Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed when you read or listen to or view something by someone whose work you greatly admire? Do you sometimes find your initial enthusiasm and enjoyment being stealthily overtaken by a mounting sense of gloom or despair or anxiety or insecurity or unworthiness as you compare yourself and your work with theirs?
This is an experience I often have. But, as I discovered, it’s not an uncommon one. Importantly, it is one that you can successfully resolve if you allow yourself a healthy dose of Mastery as I have done and as I share with you below 🙂
Today, I am stirred by the spirit of an unfolding confidence, a growing sense of Mastery over the process of recognizing my conditioned learnings and allowing myself to be more fully present to the unlearned.
So far, I have managed to redirect the compulsion to react from the stimulus of reading something beautiful and powerful (can there be beauty without power?) to abiding with that compulsion, observing it and enquiring into it.
It has unveiled a warehouse of unserviceable needs. There they were, ready to haul me into the acceleration lane of reactive action i.e. reaction. (And meanwhile, the quiet voice of wisdom prompts me: Don’t judge. Don’t try too hard. Have faith in the ever present transcendent. Enjoy the glee.).
Yes, the need to let you know that I was touched by what you’d written. The need to show others who would surely be in the audience that I too am a sensitive, intelligent and deep thinker and writer. The need to be acknowledged and perhaps rewarded by a few words of praise or even agreement or correspondence with what I had to say. The need, perhaps, to feel better than I was feeling, which is a strange thing since I had no reason to feel anything but good.
But, I’ve had a realization that often enough, a brief journey generously fueled by eagerness and delight across the written experience of an admired other, takes an unfortunate turn into a troublesome road. It’s a road that is unrelentingly policed by bandits of such notoriety as anxiety, insecurity and the worst of them all, fear.
I need to respond. I need to show how much I have been moved. I want so badly to write as well as this. I want so badly to have the same kind of insight and poetic awareness. I will never be as good as you. I’m not cut out for this. But then, what am I cut out for? I’ve had the thoughts, the feelings, the observations that I’m reading about here. It’s not like they are all so novel to me. So how come I didn’t write something like this? I see and feel so deeply but perhaps not deeply enough?
Yes, it’s a tortuous road and not one with immediately visible turn offs. Not until you realize (by remembering) that you are the rider of this journey and that you can decide how far down this road you want to keep going and most importantly, if you are going to let those bandits chase you witless or if you’re going to turn around, tell them they don’t scare you anymore, and then continue with that eagerness and delight that you started your journey with.
It’s remarkable how stunned these bandits can be when you do that. It’s as if you’ve laughed so mirthfully and so fearlessly in their faces. In my experience, humour and fearlessness are the top two most dreaded qualities that the bandits of anxiety, insecurity and fear have to deal with. And in my experience, they can’t deal with them at all. They don’t just back off, they clear out.
So, I am happily resuming my journey of unfolding confidence and Mastery , grateful for yet another realization, grateful to be traveling so fearlessly while aching with enthrallment of the wide open, uncharted field of the Unlearned.MENTORING
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