How dare you? Are you sure? Can you? Or maybe I'm just addicted to the public persona. We are obsessed with image portrayal, our outer shells, who and what to project because that will be who you are, to put forth and present to the world is pretty much the self people will sum you by, the inner subconscious is ignored and pillaged in the process. There is little depth exploration any longer, and what there is few people have time or make time to engage (myself included). I admire those people who seem to "have time," who never seem pressed, who emanate a calm and loving glow, who are never shaken, who live in the eternal present. They are the rare exception. I have only met a handful and when I have I find myself overcome with desire, to eat from their palm, bow to their feet, follow in their path, crawl into their womb, suck their blood, shape shift into their skin. It sounds demonic, but true. It takes work I am sure, practice, meditation, maybe they are old souls and have had many lifetimes to get there. They have culminated something special for sure. They remind me that progress is possible, that mindfulness is sacred. For most of us are overloaded with an excess of information, stimulation, things to accomplish, productions to administer, tasks to tackle and in the process we produce personic shells, what we want others to visualize when they think of us.
I do it all for the audience, the critics, the crowd. They support me, keep me in line, are my litmus test. My public holds a mirror to my image and reminds me who I am and where I'm going. The self referential rabbit hole is ceaseless and tiresome. It promotes a sort of late teen existential anxiety that I would have hoped to be over by now. It seems we no longer have the luxury to think and develop a response, we are continually asked to know, be, perform and innovate on the spot. If you cannot not someone else will. The pressure to be a reality show superstar is fierce.
At some point one must choose, make a conscious decision, to step off the treadmill, to stop comparing vessels, to culminate love and compassion in the continual present, right? That sounds good. I recently started running outside. Not to catch up, but to quiet the chatter, to run so the mechanism overcomes the banter. I run around a lake. I loop, yet each time with a new experience. This is promising. Step by step, inch by inch we creep, not up, or out, or in, but somewhere, on some path, with some purpose, or so I envision to aid in the sublimation.
