Video Blog Summary: Illusions are Convenient

Can you feel it? The days are getting shorter and the time change has added to that. To me, it feels like things are closing in. And visually things are closing in with the increasing darkness.

In my tradition of the medicine wheel, we call this the time of introspection. The seasonal conditions of darkness are encouraging us to look inside.

And this year, it’s extra special with the prospect of a COVID winter. Some of us barely emotionally survived the last round of COVID isolation.

One way we tend to manage this is to unconsciously do things to avoid feeling. Behaviors such as: buying things, compulsively working, drinking more, smoking pot, eating our feelings, compulsively exercising, etc.

It’s not that I am against these things in themselves, it is the way we do them that matters.
Are we doing them for their own sake? Or are we doing them to avoid feelings?

Rather than trying to eradicate these things (which rarely works), what if we just noticed them?

And then we could ask: What am I not allowing myself to feel? And finally, we could find someone to talk about it with.

So am proposing three steps: 1) Notice the avoidant behavior, 2) Ask: what I am not allowing myself to feel, 3) Talk to someone about what you are feeling.

The video above provides several examples of these steps including using self-inquiry for the second step of asking what am I not allowing myself to feel. Check it out!