Making improvements -without- The Work is messing with me

WhiteBear

WhiteBear

Jedi Master
I had a wake-up call yesterday, in the form of a discussion with my wife.

I've been improving my diet, taking supplements, reading everything about current events that I can get my hands on...with the result being, my mind is sharper than it's ever been, I feel good, physically, and I'm soaking up information like a thirsty sponge. The problem is, I'm in a fog and not mentally present in the here and now. I'm wandering through each day surrounded by dots that I'm frantically trying to connect. Nobody at work wants to talk to me, because invariably the conversation turns to conspiracy theories or pathocracy.

It got so bad that yesterday, my wife confronted me and informed me that I was tuning her out, when she was speaking to me. I mechanically denied what she was saying, but she tested me by asking me very simple questions about what she had just told me, which I could not answer...could not even remember her saying. My consciousness was not in the present, and I was very much -not- observing myself, and certainly not her.

My wake-up was the realization that in order for me to live a complete life, to not become obsessed with the "everything else" that is not the Work, I -need- to dive into the Work to find balance. It does me no good to have a tuned-up brain and a Global Dot Reporting System (the Internet), if I lose myself wandering around in a fog. My funk is so great, that I can actually identify with folks like Charlie Sheen, who end up losing their minds. Granted, he had a LOT of help from drugs, but I wonder if he didn't have so much going on in his mind with 9/11 and Alex Jones, that he started seeing dots everyplace too, and his mind just went into a tailspin....and the drugs just nudged him over the edge.

I don't know where I'm going with this, guess I just wanted some feedback from the network to see if this is an actual danger I'm facing, or if it's a normal phase of waking up.
 
WhiteBear said:
my mind is sharper than it's ever been, I feel good, physically, and I'm soaking up information like a thirsty sponge. The problem is, I'm in a fog and not mentally present in the here and now.
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Your mind is sharper than it has ever been before but you are in a fog. This sounds like a rather large contradiction. And not being aware when your wife is talking to you does not sound like paying attention to reality. It sounds like something is out of wack, but I do not know what that would be. I noticed one thing you did not mention in your description of lifestyle changes is meditation.

As for pushing your colleagues at work away and not listening to your wife, this is not a strategic enclosure. Others more experienced than me can probably make some suggestions but my first instinct is to suggest that you start the POTS breathing daily, start showing your wife the common courtesy of listening to her, and only share your thoughts with your colleagues at work about things other than work when you are specifically asked to.
 
Patience said:
WhiteBear said:
my mind is sharper than it's ever been, I feel good, physically, and I'm soaking up information like a thirsty sponge. The problem is, I'm in a fog and not mentally present in the here and now.
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Your mind is sharper than it has ever been before but you are in a fog. This sounds like a rather large contradiction. And not being aware when your wife is talking to you does not sound like paying attention to reality. It sounds like something is out of wack, but I do not know what that would be. I noticed one thing you did not mention in your description of lifestyle changes is meditation.
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My apologies, when I say I am in a fog, I mean that my mind is working on making connections and trying to assimilate information, and the internal noise is drowning out what is around me...and thank you for pointing out the lack of meditation. I don't meditate or do EE breathing on a regular basis. I only occasionally pipe breathe to reduce immediate stress.
 
I'll second what Patience said, doing (at the very least) the pipe breathing/POTS every night (even if its just listening too it) will help you keep on track, among other things.

What it sounds like is disassociation. That is you have replaced your old dissociative behaviour, with these new ones....
Have you read the big 5 psychology books yet? If you haven't, this should probably be top priority to understand what you're doing (at the very least reading the Myth of Sanity).

Not only are you disassociating/acting mechanically...you are acting purely from a position of internal consider with no external considering. Now you are aware of it, hopfully you can keep up the self observations. Doing the POTS every night can help to hold this resolve......without it you will tend to drift.
 
I agree with what's been said so far. The two things that come to mind right away are Strategic Enclosure and External Consideration. Try to see how the two work together, it can make life a whole lot easier for those around you, and in that it can help you too.

Redfox has a good point also, that you seem to be drifting off and not present in yourself. But to be externally considerate requires being present and attentive those around you, to be awake.
 
Whitebear,

I also second what has been said so far.

I think it is important to remember that the Work is also done out there, in the world. That's probably where it starts, with our ability to deal with immediate life's requests, either from co workers, spouses, children, specific situations, and so on. From what you describe, you seem to be focusing too much inwards, or simply drifting off as Alada puts it, and losing balance with the external reality that surrounds you.

Redfox said:
What it sounds like is disassociation. That is you have replaced your old dissociative behaviour, with these new ones....
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Good possibility.
 
[quote author=Whitebear]My funk is so great, that I can actually identify with folks like Charlie Sheen, who end up losing their minds.[/quote]

Identification is the means the predator’s mind uses to claim its existence. Observing it at work can lead to balance.

Why not use your newly gained sharpness for reading about balance? Plenty of info here about the centers and how they usurp each other’s energy.
 
WhiteBear said:
Nobody at work wants to talk to me, because invariably the conversation turns to conspiracy theories or pathocracy.
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Don't talk conspiracies at work! Big No-No!

WhiteBear said:
I mechanically denied what she was saying, but she tested me by asking me very simple questions about what she had just told me, which I could not answer...could not even remember her saying. My consciousness was not in the present, and I was very much -not- observing myself, and certainly not her.
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Like Redfox said, it sounds like disassociation. Have you read Martha Stout's The Myth of Sanity?

WhiteBear said:
My wake-up was the realization that in order for me to live a complete life, to not become obsessed with the "everything else" that is not the Work, I -need- to dive into the Work to find balance. It does me no good to have a tuned-up brain and a Global Dot Reporting System (the Internet), if I lose myself wandering around in a fog.
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Absolutely! One of the foremost lessons of the Work is learning External Consideration. That means not turning everybody's conversation with you into a conspiracy pep-talk. It means actually listening to the other person, putting yourself in their shoes and trying to meet their needs in whatever way you can. Throwing bits of information at people that they can't possibly understand isn't helping them.
 
Thank you all so much for the feedback. I'm not as familiar with disassociation as I should be...I have -not- read the big 5 on psychology, I have the Mask of Sanity on my computer and ready to transfer to my Kindle, but was waiting till I finished up 9/11: The Ultimate Truth before taking it on. I believe Mask is more in the line of what I call external knowledge, stuff that's useful to know to evaluate things going on outside, which really isn't something I need right now as much as Myth of Sanity, which is (I hope) more of an internally-useful knowledge.

Strategic enclosure and external consideration...both very weak points for me, as until recently I would describe myself as an outspoken activist type of person. I've actually toned down my intensity a lot, and replaced it with actual knowledge of events and history, but it's still not working out for me. I will work on that, first.

I'm still working through my programs involving Wicca and Christianity to actually "pray"...POTS is still something I can't quite do. The anger I still feel at Christianity for the deceptions it foisted on me in my younger years makes it more than just difficult to pray, and 17 years of Wiccan study still keeps me from looking at Deity with something other than an attitude of having a "working relationship" with it. These are probably my most difficult programs holding me back, spiritually, that I want to work through.
 
WhiteBear said:
I'm still working through my programs involving Wicca and Christianity to actually "pray"...POTS is still something I can't quite do. The anger I still feel at Christianity for the deceptions it foisted on me in my younger years makes it more than just difficult to pray, and 17 years of Wiccan study still keeps me from looking at Deity with something other than an attitude of having a "working relationship" with it. These are probably my most difficult programs holding me back, spiritually, that I want to work through.
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I think you may have just hit on the core drive to this behaviour.....you are trying to 'fix' the world around you, including everyone in it (by sharing you're knowledge with it - automatically without thinking) as a way of avoiding the above issues. This is what disassociation is at its core.....a defence mechanism from childhood that 'keeps us safe' from things we can't process. At the time it lets us survive....as adults it drives our lives until we face what it is we haven't yet.

Having just had quite a personal revelation involving anger - I always hated (perceived) conflict and and anger, and rejected my own and others anger as strongly as I could (in completely mechanical ways). If the situations you find your self in involve conflict (and you're interaction is generating it)....then this could be your subconsciousnesses way of saying 'you need to resolve your issue with conflict/anger'. In this case it is not 'religions' that are the problem....its the anger that got associated with them. The religion issue is one layer of the defence mechanism that keeps the anger projected externally onto something else....rather than you owning it, you reject your own anger. If an emotion is rejected, it can only exist by being projected onto something external (Jung called this the shadow self if I'm not mistaken).
Perhaps the following quote may help you find some acceptance of you're anger - rather than being stuck thinking/feeling ALL anger must be rejected (I'll have more written on this issue soon).

Laura said:
Peter of Lone Tree said:
"Excuse the sarcasm but his ego and hypocrisy make me really mad." -- Windmill knight

Makes you mad? Or do you choose to be mad?
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Quite often, allowing the natural tendency of our emotional natures to express themselves is useful in the extreme. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes:

"When instincts are strong, we intuitively recognize the innate predator by scent, sight, and hearing... we anticipate its presence, hear it approaching, and take steps to turn it away. In the instinct-injured the predator is upon them before they register its presence. We have been taught to be nice, to behave, to be blind, and to be misused.

"The young and the injured are uninitiated. Neither knows much about the dark predator and are, therefore, credulous. But, fortunately, when the predator is on the move, it leaves behind unmistakable tracks in dreams. These tracks eventually lead to its discovery, capture and containment.

"Wild Ways teaches people when not to act 'nice' about protecting their souls. The instinctive nature knows that being 'sweet' in these instances only makes the predator smile. When the soul is being threatened, it is not only acceptable to draw the line and mean it, it is required." [Pinkola Estes, June 1997; Ballantine Books ISBN: 0345409876]
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The "instinct injured" are those who have bought into any number of variations of "we are all one - it's all an illusion - create your own reality" nonsense. All of that is designed to destroy your natural ability to read reality accurately and respond appropriately.
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Hi, Whitebear.

Some of what you describe sounds to me like a part of the normal process.

When I was in 'sponge mode', it took about two solid years to go from zero to a basic working knowledge. I had the luxury of spending days at a time just reading and thinking and dealing with the intense emotional impact/import of it all.

This luxury wasn't cheap, and it did erode my resource base and my material influence in the world, but I had sort of been saving up for such a period, I think, without knowing what it was I'd been saving for. Also, I'd built around myself the friend base necessary to support this kind of research, meeting the right people at the right time to further explore all this stuff with. I was also single at the time, which I think helped a lot. But throughout, I remained able to connect with and listen to the people around me. I didn't get fogged up as you describe. I became more clear and able to listen. I was also cutting toxins out of my life, started drinking pure water, etc.

The fog I feel these days, I think it is largely environmental, and that's good, (sort of), in that I can escape it. I can feel a definite difference between my own home and busy public areas. I find that fluorescent (tube) lighting and wifi hotspots and computers really fog me out. You don't need to use a cell phone to be affected in a public place when almost every person around you is carrying one, transmitting a microwave signal. People themselves become electromagnetically toxic when they are carrying a cell phone or similar device. I think the affective zone is about two meters, which means something as simple as a coffee shop or a city bus becomes super toxic. Isn't it convenient that places where people can meet face to face, as well as meet on-line, the two primary ways of networking, are conveniently made into brain-fudge zones with the application of this technology? As much as I despise the whole scheme, I still have to admire the cleverness and efficiency with which it has been deployed. The local library has become one of the most difficult-to-think places in town! There's a sick sort of genius behind it all.

What's your work place like?
 
WhiteBear said:
I'm still working through my programs involving Wicca and Christianity to actually "pray"...POTS is still something I can't quite do. The anger I still feel at Christianity for the deceptions it foisted on me in my younger years makes it more than just difficult to pray, and 17 years of Wiccan study still keeps me from looking at Deity with something other than an attitude of having a "working relationship" with it. These are probably my most difficult programs holding me back, spiritually, that I want to work through.
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Christianity in the form of Catholicism was "foisted" on me my entire life, starting with 12 years of Catholic school, an aunt who was Mother Superior in a cloistered convent, and a mother who wished she'd been a nun instead. So I can understand your resentment toward Christianity.

What I don't understand is why you can't bring yourself to say the POTS. Do you do any of EE at all? The POTS has nothing to do with "praying" in the conventional religious sense. Do you believe there is anything after death? If so, then you know there is a "universe" out there, a "cosmic mind" or whatever you want to call it. The POTS is about connecting with that force. Listening to Laura's voice during the POTS helps with that. So you say you want to work through your programs that are holding you back spirtually, but by not doing EE and/or the POTS, you are giving in to those programs.
 
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