Helenlee

Helenlee - i love you! this was in one of MY posts yesterday:

.every time i buy a lotto ticket i am a POTENTIAL winner, but the salespeople at the Yacht company don't accept them for what they MIGHT be worth. until such time as the proper combination of numbers align just right, and the odds are 1:175,711,536 for MegaBall, it's nothing but a bit of scrap paper........

truly and seriously, that was a spot on post to Wife. i hope you share more of your ESH with us here!
Today 08:53 AM

Sincere heartfelt thanks Anvil. You've been one of my heros since I landed on planet SRF. That brought tears to my eyes

lc2846

I'll try--I'm still a beginner at it. Like LaTeeDa, analyzing and logic come naturally to me and have made me a success in my work. And I have no trouble feeling my feelings; in fact they're so intense that they drive me crazy sometimes. And when it comes to decision making, emotions are not always my friends.

Gut instinct is hard to describe as a concept because it's larger than the intellect, and words are the tools of the intellect. Nothing wrong with the intellect, but sometimes it's the wrong tool. For me, gut instinct is what happens when I stop intellectualizing. I don't need to "do" anything else--I just stop doing the things that get in the way of my gut, and in fact the urge to "do" is part of the problem.

This doesn't mean I'm supposed to "empty the mind" (which is taught in many meditation practices, and which has never worked for me). And it doesn't mean I become a brain dead zombie. But as I practice my own peculiar form of meditation, I'm learning that the gut instincts are a muscle that become stronger with use.

I meditate by distracting my intellect for a while so it's not running the show. Physical activity works great. So does being in the outdoors. You're an outdoorswoman, so perhaps you know the feeling when you go into the backcountry for a few days, and around 25 hours in, you suddenly feel peaceful and clean, like nothing can harm you. That's gut instinct.

I've read just about all of Lorin Roche's website (lorinroche.com) and it's been very helpful to me in developing my own personal meditation practices. I love how he describes most eastern meditation practices as created for celibate monks, not Westerners with ordinary lives. He says that every time we do something that gives us pleasure (non-addictively), we're meditating and developing our gut instinct. I'd love to attend the spring workshop he and his wife put on every year at Esalen--a week at Big Sur doing meditation and yoga, getting massages, eating great food, and sitting in a hot tub. Way out of my budget, but even visualizing it gives me pleasure and so it's...meditation.

FindingPeace1

I love you all so much and appreciate you!! Thank you for saying hi and sharing with me.

Okay, I am going to come across as split personality, but I'm not! LOL!

More on this gut trust thing...

I awoke this morning feeling:
I don't feel safe!
I'm cold!
I'm scared!
I feel unprotected!
I feel small...or I want to get small
Smaller and smaller in a ball
Like a little pill bug
To protect my vulnerability.
My stomach aches.
I had a headache yesterday.
I can't seem to kick this dang yeast infection!
My jaw aches!

One part of me said:
That's dumb.
You're not cold. You're under a down blanket.
Don't get up and put on a layer. Recognize you are fine.
You're fine and totally safe.
Stop freaking out.
(okay, that's not very affirming!)

One part said:
Your fear is just projected from the past.
Being ruled by past fear is BAD and UNHEALTHY.
Move on and grow up.
(more non-affirming)

One said:
That's negative thinking.
Do some positive affirmations.
Get unstuck.
Don't let yourself get so negative.
Don't buy into that fear. It's unhealthy.
(maybe true while being un-affirming? That kind of reasoning can REALLY confuse me! I think I undermine my feelings with this kind of logic.)

I considered feeling my fear (and cold) totally. Allowing it.

I got up and put on a layer and got back in bed and felt warm!

I felt like if I felt it fully, I wold be overcome. Go mad! Lose me. Succumb. Lose my groundedness and health and happiness and control (ohh!) and everything I have worked for. It felt too...out of control. (that says I need to go there, hmm? I think this is BIG!)

One part of me said:
Your physical symptoms are your body (gut?) giving you important messages.

Another part responded:
I don't LIKE those messages!
What if that's just some scared little kid when I actually AM safe!

Another part:
Your scared little kid is real and valid because we are talking about emotional safety. Those kids count.

Reply:
They are too frightened and limit me!

Reply:
Yep. They can only heal with love and honoring and being heard.

Reply:
I don't WANT to listen. I don't want to be limited. I like my life. I feel like running away when I feel scared and I feel mad and embarrassed to feel like that. I don't want to wreck my life and I am afraid feeling/allowing my fear will do that. If I listen and honor my fear I am f**ked up and broken. I don't want to be broken anymore!

So here is the question.
When is it running away out of fear and when is it removing oneself from an unsafe situation?
When is it just fear talking (like "feel afraid and do it anyway") and when is it inner wisdom?

I don't want to be ruled by fear. Agoraphobics are ruled by an IRRATIONAL fear. I don't want to be stuck like that. They don't know it is irrational. What if my fears are irrational? How would I know? (therapy? I know. I am dying to get to my next appointment and discuss this)

LaTeeDa

I have a really hard time discerning my inner voice, too. I once asked my therapist how to tell when it's the "small quite voice" vs. the "committee in my head." Because I really can't tell sometimes.

She told me that the small quite voice (gut instinct) is usually very matter-of-fact. It's not about feeling, as in emotions, but more about protection. It always has your best interests at heart. Everything it tells you is for your own protection. Like when something tells you to 'slow down,' right before you trip and fall.

The 'committee' voices are the ones with all the emotions attached. They shame you, berate you, tell you you are wrong, that you shouldn't have done this or that. They make you feel bad about yourself, and, yes, they scare you.

I still have trouble sorting out the voices, lol. But, I try to pay attention and use her guidance when I can't tell.

L

FindingPeace1

I was just reading Lorin Roche's website (thanks, lc!!!) and he was talking about the Odious Rule Generator. I LOVE IT! That's what all those voices are!
Disallowing my feelings.

This quote is about meditation, but you will get the gist:
Say that you have half an hour to yourself. Ahhhh, a chance to rejuvenate, and then you have to go pick up the kids. So during meditation, you wonder, "What time is it?" The Rule Generator will immediately slap you with a rule, "You shouldn't think about the time." Or say that you find yourself sorting through your to-do list, wondering if item #12 should really go up, closer to the top; the Odious Rule Generator can then chide you for thinking. Then you find yourself thinking of a friend who moved away and you lost contact with, and you feel sad over the loss. Your Rule Generator can then chide you for feeling.

It is kind of like having your mother-in-law sitting behind you telling you how to drive. In this case, she is sitting on your shoulder, telling you how to meditate. If she is really good, she will figure out ways to chide you for being. Your very nature is too intimate. You are attached. Your actual existence is somehow wrong, and you are defective. You, actually, are the one being in creation who does not have Buddha Nature.

It's OKAY to feel so scared (and to truly FEEL that/be present to it).
I see I fight acceptance INTERNALLY as much as externally.

It just is.
Scared is.

lc2846

What a great quote--I missed it in all of my reading on Roche's website. I have my own personal Odious Rule Generator. Partly it came from my father, who was overly critical, but I think it also arose as a defense mechanism, because I pretty much had to parent myself as a child, which was scary a lot of the time.

My RABF and I are doing couples therapy with his therapist. It helps that the therapist is very good (we're in a suburb of a college town, lots of good resources here). The therapist pointed out how both of us, as very young kids with overwhelmed, absent, or overly critical parents, had to parent ourselves--figure out our own rules and get our approval from within before our psyches were fully developed--and how much anxiety that created.

RABF and I have been wounded in many of the same ways, although we reacted much differently. I suspect this is why it's easy for me serve as his Odious Rule Generator--to get away from the incessant racket of my own ORG.

After he got stopped for DUI in January but before he decided to choose sobriety, I vowed that I would work harder to get in touch with my gut and stop worrying, because if I didn't, the upcoming month with his legal fees, hearing, classes, and general mayhem was going to drive me insane. Now that's over but our work has only begun.