For the entirety of my life, I thought what I was missing was a person. It occurred to me the other day, driving up Pacific Coast Highway, it wasn’t really the person...it was a feeling. I have been chasing a feeling that felt generated by the other person the entire time. It is the feeling we all dream about, right? That perfect combination of Dopamine, Oxytocin and Adrenaline. The feeling that makes us feel like anything is possible, we might actually, in fact get what we want, and that there is a connection to another person in this world that is more intimate and loving than we have previously ever known. Familiar with that feeling?
Yeah, me too.
But I think before Friday, I always thought it was this other person I wanted. This other being the generator of the feeling I desperately needed and wanted. When in fact, as I drove up the coast, watching the waves crash into shore, I realized, it was never the person, it was always the feeling. I just never realized before yesterday the feeling is pretty me dependent, and the other person a very unreliable delivery system for this feeling. I think, my problem is I always thought the feeling came because of the other person. And it is true that the two seem to go hand in hand. But I realized Friday, the people I often thought were generating this amazing feeling were actually the people that were only itinerant suppliers of said feeling. The feeling, wholly and totally really resided within me. And I failed to notice or realize that I was the essential ingredient to the feeling, not the other person. In fact, the other person need only really be no more than an idea, not really an living, actual being in which I was engaged in relationship with...
I am still reeling from being gobsmacked with this information yesterday. It has kind of rocked my world. What happens when the source of your feeling distributing system gets dismantled in a way that breaks it completely, likely beyond repair?
Growth. Change. Leveling up.
I think that is what happens when your entire relational orienting system breaks down, smashes to pieces and then, almost in slow motion, begins to reconfigure.
That is what today feels like.
I have been chasing a feeling all of my life. And unknowingly applying that feeling to people who seemed, at first, second and ninety-ninth blush, to be the reason for the feeling. They were not. The feeling has always resided inside me. I am the one that generates the feeling. I am the person who is lit up in a particular way and manner. Sure the other person appears to be the catalyst but if that were true, then when that person’s behavior altered the feeling in a negative way it would be easy to leave that person. And it has not been easy to do that. Why? Because I thought that person was responsible for generating the feeling. So I had to stay to get that person to go back to what kicked this whole thing off to begin with...except I got it all fucking wrong.
I was the reason the feeling started in the first place. I am source, not the other person. And I can see now my misapplication of the cause of the feeling has led me down a path that has been my ruin time and time again. I would be more disheartened but this feels so revolutionary I am finding myself ecstatic instead.
If I am the reason I feel this way, then I am responsible for what I do with the feeling. We all have come to accept that no one can make us angry...but I have never applied this to no one can make us feel all gushy and weird either. We are responsible to and for those feelings. We do it to ourselves.
It is very hard to resist the person who conjures up before us the promise of the delivery of everything we have ever wanted: romance, sexual satisfaction and elation, being seen and understood, loved and adored. We are so adamant that THIS time THIS is the right person and all our dreams will come true that we fail to see this person signaling with large, neon colored red flags that this person is NOT who we want, need or are determined to make them be. Because we misidentify person for feeling, we repeat the same fucked up pattern, suffering more and more each time.
And then when it all goes to shit, we blame the other person. When, in fact, it was us and our needs, desires and wishes that pushed us to this place to begin with. We are all chasing a feeling, and the moment another person kick starts the feeling, we launch into the misapplication process labeling this other person as SOURCE and then chasing that misidentified source to our ultimate demise. Over and over and over again until we are dead, or at least, feel dead on some core level.
I am not sure where I go from here. I just know that my entire relational system just got addressed. Now it is up to me to either go back to sleep and ignore the revolution that occurred in my brain on Friday driving up PCH, or, I could take a minute to allow all that which feels so true, in the most basic and fundamental way, to seep into my soul and allow the change to happen from the inside out.
And that is what I am going to do...I am the Source. I have always been the source. My misapplication of that moniker to others has been the literal bane of my existence. And now, I have another choice. So I will take the time I need to allow myself to be reoriented and altered.
Again, still.
One more time...
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