So I have been looking at what I mentioned in this post here - Journal de Henry - #335 by Kub933 with regards to that sense of waking on eggshells when interacting with people.
That aspect is still very much evident, it’s more or less there in most interactions. The interesting thing is that when I am feeling good it fades, when I am feeling excellent that aspect seems gone completely, there is only fun. I noticed this especially when doing my weekend hen party gigs. Usually before the job there is a certain current of anxiety that is very concerned with how they will react to me. Last weekend though I managed to dip into that place where there is only fun, and I found myself in the middle of this hen party, completely at ease, feeling excellent and with not a single part of me anxious about what may happen. It is very much the definition of all my energy being fed into the felicitous and innocuous feelings.
It’s really cool to experience this because it shows that this walking on eggshells it’s all to do with me, it is not ‘out there’ and it is not necessary at all.
Still though when I am back to more or less normal there is generally a holding back to some degree, and it seems to be to do with the volatility of peoples emotional reactions.
It is because when interacting with others it is almost impossible to ensure that some word I say or action I do does not bump into an emotion or belief and thus set off this entire reactionary response. Which usually leads to various forms of projecting, manipulating etc this is particularly evident in my work in customer service. Sometimes a customer is upset because they have misunderstood something, now for me to point out the facts of the situation is taken as an insult on them personally and of course this sets off a whole train of reactions that then have to be manoeuvred around successfully to keep some semblance of peace.
The main fear I have it seems is that I am afraid of what they will do, and not just the customers but people in general. There is this underlying fear that feels as though if I do not operate within this emotional framework successfully, I will have real consequences to deal with. Eg in the example of the customer they may go ahead and make a complaint towards me as a way proving to themselves that they were right after all.
On the other hand there is a resentment in me for having to navigate through this stuff at all, it goes something like “why do I always have to bite my lip when they are plainly wrong and refuse to acknowledge the facts”.
So the way out of this is not clear yet, I can see however that it is as always all to do with me. In most cases it is my fear of what could happen, and the general belief that something ‘bad’ will happen, that makes me enter this whole ‘game’ out of fear.
So it seems the thing to do is to actually see that it is safe to no longer play the game, to allow people to feel whatever it is that they are feeling, no longer looking to control how they react out of fear.
Of course this means being honest with myself as to wether I may be feeding into the situation with my own affective response. Yet it is pretty clear in seeing Richard writing on AFT or even @Srinath and @claudiu writing recently on the dharma overground, that even if I cut out my involvement completely, it does not prevent others from having reactionary emotional responses, those will end when humans are free of the instinctual passions.
There is also this interesting interplay between not triggering people too far and also not simply ‘going with the flow’. Because at the end of the day I probably don’t think and act like most people do, and there is good reason for this, if my friend wants to have a good long moan about the state of the world to me, am I just to nod and agree out of social politeness? Do I risk actually making it known what I think about the situation and potentially face their emotional responses? The cool thing is that this chain of events could actually benefit them (potentially)
I have tried that route of suppressing myself before and it does not make sense to me, after all why should I pretend to go along with the status quo when I have dedicated my life to finding something better, am I to forever remain silent out of fear? And what is the point of say hanging out with my friends if I am simply pretending to be like them? Do I not want to be close to my fellow human beings? And does that not entail not keeping a part of myself hidden?
Yet as above this has to be done in a way that is sensible and benign. All super interesting stuff to think about 
Lately there is a lot of confidence that I can live the answer to all these questions.
What I noticed as well when talking with @edzd and @henryyyyyyyyyy on zoom recently, is that when talking to individuals who are not as easily triggered the conversation can be so much more fascinating and beneficial to all concerned, it would be great to have this with everyone and not just actualists haha
, this is where the very ugly side of power, of being the ‘master’ became apparent. They were simply a pawn which was there to accept whatever I chose to do at a whim, and this is a terrible, terrible set up to have if I care about my fellow human being. This gave me the initial intent to actually solve this once and for all, because I could see what power does to others.
as my boss at work seemed in a particularly bad mood and without me going into detail, ended up using his power in a similar fashion to what I did the day before to my students. Except this time I was the ‘looser’, I was right at the bottom of that power structure. Experiencing myself a victim, helpless, simply an object to be abused by the one in power etc. Experiencing all this so deeply and from both sides has demonstrated just how rotten power is.
But if my intent is to be happy and harmless, then I need to do what I can and must to bring about change in how I feel and what I believe ( that are behind those feelings).
