Karma tells me not to forget what I learned

This week I went to my homeland to visit my brother and SIL. It was odd. Obviously my SIL did not tell my brother I had to quit because the only ‘contact’ we had in the hours we saw each other was when he tried to inform me of all the nice types of beer the new store around the corner has. Here I am, smiling and thinking ‘I hope they make you barf, insensitive bleep.’ Which actually happened immediately because while speaking to me so passionately about the beers he actually downed a glass of milk which worked out to be 2 weeks past the ‘use before’ date. He only found out when he was at the bottom of the glass that it tasted awful. It’s funny in a weird way and I actually felt guilty about it.

Next to doing nothing with the rest of my life I am thoroughly (not) enjoying what is happening. The other day I fell of my bike and looking back I think the learning experience was like such: I biked to the bookstore because I was going to fill in for the bookstore man that day. While doing that I allowed myself to step on my high horse and tried to get into that flow of ‘purpose, structure and money’ which is so specific for people riding to work in the morning. It always helps when I bike the same pace as these people with real jobs actually do. So I did and I felt like ‘Ha, this is how it felt when I was one of those ‘purpose, structure and money’ people.

While feeling glorious, in control and unbeatable I met up with a man in an electronic wheelchair who was zigzagging the bike lane in front of me. I called out, saying ‘excuse me’ and he moved even more to the left where I was trying to overtake him. So I said ‘excuse me’ again (sounds like ‘excuse me. DICK!’) while thinking ‘You sodden alco, fucking get out of my way!’ Yes, yes, there’s this thing Craig Nakken spoke about where addicts always point at other for being more addicted and worse than they themselves are. I noticed I was doing that and realised that ALL I had learned in the last year about taking my own weather with me, about not spreading anger but taking it in and learning from my projections, about acceptance, about continous judging narrowing life, had gone out of the window with me wanting to be in control and in the purpose, structure and money flow’.

While realising that I accelerated and hoped I could just get away with this bad behaviour because, what? Because I had earned some cockiness? Life gave me another 20 meters in that mode and that’s when I lay down on the streets. And the first thing I saw when opening my eyes was actually not the tall, blond, blue-eyed descendent of a Viking nurse who helped me later, but the wheelchair buzzing by and somebody saying: ‘Couldn’t you pick another place to do this?’

So… cockiness, arrogance and the readiness to throw all what I had learned about acceptance and humanity overboard. The bookstore man and I spoke about me falling, the picture had not cleared up in my mind yet. I was wondering what the ‘purpose’ of it was because I had an idea that there was. He said: ‘Well, for me, when you rang and told me you had fallen of your bike I had the idea it was important because somehow it broke something between you and me. I don’t know what but it felt important. And from that moment on I knew I did not have to worry about the store anymore because your presence had changed.’ From cockiness to a place where I would be more likely to actually listen to a customer e.g. Well yes! And that what broke would have been my pride and with that my idea of control and omnipotence and the will to impress you, thank you. Sigh, sigh, triple sigh. About learning the hard way…

I learned: if I walk in my old shoes, the cocky ones, where I am looking for meaning and importance through my status in the world, I will meet up with alcohol and I will fall down.

I trew a Tarot card, it was 2 of cups, you can look that up if you like – I believe there is a lot of truth in it. Funny thing is: In my set it is called ‘Equilibrium’, I had the reversed version so…. Tarot says I fell of my bike due to lack of balance. Surprise?!!!! Yeah, why not say it is because of gravity… duh?! 😦

So… was it done there and then? Of course not! Next Monday I went to see the doctors because a toe that had been hurting a lot and had swollen considerably sort of felt like… there where things shifting inside. Now I have very, very, very tiny and non-awake toes according to my former yoga-teacher so things shifting by itself inside…. hmmm…. not good. And the black that was on the toes did not wash off but was actually a bruise so lacking a bike I took the tram to the GP. 🙂

With my elbow having heftily kissed the Dutch bike lane I thought I would be better of not standing in the midst of the crowd in the tram but be seated away from the people. So I found this one, one, one and only empty chair right beside a man who actually barred it because he sat at the aisle side. Immediately I got irritated and went into despise mode while ‘nicely’ (forget the ‘n’) asking ‘Could I have that chair please?’. He looked up with irritation, despise and brusquely moved exactly not enough out-of-the-way for me to pass. Which made me decide that it was a Very Good idea to barge on and take the place. While thinking ‘You do it again, you are forgetting everything you have learned, you are spreading anger and contempt in order to make yourself feel better’. The ‘feeling better’ did not take long.

The tram moved, it was an old model so while trying to work my way into a tiny space around another person I lost balance and tried to gain that back while using my right arm to catch the top of the bench. I missed and my bruised elbow polished the steel frame. With my left arm I grabbed a pole and yanked all my infected tendons out of their sockets. My black and blue knee banged into the bench itself and the man used his foot and full weight to remind me of my bare toes in slippers. I cursed. And again. I think I cursed quite loud several times.

He never came to sit next to me after that. Nobody did actually till new people came in the next stop. I tried to explain but it worked out he did not speak Dutch. Totally his fault then. 😉

My GP immediately jumped for the wound on my elbow, I childishly drew it away saying ‘That’s not what I’m here for.’ GP’s can be so, dunno, fascinated by wounds? It’s like old days when you fall and go to your mom and she starts to poke and clean up. Ieeeehks!

GP’s are funny about things that hurt anyway, as are dentist, always poking a little further. The other day I asked her why she did that. She explained that she could, by poking in my shoulder, feel where the swelling was and determine that indeed the tendons where infected. That actually relaxed me a bit. I mean, sounds better than my idea that they just like doing that. Not?

So, again, she pulled and poked my toes, it hurt but they were straight so I got 2 pieces of tape to keep 2 toes together and that’s it. Either broken or bruised, probably broken because there were pieces moving. Refresh tape when needed and keep on till it does not hurt anymore. Come back when the toe works out not to be straight. After having walked a few kilometers with a heavy backpack on my thin sandals I can add 1: do not carry a heavy backpack with two hurt shoulders and 2: do not walk so many meters on thin slippers AND carrying a heavy backpack. Today I tried both with heavy shoes. That’s better for the toes.

So… on roads that are closing; I feel that because of the process I have been going through certain behaviour is not suitable anymore and when I try to step back in time and walk, what I now call ‘the wrong path’ I get called back. Obviously not all the time and not on every field of development otherwise I would be a saint by now. I’m not but I guess at this point in the post I do not need to tell you that :-D. It is strange, all of this, getting sober, losing non-constructive behaviour, my search for what is right and what is wrong. I found the other day that addiction has been mixing up my life badly because addiction is about thinking that what is wrong is actually good.

I am happy that I quit. I am a bit disillusioned about the status of my life now the 1 year thing is around the corner. I would have wished that by now I was in control, powerful and omnipotent… ok, that I had a job where I was in control, high up and omnipotent and making a lot of money…. eh… Well. That. But still, even though things are not going ok financially I keep on having this sense of being exactly where I need to be. Even when I fell down I felt it was exactly where I needed to be. Ooh, the GP thought so too, she said: ‘It is a nice opportunity for you to start to learn to ask for help.’ Whaaaa! I have been trying to do so, damn, well, that’s a full other post. Did not know it was such an issue (as said by the person who quit by herself and denied detox and addiction counseling).

The bookstore man gave me a book, an introduction on reincarnation. It is really funny because the writer somewhere mentions ‘and of course all these believes of reincarnation have attached to them a system of punishment and reward where both of these are executed in the next life’. And I was thinking: what a bad concepts, how very much unsustainable and silly to keep on thinking in punishment and reward. Nature does not punish, nor does it reward, it only knows consequences. Walk the natural, sustainable path and you (I!) will be ok. That is the path without the opinions and judgements and all that which gets in the way of feeling clearly and having an intuition and instinct which are of use to further us (me) as people instead of misguided by fear and mental, physical and spiritual illness.

All religions, most walks of life are built on a system of punishment and reward. But what if life itself has natural sustainable paths we ‘just’ need to discover? The other day the bookstore man made a remark about me understanding something about him because ‘Well, you are overweight too.’ (He’s got like 5 kilo he likes/could lose but he’s a tiny bit vain). And I thought: How do you know I am overweight? If all goes as it goes, why is it not so that my weight is exactly what it needs to be? Maybe for me to experience that it is nicer to get rid of it, maybe, maybe not. In all that we (I!) do there is such basic thought interwoven where ‘it is not good, it is not good enough, it is not as it should be, things should be different, things are wrong, things should be improved, I should be improved.’ while you know: being addicted is shite, but I would have never gotten to this point in my life if I had not been addicted. And I don’t think I would have been a better person for it. I would have kept walking my ‘purpose, structure and money’ path until I what, would have died? Got an awful disease to bring me off that path?

I would have never realised what addiction is, how I am in the core not satisfied with who I am. How I have used/use work, money, status, alcohol, internet, romantic relations and lately sugar to get away from my feelings of shame. I’m not saying I am at peace with it totally, it fluctuates, but the seed of ‘What is in the way is The Way’ has been planted. That works 2 ways I have come to realise: 1 Work on the bears on the road, 2 if what is in the way is The Way, what is in the way = good because is makes me walk My Way.

And, I mean, what god / system / HP would design a world where everything is flawed in itself? That’s such eh, what, bad concept, useless, not sustainable. When trusting my higher power (natural order; balance between Creation and Destruction, Chaos and Order, yin and yang, you name it), why can’t I trust that things go as they should go? It is not about the smug satisfaction of ‘I’m so good’ it is about the opinion free realisation that existence is existence and that there are sustainable and non-sustainable walks of life and that it is up to me to try to find the sustainable one. And that I would have liked to have done that in a society which is more sustainable by itself btw. That too. Which very much links to the post from Brad which I reblogged earlier this day.

So, I am happy that I quit, currently in an opinion free state of mind where I say: I quit, that is more sustainable.

I need: to get to bed.

I want: to get to bed but actually also finish the movie.

I take: chocolate and cheese, and here and there some 1/2 a painkiller because my shoulders are hurting badly sometimes and it is not funny. I still can’t find an entrance into natural healing of these shoulder issues. It is like that road is blocked too. Can’t read what is in the books, my brain does not take it in and I have never had something like this before so I have no memory.

On discipline: the feeling for wanting discipline sort of comes and goes. The other day I had a dream which told me I am not dealing with this sustainably, that I misunderstand something but I could not work out what. I got so worked up in the dream that I pushed the issue too hard and woke up before the answer came along. 😦 I was in a flower garden then with dramatic red and yellow roses.

3 Things: this post, being acquainted with the book store man and some friends I speak with, about everything, on a daily base lately.

Hope you have a nice sober day/evening/weekend 🙂 For those out there whom are hurting I’m thinking of you, sending you a hug in which you can hide and feel comfortable until you are ready to come out again. Hang in there.

xx, Feeling