A couple of nights ago I had what I used to call an “existential crisis.” Now I think a better name for it is a “shit storm of self-hate.”
The storm started off with the usual voices telling me I wasn’t doing enough. “It’s already four in the afternoon and what have you accomplished?” Blah blah blah… Within a couple of hours, I was feeling utterly depressed, hopeless, frustrated, anxious, panicky, etc. Suddenly, everything in my life was wrong. All of the happiness and peace I’d been feeling seemed like an illusion, and I was a fool for falling for it. And for God’s sake, I’d better get my ass in gear and fix all of this, pronto, before it really was too late!
I talked about it with my husband, pushing past the shame of admitting these thoughts. As always, getting them out there, out of my head, immediately sucked away some of their power. I’m not saying I wasn’t still falling for these stories — conditioning was going for the jugular with issues that it knew would totally get to me. Part of me still believes these stories.
But luckily, part of me also knew they were just stories. And I’m also lucky to have a partner who listens and, instead of addressing the content (irrelevant), helps me see the process (the true culprit). With his help, I got to a place where I had a glimmer of perspective.
I realized I was seeing my life through conditioned mind’s lens of “something wrong, not enough.” In fact, every last bit of content in this shit storm could be classified under that heading. Cheri Huber has talked about “something wrong, not enough” as a sort of mantra that pervades our lives, causing a constant state of dissatisfaction. As long as that’s the process, there will always be content to fill it.
That night, none of the external circumstances of my life had changed — and yet the way in which I saw them had changed completely.
Why was this happening now? Well, my theory is that because I’ve been so dedicated to my awareness practice, shining the spotlight on conditioning’s shenanigans, seeing how it’s keeping me in chains, seeing a different way that I can live, feeling joyful and expansive — all of this has threatened conditioning.
If the voice yelling at me were coming from a person who was only interested in my unhappiness, I’d be disregarding everything they said. So why should the voice of conditioning be any more valid? I’ve lived with it for so long that I sometimes mistake it for me — I identify with it. That happened big time the other night. But that glimmer of perspective, that reminder of what was really so, happened too.
