Into the mist I go

I have started to look at the reasons why I do, or don’t do, the things that are important in my life. Now all my energy is focused on my son so naturally I am looking there first. The guilt I feel, waning though it is, is an obstacle to me in accomplishing much of what I want but I am seeing it now as a by-product of an underlying reason. I had a great Dialogue with Beverley at Option a couple of weeks ago. I started on the guilt I felt surrounding my son…how I felt immobilized by it…confused and lost at times. . I was focusing on the guilt but not what was causing it…my in ability to act…act on desires and tasks. I wanted to help my son. What I discovered was my own thought process. I realized that I take a single action or task (I used an example of hanging a door in the fun room) and run through in detail every step I need to do to complete it. Then once I have reached what I deem as the logical end I walk back through the process looking for things that can go wrong. I don’t know if this is from building houses all those years or if I built houses because of it but the process is deeply ingrained in me. The problem lies in that I apply this to everything and I get bogged down before I begin. I complete the task in my head, deconstruct it then look for things that “could” go wrong and then try to solve those problems. My god I haven’t even left the couch and already I’m exhausted. Multiply this by who knows what on a daily basis its no wonder I feel overwhelmed. Never mind that I am fixating on an end result that I can’t possibly know.
But it speaks to an underlying problem. As I’m doing this I have an internal monologue of “I can’t”. I have to run out every possible scenario on what ever I do because, I realized, I don’t believe I can handle what ever comes my way. I create problems where there are no problems and end up talking myself out of attempting what ever it is I wanted to do. . Instead of looking out at life and seeing endless possibility I see a great multitude of paths I can take but not willing to travel down them unless I think it through until at last I talk my self out of it or just exhaust my self over contemplating the what if’s.
I knew I did this before I had my dialogue but its with Beverley I was able to form two key mental images that help me gain some perspective. The first image is of the multitude of paths: grey, course, thick stepping stones reaching out in every direction blanketed above and below in a white fog. Confusing and uninviting; not showing a single path but all paths with out any being distinguished from the other. This is what I feel in everyday life. This is where the guilt comes from because this is what I see….and that I can’t see the path I want or need to take…I have a choice yet I have failed to pick one and in the mean time my child suffers.
The second image…the one that turned me around was this: I’m in a galvanized tub, in the water; the water is black with little splashes of light being reflected off the surface and all around me is darkness. There is a rope that is tied to my little tub and then to something large and heavy that I can’t see. At that moment I cut the rope with a knife and my tub floats away turning in the opposite direction and all that is before me is a grey mist…. completely void of anything at all and what I feel is absolute contentment. The stones are gone and what I see is not nothingness but endless possibilities. There is no path to choose, nothing to think through, no problems to solve. I’m in my little tub all alone and I can just move a head into the unknown. The rope symbolized the guilt…what it was tied to was my belief that I could not handle what came my way…the “I can’t” monologue that runs in my head.
Through out my life the happiest times for me are when I have stepped out into the unknown with out a concern for what might happen. I have a sketch of purpose and a goal but no final thought on what that will look like or what the journey will hold. When I think about death it is the same…a great nothingness and that sooths me to the core. This ability to just take things as they come, that I know I have, has eluded me most of my life only coming to me in short bursts only to disappear again. The difference is now I am learning to discover the reasons as to why it is not a constant in my life. I know I possess the ability and that is where I think the guilt was coming from. Knowing that somewhere inside peace and happiness was waiting to be uncovered but I lacked the skills at uncovering it myself.
I have not discovered what those beliefs are that prevent me from changing my inner dialogue to “I can” but I know that I will. The dialoguing process opened up an expansive new world of thought to me. The beauty is that Beverley did not give me any of this…she had no answers for me, and was not wanting to give me any but she allowed me the freedom to explore my self and I discovered so much. I look forward to building on this new skill…it has changed my life.