shoulds

I feel agitated. It is challenging to write this blog when I feel so anxious. I have the idea that I'm supposed to have my shit be more together in order to write this. Let's see what happens.
I am going to trust that if it is true what my intuition says that writing this blog from this place will be helpful to you and to me, you will be receiving it tonight. If not I will delete it and write tomorrow. This is the beauty of modern technology. Somehow I have the idea that I should have a certain level of equinimity to be able to have anything to offer to others.
My peace quote today from www.livingcompassion.org was by Georgia O'Keefe. She said:
"I was completely terrified every day of my life and it never stopped me from doing what I want to do." Inspiring words.
Yesterday I led Sacred Circle my women's spiritual support group in the midst of this fear. No one ran out of the room screaming. There is something powerful about being with what is no matter what it is.
Gary and I did a Sensory Awareness and Vippassana workshop this weekend. If I had known what I was getting into I would have probably not done it. I thought the weekend would be mostly sitting meditation, which is familiar to me. I imagined the sensory awareness exercises designed to slow us down and focus inwardly on our sensations
would be done for a short amount of time between meditations. Instead it was six hours of sensory awareness exercises with two short meditations. It is extremely challenging for me to move slowly and focus on my body sensations. For instance we played with small sandbags and moved them between our hands and let them rest on various parts of our bodies. The idea was to allow ourselves to move from our inner being rather than directing the movement. I am very invested in being in control and it took a lot of the weekend for me to let go enough to even understand the idea of following movement rather than directing it.
I have learned to pretend that am laid back and holy when I am really up-tight. When it was just me and me with noone to impress with my niceness a great deal of anxiety, that I have been hiding under being in control, began to surface. Doing a movement practice at a snail's pace, which is how I judge my own slowed down pace, allowed a lifetime of stuffed down fear, to begin to arise. When I am not running the show everything underneath the illusion that I am running the show surfaces.
I could feel myself focusing on my fear that I was doing it wrong. I can distract myself so skillfully from being present that way. I could feel the energy of that pattern coursing through my body, like an old shoe that I bought two sizes too small and have been walking around in my whole life. The exercises were about being with the energy of gravity, breath and life force, not about doing anything in a certain way. When I couldn't focus on what I should be doing because there was no should, something inside me went nuts. Several times I wanted to run out of the room and keep running until I dropped. I don't run anymore and the idea of moving my body fast and pumping the anxiety out seemed so much more appealing than being with my fear. I came out of the weekend knowing I could be present with myself with whatever was going on. That was a huge teaching for me.
Today I was putting air in my tires and couldn't get the tire gauge to work. My three minutes of paid air evaporated before I even addressed the first tire. I left and came home to eat carbs and wallow in my lack of mastery of the material plane. Then I breathed and realized I could be with my anxiety and my judgements about being the only person on the planet who was too incompetent to know how to put air in tires. I went back to the station and tried again, even though I was anxious and impatient with myself and terrified I would end up with four flat tires. I was able to persist because I was willing to persist even in the face of my anxiety and judgements. I am learning that that is what is required. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Be with what is and let the doing follow. Sensory awareness means being aware in the world in a way that is more tuned in to what is going on in my body. Sensory awareness means using my senses to meet the world from a stiller place with a slower pace. Sensory awareness means opening my senses to fear and releasing the effort of holding it down so I can look like my pictures of who I am supposed to be. I know alot about who I think I should be. I have huge curiousity about who I really am. What are some of your shoulds? How do they hold you back from the aliveness quietly waiting underneath them. I am noticing that the more I allow my fear to be here, since it is, the more space there is for joy. What do you notice?