Well it is no surprise to me that chapter 4 starts off with its focus on the morning pages. Especially since I have been avoiding the morning pages. The Chapter talks about integrity and follow through- and the follow through for this experiment is all about doing the morning pages and the artist’s date. Yes, and it talks about how participants start to slack on the morning pages and why! The author believes that we back off of our morning pages when we are at the point where we are about to uncover something uncomfortable about our lives. If it is our relationships, jobs, feelings about our own worth etc, we may not want to face it, so we stop doing the morning pages. So, I confess I have not done one day of morning pages this week. It does not feel good to admit it, but I shall admit it. Why I ask myself? Time- is my biggest excuse- I don’t have time in the morning- too much is going on! But, if I am honest , it really is because I don’t like what I am writing. A lot of dumping and complaining and I really hate to start my day that way. I would prefer to be in gratitude, but I am supposed to write what I feel and I just dump on to the page the same issues that I struggle with on a daily basis. Even though I do make a concerted effort daily to move forward from it- I can only remember a short time in my life when I was liberated from my defined “issues”. Control generally is the underlying theme and to tell you the truth the morning pages leave me with a feeling of failure and I do not like it! In contrast to stream of consciousness writing techniques, there could be intentional writing techniques that I may want to explore. I am not sure if this is the intent though. My good friend has recommended to me the book called Buddha Mind where you consciously set in the brain positive neural pathways, therefore you lay tracks of happiness that could lead to a habit of happiness. Morning pages are what you write as soon as you get up, including disturbing dreams or leftover feelings from the night before. Apparently there is supposed to be a breakthrough with this kind of writing as opposed to intentional writing and as challenged as I am with having faith in the unknown, I decided to just let three days pass without doing the pages the way they were intended. Maybe I needed the break and will start up again tomorrow. Gonna see how I feel. Morning pages are a bit easier than the other task for the week called Reading Deprivation- you are not supposed to read at all for the week. This is going to be hard since I am a complete book addict!
So I will leave that for tomorrow as I contemplate what my artist’s date is going to be. I did take a look at ancestry.com to do a little searching into my roots-having reconnected with relatives that I did not know very well, I am very curious about my history more and more- it is fascinating and that might be fun. I also watched my wedding video ( I was married in 2000) because today would have been my parent’s 48th wedding anniversary and I wanted to see my mom and dad together. (My mom passed away 2 years ago) Watching it, I got nostalgic. I did get to see my parents gushing with love. That was true love. And, the message was all about love. That was a nice visit to a past memory where happiness ruled the day. Love is creative and now I have to come up with something for this week to make up for the slacking- but if I am looking to recover a sense of integrity or recovering a sense of self than I gotta be a little more gentle with myself. Besides tomorrow is the first day of August, I love new months and I love beginnings- so with that away I go to embrace a new month to embrace new bliss! Pray for me!:) I could always use additional prayers, if you need it too just ask and you got it! Praying for a successful recovery of integrity for us all!
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