Food is totally out of control—especially sugar. I keep finding myself munching every time I turn around, trying to pack down my feelings to more manageable states. I am not satisfied and happy. I am tired and growing more tired each day. All seems illogical to me, considering that I very much want to be retired!
I have good days and great days, and days of seeking much numbness. I feel like a robot, going through my day—not even knowing how to navigate through my day. I feel like I am in a foreign land, and I do not know the ropes.
I do not know how to live my life as a retired person. I’ve been so very busy for so very many years! I’ve always kept my schedule booked to the gills. I have a schedule that is booked to the gills even this very moment. But I feel like the wind has been let out of my storm, my lungs, my sails, out of my life. I don’t know how to move forward through this space.
I want to rest. I am afraid to rest. I want to stop. I am afraid to stop. I want to feel. I am afraid to feel.
I am falling through every day, tripping and floundering through the things on my schedule, not really enjoying any of those things and not really being invested in any of them, either—even things that usually matter to me very much! I am just, plain, not feeling much right now…except feeling very tired. It is like I am watching my life from outside of me, not sure at all what to make of any of it.
How can this all be when I wanted so much to be retired and free???
I guess I don’t know anything about living in freedom and being free!!
What if there is no life left?
Of course there is life left!
What if all that I had on my plate keeping me busy for all these years is/was just an illusion—a way of keeping me out of contact with my real feelings all along?
What are my real feelings at this very moment?
Scared
Depressed
Tired
Overwhelmed
Expectations
Freedom
Compulsion to keep busy
Compulsion to stop everything and hole-up in my bedroom
Anger
Fear
Frustration
Shame
Grief
Loss
Hope
Anxiety
Trust
Being able to retire has been such a gift. But right at this moment, I am not feeling gratitude about this!
I am feeling a lot of crappy things right now and a few good things, too! I don’t like irrational and illogical stuff! And these moments right now are all about irrational and illogical! Probably all of these strange feelings are about being a human being, living in a body on the planet—something that I think I have tried to spiritualize myself out having to feel for a very long time!
There are trapped tears in my heart, in my throat and in my eyes right this minute. What are the tears about?
There is the loss of (the illusion of) safety and comfortableness, of familiarity. There is fear about the bottom falling out of my life and my maybe not being able to manage it…or stay above water, as I have now created it.
These are silly fears…but I am feeling these things. And five minutes from now these feelings will go away and I won’t have awareness about what I was feeling about any of this! And in another few minutes, these feelings will be back with a vengeance—refusing to be quelled for long.
I am feeling hopeful and somewhat hopeless. I am a paradox of so many feelings right now! I am silly!! I am a walking display of duality, incarnate!
I can’t get done the things that I need to get done. I feel like I am in quicksand. I don’t know where my time is going. I have lots of time! But the days seem to fly by and I do not get done the things I need to get done. I do not know how to make myself more productive for the projects that I need to accomplish. I want to complete them. And I don’t care about them, too! How silly!
There is no need to accomplish anything at any given moment right now. But I have always been outcome oriented—maybe “driven” is more like the real word.
I seem to be suffering an energy vapor lock. I feel lazy, lacking in direction and fighting inertia. But I have been busy nearly every waking moment for the last two weeks! Where is my time going? It is falling off the face of the earth right before my eyes, and I can’t catch it. I don’t know where it is going! I only know that I am busy non-stop all day long every, single day, and STILL, I do not accomplish what really needs to get done! How can this be???
This feels very bizarre, experiencing these strange feelings about all of these things!
I am sure all of these feelings are perfectly normal to be feeling after spending more than 40 years of my life with my nose to somebody else’s grindstone. I don’t know how to live my life with only me as the one directing me for me!
It’s a whole new world for me. And I am feeling like a fish out of water! But I am hopeful that I will learn how to swim!
I am feeling lost and I am looking for my way. I know it is here somewhere. And I know that I will find it, too. But I will have to be patient as the feelings all reveal themselves to me—as I am willing to allow them to come forth without trying to not feel them!
There is some excitement, down under the energy vapor lock—fueled by the knowledge that some new awareness, some pieces I have never had access to before, are germinating and working their way from my center for me to experience in this world.
I am feeling very vulnerable and very unknowledgeable, very out of my comfort zone. And yet, I am still trusting that something wonderful will come, if I am willing to sit in the vulnerability and allow it to be alright, just as it is.
I have been allowing it all to be—sandwiched in between feeling stark, raving terror about the adjustment reaction that I am growing more aware of brewing grandly in my life. Without real conscious awareness, I have been trying to push it down, not feel it, run from it…and I see that and know that now.
I want to openly embrace what I’ve been working so hard to not feel!
OK, Spirit! I surrender! I ask for assistance! Please show me—with as much compassion as possible, what I have been blocking. I am willing and I accept and allow it—all of it! Please help me find my way through it all to my highest good!
Thank you!
Barbara
Copyright 2011. Transformation of a Mystic. Barbara F. Manning
