Dominoes

I had a moment of insight this morning, precipitated by a phrase I read in Chiron's book*; "Whatever you are feeling IS NORMAL!" I'm taking it well out of context and my train of thought isn't finished yet, but here is how it goes.

Generally, when I feel a bad emotion (loneliness, anger, anxiety), I feel bad that I felt it...because I feel they are somehow below me - or not part of the person who I see myself becoming** . If we take this 'bad' emotion, define it as 'normal' - it is no longer 'bad' (in my sense of the word)... and then redundant. A loose analogy is learning to meditate, where one acknowledges a distraction when one occurs, but does not give it attention. By dismissing the bad emotion as a natural disturbance, it no longer bothered me at all.

*Picked up a few books this week. Meditations was one; I read it first and it was excellent. I'm not big on MA books but Rory deals with a lot of issues very well. It stimulates non-martial trains of thought too, and though a lot of this stuff is already available on his blog, theres enough there to make it worth the money.

I'm now making my way through Kiss or Kill: Confessions of a Serial Climber, then afterwards I'll tackle Deep Survival, finish off with Verbal Judo and then Manwatching (once it arrives). Also planning to pick up a copy of Walden this week. At some point in the next month or so I'm going to sit down and discuss how I'm developing as an athlete and as a human being, and make some plans/goals for the future.

**Or wanting to become...who I am may be quite different to my expectations, though I think my insight is pretty good.

Train hard.