What Have I Done For Me Lately

I feel like I need to point out that when I decided to start a blog, I wasn't planning to write a bunch of stories about myself.  I thought it would be a wonderful way to begin sharing my ideas and visions with the world.  Like my last post, The Mirror Principle.  Maybe more of that will come, but for now it feels most honest to share what I'm going through.  It's like I'm slowly integrating my inner world with the outer world. And I can't jump straight into the deep end, I've got to start out by wading a bit.

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Lately I've been feeling like I'm riding a wave.  That I'm getting help from some unseen energetic, as I move through some growing pains.  My prayer over the last few months has been for Love to use me, however It wills.  I've been earnest in my petitions to the Divine, and I suppose grace has found me for it.  

Over the last 10 years, I've been very up and down.  I'm prone to long periods of withdrawal and pretending.  Then at other times I'm almost over interested, looking out strictly and not paying attention to my inner conditions.  But that has all been slowly changing since I started Authentic Relating, Circling, men's groups, and therapy.  I've gradually been bringing my inner world out more into my communities.  This blog is the culmination of a year and a half of emotional and psychological work.

Even still, I have hard days.  Today I'm feeling particularly challenged with bouts of sadness and low energy levels.  In this state, I would usually retreat to my tower and bury myself in junk food and silly TV shows to lighten the mood.  Or disappear into the fantasy world of a video game.  Another big tool for hiding for me has been cannabis.  It works so well to quell the emotional storm for a time.  Or if I felt I didn't have a choice, I would use caffeine to try to power through.  But all of these things only sort of work, and only temporarily.

Presently I'm on an indefinite hiatus from the things in the last paragraph because I want something more than to hide.  I want to take risks and be vulnerable.  I want to open up fully.  Rather than retreat, I want to go right into the storm and find out what I'm made of.  I want to let this story die and find out what in me continues to live.  I want to face the pain I find inside with the same gentleness that I meet it with in others.

So for all the stories and report cards and track records, I ask myself, what I have done for me lately?  I stay present and centered and don't allow the past to intrude with its demands and attempts at manipulation.  I'm here, now.  I know that much.  The rest is just story about some other guy that I used to be.

It seems fitting that I'm going through this as autumn begins.  My leaves are falling and I'm standing more and more naked in the sun.  Sometimes I'm afraid, but I know underneath that this is a natural process.