Part III - Resisting

After my 3 hour freak out, I actually had a good time for a while today – feeling full and nourished and safe. Until I laid down at 7pm to rest my body, and it was feeling time again. I went to bed and after 10 minutes felt a rush of energy through my body, heart beating faster. I said “NO. I don’t want to feel this. I don’t want a night of sleeplessness. I don’t want a day tomorrow feeling exhausted and anxious and crying. I accepted everything the night before, and still had 3 hours of freaking out during the day - feeling like the fear and despair was too intense to handle. It’s hopeless”.

So I got up feeling anxious, and started preparing and justifying my plan to make things easier with a sleeping pill.

At the same time, I could see how much I didn’t want to feel my feelings. How scared I was of lying down and feeling what might come. And I wondered what it would be like to fully surrender – to go there.

I found a good friend who said ‘when you’re wired, you’re the one keeping yourself wired. If you just allowed it all, it could cycle through’. I suddenly saw that resistance – feeling anxious about it, worrying about the future, getting up and moving around, distracting myself, avoiding the feeling at all costs – was much more expensive than I thought. It must have LOOKED like a good idea to my ego. It must have LOOKED like it would be productive and protect me in some way. But if my resistance to feeling pain and discomfort was actually causing MORE pain and discomfort – and perhaps in a perpetual cycle – then resistance is VERY VERY costly.
Put another way, Eckarte Tolle says that resistance creates more ego to burn through. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but now I notice that when I suffer and panic during an experience (now known as resistance), I have more to cry about the next day. i.e. what every past stuff I’m feeling and releasing, I now have my scary suffering experience to feel and release.

So….

Perhaps it’s better to feel everything, no matter how terrifying or how much the mind is worried and shouting. Perhaps in the long run it will be easier. Perhaps, ultimately, it’s the only way.

I chose to go back to my room, turn off the light and lay down….with myself. After about 10 minutes I felt a cold energy rush through my body, and my heart beat faster. I lay with it. I tuned in more deeply to the vibration I could feel in my body (the inner energy field), and was aware of my whole body and what it felt. I could feel this ‘vibration’ or energy that felt alien to me very clearly, and everywhere. In a sense I ‘opened’, allowing all the sensation, embracing it, inviting it in. “You’re welcome here” was my attitude.

After a few minutes it passed, and I heard my thoughts say “Is that all you’ve got?”. Knowing I’d survived one wave gave me courage to face more, so I lay there for an hour feeling the waves as they came. A flash of a thought about what I might feel like tomorrow, and a wave came through. No problem – feeling it all, with nothing to change. After an hour I got up, feeling calm, chatted with my buddy Kal, and went back to bed to feel, to allow my body to feel what it will. At the mercy of my thinking and worry, but allowing it all – unworried about the worry.

I woke up 3-4 hours later, 4am, grateful for the most solid sleep in 72 hours. On laying down again I was disappointed to find more energy coming through, and that sleep didn’t come. So I lay with it for a few hours, dozing on occasion. In the end, continuing the practice of acceptance, I got another hour of sleep and woke to enjoy a dozy, warm, stretchy feeling that I’d wanted for months.

My commitment today is to be with every feeling, allowing it. Including any feelings triggered by worry or anxiety about what might come. I realize I may go into panic/resistance and want to ‘run away’ again inside when the feelings are very intense – that way of being is getting more and more familiar. Fortunately I have friends to remind me, and find the way back into allowing, feeling – not ‘running’.