Day of Feeling 20

I ended last night thinking about feeling criminal.

I can say almost immediately: feeling like a criminal is a vulnerable feeling. This is not much of a stretch, or an abstract analysis. This is what the feeling is. If you are not in fear for your life from the long arm of the law; if you don't feel like the jig is up, the news is out, they finally found you; you do not feel like a criminal. This is not a strong person confident in what he did - this is someone who feels terrified.

I guess part of the big feeling shift in July '07 was the feeling of not being safe; of being vulnerable in a way that I had never felt before. Last night I spent a good part of the night worrying about the conversation I was going to have with the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department in the morning about how their amnesty program could help me with the little bit of a pickle I ended up in after last year. I fretted about it after I woke up, too. It was to such an extent that I needed to sit down and really focus on how afraid I was and think about what to do about that. I ended up calling, and it was fine. It seems they offer this amnesty program for just the type of situation I am in; and I am doing the right thing by working with them on it; and they are happy to help me do what I need to do.

What was I afraid of? I guess I felt really vulnerable; I was worried that knowing I had done something wrong would be enough for the hammer to fall on my head. A lack of trust, a feeling of being unable to help myself. I have read the Stoics and the mystics; I know that the core of me is something that these little conflicts can't touch. Yet I am afraid and afraid and afraid for myself over and over again.

I got into a little conflict at work. It was not an ideal situation; but it was workable, and I worked through it best I could. But how do I feel afterward? Afraid for myself. Afraid of retribution and getting attacked, of getting blamed. The feeling: I have done something wrong and there is a bounty on my head. Nowhere is safe!

What is the deal with that? It's incredibly egotistical, I find. Feeling that I am so important that I need to be captured, destroyed, subdued somehow for other people to be safe. Other people are fine.

I want to take a break from this puzzle to say that one reason I might be a little dissatisfied with my life is that my To Do lists are so narrow. I want better goals. Why don't I have grander goals?

I feel like I need that healing, first.

The criminal feeling, the Guilt, really permeates How I Am These Days. Can I just flip it around by doing better things with my life, being creative?

I feel: no. I need to sit down and heal. It feels good to change from one way of being to another, from being closed up to being creative and open. But to find a good place of balance, to be engaging the problem itself, rather than just finding solutions, ways out, seems to be a sounder path.

But then the matter of how to heal?

How to heal the criminal feeling?

A few ideas: rest, take care of myself, allow myself to feel distress and fear without getting irritated at the fact that I'm feeling them.

A few weeks ago I was trying to engage with the fiery, raging bull inside of me. Supposedly I let him out of his den. Where did he go? My masculine energy. I feel like he can only stay out if I create space for him, if I generate habits that support him.

Identifying habits that push away masculine energy, strength, a sense of importance and solidity, would be a good task. Writing that, I am concerned that I won't find any, that I will just find places where the self-respect, the inner-strength is lacking and point at them like a tattling child, saying they need to be different. I don't have to do that. I can look meekly and silently at what I'm doing, following the chain of cause and effect until I find something that will make significant change.

What could that be?

With that, I go to bed.

Good night, all.