I'll chime in on this thread with my own experiences (knowing my own personal issues can be dealt elsewhere in this Forum so I don't want to distract from this thread).
There is something going on in terms of a hyperkinetic sensate, as I definitely have been experiencing various effects, in terms of amplification of feelings/emotions. There has been amplification of joy and gratitude, but also an increased intensity in other not-so-positive emotions.
It seems that all of the dirt that I have tried to keep concealed can no longer be unseen, and I have run out of ways to just ‘turn a blind eye’ to my past behaviour, errors of thinking, and state of being. The intensity of the voice of the conscience has gotten much louder. Never having experienced any ear-ringing in the past, I wake up in the morning with a faint ringing in my ear (like an alarm clock buzzer going off way in the distance), and strong anxiety at times, popping up with an intense sensation of “this not has been dealt with yet!”.
Usually not much of a dreamer, a few nights ago, similar to what Redfox experienced, I had a disturbingly shocking and intense dream, where I woke up astounded, and had to write it down right away – the dream has stayed with me for days already - this is completely unprecedented. In the dream, in a character-disturbed way, I felt entitled to steal a large car from a
church parking lot (of all places
), and with my children inside I proceeded to drive dangerously, taking useless risks, seeking thrills, scratching the vehicle and almost getting into a serious accident. Then I realized I might get caught and in the dream I was extremely worried about hiding my tracks and somehow trying to hide what I did, concerned about what ‘others would think of me’, and then sneaking into the church lot to somehow return it without anybody knowing or seeing. Apparently it was the church sexton’s car, and he was coming toward me, and I woke up just as my mind was formulating some kind of tactic to impression manage the situation, and generating some kind of excuse or lie to get out of the situation I was obviously 100% responsible for. I can’t remember the last time I jolted up at 2AM letting out such a loud and long shriek of intense grief. The rest of the night I barely slept. It was like all of my defects of character that need working on were laid out in front of me in a flash.
I am surmising that the amplification of emotions, such as the above example of remorse of the conscience, is a consequence of this intensified hyperkinetic sensate – it seems to me that not dealing with our issues and programs is just not an option any more (as Woodsman put it, dealing with “our stuff”) – I think I’m feeling a sense of what it means to be in that state of a “skid row bum in spiritual terms” as Laura described in SHOTW (
quote in this post), and this may or not be experienced by us on this Forum who have been sitting on the fence for many years and not networking much. But as I mentioned in the first sentence, there is also an amplified sense of hope, and an amplification or increase in the brightness of the light at the end of the tunnel. It is comforting that we have support here to deal with this 'stuff' - at our fingertips is the knowledge of this network to make the difficult and effortful steps towards conscious suffering in terms of character and spiritual development. We can make it through these tough times, and to the other side, with dignity!