This is it right here: the hard part of change. It feels hard enough to get up every morning to follow Joe Dispenza‘s guided meditation and do the work of digging in to my unwanted emotions, but this is the real ordeal. After months of struggling to get some momentum going (so that some days I feel very optimistic and other days I feel less optimistic), I’m facing challenges that are making me want to crawl back into my old patterns.
Right this minute I’m blogging in order to avoid facing what’s waiting for me: things like budgeting and working on strengthening my income streams and feeling like a fat, ugly failure. My home is my safest place and it feels weird when there are things there I don’t want to deal with. Today I want to avoid bank balances and mirrors and dirty floors. Thinking about them hurts.
But my new work with Dr. Joe Dispenza’s books (Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself and You Are the Placebo) has set a new pattern in place. The new pattern includes loving myself, knowing that I’m powerful and being gentle with myself no matter what happens. This new way of thinking is pulling at my consciousness even while the old way is holding on tight. It’s like standing beneath a bright, windy sky scudded by patches of moving cloud cover. When the clouds come, the world goes gray and I can’t imagine it being sunny again. A minute or two later, bright light pierces everything and the cloudiness feels like a fading dream. Then gray, then sunny, then gray.
Similarly I seem to be standing on the edge of Old Regina’s Brain and New Regina’s Brain. At various moments throughout the day I feel discouraged and gloomy, but if I just remember the images I implanted in my mind when I meditated this morning, my spirits lift. I have finally gotten enough of a grip on my mind and heart that I really can choose how I think, which affects how I feel, which affects what I experience.
At this moment I’m in the clutches of both the old way and the new way. I have called the following statement bullshit so many times, but it’s finally true for me: whether or not I tumble into depression is my choice to make. For most of my 47 years I’ve struggled with terrible feelings of self-hatred and fear because I didn’t have any control over my mind. The main role models in my life had only taught me to be afraid, but Dr. Dispenza has taught me another way. Now my powerful part and my fearful part are facing off; I can feel them. The fearful part is still very strong and resisting it is hard — goddamn hard — but I think I can do it. I think I can do it and, according to Dr. Dispenza, that’s all it takes.