At some point in the last three weeks or so (during my run of OF v1,) I was driving to work on a road that passes by a neighborhood where a former supervisor at my job lived. At that time I wondered if she still lived there ( I drive this road every day I work, and never really thought about this before. ) After she quit back then, she became a real estate agent, and helped me sell my house in 2005.
Sooo, I've just started week two of OF v2. And what do I get in the mail today, but a holiday greeting card from this person. Seriously, fifteen years of no contact, and now a very kind and warm note! And the return address on the card clearly indicates that she does still live in the same place...
(12-29-2020, 12:22 PM)Ruffian Wrote: [ -> ]At some point in the last three weeks or so (during my run of OF v1,) I was driving to work on a road that passes by a neighborhood where a former supervisor at my job lived. At that time I wondered if she still lived there ( I drive this road every day I work, and never really thought about this before. ) After she quit back then, she became a real estate agent, and helped me sell my house in 2005.
Sooo, I've just started week two of OF v2. And what do I get in the mail today, but a holiday greeting card from this person. Seriously, fifteen years of no contact, and now a very kind and warm note! And the return address on the card clearly indicates that she does still live in the same place...
Interesting!
I haven't been journaling much on this sub because, as some other users have said, it's been very smooth. Since last Thursday, however, I've been having an avalanche of insights. Last night, I had the first nightmare I've had in a long time. (Teaser: it took place at Disney World!)
Sooo, I've got something going on today, and then sometime in the coming week I'll be taking the notes I've made, and attempting to make a report that makes some sort of sense...
I had stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work last Thursday. As I was driving on the roadway leading out of the parking lot, I saw a homeless man on the roadside. He was riding one of those adult tricycles which was laden with all his possessions. The front wheel protruded maybe two feet onto the roadway, and he was just sitting there.
I reacted immediately: how dare he, he is impinging on my right of way, it's not safe, yada yada yada. But the reaction was over almost as soon as it had begun. And it was replaced with the realization that I had zero compassion for this fellow human being, who was obviously suffering horribly.
Normally a reaction of this sort reaches a higher level of intensity, lasts longer, and has more swearing. The fact that it was so short, less intense, and did a total 180 in such a short amount of time (maybe less than a minute) well, I'm going to give OF credit for that. (As I was trying to gauge the intensity level for this report, I was like...anger? Nope. Intense irritation? No, the tone was all wrong. It was then that I realized... I had had a temper tantrum!)
Friday morning, having had a good night's sleep, the thought popped into my head that this was all about power/powerlessness. I'll be exploring this further...
Friday night, I had a nightmare. I was at Disney World (when I say I was at Disney World, it is because somehow, that information was clearly given in the dream. But there were no rides, or entertainment. There were shopping areas that looked more like flea markets, and one elevated restaurant where people were dining.) At any rate, I was with a group of friends. The group of friends somehow disappeared, and I was then by myself.
At some point, a sales person took my driver's license. A while later, when I tried to get it back, they wouldn't give it to me. Also, my cell phone just vanished.
So...friends gone, phone gone, driver's license confiscated. I was panicking in my dream. It took a while to calm down even after I woke up.
Having had a couple of days to put some perspective on this, I've come up with this (so far) :
The old friends are old, outworn beliefs, ideas, and habits.
The driver's license is a belief that I need validation from some external entity, without which I have no agency in the world. (Apparently, this validation can be confiscated by the “sales person.”)
The phone is a belief that I need an intermediary through which all information/communication/knowledge must pass.
Needless to say, these are massively dis-empowering beliefs.
Exercise for the week: Notice ways in which I abdicate my power.
Edit: I realized that "Disney World" may be a metaphor for being in 'Fantasyland'...
Definitely feeling much less reactive in general.
Re: noticing ways in which I abdicate my powers: I guess I first need to know what those powers are... That to me is the benefit of having a real question. It's not as much about finding an answer, as it is about really opening to the question. And things start showing up...
For instance, I was watching TV, Tuesday I think, and a character in the show said something to the effect that “the key to a successful 'con job' is misdirected attention.” That was a real aha moment.
The next day, I started thinking about attention. One of the first things that came to mind was advertising. While the ultimate goal of advertising is to get you to take a certain action (usually buying something, but not necessarily,) the primary goal is to capture your attention. If they can't do that, they have no power over you.
Then there's the different types of attention: the laser focus on a single subject, the diffused attention on the sensory input while lazing in the sun at the beach, the divided attention of trying to get lunch ready, while simultaneously keeping track of the dog/kids/grandpa.
So I count attention as one of the powers.
I think the ruminating on advertising is what led me to another power: the power to choose. But I can only choose if I am free to choose. And here is where I circled back around to the reason I use subliminals. While it is helpful to me to sort through things on the intellectual level, it is the slowest function. The emotional functioning, especially in reactions, and even the instinctive/reflexive bodily functions, are much quicker. And that is why it's so difficult to change. You don't necessarily have to go through all these mental gymnastics if you're running a subliminal, it's just my way.
Some of the posters on this forum who are journaling their OF runs seem to be making some pretty exciting changes. They are free to choose differently. Power accomplished!