Fear of Power

Over the last week I've been noticing how I feel when I choose to shift my sense of self from the powerless feeling of ordinary consciousness, to the more powerful feeling of pure consciousness. If I see myself as driven and created by this powerful psychic force, and I see the drives that diminish my energy--my ordinary sense of self, as puny in its face, it's inevitable that my life will change. And change for the better.

So what is this fear about? Well, change for the better means more work. It means greater risk of failure, or perhaps bigger more noticeable failures. It means risking criticism, envy, contempt. Having a dream, where I grew up, meant contempt if it wasn't the dream that was the dominant dream.

It means living up to your potential, and paying back the gifts of life.

It means the solid realization that the strongest most powerful part of me, the part I share with all beings, whether they realize it or not,  wants to communicate what I've learned and what I'm learning to others.

It's an entire shift of my locus of control, and that makes me feel a little unbalanced.  In the past it has made me feel extremely unbalanced, but slowly that shift to a different centre becomes more intuitive.

It's an interesting optical illusion because the "self" that I'm afraid of letting go of sees the locus of control outside myself.  Whereas the "self" I'm trying to give more control of feels like it's outside of me, but is really the self that has the most inner control.

Patience.

Fear of boredom, fear of fascination

I'm grateful to Shinzen Young for filling me in on the twenty-minute ceiling. This is the stage in meditation training where you feel yourself again and again popping out of concentration and back into ordinary distracted thinking.

Now that I know about it, I'm more alert to what it is that blocks me from going beyond twenty minutes.

I'm convinced everytime I head into the second twenty minutes that I'm going to be bored, struggling, struggling, struggling with this pop.

Of course it's the opposite. It's in the next twenty minutes that I usually start feeling the most fascinating feelings. That magnetic, bouncy, warm, always surprising powerful chi.

That's when I feel the next fear: that this is so cool, surely the rest of the world is going to become increasingly boring to me. How on earth will I be able to hang around all of the boring, unenlightened, egomaniac, people, once I've become so powerful?

Obviously I'm just as wrongheaded in that fear. It's no doubt the opposite. If I were to get to an expert level, maybe everyone's ignorance, and striving, and complicated living would become as lovable to me as Ben is when he's so sure he has it right.

And maybe I'll finally find joy in being there for people. For all people. Like I did that day when I was able to help my mother in the hospital.

Maybe I'll enjoy being around people because more and more I'll believe that they enjoy being around me.

This morning I got up very early and went beyond the 40 minutes, into a third twenty minute session. There I felt the solid magnetic energy that I am becoming more and more familiar with. In that place it is so easy for me to decide to give up worrying now and forever. Because connected to this power, how could my future manifest as anything but good.

I will continue to take things one day at a time. But I would love to have a life where that morning hour was an unshakeable part of my day. What a wonderful life that would be.

Just for today, I will imagine my life as though this is what is inevitably going to happen. As though my locus of control is now permanent and immoveable. What a wonderful life this is.

Locus of Control

Just read about an interesting psychological concept, the locus of control. Apparently children who suffer from dyspraxia (like my son, and probably myself) tend to have what you call an "external locus of control." They believe that external circumstances are more in control of their lives than they are. People who believe that may be more prone towards underachievement, depression, addiction etc.

So I took a questionaire, just to get a baseline for myself. Apparently I'm 57% leaning towards external.

I wonder how standing might change that. When I'm standing I feel as through there is an outside force controlling me. At the same time I don't connect with that force unless I'm keeping to my regimen (which I confess, I haven't been of late. Stress taking control, or maybe learned helplessness in the face of stress) . So I believe, when I'm standing regularly, that my actions control my external environment. Even if the external environment feels more powerful than I am.

I'm not sure I want to be 8% more internally locus. I like the idea of being a balance between the two.

I'd be curious to take this test again in a month, after really sustained commitment to standing.