I continue to focus my attention on how I am with other people, especially in conflict.
I still spark and turn the other person into the enemy. I go out of relationship with them and break the connection over issues that arise.
Recently Fedex lost a parcel of mine and I could have used the occasion to blame and get abusive. And I didn’t. (I’m immensely proud of myself, by the way.)
There is marked improvement. But nowhere near where I need to be to carry out my later, post-Reval responsibilities on the blog and in humanitarian philanthropy. I can’t afford to fall asleep during this precious time and not use it to prepare.
Among my noticings from observing myself, I can now see how fear underlies anger. I’m afraid of being criticized. So I make that into a fearsome weapon for those who use it and a dreadful fate for those against whom it’s used.
Then at some point I get mad at someone else, feel justified, and use the weapon on them. And so the cycle persists. Intergenerational transfer. Which stops here, by the way.
As I said in an earlier article, the process of being triggered through to responding happens in a microsecond.
I have to be vigilant just to see it and very strong, very much in self-command not to resort to it. I have to stop resorting to that process. Without putting anything in its place. Just stop.
This is where the rubber meets the road in self-reconstruction. Yes, I’m taking apart the constructed self, the mask, the self-image I built up over decades.
But I’m also reparenting, reprogramming the Child in me who resorts to habitual behavior which is destructive. I’m getting the habitual behavior pattern to stop.
If you’re looking for a description of how a person can “change,” I’m giving it to you as we speak. This is change. This is what it looks like. This is the level at which a person has to go to – short of going through a life-threatening experience – to effectively make a change in our self-presentation – the who we present ourselves as being. Are we in integrity? Are we even close to being transparent? Or not?
A car outside my window plays rap music much louder than I’d like to hear. My ire mounts.
I get constant opportunities like this these days to ask myself: Am I going to potentially jeopardize my mission over this issue? Am I going to risk bringing disrepute on the Company of Heaven by my actions? No, I’m not.
To have the space to approach things like with this degree of concentration, I have to bring all other calls on me to a standstill. I have to concentrate. There is no way I’ll be able to do this after the Reval. It’s now or never.