I was very stressed this week for some complex works I had to finish before Friday. And I tried to remember – while too many difficult problems came to me to solve – that events are composed with time since light reflects on objects/ senses respond/ experiences are identified/ ego appropriate/control the experience by organizing and interpreting it (as I just have read in Knowledge of Freedom). I imagined that may be I could feel more confident if I could be aware that things were not so surprisingly big and complicated as they seems to be when we are tense…

But while I was trying to decompose the events I started to realize that it was like the tenser I was the quicker this process seemed to happen, and sooner ego was in the control. And as I (am not sure that time which I was that..) was sure the situation was quite hard to cope with, it was like my ego´s control was being in danger, and very fragile…which led to rather authomatic defensive responses.  So I went to read the exercise 5 from Love of Knowledge (which led me to #3 too), and doing what I understood it indicated me to do, I started to observe the “temporal structure linked to patterns centred in interests and desires of “I” (as my quick translation from book in portuguese). It came to me that interests and desires that structure this stress was, in the end, related to my efforts to be responsable for my work, to be respected and well considered by other and by myself. 

It seems ok to want these things. But are these interests and desires so essencial to me, to turn me so stressed to attend them? Which “I” prioritized these contexts in my life. One “I” does not agree. If I were about to die and was asked what was the most important things in my life, I would not list these…Responsability for my work is a value for me, but should it be in such a position and proportion in my life? Isn´t too related to correspond to contextual situations outside me (or at least as how I think they are) which connect me to social conventions and patterns?

So, if I am in the right direction, the tension I am feeling is related to an effort to achive interests/ desires in the first plane, but also to a fear to not correspond to expected interests and desires (from others and from myself to confirm my image and self-image), and  may be also to the disconnection that to concentrate in external interests and desires cause to my internal interest and desires.

And if it is so, one “I” of me seems to dictates pre-defined procedures in a way to construct/ reafirm/ mantain a image very before delineated for me (which seems to leed to comfort and expected  , . And the other “I” is very away from that, free from the fear to discomfort, convensions, has own and clear rules and tend also to reach people, but from another perspective, and not from the necessity of reafirmation of its values.