AFOGS

AFOGS

You know how annoying I can be here, throwing out outrageous ideas, shaking up our familiar status quo with radical ideas about radical responsibility and radical acceptance. What you may not know is how diligently I am working on this same stuff myself.

Yesterday I had a nice juicy AFOG, another f*cking opportunity for growth. My choices, with variations in between, were to sink into a big ol’ pity party, feeling like a miserable victim, or take responsibility, process the feelings through, and choose to feel good.

I had a lovely day.

Why am I responsible? Why do I choose? What makes me capable?

One of the things I have learned is that when I allow those kinds of feelings to flow, things will often come up from my shadow side, dark stuff that can be uncomfortable; shame, guilt, anger, fear. Like a toddler, if we don’t pay attention to it right away, it will get louder and more obnoxious until we’ve got a full blown tantrum on our hands, and suddenly we are acting out, or having bad physical stuff, or attracting all sorts of strange stuff. So do I let it flow out and away, or push it down to grow stronger and bite me another day?

The card I drew today was the “Why do I commit?”

This was the big shake-up for me this past year, asking that question, “To what am I committed?” I can tell you, I did not like looking at that. The exercise requires looking at our lives as they are to see what we are committed to.  The way things are shows us our commitments. The longer things have been that way, the deeper the commitment.

As I opened up to really looking at the state of my personal world, I found that there were places where I could make some simple change, topics where it would take a bit more, and some stuff where I really needed some help.

I realized that I have a couple topics where I seem to be committed to staying stuck.

Why can I choose? Why am I supported? Why do I let go?

The more we clean up our stuff, the nicer our lives get. That’s just true. Things get easier, more fun, way more satisfying. Our biggest topics will also have more room to come to the fore. We may feel like we’ve done our work, but those big deep topics still want our attention. And we can look at the recurring themes, the things we get called out on, or the stuff that pisses us off, to see what those topics are.

I have what is probably an unrealistic goal. My goal is to have no unconscious material. That means I have made a commitment to spend some time on that regularly, to address what comes up in meditation, or on walks, or when I am sitting in contemplation on my sweet porch.

Or, like yesterday, when an AFOG dropped into my lap, a gift from the Universe.

When a topic floats up, an uncomfortable memory, or just a feeling during those quiet times, I sit with it. I may cry, or shake, or have big scary feelings, but I stick with it all the way to the end, when it stops by itself.

When an AFOG pops, it takes a different kind of attention, because those happen on the fly, often with others, and while I’m doing something. Keeps me on my toes, I suppose!

How have I changed from avoiding the hard stuff to letting it work its way out all the way to the end?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04202014

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