I wanted to write about some general thoughts I had, of my experiences yesterday, my dream this morning, and an emotional cleansing experience this morning that occured while making use of what I could of the EE program.
I was not doing the entire EE program at the time, although throughout my day I am mindful to breathe appropriately, and will steal moments in daily life in which I can take a moment to breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. Obviously the in=nose and out=mouth technique is something presented within the EE program proper, and so one could possibly conclude that going around all day doing this is not necessarily advised. However, I often get stressed at work and there are many times I wish I could just become invisible for a minute or two, and just do 3 gentle sets of breathing like this. What I do feel sure about is that my normal "waking" life does not afford much opportunity to do so. Sure, if you have an office or sit a cubicle with some amount of privacy you can get away with it, but for me when I feels like I need it the most is when I am around people, especially lots of people during a meeting for example. In this situations it is not so conducive.
This morning I awoke to some stirring dreams. Last night I had to stay up for an extended period of time to catch up on work before going out of town for the holidays. My night (technically very early morning) ended on an emotional note. Perhaps elsewhere I will write in more detail about it, as I feel there are some very significant points to lay out. But in short, what happened is that I called someone and was ignored. My head went into a tizzy thinking about how this guy was basically just sitting there on his butt ignoring me while I waited for him (this was in the context of my job). Upon walking around the building, and into the room myself, I did indeed see this guy just sitting there. My mind felt like it went into over-drive. How dare him ignore me like that. I was not there for some personal reason; trust me I don't show up at 5am at this location far away from my house because I have nothing better to do. So I did a test and called his phone again whilst walking over to him. It rang, and loudly. This and other things I observed just solidified for me that I was right, that he was intentionally and immaturely ignoring me. At that point I had to "back off", as I was feeling quite confrontational with this guy - although I had not even said anything at all so far to this guy. I ended up resolving my matter with the other individual there. The other guy (who did not have the phone) said that the guy who did "ignore" me had just been in the bathroom. Yea right I thought. I didn't believe him for a second.
Fast-forward to me leaving and driving home (nothing else really of interest happened at the location). So angry I became. I day-dreamed of ways in which I would deal with this issue. At that time I had decided that I would request a mediation session with my and his manager. My motivations here were both good and bad, if that is possible. On one hand, I really wanted to resolve this issue with him so that this would not happen again. On the other hand, he (I thought) had acted quite clearly in the wrong. Within a mediation session I would be able to lay out the facts, and do so in a calm, objective manner, emphasizing that I merely wanted to resolve this and move past it. The bad comes into play because I am confident that in this scenario I would basically win. I feel that I could "out-do" him in this sort of setting and put forth a better image of my actions than ultimately he would be able to do. In so doing, he would be reprimanded and would be more or less forced to never do that again. Ultimately though, this bad intention of mine I feel arose from wanting to lash out against him for acting against me. I wanted to "duel" with him in a battlefield I was sure I would win in, I wanted to rub it in his face that I could better navigate these corporate waters than he and he better watch out. (there is more to the story, the background if you will between myself and this individual that I believe ignored me, but I refrain)
Later at home I was able to log into a security system which shows when individuals "badge in" or use their RFID access card to gain entry to a door. In short, what I found corroborated what I had been told; that this individual had been in the bathroom at the time that I called. Realizing and processing this was hard for me, because so much of that energy I had expended had been basically mis-directed and in vain. In short, I was wrong. I was wrong to jump to the conclusion that I had, I was wrong to devote so much time and energy in trying to deal with this perceived attack. And I was so sure of my conclusions at the time, so many data points that I had observed pointed in this direction (as does our "history"). It can be a hard pill to swallow, being so sure you are right and finding out you are so wrong.
Fast-forward again, to my dream. My dream was a mis-mash of stuff related to my previous day at work, my co-workers, and this group. I remember that Laura and many others that I "felt" are part of this group were in it, although I did not interact with them/you guys much. Except this one girl. She was telling me about how she recently became pregnant, and that of all the research she has done as part of this group, becoming pregnant was the hardest. I have no idea that this specific part has any relevance, but it was the only "direct interaction" in my dream that involved someone I saw as being part of this group, and so I figured I would toss it in. At the moment, I am of the feeling that this dream had more to do with just the mis-mash of thoughts and emotion of the past day than anything else. The big part of this dream however was throughout it I was being confronted my the aspects of myself that are out of line with reality; the reasons for the "issues" I have at times with people. I remember being shown a movie of sorts, more like a roll-around poster with 3-4 "frames" and it showed a bird plucking a seed from the middle of what looked like a doughnut. There was a saying written on the first frame, and it was said aloud to me and I heard it clearly at the time, although I cannot remember it know. It was not in English, and sounded like it was from an old/ancient language. It's meaning was described to me as (paraphrasing) "take what you can get before its gone" and the poster turned and it showed this bird plucking a sole seed from the ground, as many other birds swooped in to do the same. Overall, the main element of my dream was how wrong I had been in numerous personal interactions and personal opinions.
I do remember feeling very sad in my dream, and woke up with this feeling. I did the breathing (in=nose, out=mouth) as much as I could right after. What I felt (which in a way echo's Elizabeths post above mine) was that when I breathed in I saw moments in which someone has been mean to me in my life. When I breathed out I saw moments in which I had been mean to others. Where others had been mean to me, I felt some sadness, but on a level that was totally "fine". Where I had been mean to others, my body shook and the tears flowed. It was almost like everytime I had "hit" someone (lashed out verbally) I had really hit myself, but the force of the blow was kept at bay. I was only able to do this breathing for a few minutes, but I ended up feeling very sad for every and any time I had displayed a lack of compassion for others and instead lashed out in anger and with mean intent. Just based on that snapshot, it seems to me that my acting against others carries with it it a weight far heavier than when others acted against me. I conclude this based on the emotional content of the in (others against me) and out (me against others) compared against each other. I feel that I had more to add to this, but writing this post has taken most of my energy at the moment and what free time I had, and my memory wanes. The best I can conclude at this time, at this moment, is that I never want to ever be mean to another person again. I have felt and thought this before in my life, but never with the strength as I feel it now. Not with such conviction, and such clarity for what it really entails; basically that I am really attacking myself. I will be interested to watch and observe in my daily life how this manifests; if I now have more power to stop this program(s) from acting out.
My apologies for the long post, but I believe that this event arose as a direct result of the EE program, and certainly the emotional cleansing I experienced arose from me making use of what I could at the time of the EE program.