10-17-6 notes

Walking into a crowded gas station and café after spending 3 weeks at my friend’s in the northern Minnesota woods and I experienced instant sensory and perceptual overload.  Not a logical reaction, like I was shattered, splintered and fragmented.  Like my “me” state of mind that I was “in” when I walked into the door disintegrated and disappeared in response to the input of “so many possibilities” at the same time.  I could not help but react in almost panic, as if every potential and possible interaction that could happen was on some level happening instantly and simultaneously.  They all demanded my attention at the same time.  As if my walking in there changed “their world.”  How could anyone be that aware of what’s the possibility of interactions even though I only had to interact with the cashier.  Like everything got sensor-arily noisy.  Very LOUD!  I left as fast as I possibly could!

THAT was disorganizing!

Like the possibilities and potential for interactions, just the awareness of the potential for complexity – demanded and triggered a transitional state of mind, a shift.  But I got caught in an expanded version of transition that I KNOW is not normal!

I think others would remain completely unaware of the “essence of energy” present in that small space.  They would – as Temple Grandin would say – be unable to ignore almost all of the sensory and mental input in favor of the bigger picture which would have been focused and goal directed:  Comfortably and at their own internally relaxed pace they would have been able to do what they came there for – pay for their gasoline and leave.

It’s almost like little ghost selves dissolved out of all those bodies and came rushing toward me when I walked in the door.  Curious, push, forward, leering (some of them).  People DO have life forces and energy.  But we assume people are retained pretty much within the boundaries of their bodies.  Yet we are “sensing” all of the time – whether or not we are aware of it consciously.  The root of “sense” is journey, and how do we know that our senses don’t “reach out” and journey outside our bodies?  Just because these events are normally hidden and invisible to us?

States of mind:  Is it possible to begin to try to consciously choose them?  Isn’t a smile at a stranger walking toward me on the street a conscious choice?  Or can be?  Maybe “normal” people don’t have to think about becoming conscious of their states of mind.  Theirs just FLOW along, one into the next one.  But for those of us who had our “flow” broken in infancy as our brains developed – we don’t have the flow.  We have something else.  These abrupt shifts in states we can’t predict or anticipate and often can’t control.

What other choice do I have other than to be hyper aware?  With somehope I can learn and change – and intercept if I can actually either move faster than the state shifts so I can be ahead of them, or slow them way down, or both.

So is everyone’s state always organized around a value, something they need or want, like a goal?  Are all states fundamentally goal directed?  Goal directed states of mind?  But some of us sabotage ourselves by our “other” states taking over and interfering.

#1 being protected by our parents so that we know they are there for us to take care of us and keep us safe no matter what

#2 “feeling felt”