More fear

I've continued feeling deeply into fear. Very rewarding and freeing. Most recent example: sitting at home at my computer just now, looking up driving directions for my outings and errands today, noticed tight heavy feeling in chest/throat and gloomy mood. Took a break to feel deeply into the sensations. It only took a few seconds of gentle, focused attention for me to get beyond the tightness and heaviness -- which, I think, is a fighting of the deeper feelings -- and relax into what I call feeling deeply into the sensations. This feeling deeply is not entirely comfortable, either, but it's much more dynamic and much softer. As I do this "feeling deeply into" my body rocks slightly in response to what I feel, and where there was painful tightness, there's now pulsing and release. The pulsing moves through my throat, chest, and upper abdomen (all on the right side).

As I continue this kind of close self-attention, this "feeling deeply into", I frequently (every second or two) also feel an urge to stop, to escape, to move on. Physically, I notice this mostly in the arms. When I feel this, I ask, "why", and the mostly-empty messages bubble up: "this is a waste of time", "you don't know what you're doing", "this is dumb", "you need to get something done", "you need to take care of others". It is awesome to become more and more convinced that these are mostly messages from my very long ago past, from early childhood, and to release them instead of cogitating on them!

As awesome as this process is, it's not accompanied by feelings of joy. A veneer of gloom blankets the process. I look forward to investigating that, as well.

Almost every hour of every day I reflect with anxiety on the slowly accelerating aging process that is undeniably taking place in my body and mind. I so long to get past this fear and reclaim joy before I am quite old. As I ponder this longing, I see that I am also afraid of reclaiming joy. It is unknown territory; the spaciousness I imagine seems itself terrifying. Perhaps this fear, too, is an echo of early childhood, of thousands of experiences of being abandoned or punished for exercising my will.