help wanted: a recipe for joy

After a lovely week soaking in hot mineral springs in Nevada I have returned and awoke today with a feeling of discomfort. On Wednesday I was in Virginia City when I had a rage attack. The triggering incident was minor so I was surprised by the depth of my rage. I started asking myself questions and my point of departure lately is to assume it is a projection that is sending me around the bend. So why had this sent me into a searing rage? Today the answer popped into my mind. It relates to my dislike/hatred of being human. I see this ride will not be over until I come to love being human, to enjoy the earth experience. Now this feels like a tall order personally and globally. How can I love being human after I just finished an excellent book on the Holocaust, with mass shootings, deliberate pollution and altering of food, extreme greed and so on. In my world the question is how can I delight in the human condition when the people I love can turn into seemingly cold monsters from one second to the next? I see that it goes back to my childhood where at any moment my father could begins raging over some small irritation. So when a relative suddenly seems to turn on me with an act I consider to be rude, unkind or alienating I can easily return to that feeling of it being life or death, as it was for me as a little child. So this relative’s grumpiness and a door shut in my face for no apparent reason were the trigger for this intense rage arising Wednesday. 

Only presence stopped me from reacting and counter attacking. Instead I have been sitting with it. Inside I felt huge separation and anything but love. While I had no external reaction, internally I felt incredible anger and energetic attack which I know did not go unfelt. Yet the lessons of the last weeks stopped me from judging myself (at least not too much). I was judging the person involved even while questioning the whole incident. I have been sitting with it for three days and awoke with such a feeling of heaviness, of not wanting to be here. 

A few years ago listening to my outgoing phone message repeatedly woke me up to the realization I wanted off the planet, to go home, where ever that home might be. I have made  some peace with being human but not enough. The last weeks taught me my own value, to stop seeing my own authentic nature as much more of a be-er than a do-er as worthless, to see myself as valuable and perfect. Now I see I must come to not just accept being human, but rather to truly delight in it. I hear the background music for Mission Impossible playing in my head as this is how it feels, especially after these 13 years of torturous ascension experiences and symptoms. Yet I am absolutely clear this is what it will take to stop projecting my hatred of my “failures,” my moment of being monstrous like my father was too often. How am I to do that? How can I see another's behavior that appears as factually monstrous to me, not matter how slight the provocation sometimes is, as harmless?  How can I accept being human with all its flaws? It took me years to truly forgive another relative’s behavior but I was a bulldog on a pork chop with it, as I could feel how the unforgivenss sat in me with it’s insidious poison leaching away my peace. Now I have two more people who perfectly reflect my own remaining self hatred for being human, for sometimes acting monstrously. I keep using that word as I see that even the smallest action can give rise to the certainty of the boogie man ready to pounce.

I am clear the only antidote is to enjoy this circus. Of course, when I do the whole world shifts and suddenly it is truly enjoyable. This is definitely the cart before the horse reality. No clue how to make this happen. In fact, I know I can’t MAKE IT happen. I can only surrender and intend it and await the miracles with my currently minuscule trust. So if anybody has the recipe for joy, please, oh please let me know. 

Yea, I know that I know it already at a semi conscious level. Just intending to make peace with the unjoy until the joy arrives, as it certain will.