I feel reluctant to blog all of a sudden. I’ve missed the two weekend days but that’s quite normal. I suddenly feel shy or something. I don’t feel like I have anything to say all of a sudden. I have been questioning my habits challenge and all of the habits I’ve been very much sticking to for most of this month. I’ve been questioning whether it’s a good idea to be so fixed in your ideas.
This morning I feel like I don’t have a plan and I don’t know what to do with myself all of a sudden. I have things to do but they don’t feel so important. I think it’s just that I’m questioning everything, including this blog and everything I write or think or feel. Is it good to write or am I just perpetuating all this meaningless and even harmful stuff that goes round in my head all day long. Giving it a voice when what I should really be doing is letting go of all the thoughts and just being.
But what does that even mean? What should I do in that case? Just sit here and meditate for hours. Read books telling me how to be more spiritual and less worldly? I feel like that’s not just letting go but completely dropping out of life, and I also feel like a big part of me wants to do that anyway and so it’s the last thing I should be letting myself do. All of which is to say that I really don’t trust my own instincts.
I’m torn between letting my instincts rule or using discipline to move down the spiritual path. Should I eat anything and everything I feel like eating or ban the foods that I turn to when I’m down. Should I listen to my body and take a day off running or force myself to run in order to push myself outside of my comfort zone?
I’m confused. I want to leave this post and go and read something, to try and find inspiration or some instructions even on what I should do with my day. All I know is I have work to do and well that’s it really. Even as I’m writing this I’m thinking I should continue to follow my habits. I don’t think they necessarily ARE me staying in my comfort zone. I think it’s the opposite in fact. I have instigated them in order to PUSH myself to do stuff that may not feel easy or comfortable now but will pay off further down the line.
I think my mind is very sneakily trying to come up with all these excuses to let me off the hook. I’ve already stopped gardening because it’s hay fever season. This morning I decided not to run because when I first got up my leg felt really sore. If I’m not careful I’ll find myself dropping this blog, my language studied, my other writing, and every one of these small habits that I’ve been trying to stick to this month.
I was reading back over my monthly “books” that I’ve been writing all year. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but since January 1st I’ve attempted to write 1,667 words a day. This has theoretically been in the form of a book of 50,000 words each month but they’ve ended up being just as random and stream of consciousness based as this blog and my morning journaling. But they do make for interesting reading for me at least, especially when I’m trying to remember something I did back in February.
What I’ve realised is this is possibly one of the longest periods of time I’ve spent feeling really alive for many years. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt like I’ve mostly just been trudging along, wading through mud, getting through life, getting the basics of work and running and eating done, with just these occasional glimmers of light where I’ve managed to actually hope and dream of something better, where I’ve stopped myself from numbing and sabotaging with bad habits, and actually tried to live. Not that I’ve been constantly on a high since November, which I think was the last time I had to really extricate myself from a slump. But I’ve never fully gone back into that darkness.
One of the reasons I decided to implement all these new habits about 3 or 4 weeks ago was that I was in a bit of a slump, watching a lot of TV and playing iPad games and eating a lot of sugar. But it hadn’t been that long actually and was more a reaction to the ultra I did in mid May. So while there have been ups and downs this year I really have stayed in the light more than in the darkness.
I think a big reason for that is probably that I’m studying ACIM daily. There’ve been a few missed days but mostly I’ve really stuck to it, and I now look forward to it. I put it almost first in my day precisely because I WANT to live my whole day according to it. I can FEEL the benefits it’s bringing me. I’m more confident, I’m relating to people better, but mostly I’m just in a better mood. It’s not that I NEVER have a negative thought or feel unhappy about something going wrong, more that I am managing to lift myself back up again more quickly.
I’m on day 89 I think now, of 365 and honestly I couldn’t recommend it more. It’s difficult to grasp at the beginning and I think you have to be truly ready to change your life. Because I started it several years ago and it just completely freaked me out. At that point I didn’t want things to change. I just wanted to get what I wanted. I didn’t want to learn how to be happy REGARDLESS of what happened. A big part of why I became ready was simply that my so-called “reality” had begun to feel really awful, truly awful, and I could no longer find any solution from simply trying harder or finding the right way through. There wasn’t any upside I could see and life just felt almost unbearably sad and unfulfilling and disappointing and terrifying. I felt like I no longer had any alternative to finding the light.
I can’t pretend to fully understand yet but I feel like the momentum is building and building. Sometimes it scares me, I have to say. Where will this lead? Am I really willing to give up all of my perceived control over my life and just surrender to whatever happens? I feel like the answer to that is yes. I am now fully on board with the idea that trying to control stuff doesn’t work. There are a couple of final things I do still need to let go of my need to control, and that’s why I’ve got this confusion today about whether my habits are a good thing, whether I should write or not, whether I should stick to my diet or not etc, because I’m working to let go of these final elements that I still foolishly believe I have control over.
But there we are, a bit of a conundrum, almost a Catch-22 even, if I hadn’t forced myself to write this today, I wouldn’t have had these insights. I feel like it’s the opposite of “damned if you do damned if you don’t” though. More, “blessed if you do, blessed if you don’t”, because what will be will be no matter what you do and your only role in it is to let go and love it, no matter what.