si dawson

A cou­ple of years ago, when I first dis­cov­ered EFT, it changed my life so much, so quickly, I imme­di­ately went around telling every­one I knew about it (Yes yes, I realise now how dopey & threat­en­ing this kind of behav­iour is, I was just super excited)

I remem­ber one con­ver­sa­tion par­tic­u­larly vividly. Telling a friend with dyslexia that she could get rid of it, if she wanted.

Know what hap­pened? She got angry. Yes, angry. Sur­prised the hell out of me.

"Huh!" I remem­ber think­ing, "I guess being dyslexic is just really impor­tant to her."

Now here's the funny part of the story. Remem­ber that old say­ing "We hate most in oth­ers what we despise in ourselves?".

I was watch­ing this incred­i­bly infor­ma­tive video by Roza­lind Gruben this morn­ing, on Social & Emo­tional Aspects of Eat­ing (45 mins in 5 chunks, but def­i­nitely worth find­ing time for). She talks about the aban­don­ment & dis­ap­proval that we expe­ri­ence as chil­dren — as part of the way we're cul­tur­ally raised. About how we start to see our­selves as flawed, & iden­tify with what we're told by the peo­ple around us.

.. and then it hit me

.

I've spent my life — or at least, as much of it as I can remem­ber — defin­ing myself by my pain. My strug­gle. My mis­ery. (Note the use of 'My' — a good sign it's my ego talking)

Iron­i­cally, my spir­i­tual jour­ney has been all about strug­gling to free myself from this self-imposed iden­tity — that I'm mis­er­able, in pain & suf­fer­ing. Although I have been mov­ing towards less strug­gle, less mis­ery & less pain, it's been damn hard work.

Yes, I'm laugh­ing as I write this. It's all so obvi­ous now!

And yes, it's been a strug­gle. Every key area of my life has been difficult.

Well this is sim­ply because I've wanted it this way. I've been in love with it. It's been a part of who I am. Yes, my deci­sion. Maybe not con­sciously, but still, my choice.

The won­der­ful thing is that even just real­is­ing this has enabled me to change it. I was doing some tap­ping (EFT) this morn­ing, and every­time I went to tap on some­thing, part of my brain just went "Peh, ok, that's gone." — before I could even get started.

That strug­gle, that pain, doesn't have to be part of who I am any more. I chose it for years, but, well, now I choose differently.