I've been pretty trailer and computer-bound this week. Sick with this cold that is laying waste to a lot of folks right now. I'm on day four and my symptoms are worse. From what I've heard, it's a long-haul of icky with the threat of pneumonia. Oh boy.
I woke Monday feeling decidedly under the weather. Joints in places I rarely think of unless they're complaining all chorused in with tweaks and twinges of discomfort. I thought the fever would be next, but I went to my first mammogram that morning, worked all day, and sweated it out at a therapy session until 8:30pm, no temperature.
My energy level is bizarrely high, might be due to the psuedenephridrine, or just getting enough sleep? Today, however, that energy level was pretty sunk. I am prepping to live at a friends' house for the next three weeks. This means putting the trailer on autopilot tomorrow - fixing that leak that puts out a cup of water a week, setting the heater to 40 degrees, checking my propane levels, closing windows, etc, etc. It also means packing enough stuff to minimize long trips out to Oregon City - although Google maps puts it at 35 minutes total with no traffic.
I've made two trips to the house this week too. One trip for a dinner that hadn't started being assembled at 8:30pm and hunger and sickness sent me home quickly. The other trip was today for more elaborate instructions. I look forward to living in the city and plan to take advantage of the proximity of other people and services. The freelance business will keep me in check as will this cold.
My trips to town have been the type where all of the music I was just jamming out to is suddenly stale, overplayed, and that library of disinterest has extended significantly into all music of the last year. I am left with jazz radio and podcasts. Which brings me to my title, masculinity. I was listening to a Sounds True podcast about the true nature of masculinity and guess what - I got a lot out of it that was very personal and not very masculine. But good advice is good advice and when one is ready to receive the message, well that message is going to come in whatever form it come in.
Two topics, that may or may not be correlated, stood out as upcoming and ongoing discussions with my therapist. A.k.a. on my mind in my personal development at the moment.
Shame and worthiness (two sides of one coin), and sexuality in how it relates to sex drive, fantasy intensity, and egoic identification. I pulled over and took notes frequently. I want to tackle these two aspects of myself, particularly in relation to relationship. To dissolve shame in worthiness is a freedom well worth working towards. And as Byron Katie would demonstrate through The Work, can be a deliberate process of inquiry. Coupled with Schnarch's intimate relationship differentiation model of holding one's self while experiencing flooding and high emotional states such as shame while in the presence of another, I hope to delve into what I experience shame about and invite the experience while being grounded through emotional or sensate focus while in an interpersonal exchange with another - in my case, a therapist. How does that all work? I'm hoping to talk about and invoke the deep shame I experience while deliberating on several storylines in my life, out loud and holding her gaze while also reporting my emotional and sensate states and giving myself the permission to go as deep as I can into the shame story.
For example, I'm a bad wife, or bad at relationships, or inherently unworthy of love and approval (the real shame story). And come out the other side with a healthier view of myself with much more understanding and lessening the power of that storyline. This might be an experiment that has to be repeated for total release.
The sexuality is equally interesting. It's such a completely vital part of my (and everyone's) identity. It's the place I've gone to connect, to find power, to anesthetize the pain body however temporarily. The podcast asserted that the intensity, frequency, and compulsiveness of sex drive can be correlated to the intensity of the pain body - of the story that is painful and seeks escape in sex. Obviously this statement feels true to me.
The possibilities of looking at this egoic attachment and identity formed around my desired perceived desirability is a very, very sticky place in my personal growth. But it's not limited to how I want others to perceive me, but the escape from the parts of my thinking that sex affords. Intent on the hunt and conquest leaves very little mental space to experience the painful or angry thoughts that come up.
Now I can approach this all from two angles, and do. One angle is to sit in the truth of the story of self, that thoughts happen without any control, that thoughts are pretty much the same for everyone, and so thoughts are not original, not forming "me", not describing "me", and are the very vocal products of a well-functioning organ of this body. The other angle is to inquire, attend to, and delve into the thoughts, emotions, and storylines as they come up.
Most of the time I'm busy with so much that the 37-year-practice of believing whatever thought happens to surface or circle around a few thousand times in the mind is true and react to that thought. Like this one that says I should make another cup of tea, crawl into bed, and watch a couple of shows before I pass out. I think I will listen to that one.