6/27/22
9:45 pm
Okay, I missed a couple days, but we’re back on.
2 days ago was Pride Festival here in Tulsa and after the parade, I, Kayla, and our friend Kera, went to meet some other friends at some bars.
at one point in the night, we all circled up and played some authentic relating games.
We were playing a game called “Hotseat”, which is just making one person the center of attention while the rest of the group asks that person whatever they want.
While I was in the hot seat, someone asked “what’s your biggest fear?”
I felt into it, and the fear that was most alive for me at that moment had to do with my relationship with Kayla. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the details, I just knew there was something there, and I was getting images and feelings of a small ball of darkness sitting in my lower abdomen, like a void space.
I didn’t give myself enough time to fully dissect it. I was also under time pressure for my turn in the hot seat, as well as a desire to be impressive to those around me (which ended up backfiring in the end), so I started expressing things prematurely.
Words started coming out of my mouth, saying something about how I felt like I was still uncertain in myself around our relationship, and unsure if I’d be happier being with Kayla, or if I’d be happier being on my own.
It was an old story, and I knew it was as I was saying it. I could tell it wasn’t quite the truth as it was leaving my lips, but that’s the story I had been telling myself and others often at the beginning of our relationship, so that’s the story my brain started rolling with, and I just wasn’t willing to be authentic and vulnerable enough to stop for a second, take a breath, and explain what was happening for me in the moment.
I just decided to keep going with that thought train in order to appear congruent to everyone.
What feels a lot more true for me is that I was feeling some sort of fear regarding our relationship, and I’ve been thinking about it and processing it and have ideas and stories about it, but I still don’t feel confident saying that I know exactly what it is; I imagine there are many layers (and I just don’t feel like writing all about it here).
I just know now, and knew then, that I love Kayla and feel really committed to her. I really only question whether I’m happy with her when I’m in triggered shut-down lizard brain state, and that’s such a minor amount of overall time which I get over fairly quickly.
But anyway, what I had expressed that night in the hot seat was very hard and hurtful for Kayla to hear, and we were working through all that for a couple days. I felt we were closer to breaking up with each other than we’d ever been, and that was really unsettling for me. I was feeling fear rising up in all kinds of ways, including sadness, anger, numbness, longing, and so many others, I’m sure.
But long story shortened, we worked through it, and now I feel even more committed and close with Kayla than ever, and I feel so grateful about it.
Which is honestly kind of insane. It was such a difficult period for me, and at the end of it is so much joy and peace and love.
It reminds me of doing high-dose psychedelics and being confronted with the scariest shit my mind can conjure. During the first half or so of the trip, I’m thinking “fuck this. I’m scared and uncomfortable and I want out! I’ll never do this shit again. Why did I do this? why the fuck would anyone do this to themselves? If I survive this, I’ll never touch psychedelics again. I just want a normal-ass human life, for the love of God!”
But something amazing happens. When I survive being stuck in maximum level existential fear, then in the latter half of the trip, I’m wide open. Every cell is cracked with ecstasy pouring out. I’m the most beautiful and alive that I’ve ever felt. I’m free, and I always think at this point, “all that fear and infinite insanity was worth this amount of love and care and gratitude that I feel right now.”
It always makes me think that “all the ecstasy we could ever want is just on the other side of deep terror!”
Fear is the doorway to peace and massive creativity and pleasure, and the amount of pleasure that you experience is equally proportionate to the amount of fear you face.
It’s kind of cool. It kind of really sucks.
This sort of rule that I’m talking about probably isn’t always true and probably doesn’t just work that simply.
I know I don’t enjoy or want to be in more uncomfortable dissonant situations with Kayla, and I don’t think that just being bombarded with fear and discomfort to the point that it’s nearly impossible to take just so you can pop out the other end excited and burning with passion and aliveness is a very sustainable relationship model.
But I do have to say, I’m curious about this strange idea and feel like it’s worth contemplating.
I often feel as though most things, if not everything, are just a microcosmic reflection of the infinite back and forth polarity engine that fuels the churning of existence. I don’t believe there would be a universe if love was not accompanied by, probably, an equal amount of fear to dance with, and if we want to keep existing, then that dance has to be felt in us one way or another.
We, and all our relationships, and everything we do are little micro-polarity engines keeping it all together and going, and highly attached relationships can be such a clear reflection of how The Game plays itself and how we’ll probably just be here forever feeling the highs and lows and in-betweens, but always flowing, shifting, changing into the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.
And that’s all a lot to have weighing on yourself, so that’s why we don’t do psychedelics, and we just stay dumb apes that have lost all our memory and create a sense of safety and coherent reality so that we don’t have to see what’s really going on.
Whenever I meet The Truth and my Infinite Self, I remember why I chose to forget, and say, “slap me on a meat suit and send me straight to Earth, Baby! I don’t even give a shit what happens. Randomize my avatar, I’ll be born in an impoverished country. Whatever. No big deal, just get me as far away from my unlimited eternal self as you can get me. Give me the biggest fuckin ego this planet has ever seen so I’m too dumb to explore spirituality this time around.”
Okay. Maybe that got a little heavy, idk.
I’m ending it here and going to get some cuddles and sleep.
If you read all this, I’m grateful and slightly confused.
I’d love it if you left a comment letting me know if you actually read through it all, and I’d be extra appreciative if you felt like sharing any interests or inspirations you’ve felt reading this post or any of my posts in general.
Have a great night!!!
Expression H 