An introduction to this series can be found here.

2. Frequent fantasies about having or deserving:

• Success.
• Power.
• Intelligence.
• Beauty.
• Love.
• Self-fulfillment.

I already feel intense mixed responses within me.  A deep breath comes.  The word “deserving” here conflicts with the opposite but simultaneous experience of feeling unworthy of these things.  Not in a grandiose way but in basic minimal right to survive and exist type of way.  I can feel a pinching in my shoulders as two very painful experiences that are seemingly, again, contradicting each other. The thought enters my mind that they should be counteracting each other to a tempered balanced state, but they can’t because they are so fragmented.  

Already without going into the details of the list I feel these two opposites meeting and acknowledging each other.  I will call them entitlement and worthlessness.  In my case I was taught by implicit treatment that I was not worthy of any of the above, or I was not inherently any of the above, and I was also taught explicitly by example that I was entitled to all of these things and to be seen for all of these things if only I did enough to earn it.  Nothing was ever enough, though.

There is so much tension and rigidity in my shoulders, I move them around a little bit.  They almost feel like they could break, but at the same time the movement feels good.  It feels like it would be worth it if they would break, and that is likely the worthlessness speaking, just wanting something and anything to change to relieve or distract from the suffering.  

A slow gentle deep breath comes, and I invite the words of entitlement and worthlessness back into my awareness.  When I think of entitlement my stomach squeezes, and I feel heat and pain rise up my neck and head.  I sense deep resentment at life itself for not handing me namely success, love, and self-fulfillment, as I would have expected by this point, by this age.  Another slow gentle deep breath comes and it feels like it’s making me aware that this is something to be gentle with.  I read back the words “deep resentment at life itself” and just a moment later it is already hard for me to believe that this is an expression that comes from me.  Again, this is how fragmented and unaware of each other the entitlement and worthlessness that live in me are.  A deep breath comes and my whole body moves with it.  There is a sense that this self-awareness is a little shocking to so much of me, like I’m in a shocking situation right now.  I picture a park near where I grew up and I let that environment be present, not sure if it is coming to provide an extra resource or what its purpose is, but nature usually is resourcing for me.  Clearly the part of me writing keeps being quite surprised at everything coming up.  It feels like there are a lot of layers here, just between entitlement and worthlessness, let alone each of the specific areas in bullet points.  

I return to the words “deep resentment at life itself.”  I look at the words success, love, and self-fulfillment.  I feel a warmth that is almost a little too hot around my throat and chest and in my arms.  I do feel gentle and it does feel like there is a settling in my being.  I’m surprised there is already settling because I am familiar with anger and grief and fear taking over with these topics, but instead there feels like such a slow moving glancing around within myself and a clarity with what I’m seeing.  There is a little stiffness in my neck and shoulders, like a hesitation to move too much, following the example of the breath to be gentle.  And it feels like the gentleness is working.   

My mind thinks this should be packed with lots more words and exploration, but there does not seem to be movement with it.  It feels like it is part of the love and forgiveness and home that I’m feeling.  So I invite the unworthiness, gently, and offering to revoke the invitation if needed.  I look at the words again, and intelligence and beauty and love stand out for me through the lens of unworthiness.  I continue, acutely aware of this slow moving gentle awareness witnessing this entire process, and I finally feel the rawness around my entire being.  Right inside of my skin all around me feels very raw.  A gentle breath comes, lightly soothing of the rawness; it doesn’t help or take it away, but it becomes a light and gentle presence that the rawness can feel and knows it’s not alone.  

I invite my awareness to worthlessness again.  I feel this sense of “home” holding it, these layers of forgiveness and love and togetherness and settling, the inherent beauty in this.  It brings to mind that maybe the feeling unworthy of beauty was just a part of me so out of alignment with nature and my natural impulses, untouched by fear and anger and unprocessed grief, that it was needed to lead me back to this true sense of beauty.  In this moment I feel like the embodiment of beauty, and it is not something I am entitled to, nor unworthy of.  The image of the needle in the center of my being comes to mind.  My mind interjects that I should be overjoyed right now, but I feel like I’m just walking on a path of neutrality, finding my balance with each step of this exploration, oriented within reality outside of me and the reality within my being.

Again I invite unworthiness of intelligence, and again it feels neutralized, like there is a completely different sense of intelligence in this moment, in alignment with the intelligence I need for the guidance provided to my life.  It is clear to me that my intelligence has been compared to a standard outside of me in the past, by those outside of me, and myself.  I picture Einstein’s fish failing at climbing a tree.  And again so gently, (…I don’t know how I’m being this gentle with my exploration…), I gently feel the intelligence that is in me, and just how precisely it is designated to my path in this life.  

I do not feel excessively vulnerable at this moment, but as I consider this, I am reminded that for a while now I have recognized pain around the perimeter of my skin that has felt like metal, and I had recently started to call it “fear” in order to help me accompany it with compassion.  I am seeing now that this rigidity is where it is feeling raw.  

A house fly lands on my hand and I feel gentle with it, as I do with myself.

This feels very matter of fact, and part of me wants to find a way to remind myself of this in the future.  My attention just goes back to the feeling of alignment with the intelligence, self-fulfillment, and beauty life has given me.  

I return to entitlement.  It seems to be breathing with each breath.  I invite worthlessness.  It too feels each breath as it comes.  We all breathe together.