The voice that says, "You are doing the wrong thing"

I just saw this morning that there is a blog at blogspot.com with the same name as this blog. And with the same kinds of musings. The more explorers, the more productive our explorations can be.

Woke this morning and, after spending 30 minutes groggily waking up while infused with feelings and thoughts of dread, sat in bed on 2 pillows. I explored, both mentally and manually, the unusual sensations in my right torso, the ones I've been working with for the past year. I noticed sensitivity, yearning, responsiveness to massage, in the superficial tissue just at the bottom of my ribs, across a maybe 6 inch width on the side. I gently massaged there.

Then, a thought that I was doing the wrong thing. A thought that pervades my daily life. The past ~10 years, I've practiced dismissing the thought. This was progress over what I used to do, which was to think about what I should be doing instead. But today I went further and examined the source of the thought. It seemed accessible in a way it had not seemed before. Just barely.

I knew abstractly that this thought was probably an internalization of multiple external messages, external messages that were so strong that they terrorized me. This morning I thought, "I internalized these messages because it felt better to pre-empt them by delivering them to myself, rather than to be shocked by them coming from outside each time." Not a new thought, but today I could feel the truth of it. I could feel the inevitability of it--internalizing the messages was the only thing I could do to survive.

I visualized a gigantic Dad approaching me from above and attacking me for something I'd done. I thought, "If I were really ready to work with this idea, I'd be using my body and fending off the attack, but I just don't feel that impulse." But I did feel a tiny pre-impulse, maybe just a fullness in my torso, a desire to energize my arms. I carefully followed this impulse, not knowing at all where it would take me. As usual with such exercises, it required a lot of determination and focus, and was accompanied by a boatload of uncertainty. But over the course of maybe 10 minutes, I was indeed fending off the imagined (or remembered) attack with my body. My right hand continued to massage the lower right side ribs while the other protected my head from blows. Then my right arm tired of massaging, even though my ribs still desired it, and I used my right arm also for protection. Breathing, imagining ... twisting my body slowly from side to side ... just imagining the gigantic Dad coming down on me and following impulse, not knowing where the impulse would take me next. Felt constriction in the throat, knew that if I could give that some space then I'd see some opening there, too, but didn't have the mental bandwidth to do that exercise.

Tired of this work, I allowed myself to transition into yoga. During yoga and beyond, I stayed alert for the voice that said, "You are doing the wrong thing," and remembered the gigantic Dad, and felt more freedom.

What delight, to think that underneath the voice that constantly goads and punishes myself is a wisdom that actually knows the right thing to do. I fear that, underneath, there is no impetus to act at all, that without the voice, I'd languish and sink into a state of greater suffering. But my confidence is growing beyond that fear.

This work is one of the biggest adventures of my life, but not one that can easily be shared and celebrated with others.