Day 23

Again, a day late with this one - sorry guys!  It has been a crazy few days at work and I haven't really had time to post much in the evenings since I have been doing yoga after work. 

Last night we had our weekly group session and talked a lot about our "lies" and our "exit doors."  The lies are the root feelings and beliefs that you have that you believe are true but are not because you are fundamentally perfect the way you are.  Beliefs such as: I am not lovable; I am not good enough; and I am angry at myself.  What happens is that you live your life out of that belief system, then when you interact with people you find yourself in situations that reinforce that perception of yours, so then you have an escape route so as to get away from those feelings. 

For example, one of the lies I shared was the lie that I am always angry.  I am always angry in large part because I am disappointed in people -both myself and others.  I believe that if I hold onto a person or a situation long enough they (or it) will change.  If I was good enough/smart enough/worked hard enough I could figure out a way to make that person or situation better and then all would be happy.  Well, life doesn't work like that.  What happens is that the people and situations that I cling to, that I try to wait out and work through, don't fix, then I get angry and disappointed, and then I begin to ignore and belittle my needs, still in an effort to remedy the situation.  Instead of saying to a mean friend "hey you're a jerk, you never return my calls, and now that you finally want to hang out, I have other can't," I push aside my previously scheduled plans so that I can hang out with said mean friend because maybe, just maybe, if I work really hard, they will like me. 

Wow - it sounds kind of pitiful to write it all out like that.  But it was really interesting to see how many lies and how many exit doors we all have, and as members of the group shared, it was bizzarly comforting to see how many of our lies are similar.  So many of us feel unlovable, unworthy, unappreciated, not good enough. . . and so many of us have the same exit doors - although they seemed to go one of two ways - either try harder or run away from the situation.  The fight or flight instinct I suppose.

It was a good group.  My one little mini-breakthrough was an observation that a fellow yogi made; she said, "you are willing to quit on yourself but not on anyone else."  I am not fully sure why that is yet, but it rung very true and struck a little too close to home.  As I have shared in this blog, it has been very hard for me to stick with the yoga and meditations.  I have quit on myself a lot, usually at the last minute I just sort of give up because mostly I am too tired or, sometimes, because I am too busy.  I am not quite sure how my fellow yogi's observation about my behavior relates to my "lies" but it is another iteration of my "exit door" and that was very clear to me!

Tonight I will try to write more about the end of this fruit fast which has been really cool - everyone should try it once! Until then . . .

Namaste,
Clare