Hi Vineeto,
So it looks my attention is now shifting to this aspect of minimising ‘me’. I have a good fresh example also which is nice. So I was doing some BJJ training just now with one of my regular training partners and this new training partner who is an experienced MMA fighter looking to sharpen up his grappling skills. All in all we had a really good training session but there was 1 instance where I detected not only a diminishment in feeling good but also a link to a more persistent part of my identity which is clearly behind it all.
It happened as I was sparring with the new training partner whilst my regular training partner was watching the round play out. I am currently still a little crippled with my knee so (in an attempt to take out any dynamic motion) I gave up a dominant position to my opponent with the intent of working out of it safely and then countering. BUT I was kind of trapped haha and it took some good doing and a few failed attempts to finally escape.
Then there was this feeling of some kind of shame, of having failed to live up to some kind of a standard. So firstly I got back to feeling good and have been feeling good since. And actually there has now been this sincere, maybe even naive fascination at discovering just which part of ‘me’ is behind it all.
So to go step by step, I did in fact get back to feeling good, I am well aware of what the trigger was as well as the facts of the sequence and I also have some breadcrumbs leading to the part of ‘me’ which has been threatened. It is clear that my regular training partner watching was a pivotal part in setting the scene for this particular drama, it gives a clue as to what this part of my identity is all about… It is something like being a leader, that by demonstrating excellence I am helping to pull others forward in their own development. Which by itself this would not be a problematic MO, and yet there is something dirty here. Which means there must be a ‘good’ feeling behind this, what do ‘I’ get from being in this position of a leader demonstrating excellence. Clearly this is how ‘I’ belong, this is the position ‘I’ have carved for ‘myself’ in this particular group, and it comes with the perks of being respected, paid attention to, liked etc. And yet that ‘position in the group’ is a prison cell and I wish to be free from it.
I think that is as far as I got with it so far, I don’t expect this to be resolved immediately as I know this to be a very persistent part of my identity. It’s more I guess to run this by you, to see if this is the kind of investigating you were recommending in your posts to me. It does not feel like rumination, because I am feeling good and it is actually quite exciting/fun to dig into it, I am quite fascinated at unravelling it.
Ah it seems quite clear that it is the “being looked up to” part which is the dirty part, that is the ‘good’ feeling I was trying to have happen and of course when it all failed it turned into shame. So this “inspiring through excellence” is a furphy I tell myself so that I can cunningly play the game of being looked up to, that is what I was protecting.
Well that is something very beneficial which has come from this for sure, that this “self-less leader” is a furphy and underneath it is self-centricity, it is indeed about ‘me’ ‘me’ ‘me’. This drama has persisted in me for so long because I sold it to myself that it was about the benefit to others, it was hiding under the guise of some kind of nobility.