Pause For Thought

[MajestyJo]

Dealing With Frustrations

For me it is the Serenity Prayer (it won't wear out), talking about it and trying to let it go. My sponsor always told me to inventory my side of the street, clean it, and change what is my to own and let go of what isn't. As you say SunnyGirl, it is freedom of choice. Most times it is good to detach myself from things, like going downtown or going to bridge, it never solved anything but sitting and looking at four walls. If I get tired of being on the internet and reading, I can always go downstairs to sit in the community room. Sometimes belong along with me is not being in good company and I need to get out of the self by helping others or being with others. If I isolate, I isolate the problem and sometimes my thinking can blow it out of proportion and that is why it is good for me to pick up the phone and call my sponsor, a friend, and/or my sister.

I will also do a meditation with my cards, and work with stones on crystals, or use my books on the cards and stone. In order to use them, I need to say the Serenity Prayer, quiet my mind, and ask for help and they give me direction and guidance and they calm me down so I can go within to find my own truth. Over the years, I have learned that I don't need them to do that to get there, but they were a tool to show me the way and now when I just don't know or am in too much pain and overwhelmed, they bring me back to where I need to be. I don't have the money to invest in all the stones, so the cards work for me.

In my book Osho Transformation they say the following:

Worry for me is another word for frustration

Have you ever taken note of one thing?- the present is always juicy, the present is always blissful. Worry and suffering are created either by what you wanted to do in the past and could not do, or by what you want to do in the future and don't know whether you will be able to do or not. Did you ever notice, did you every look at this small truth, that there is no suffering in the present, there is no worry? This is is why the present does not distrube the mind-anxiety disturbs the mind. There is no suffering in the present. The present doesn't know suffering-the present is such a small moment that suffering cannot fit into it. In the present only heaven can fit, not hell. Hell is too big! The present can only be peace, can only be happiness.

This has always given me help to staying in the moment. My sponsor always use to say she had three seconds because she was narcoleptic (a sleeping disorder and she would have seisures on the bus or where ever she sat down and people would think she was sleeping not realizing that she needed to be woke up).

What ever you call it frustration, worry, stress, anxiety, anger, it all boils down to emotion and it is about dealing with them in a way that is good for us.

Anger (What frustration can build into!

Next time you feel angry, go and run around the house seven times, and afterwards sit under a tree and watch where the anger has gone. You have not repressed it, you have not controlled it, you have not thrown it on somebody else....

Anger is just a mental vomit. There is just no need to throw it on somebody. Do a little jogging, or take a pillow and beat the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed.

In transformation you never control, you simply become more aware. Anger is happening-it is a beautiful phenomenon, it is just like electricity in the clouds....

My counsellor had me do the pillow thing. I never really felt the anger and yet it was there buried very deep. What I didn't know was that it was okay to have these feeling and I tended to exaggerate them because they were unknown to me. I find I can still go into those old habits that allow me to stuff instead of letting them go because the role is familiar and seems to be the much easier softer way and we know that doesn't work in the long run.