My facial expressions have changed permanently. The squinting muscles around my nose and eyes are relaxed and I am unable to even fake the old expressions I held for my entire life.
It seems that these muscles are closely tied to threat. They squint the eyes and prepare the nostrils to flare: get your ready to focus on enemies, protect the eyeballs, and oxygenate your muscles.
They often have a deep release when someone awakens, because their sense of self, and self-threat, is overturned. The self-referential habits of facial tension and hunching your shoulders are often dropped.
I am feeling a fair bit of anxiety these last few days, especially when waking at night. Or maybe I am just cold. I am honestly not sure. Last night I woke up for an hour and thought it was anxiety, but then when I got a warmer cover I felt fine. I suppose the empty, trembly feeling in your upper chest is common to both anxiety and cold.
I think a lot of my old trauma is about to come to the surface, now that the tension which was holding it down has been released. I suppose this is a good opportunity to work through things, finally, but it is a little intimidating if I am honest.
School was violent, and work was competitive. My release from these things were either drugs, or more competitiveness and self-improvement. Constant PRs powerlifting or cycling or just going at something far harder than any mortal ever should.
But now my defences are down. I guess that was the whole point. Tear down the wall; tear down the wall. Is there anybody out there?
It’s very strange. I was a hardened man, born of competition and survival. And now I am not. Now I walk around brushing the flowers with my fingers and realising I have spent 10 minutes standing and smelling the forest while listening to a softly bubbling stream.
I guess this has a flip-side. If you open yourself up to the good, you also have to deal with the bad. You are either open or closed, craving or satisfied. There is no polarity in these things.
Now… I think I am open for the first time in my life. And it feels good. But there is likely to be a period of huge waves of fear, anxiety and grief about to hit. From all my research it seems like this is par for the course when someone awakens. They have a couple of month of blissful export and then the reality of their lifetime of conditioning hits.
The defences are down and the hordes are at the gate. The echoes of enemies past. The things that were done to me and the things I had to do to survive. I have a feeling there will be a few more dark nights of the soul around the corner.
I have booked a cycle tour and am taking a tent and not much else. This computer probably, because I think the tour will be a trauma therapy thing in many ways. A way to process things as they work their way out on the blacktop. Leave some problems on the road; integrate who and what I was and what I am now.
It is bittersweet. I love my time with my family so much more but I am also acutely aware of how limited it is. I do not cling like I used to, but that in itself is something that needs getting used to. My old habits of thought keep popping up, but they are no longer effective as defences. Thinking that this period waking up next to my eldest is about to end, and then somehow accepting that while also having the old side of me trying to refuse the reality is an unusual situation to be in.
These things need to wash over me like water in order to be released. Writing and somatic therapy while meditating. Allowing the body to move when it wants to.
Maybe the reason I imploded and awakened was because I was just too full. Had I reached my maximum capacity for denial? I was a pretty accepting guy, all in all, but looking back I guess it was intellectual, whereas now I know.
I think this is the path the buddha laid out, and I think I am following it. I never even tried to. Maybe it’s just the natural path to recovery which is programmed into all of us.
The guy was a genius and honestly… I am gradually becoming a new kind of buddhist as I translate his teachings.
The process seems to be very logical:
1 - break the trauma of self and wake up to the reality of change.
2 - all your old conditioning and trauma comes to the surface; work through it with right effort, concentration and mindfulness.
3 - ensure that you take actions of a good kind without becoming attached to the outcomes so that you do not cause yourself more trauma.
4 - spread the good vibes to those around you through action, speech and livelihood.
It’s a comprehensive way of living a good life. And it doesn’t need to be done in a monastery. The buddha also stressed physical health: walking for extended periods every day, eating healthily, and ensuring that you treat this body as the only one you'll ever have.
I guess I’m into phase 2 now, which is where the real work can begin. But the work he described is not a case of pushing things away; it’s a case of letting them rise to the surface and burn themselves out.
Without a self to attach to, they will flounder and die, like leeches left in the sun.
This is part of the process.
Onward.
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