{"id":8994,"date":"2018-10-24T11:18:11","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T18:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=8994"},"modified":"2018-10-27T07:57:10","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T14:57:10","slug":"separation-anxiety-object-and-its-glow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=8994","title":{"rendered":"Separation Anxiety (object and its glow)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo courtesy of: ‘ANGER’ by Arcaion – Pixabay
https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/y8r8sffm
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This morning I was doing an exercise called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Object and its Glow\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, which invited me to discover experientially that I (the viewing self) am not so separate from the objects that I view\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven though a sense of separation runs deep within my apparatus of perception.<\/p>\n

At some point during this exercise I felt very sad, because I realized that I had not been there for a family member when they needed to talk. I realized, belatedly, how defended I am: how fortified against anything that I \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcimagine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 will disturb my established routines and certainties\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhich are mostly old baggage I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m carrying around from the past.<\/p>\n

It also became clear that I reacted to this \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcimagined\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 threat before anything (threatening or otherwise) had actually been said. It was as if a ghost had appeared which I treated as real. Then, what might have passed by\u00e2\u20ac\u201dlike a cloud of mist\u00e2\u20ac\u201dinstantly congealed and froze shut my eyes and ears and separated me from my own heart.<\/p>\n

How I wish that I could melt this separation that takes me over. However, I fear that if life allows this sense of misunderstanding and exile to disperse, I will again not remember this present feeling and what it has to teach me?<\/p>\n

Vows and resolutions can ring so hollow, when they are rooted in a mood, a thought, or even a recognition that something needs to change. When, sometime in the future, a flash of unsettling emotion, fueled by an entire complex of conditioning, fills my mind–of what use will it be that there was a morning in late October when I wanted to be a more open and caring person?<\/p>\n

Perhaps I need to train myself to recognize milder flashes of anger and panic when they arise and to practice creating a space between that flash and my response to it.<\/p>\n

When I hit my forehead on an open cupboard door, I always react with anger, blaming the door for being there\u00e2\u20ac\u201das if it was the door that has attacked me, not that I have stepped into it. I usually curse at the door and at the world that permits such collisions, while instantaneously reacting to the sharp corner that has arisen so unexpectedly out of a space beyond the focus of my eyes–which are always focused on other situations, such as making breakfast. So, even that will be a challenge. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so conditioned to react to the unexpected that it seems akin to the way my leg kicks out when a doctor strikes my knee with his rubber hammer. And in that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not so different from a police officer, feeling threatened by someone, who pulls the trigger before he has understood the situation.<\/p>\n

It feels like a major, lifelong task for me to learn to not pull the trigger when an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcimagined\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 threat appears before me. But so much depends on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning I was doing an exercise called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Object and its Glow\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, which invited me to discover experientially that I (the viewing self) am not so separate from the objects that I view\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven though a sense of separation runs … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,74,69],"tags":[74,69],"class_list":["post-8994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-general-tsk-discussions","category-self","category-time","tag-self","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}