The paralysis of analysis.

I had a difficult session with Ranjana a few days ago. Really languid. I felt intellectually vacant and distant from our conversation. 

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It took me another couple of days to get back to writing this post.

Every once in a while I get to this place where I ask myself about the perils of self-reflection. Am I not hyper-critical of myself? Can't self-reflection eventually turn into masturbatory flagellation? It's like I'm a chimpanzee enamoured with my reflection, stuck in this space of first-time discovery of the self.  

Is this what I look like? 

Like a magnifying mirror where unseen pores are now as large as the moon. 

Is this what I look like? 

Isn't the body disgusting?

This selfie culture of best angles, Oprah-lighting and 45 shots to get one where you don't look, like, well, like yourself. 

I don't want to look like me. I'd like to look like her please. 

This place where my mistakes are some easily remembered and my triumphs are so quickly left behind. 

How can I be so aware of my flaws, but know so little about other parts of myself? 

Why is my depressive muscle so much stronger than the other parts of my personhood?

How do you practice something that is alien to you? 

How do I live a life?

I'm in my 30's. Haven't I already wasted so much of it? The experiences I've collected are not happy ones. But is that permanent? Can I serious, shitty time be moved away from? Can I grow, up and out?

I reject my maturity. 

Am I the fly?

So, Tuesday of this week, two days ago, I had my third session with Ranjana. It was, intense. Both of us were on point. I was open and really able to verbalize a lot of stuff, and she has a point of view and approach that is very different from what I've experienced in the past, so it allows me to be directed and questioned in ways I haven’t experienced before.

We talked a lot about shame, and guilt, and how you can be traumatized by something you want to let go of. How people are associated to these events, and you then become haunted by people that become ghosts. These ghosts, the people behind them are irrelevant, it’s the trauma of the experience that imprints on you.

I guess that’s where I'm at now. I'm trying to understand, and grow away from these imprints. I think that became clear in my session.

I got home, drained. It was raining, and I opened my patio door to let some fresh air in. My attention was drawn to a fly who kept hitting the glass pane of the sliding-door. He just doesn’t see the glass. He sees the world, he sees outside. He sees where he wants to go and just can’t comprehend this blockage - this interruption. Can he comprehend the window? Is it outside of his frame of reference?

I stared at the little fly, and became lost in thought. It’s as if I was pulled out into the sky, receding back into the universe, while asking myself if the fly and I are that different. My glass barrier is probably all internal. Maybe it’s my ego. Maybe I am completely unable of picturing it. Maybe it is beyond my comprehension.

So the fly and I were one in that nanosecond. I opened the door and let him out.

There was a melancholy in watching him fly away, because he got out, and I didn't.