I feel the push-pull of fear and duty pulling me forward. Pulling me inexorably into the future.
As I go, I feel emotions, feelings, relationships pass through me as they are finally purified, let go. They are cast off like old skins. But first, I must experience them again.
As I look at the unknown future; something different, something alien, I feel haunted.
Am I ready? Am I prepared? Will I even be able to walk, talk or see in this new, alien world? I sense a failure to prepare. Have I made the appropriate arrangement for this trip?
I am reminded of old dreams. The dreams come before my inner vision like real, tangible things. I can walk through them like I am in the dream. I see the dream like I am experience it, now, and yet I am fully awake and conscious. This is new. A totally new ability.
In my dreams, there is an overarching sense of guilt. I have forgotten about a job that I had. Only very faintly, foggy, vaguely, do I remember that I have a job. I feel guilt, for of course I have not been showing up for my shifts. I do not feel in any way any consequence for myself; I do not need the money and it is more of an inconvenient for me to have remembered that I have a job. But I feel guilt rather thinking of those who are expecting relief from their shifts.
In one dream, I feel happiness as I who up and there is another woman who with great relief thanks me for giving her a break. The job itself- I don’t know what it is. I wander around in a store. At some point, I come to the back room, as big as an acre, which is either a totally empty expanse, or completely full of manufacturing machinery.
I wonder if I am to remember or know what the job is. Did I agree to do a job? Not just unconsciously, because I don’t need to remember to do a job unconsciously; but in conscious awareness which necessarily requires that I remember my prior commitment to do this job. I wonder if I am too late. But, a sudden surge of urgency reminds me that if I am experience these feelings now, then now is when I am meant to experience them.
I’m not too late, then.
Optimism then floats me upward. And I am again struck by how this duality condundrum propels me or slows me. Quite to my chagrin, I realize that things that I “like”, or enjoy, slow my movement. I delay, unwilling to move. And it’s quite unconscious. Much like one trains a horse; make the right thing enjoyable, and he will perform reliably.
Conversely, only those “negative” experiences propel me forward. Again quite unconsciously. As the whip smarts on the hide, the horse leaps forward.
And I, the observer, am left in a confusing conundrum. I am not experiencing this enjoyment, or pain, as such… But I feel compassion for the one that does. I feel a deep, tender care for that one.
Even as I realize that this experience is empathy, I wonder from what perspective I am percieving from? I feel empathy for the one who feels the enjoyment or pain of a thing. Yet I am the one who compassionately, tenderly, and empathetically guides that one to the lessons that one needs. It’s as if looking down upon a body, and the body is me, but “I” am also the guide.
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