December 20, 2010

• your basic diary entry

  Many years ago, I had an online journal or diary before xanga, before blogs.  Several years ago my xanga was a diary.  Slowy, over time, it became formulaic, an attempt to impress alternating with a strange paranoia about having witnesses reading.  Maybe not paranoia always, but self-consciousness.  Then came Facebook, which leads to snippets of expression and sharing of information without any depth of conversation or sharing really.

  Ok, that being said, here’s how I feel today:  shitty.  Why? I am anxious because I am still dealing with the licensing board evaluating me.  This whole experience of getting into legal trouble has shown me my own level of narcissim.  I am addicted to seeing myself as a good person.  If I see some indication that I am not, or have made mistakes, particularly mistakes that may cause me risk of my career and thus are threats to my ability to survive financially, it touches on my core issues.  So in response, I went through a period of depression and shock and shut down.  One result was my faith in 12 Step programs took a nose dive.  I guess my ability to trust others did.  In part this was because my attorney told me I couldn’t discuss it with anyone.  So suddenly I had a problem that I couldn’t take to meetings, except in vague hypothetical terms.  It turned my world upside down, or at least on it’s side.

  Greg is on his way out the door for work.  It’s snowy, so I’m not going in until the afternoon, a.m. client cancelled.  I realize I am in an anxious trance, or anxiety attack at the moment. I am trying to not burden Greg with it.

  Ok, I took a break for a second.  I feel better now.  Yet, I know there is something really core that is within reach of some healing right now – despite the discomfort.

  So, another thing that recently happened is a visit to a spiritual mentor.  I have taken over updating a list of local therapists.  One guy listed on the directory emailed me and said, hey, I’m not actually a therapist, but he didn’t say remove me from the list.  When I read about him, I realized I wanted an appointment and had one with him.  He works through a local yoga studio.  http://www.flowhoodriver.com/about-adi.cfm

  

  Adi Marino.  As it turns out, his teacher is Gangaji.

  So in my 1:1 discussion with him, he shared about non-dual spiritual teachings, about finding out who we really are.  The technique basically was to turn and face discomfort and feel into what’s in the center of it.  What happened is I shared about intense anxiety and shame, I looked into it and found and emptiness in the center.  He said that, in effect, we are all one and it is impossible that that unity is flawed.  Therefore, Shame is a lie.  Anxiety is a lie.  My deduction.

  So, the problem is, I left feeling a bit of a crisis as to how to go on living this life in this body with all the story of my life as “me.”  LOL.  The first obstacle after that was trying to explain to my husband.  That weekend and the following, we both went to the Dharma talk with Adi, which has peaked Greg’s interest enough to make his own 1:1 appointment with Adi.  I don’t plan on following Adi necessarily, if he even sees it that way; I just wanted Greg to know what I was exploring.

  I attended a Dharma center in Portland a decade ago.  It was not the right time for me.  I was not emotionally stable enough to handle the threat to my ego that is involved in this type of path.  I may not be now… LOL.

  But back to why I am bringing all this up now, today.  I got a letter back from the licensing board asking me further questions about their allegations with regard to the administrative rules.  I must write a response, a defense.  Somehow this has become the central fire of my spiritual choices right now.  Do I defend my ego and attempt to defend my innocence?  I can’t.  Do I throw myself under the bus and over confess, promptly admit my wrongs, as 12 Steps would say to do?  The problem is I can’t accurately assess it anymore in the spiritual state I currently am in. 

  Honestly, I wish they’d just total up the fines and fine me.  Be done with it.  But clearly the process continues so that I am forced to look within my core sense that I am broken, tainted, evil, throw-away, should never have been born, will-be-found-out, my core SELF-HATRED.

  So the desire to just be fined and move on is another desire to just escape the self-hatred rather than face it.  So I will explore facing it, looking into it, moving through it.  The only way through is through.

  • 11:55 am
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