Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Day 230: Rock Bottom



I have recently had the experience of hitting Rock Bottom.  For me, it was a place of having lost everything - my relationships, a business I have been building, my integrity, and parts of myself as who I had been working on creating myself to be.  There have been many times in my life where I have gotten to where I wanted to give up or not seeing the point of continuing to live but this Rock Bottom place, for me, was different in that what I had been hiding about myself and what I had created and manifested over months accumulated to the point of where I had no way out - the consequence of what I had created was inescapable.

Being at Rock Bottom is a milestone in my life that I will likely never forget - I never want to be in this place again.  However, what I was seeing in the few weeks since being a Rock Bottom is how I have still been in it in a way - where, even though I have been writing, self-reflecting, and getting a massive amount of support, I have been seeing the behaviors, thoughts, and reactions that I haven't been wanting to give up - the very same behaviors, thoughts, and reactions that I have allowed to create and manifest my Rock Bottom which shows me that if I continue to make decisions that compromise my self-integrity and self-awareness that I will likely re-create and manifest this experience again.

Interesting, though, I have found that the temptation is there - to recreate the patterns that I know will lead me back to Rock Bottom, despite my seeing that I never ever want to go back there again.  For me, the temptation is blame and my reasons or justifications for how others are responsible for me making the decisions I have made, easily recalling memories and other evidence that makes it look like others are against me, that I'm in the right, and that I can do/think/say the things that I do because others are in the wrong.  Essentially, with blame, I give myself permission to be any version of myself - whether it's the best version of me or the worst.

Within the awareness that the cure for blame is to 'bring it back to self', self-honesty, and self-responsibility, it has become clear that the solution for not ever going back to Rock Bottom is the same: slowing myself down and looking at the nature of my thoughts, my inner dialogue, the conspiring, assumptions, ideas and my reasons for allowing these things to exist within me.  I realize that my reasons, along with my reactions, must go and that when I have reasons come up or in anyway start arguing something in my mind - that this is a problem for me to take responsibility for and in that moment, instead of going into it, to stop, redirect it back to myself and look at it self-honestly and how it is in-fact me communicating with me about me.

Back to basics.

An unfortunate consequences of getting lost is being in that very strange place of being aware but at the same time, having given up my depth and my ability to process what I am seeing and hearing in one moment.  Now, I understand what it means to not have access to life - before I had seen life as something external, something separate from me, something greater than me, and something profound.   Not the case at all.  I only have access to what I create - a few weeks ago, I had access to Rock Bottom and at this moment, cleaning up from the 'fall' and getting back on track.