Report 32

Naturalness in a more personal way...

Today something came up which broke open some layers to what I've referred to as 'shyness'.

I could see first, an introverted tendency, which is also what my younger daughter was born with. This is what shows up as an exaggerated sense of 'everyone is looking at me'. This tendency was not a terrible thing most of the time, and enabled me to spend a lot of time enjoying my own company as a child. Once I became friends with someone, this would fall away in their company. 

With my younger daughter, due to having some understanding of what she was dealing with, I made sure to push out her a little. Her natural personality is that this is still there, but she knows how to push herself beyond it when she needs to. I think that is what I'm learning too. :)

Funnily enough, not having this tendency is why my older daughter did not continue ballet lessons. Due to extreme extroversion, she was unable to scrunitize herself in the mirror long enough, was not minutely aware of her movements or comparisons with others. After six years of lessons, at a big transition her teacher said to me that "One day it might click, or it may not."  :) 

Just to show contrast, whereas my oldest daughter once took part in a performance where she danced the wrong way and tripped two other children up, walked off stage and told me she was "the best one up there", my younger daughter would throw herself into terrible anxiety and then get on stage and a natural effervescence would errupt. Then, the performance itself was often beyond what anyone would expect, but she could not see it or evaluate it clearly.

Okay... so that is one layer. The second layer that was brought to my attention today is a different sort of fear which has, for me, been bundled with the other. I did not know that.

Without getting too personal, today the second aspect was activated in a way that showed me how distinct that it is, and that this is probably where the 'completely shut down' part comes in. This is where much confusion lies, as I try to make minute decisions regarding what to share/what not to share/exposure/hide, etc. and become paralyzed. Perhaps without this activated, which is more conditioned (which in its way is a natural 'response' to circumstances) than innate, the first tendency is more a positive filter than an obstacle.

Just beginning to work with this.

Okay, laughing because I took out my first naturalness report from this week, but just read Dao's report and since there is a reference to the overlapping themes, I'll put it back. :)

 ( Part I )

Today the topic of Naturalness took a very nice turn, overlapping a few ideas, which together seem very dynamic to me. Mick and Ara wrote about Ethics from a few angles. Gaya spoke of not relying on substances for certain affects but rather learning to work with our awkwardness or shyness. Stim then made mention of holding the limitating aspects of something open, finding options (the talk isn't yet posted so I am paraphrasing), and Mitsu brought forth this imagery of the halo, which I am inspired by in the context of one's natural aliveness.

Synthesizing these ideas, what came up to me was something that I've been turning over for a few weeks, which is what I called a 'hierarchy of desires'. I had spoken about this in a PaB session before with someone, in the context of making decisions, and in the context of 'desires of the heart', but hadn't made the connections of Renunciation to Ethics to Naturalness to Aliveness.

This came today when Stim drew attention to this way of looking at things and suggested that giving value levels to concepts was a useful tool but not necessary. So later on, I layed down for a while to think about it, and began to allow the value levels to soften. This idea then became more layers unfolding than a hierarchy, and the idea of renunciation more an active process than a practical decision being made not to, for instance, stay out late on the night before an important morning appointment.

Which brought me to the Resonance we sense with others/ideas, and what we talked about a few weeks ago, of a kind of recognition of 'Namaste' or divine speaking to divine. It is quite interesting when we can be considering and tending to various ideas from 'separate' angles, and also in a way that allows those angles come together so beautifully.