May 5, 2011

I was walking from Reid to GloHo and thinking about how I would rather feel.  But also thinking about it should not matter how I feel.  I should not avoid feelings but accept them. And so as I felt willing, I managed to think of myself as willing, and so I was.  And as I was willing to feel shitty, I let myself feel shitty… but then when I felt shitty, I wasn’t willing anymore; which is exactly what I didn’t want.  But then I realized that they only reason I did not feel willing was because that is what it means to feel shitty; and I should not try to not feel unwilling (because then I would not be willing to feel shitty).  But to let myself feel “unwilling” for as much as I did, then I would truly be willing to feel shitty (even if I didn’t feel like it).

I dared myself to stop as I was crossing the street, to give myself a chance, or to see if I was able to cope with the uneasiness that the behavior would create.  My head began feel dense, fear came from different directions into my being, quickly my imagination came up with a different perspective and all the pain went away. 

That was interesting.  The pain went away because an idea that I came up with, wow.  If ideas can do that, I wonder if all types of pain are extinguishable with “ideas”.  Like when I was running last Wednesday and I felt like collapsing… the way I would normally extinguish that pain is by stopping and resting.  It doesn’t seem to be the same type of pain, since it seems to need more than just an idea to extinguish it… or is it, that I just do not have a good enough imagination to come up with a good enough perspective to make the pain go away.

Why do the ideas  make the pain go away?  The new ideas bring a new perspective, and the new perspective allows your body to respond to your situation differently; whereas once your glands pumped adrenaline to make your blood boil, a new idea made it calm again.  I this way, the idea is not something in some mystical and hidden realm, the idea is part of your body.  Your imagination and each of your thoughts is a physical event  in your body.  And so I realized: There is no such thing as an “inner world”  where you get to keep your thoughts to yourself and have no one look at them.  Your thoughts are exposed to everyone as they are part of the world just as much as the wind.  They may be hidden inside your head, but they are still happening in the world, literally.

But these changes of perspectives (due to ideas), do not mean that I accept the pain, but only that I avoided it with my imagination. 

Did I manage to cope with it?

I rather not think I was successful