by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys
Rush hour going in town in the afternoon. Across a busy intersection the traffic is stopped, backed up from a red light a little ahead. I pause so as not to get caught in the intersection, then move forward as cars move up, just enough for a single car. Behind me someone else is coming through the intersection with no place to go.
I find myself getting angry in a self-righteous way, that this person would block the cross traffic, would potentially endanger themselves and others. My judgement is getting all revved up; a pet peeve going into high gear. I start to say something out load, but my beloved flags me down and invites me to reign in. She’s not wanting to have me go there while driving with her.
So I turn inside myself. I hear a voice in my head that says, “you’re spoiling all the fun”. Whoah. Its always so interesting when I can be in my witness to internal psychological processes. Then I can become neutral, disengage, and decide if I find the process useful or not. Does it currently serve me? if so when. Once I have some awareness I can begin to make changes.
Taking time to feel into this energy and the part of me wants to whack someone else, to tee off on someone I don’t know. It thinks it will feel better. That by making someone else wrong I can make myself right. Why can’t I just be right all by myself?
Back up to earlier in the afternoon, when I was having a somewhat challenging conversation with people about responsibility for something involving money. I’m asking them to take some responsibility and help me pay for something. There is an expectation of resistance to this request, and a sense of limited power on my side. I’m asking them to do something that seems reasonable to me, but if they say no there is little I can do.
It left me in a place of feeling uncertain and weak, that I should have done more, somehow. My guidance tells me that I did what I could, to let it go, but somehow its hard. Some level of my psyche still wants to boost itself. Too many doubts about my toughness as a man in the world. Perhaps it serves me better to add energy to that possible positive outcome, rather than rehashing me “defeat”.
I’ve been judging myself for the last hour and now I want to release that at someone else. Isn’t this the way it so often happens? When I was young I used to come home from school and pass along things that had upset me to my younger brother. Not proud of that either. So perhaps its time to change this old pattern; to ask Spirit to show me how to let go of my fears and self judgements and to notice when I’m about to pass something along to someone else. I can then own them, sit with them, let them go. A new practice.
Waiting for the light up ahead to change I go through all this. My beloved checks in and I say I’ll be with you in a minute. As it comes clearer summarize for her. She laughs at how complex a web the mind can weave in a few minutes. She is happy that I was able to stop and sort through things.
Thanks to my beloved who saw this and said no thank-you in a way that was kind enough that I could observe my process rather than reacting to a reaction and getting further distracted by tangling with her. Gratitude to my guidance for helping me notice what was useful to notice and stay out of reaction.
I have begun a dance with my inner fear, the not-enoughness, not as an idea, but as living energy that I have invited into a conversation, allowing myself to feel and sit with it, rather than pushing it away, or easily distracting myself with the other drivers. I can see how its useful to this protective part of me to have a stock pile of pet peeves for uses at times like this. Things that its pretty easy to call up as experiences that feel real and justified. Perhaps I can let them all go. I choose to stop judging myself and/or then passing it along to others.
Now I can continue in town with my beloved. Leaving the other driver behind. Leaving the earlier people behind more completely. I think I’ll be happier that way.
