All Spiritual and Stuff

The start of a new year always gets me thinking about resolutions and other nonsense.

This year, 2012, — the final year of our planet’s existence, as everyone well knows — I’m determined to make a good one. I was on autopilot last year. I’ve been on autopilot for some years now, actually. But there’s something awakening within me. I’m caring about my life and the meaning of it. I’m caring about the impact I make on the world, however small that impact may be. Lately, I feel like I’m being guided toward a new path.

Yup, I’m getting all transcendental on your asses.

For many years, I was really into yoga and meditation. I read about Buddha, meditated over crystals, wrote esoteric phrases in little black notebooks. I observed a lot. Things meant something to me. Colors were more vivid, people were more alive. I was more alive.

I may also have been taking a lot of acid or other hallucinogens at the time. But that’s really not the point.

THE POINT, my friends, is that I’ve lost myself somewhere along the way. I stopped feeling compassion, stopped feeling joy. I’ve been sucked into a cycle of self-imposed self-punishment. I’ve spent a long time believing I’m meant to suffer, to pay, to wither inside. I’m not allowed to feel good. I used to punish myself in physical ways; now, it’s emotional, mental — which can be, in ways, more powerful. To live in self-punishment in one’s own head, over and over, day in and day out.

This has translated into a great degree of emptiness, anger, agitation, frustration, sorrow, self-loathing. I don’t feel good-ness anymore. I only feel the pinpoints of rage and the longing of something, anything else to fulfill me.

Although I’ve known for a long time that I have “issues,” the revelation of me punishing myself (for whatever reason — it doesn’t matter) and the subsequent manifestation of that punishment into an overall shitty attitude is a new thought for me. It’s not that I’m a bad mom, a lousy wife, and a crappy friend; it’s that I am flogging myself inside, and I’m so angry and hurt and empty that I have nothing to give to anyone else.

Our feelings are reflected in our behaviors. When we feel good, we do good. When we feel bad, we do anger, rage, frustration, sadness.

So, what to do? I’m not sure. That’s what I’m starting to explore. What I do know is that I’m not talking about suppressing feelings or tricking myself into feeling something different. I’m not talking about not feeling bad things. But I do think there’s something underlying those emotions that, if I can learn to just observe rather than retain, I could clear up the grayness that has taken over me.

Sigh. I don’t think I’m even making sense at this point.

Just trust me when I say I’m going through some serious touched-by-an-angel shit over here and there’s going to be some positivity up in this mo fo, by golly!