I’d say that realizing that expansion of consciousness can happen by simply asking a question is a pretty significant insight. I feel like a child in some ways now – I was with friends yesterday and asking so many questions, repeating back what they said to me, wanting to be sure I really understood what was being said to me instead of my mind just sort of half-tracking what was being said and nodding and not really getting it.
I’m also realizing how far I’ve managed to get through life without really understanding what the heck is going on around me or what people are actually saying. In the past few weeks I have felt more at ease asking for something to be explained to me more than once. I noticed how terrified I was that certain people might even look at me disapprovingly, and at work I would sit in my office, stewing in anxiety trying desperately to remember or sort it out or risk the consequences of guessing what I was supposed to do rather than ask.
An insight I had this morning, as a consequence of questioning a friend of mine about her perspective, also illuminated a recent dream. ***I realized the way my mind has been sorting information is through a true/false filter. If something registers as a lie, my mind immediately would go into defense/combat mode. So much so that I couldn’t even get through reading an article to a friend of mine yesterday, and when inquiring into my reaction, I asked myself if I “needed” to be right, and found a very tender part of myself, some sadness, and tears, leaving me feeling raw for a while. I also noticed later that after eating healthy, whole, raw foods during the early part of the day, when alone I reverted to sugary comfort food. I interpret this as a period of contraction after expansion.
I also noticed about myself that my curiosity has been tinged with pain, so often asking people about their experience has had a mixed impulse of invitation/interrogation.
On a long drive yesterday, I decided to have a conversation with my car. My experiences with psychedelics have taught me that all is alive, even space, so I figured, why not? I practiced saying things out loud that were running around in my head, and, out loud, they lost their power and I could see more of where I have been fantasizing not present to reality. I also practiced, a la Law of Attraction, speaking as if life were already the way I wanted it to be, as if I were already in a place of satisfaction, ease, grace, fulfillment, intimacy and joy…leading into an interesting dream last night.
I dreamed that my son’s father (who is deceased) was sitting in front of me. His back is to me, and I am standing behind him with my arms wrapped around his shoulders. We are watching scenes on an old console TV. The drama is of lovers fighting and hurting and killing each other. There is a shift as I watch this, a realization that I am controlling this with my mind and in a way that was finer and more subtle than trying to mentally control reality the way I have in the past, I (perhaps we) shift the drama to one of lovers playing and frolicking with an air of innocence and comraderie. It’s not as if I am dictating the details, I am simply doing it and aware that I am, and feel relief from an inner tension.
***This insight came today - after pondering my experience of interactions with friends yesterday, I thought of a dream where I entered a meeting of an "inter(inner?!)galactic council", and a woman presented me with a clear glass bowl overflowing with small red tickets, which read either "TRUE" or "FALSE", and I finally understood the message of that part of the dream.
