Grand Funk (no Railraod)

For reasons that make no practical sense, I spent the last few days n one of the worst moods I have been in in a long time.  Everything I encoutnered seemed to be flawed, wrong and crushing.  My wife put in a lot of effort trying to help, but it did not seem to have an impact.  Granted, that fact that she would not let this slide by forced me to find a way to address it.

Although there were lots of moments where my funk was on auto-pilot, I did find ways to engage this as practice.  It has been a real benefit that recently I learned about the practice of just watching these patterns unfold, even when I did not feel I had the power to interrupt them.  Putting attention on these feelings really did take the edge off, but they still remained. 

Much of it came from two sources.  First a feeling of being out of control (which actually has a deepr root, which is my attempt to control what is happenening beyond what is natural).  I spent a lot of the last weeks getting things done.  It happened at such a remarkable pace that I locked in to that frame of mind.  When the tasks were done, the mindset was still strong and getting hot and heavy with the ego.

The second source is an older issue of not feeling valued.  In the end it goes to the same root of trying to control things.  This shows up for me as a feeling that everything I saw and do is being discounted or contradicted by others.

What happened here was a short lived, very un happy place.  Practicing it, seeing that it is of my creation I was able to slow it down.  Slowed down, I was able to get a much better sense of where it was coming from, and thus what work I need to do to reduce these tendencies.  The whole thing was very emotionally tiring.

There was also a backdrop that I realized created furtile ground for this whole spiral.  I have spent much of the last week very up in my own head.  When that part of me got out of control, I robbed myself of many moments, prefering instead to intellectualize the things that were happening.  As the process became pessimistic, that thought process was never  a good thing.

Keep in mind that all of this unfolded rather quickly and all of this is post analysis.  I am greatly appreciative however, of all the bodhisattvas that brought medicine.  Mirrors, the practice, etc.

I endeavour to take up the way of better manifesting what I know to be helpful.