I swear, @Chava, the more you write, the more I feel like we're on some kind of parallel journey. I suppose in some ways most of us on this site are...just at different places along the path of life.
The last sentence that you wrote above is absolutely right, I think. After, you talk about being tired. I have trouble when I'm exhausted. That's generally when I get stuck in parts (which seems to be most of the time these days...). Have you ever looked at the hierarchy of needs that Abraham Maslow framed long ago? It helps explain some of this problem...our basic needs need to be met somewhat adequately before we have the energy and ability to meet our higher needs. So, before I can really access SELF energy/spiritual energy, I need to feel rested (basic physiological need) and safe (:( mostly these don't happen together). Here's a link on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs. The hierarchy has been revised, but by people from a branch of psychology that doesn't resonate as much for me. I actually still like the original...but that's fodder for a different more academic conversation.
I'm one of those people who have found it pretty easy to be "one with everything" especially in nature, etc. It is a total HIGH. Sometimes I get there with meditation, other times it just happens randomly. Ralph Waldo Emerson used the phrase "transparent eyeball" to describe it in the 19th century. There's lots of talk about it in stuff from Tibetan Buddhism and some other religious traditions. What I realized fairly recently, though, is that while I can get to this One-with-universe sort of feeling relatively easily, I CANNOT do it while remaining in my body. The spiritual part of me developed very early on and is probably one of the "dissociative" techniques that saved my life and allowed me to do what I have done in my life and become the person I have become. HOWEVER, I skipped a step. I forgot I had a body to deal with. A body of an individual person who needs to interact with other people. When the pain came on, it forced me to start paying attention to my physical self...my "embodied self" (which is something I am still working on) and kind of broke the bubble I've lived in most of my life.
I share this because you say that you absorb yourself spiritually as a sort of distraction. I totally get that. I have always done this. But it has become much harder to do with the pain which forces my attention to the NOW and the body I inhabit. I don't know if any of that makes sense or resonates with you. Just ignore and don't respond if it sounds way too out there. I'm fine with that. This kind of conversation isn't for everybody.
This isn't weird. It sounds very similar to me. Pretty much all of my parts are frozen, or have been mostly. I have been lucky, however, that my spiritual part and some creative parts have peeked through now and again. Probably what have sustained me through this whole continually evolving breakdown, or whatever it is I'm having. Break-out is more like it, I suppose...parts parts parts a la structural dissociation. I just don't have a crabby/not smiling part...although one will probably show itself eventually--everything else seems to have appeared in the last year :woot::wideeyed::wtf::confused::eek::hungover:. The early trauma stuff takes up HUGE energy. More and more, I'm finding. My stuff has all come out in the last 16 months. The more it comes out...the more exhausted I get trying to work with it. I can still rally enough to pull off work stuff sometimes, but that has gone downhill startlingly fast--which is absolutely terrifying to my highly functional parts.
The last sentence that you wrote above is absolutely right, I think. After, you talk about being tired. I have trouble when I'm exhausted. That's generally when I get stuck in parts (which seems to be most of the time these days...). Have you ever looked at the hierarchy of needs that Abraham Maslow framed long ago? It helps explain some of this problem...our basic needs need to be met somewhat adequately before we have the energy and ability to meet our higher needs. So, before I can really access SELF energy/spiritual energy, I need to feel rested (basic physiological need) and safe (:( mostly these don't happen together). Here's a link on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs. The hierarchy has been revised, but by people from a branch of psychology that doesn't resonate as much for me. I actually still like the original...but that's fodder for a different more academic conversation.
Argh. I haven't talked about this much on the forum...but this sounds also like something I've realized so I'll go out on a limb here. What the hell? I seem to be in this mode of revealing everything and not caring these days.
I'm one of those people who have found it pretty easy to be "one with everything" especially in nature, etc. It is a total HIGH. Sometimes I get there with meditation, other times it just happens randomly. Ralph Waldo Emerson used the phrase "transparent eyeball" to describe it in the 19th century. There's lots of talk about it in stuff from Tibetan Buddhism and some other religious traditions. What I realized fairly recently, though, is that while I can get to this One-with-universe sort of feeling relatively easily, I CANNOT do it while remaining in my body. The spiritual part of me developed very early on and is probably one of the "dissociative" techniques that saved my life and allowed me to do what I have done in my life and become the person I have become. HOWEVER, I skipped a step. I forgot I had a body to deal with. A body of an individual person who needs to interact with other people. When the pain came on, it forced me to start paying attention to my physical self...my "embodied self" (which is something I am still working on) and kind of broke the bubble I've lived in most of my life.
I share this because you say that you absorb yourself spiritually as a sort of distraction. I totally get that. I have always done this. But it has become much harder to do with the pain which forces my attention to the NOW and the body I inhabit. I don't know if any of that makes sense or resonates with you. Just ignore and don't respond if it sounds way too out there. I'm fine with that. This kind of conversation isn't for everybody.
Of course you do. Me too. I am just beginning to acknowledge that I need an extraordinary amount of rest, rest, rest if I am going to get better. And that is so hard to find in my life with husband, children, and work and other responsibilities. I've cut most things out, but I still struggle with guilt and self-recrimination that I am not forcing myself to do what I always used to do. But when I can rest without guilt or fear that I am not doing something I should be doing...I feel much, much better. I have yet to figure out how to get what I need without losing everything else. I feel pretty trapped in the mess these days.
I agree. I think the heart chakra links, to a great extent, with Maslow's love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs (although the last would include all the chakras). I have had some really healing moments doing meditations with a chakra cleansing/stimulating app that uses sound frequencies. You have to be really careful though, because for me at least it is one of the things that brought up a lot of trauma memory stuff. A bit too much got loosened up too soon. But more recently, as I've learned more ways to help myself stay present, I've started again, and the work on the heart and throat chakras has been quite healing.
Yes! I have lots of versions of your "black wall". Who knew? Not I, until recently. It is "awesome" in the true sense of that word...inspiring both fear and wonder simultaneously. On a neurological level, I think this means that we're forming new neural pathways among parts of the brain. Others might call it "processing" or "integration."
