Yesterday and today; denial and joyfulness

I got into town early enough (12:30) to see a guy about a course, put two blog entries online at the public library, and get stood up for a coffee, which was okay. Then I started chatting with a guy who would make an excellent date for my exflatmate, so I played cupid and he gave me a lift home for my trouble.

Sure enough, my exflatmate, A W, was at the window at nine twenty thismorning. He blushed when I gave him the phone number (cute!) and protested it was sunburn from a car detailing job he did yesterday. I had been up til two so I woke easily enough, and he needed the rest of his furnishings out so he could sell them en masse today. My exneighbours rocked up for a final inspection, which was cool cos I got to help them out a little; AND alert the property owner to the plumbing problems and excess water costs he was paying because of a washer in my bathroom.

I have SUCH amazingly fucked up feelings about property owners, it is hard to believe. I avoid them with a vengeance because of the feelings of vulnerability (they have the power to evict me) and irritation (I am in their property AS IF it is mine, and paying them money for the privilege). I go to lengths to avoid dealing with these feelings... just rejecting negative feelings, however, does not seem sufficient. I must also confront them, else they become a hidden influence.

Reading Ms (Tara Bennett) Goleman's book at the moment, a chapter or two a day, on "Emotional Alchemy", and it has considerable insight into the nature of moment-by-moment experience. Her sophisticated analysis is supported by a strongly compassionate nature, which gives the book its power to influence. And this reaction to the property owner is exactly the kind of hidden emotional pattern she discusses. Interesting.

It is fair to say, then, that my basic strategy is avoidance, then anxiety, then aggression/frustration, then guilt and shame. Yes it should be horrible to spell it out here, but that is just the coping strategy, just the entree really. It is the underlying negativity that is "coped with" by that strategy which is of particular interest to me at the moment. This is the complex of interesting behaviours that is dubbed as denial in the pyschological literature, pride in the Christian literature, and ignorance in the Buddhist; and it is the everyday condition, I am taught, of over 80 percent of humanity at the present time.

God help me!

What am I avoiding?

- A BIG pile of papers represents the invested value of my past 15 years; it sits untouched in my office.

- Educational opportunities, in spite of my love of learning, lie untouched for months at a time.

- Opportunities to contribute not taken up.

- Chances to get fit and healthy ignored.

- Relationships not fostered and tended to.

Dear me... it's a bit much to look at all at once! Worse, it is blantantly contra my values to ignore these things! I am smiling at the delicious irony, but inside I feel afraid, and glad, and excited, and, funnily enough, actually JOYFUL in my inner heart.

Time to get to work.