Time to give our divinely human selves a break:
It is SO normal to go up and down in mood.
It is SO normal to get angry and throw tantrums and act like a two year old.
It is SO normal to feel blissfully happy and on top of the world, one moment, and like a heap of shit on someone's shoe the next.
It's SO normal to feel like you've got this, you can do this job, this parenting-malarkey, this relationship, and the next, feel like you hate it all, and want to disappear to a desert island, jack it all in, run away, hide your head in the sand/a bottle of wine/ the refrigerator.
The thing is, I used to think it wasn't normal AT ALL. Or 'good'.
I used to try and try, and WISH, I wasn't such an up and down (fly-off-the-handle-occasionally(?!), nutcase.
I tried for years to 'rein' myself in. To TRY to be more steady, less erratic in my emotions.
Then I saw the truth of the fact that we are ALL doing the best we can with the thinking we have in the moment. And the thinking we have in the moment is not something we can control.
Life moves through us in ways we will likely never understand.
We are consciousness in motion - life/god/ consciousness having an experience of itself, through us/ in us.
Who are we to know *why* a certain thought comes into our minds when it does, or exactly *why* one day our mood is up, and one day, our mood is down.
Perhaps there's a grander 'reason' for it, perhaps not. All I know is that life in the moment is easier, and much more fun, when we don't try to control what's coming through us.
So I'm done, and have been for a while, with 'censoring' my thoughts and emotions.
And I'm done, particularly, with berating myself when occasionally things get ugly, and I fly off the handle (or find myself beating my thigh with the metal spoon I'm holding in pure anger and frustration - with what? Who knows? It doesn't matter - though the fact I looked at my leg the next day and wondered how a gigantic bruise got there and started going through all the possible reasons - child, car door? - until the truth dawned....! still tickles me).
What I notice is: the more I look to marvel at whatever it is that's *creating* our experience in the first place, the more joy, and pure wonder at the miracle of life, comes through, on a more regular basis. And *that* is blissful.
More and more, the experiences - though real and difficult when I'm in them - stop mattering quite so much. They pass into the rear-view mirror more quickly, or get added to the list of incidences that are actually quite amusing in hindsight - mystery bruise, anyone...?!
You can argue that we can choose what we do with the thinking that arrives in our heads, but I'm not even so sure about that any more.
What we can do, is learn to roll with it.
All of it.
The punches - and the caresses - that Life throws our way.
The 'fairness' and the 'unfairness'. The 'luck' and the 'un-luck'.
Because if we're alive, we're on a divinely human magical mystery tour.
Noone gets to choose how that unfolds or how it turns out. (Though we can play with the illusion that we do... :))
It is SO normal to go up and down in mood.
It is SO normal to get angry and throw tantrums and act like a two year old.
It is SO normal to feel blissfully happy and on top of the world, one moment, and like a heap of shit on someone's shoe the next.
It's SO normal to feel like you've got this, you can do this job, this parenting-malarkey, this relationship, and the next, feel like you hate it all, and want to disappear to a desert island, jack it all in, run away, hide your head in the sand/a bottle of wine/ the refrigerator.
The thing is, I used to think it wasn't normal AT ALL. Or 'good'.
I used to try and try, and WISH, I wasn't such an up and down (fly-off-the-handle-occasionally(?!), nutcase.
I tried for years to 'rein' myself in. To TRY to be more steady, less erratic in my emotions.
Then I saw the truth of the fact that we are ALL doing the best we can with the thinking we have in the moment. And the thinking we have in the moment is not something we can control.
Life moves through us in ways we will likely never understand.
We are consciousness in motion - life/god/ consciousness having an experience of itself, through us/ in us.
Who are we to know *why* a certain thought comes into our minds when it does, or exactly *why* one day our mood is up, and one day, our mood is down.
Perhaps there's a grander 'reason' for it, perhaps not. All I know is that life in the moment is easier, and much more fun, when we don't try to control what's coming through us.
So I'm done, and have been for a while, with 'censoring' my thoughts and emotions.
And I'm done, particularly, with berating myself when occasionally things get ugly, and I fly off the handle (or find myself beating my thigh with the metal spoon I'm holding in pure anger and frustration - with what? Who knows? It doesn't matter - though the fact I looked at my leg the next day and wondered how a gigantic bruise got there and started going through all the possible reasons - child, car door? - until the truth dawned....! still tickles me).
What I notice is: the more I look to marvel at whatever it is that's *creating* our experience in the first place, the more joy, and pure wonder at the miracle of life, comes through, on a more regular basis. And *that* is blissful.
More and more, the experiences - though real and difficult when I'm in them - stop mattering quite so much. They pass into the rear-view mirror more quickly, or get added to the list of incidences that are actually quite amusing in hindsight - mystery bruise, anyone...?!
You can argue that we can choose what we do with the thinking that arrives in our heads, but I'm not even so sure about that any more.
What we can do, is learn to roll with it.
All of it.
The punches - and the caresses - that Life throws our way.
The 'fairness' and the 'unfairness'. The 'luck' and the 'un-luck'.
Because if we're alive, we're on a divinely human magical mystery tour.
Noone gets to choose how that unfolds or how it turns out. (Though we can play with the illusion that we do... :))