I don’t know why, I just like this picture
Saturday started off on a sour note for me emotionally.
I kept blaming it on the fruit fast, but I knew exactly what the problem was. I just couldn’t articulate it.
On Sundays I’ve developed the habit of going on a little date with my son after a long, hard weekend of teacher training has ended.
We usually go to Starbucks where he will get himself a “treat” – a cookie or other such sweets – and I get myself some tea. From time to time I take him to the Starbucks at our local Barnes and Noble so he can pick out a few books for us to read together.
While we were there, we walked by a table display full of bargain books, and I noticed they had a new hardbound copy of The Art of Happiness, by the Dalai Lama. It’s a book that, while dense, has given me some good insight into breaking out of a “victim” mentality and start relating to others with compassion – even those who would malign us.
The last time I owned a copy, I got half way through it before I decided one of my brothers needed to have it instead. I fully intended on buying myself another copy and finishing the rest of it, but I never did. Until yesterday.
I’ve believed for a long time in living life more compassionately, and I’ve been mindful about looking at others from that perspective. But I don’t know that I practice the same kind of compassion on myself, and it takes a toll on my emotional well-being.
On Saturday, I sat in our classroom session with tears rolling down my cheeks for the first hour and a half, for no apparent reason. We then went to a particularly grueling class and at the end, while laying Final Rest Pose, a few random thoughts just popped into my head.
The first was, “I just want someone to see me. Really see me.”
The second was, “Why isn’t it enough for you to just see yourself?”
I learned early in my anxiety treatment that judging your own feelings is a one way ticket to mental illness (or maybe not one way, because I went there and came back). But at any rate, judging yourself and your feelings harshly breeds nothing but discontent.
And I judge myself ALL the same. I have very unrealistic expectations of myself. I almost expect myself to be superhuman where it comes to the things I value – like courage, confidence and self-awareness. I beat myself up constantly in my head for lessons not learned, chances not taken, opportunities not seized. For not rising above my feelings when sometimes they are just so fucking irrational. (Pardon my French)
I lay there in the heat after our practice on Saturday letting my thoughts just float by, and one word featured prominently in my mental tape.
Coward. Coward. Coward.
I think I want someone else to really see me because when I get like that, all I see in myself are my flaws. I don’t see that I’m also smart, and kind. And talented. And funny! Boy, do I crack myself up! 🙂
I don’t want or need to do something stupid just to prove to myself that I’m not a coward. I just want to accept that sometimes I have irrational feelings and that it’s OK not to react at all.
Nothing to do but observe, say “hm” and move on.
The Universe will take care of the rest.
average yogini 