Today I went out for tea and to get there, I took the train. Usually at this time I would shut off as a defence mechanism to ‘avoid’ aggravating people, but I decided to breathe. What I found out was I was reacting to myself and projected it onto others. I have not met any of the people I pass by, but in my Mind I was already judging myself as already doing something to aggravate them.
When I walk out of the door, I immediately ‘fit’ myself into a position I interpret is ‘mine’ in the social ladder. Some criteria for judging myself and ‘putting myself in my place’ includes ‘intelligence’, ‘perfection’, ‘what kind of job do I have’. So walking outside was exposing myself to others judging me, in this judging myself through other’s words/behaviours. Other’s words/behaviours were triggers, but in my Mind I was victimizing myself towards them. The excuse was that I was ‘already doing something wrong’ towards them without knowing the one point I was doing that was ‘wrong’.
The judgment I was placing onto myself was ‘I am unworthy’ of being in the presence of the people that were going about their lives. So while in reality, I was already in the train, already on the street, I was not accepting myself as being on the street, already brushing shoulders with people I have never met before. ‘Setting things right’ before others set things right for me. Fearing other people’s blows as words/behaviours that I would police myself and if I felt I was doing something wrong, would ‘leash’ myself before anyone else were to do so.
When I was focusing on how relaxed/tense my body was, how I was breathing, the confusion I would put myself through just stopped because I stopped confusing myself with thoughts/emotions/feelings as memories/judgments/fears. And within this I understood that I was cooped up in my Mind for so long, that I was not seeing the people around me physically. The fact that I was sitting on the train, people sitting/standing on the train to get from A to B. I was not harming anyone by sitting on the train.
Keeping on with the perfection point tomorrow.