Top of the Pile or Bottom of the Heap

Well, I finally get to go back to work today.  I'm excited and look forward to earning my keep.  I had a dream last week I returned to work and was a superstar awesome employee doing everything and being all that plus a pack of potato chips.  I woke up feeling happy, feeling good about myself then I thought, "When I go back to work instead of being a superstar I'll probably be fired because I'm slow and not all that."  And snap!  There went my glow of happiness.  My high in life.  My natural buzz.  Just like that and then the anxiety set in.  The sadness welled and I felt sorry for myself that I'm slow, haven't been to work, nobody cares, etc.  Wah, wah, wah.  The morass of self-pity is but a blink away.  Top of the pile or bottom of the heap, indeed.

It all feels very real but this is actually a symptom of the spiritual illness, one of the bent neuropathways grooved in early childhood.  I believe there were instances I felt so deeply sorry for myself as a child and never really had a chance to discharge, cry, vent, process these feelings so they integrated into my system of being as a major neuropathway with complex interactions on my personality.  I remember my mom being angry and chastising me for laughing too hard because that meant I was going to suffer, feel bad.  I wasn't allowed to feel too happy for too long because that was bad.  Fast forward to the here-and-now.  She is no longer around to put the brakes on my happiness.  Now I apply the brakes by not embracing the full capacity of my humaness.  So now it's a part of me.  There's nothing wrong with feeling sorry for myself once in a while if things aren't going my way.  This is a part of the human experience, no big deal.  It is when it looms large and robs my birthrights to peace, happiness, fulfillment and love.

My experience is prayer and meditation help resolve this conflict.  I ask my Higher Power for knowledge of my Higher Power's Will and the courage, strength and wisdom to carry it out.  Just for today.  Then I shut-up.  Sit quiet.  Who's large and in charge?  My Higher Power that I choose to call GOD.  When I do this, it seems GOD is available to change me, by GOD's grace, into the person I was meant to be all along.  Just for today.  When I stop relying on me for the solutions to my problems and instead rely on that Power Greater than me to help, then things seem to turn-out even better than what I expected.

HUMILITY

“Humility is perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble, it is never to feel fretted or vexed, or wonder at nothing that is done to us, even to feel nothing done against us. It is to be at rest when nobody praises us or when we are blamed or despised. 

It is to have a blessed home in ourselves where we can go in and shut the door and kneel to our Father in secret and be at peace. As in a deep sea of calmness when all around and about is seeming trouble.”