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THE EMOTIONAL CLEARING PROCESS / required activity vs activity as escapism?

« on: December 06, 2020 »

When is activity escapism? When is it required?

I'm struggling to complete projects that I take on. This sometimes even extends to daily life chores. Almost everything requires a mental "triumph of the will" type effort and I feel a strong resistance in my solar plexus to almost any task. It would be accurate to say that most of my effort is mental as there is 0 emotions driving it. Sometimes the resistance gets so strong I cannot continue as a mental confusion sets in. At that point, I get annoyed or angry with myself and self-hating.

On the occassions where I muster the will and maintain the effort and "push through", the resistance in my solar plexus is overcome and a sense of power appears - as if the rest of the body comes into play - and interest and a certain kind of pleasure comes along with it. It's not just a pleasure of "achieving", but it's also a kind of ease, calm and harmony of the body where I experience joy, not just from the activity but from this energy that has somehow been unlocked. The "trouble" is that the next day, I begin a new from an even lower place energetically, if that makes sense. Or if I somehow manage to maintain a level of activity for 3 or 4 days, inevitably on the 5th I will do something to relax, which takes me out, sometimes for several days on end.

I don't know how to process this from an "emotional clearing" standpoint. I feel like it's a deep issue because I even doubt the validity of clearing it, except from the "pushing through" approach. Also I'd like to ask if you're familiar with 4th Way/Gurdjieff? Work (whether physical, emotional or intellectual) is a big point in that system and culturally, it's something that is very hard to shake off as a guy. I have a vacation now - zero obligations - and yet I feel like I'm wasting my life by not doing something - and at the same time I'm not drawn to anything I "like", even a hobby feels like "work" to me.

Am I looking for an easy way out? Should I just accept that I am going to have this resistance to anything that I do?

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THE EMOTIONAL CLEARING PROCESS / art, inspiration and emotional blockage

« on: September 22, 2020 »

Hi John,

What would you advise to do in regards trying to create art while being held back by emotional blockages?

Some context: Since childhood I've had the dilemma of being in a science, right-brain oriented, "safe"  career (software) vs. exploring a life in the arts. At the core, I know I'm an artist. Or at least I would very much like to fully express this side of myself. But emotional blockages are holding me back big time. This is somewhat of a family issue: my Dad had talent painting as a kid but was forced, told to enter a career in science because "painting is not really a serious profession". Somehow this repressed drive has been passed on. A couple of years back, through some various practices, some of the emotional blockages started "to thaw" and I began exploring music. It was my only escape, and something that I looked forward to...

Fast forward to last year, I had something of a prolonged traumatic circumstance: lost my clients, lost all interest in the work I was doing, went broke in a foreign country, was numbing myself daily with weed, etc... I hit rock-bottom. I moved in back with my Dad (let's say no one was happy with the arrangement) and... things did not get better. Although I was momentarily free of financial worries, I thought that maybe I could resume or at least finish some songs to at least prove to myself that I could do this - at least as an outlet for self-expression. However I found out that I experienced deep shame whenever I did anything creative in my Dad's presence. So what happened is that although I wanted to express myself... I had to constantly stiffle my singing and creative impulses on a daily basis. Felt like a bird in a cage. This of course did not lead to anything good - I kept self-rejecting, and in due time the physical symptoms manifested as well (I barely sweat and my chest feels numb/cold most of the time).

Today I'm back on my feet, at least financially, but physically and emotionally I still have not recovered from my time at home. I will occasionally get a flare of inspiration - it can be anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour where inspiration and motivation to create is flowing through me - only to hit a dry well for months on end. I cannot finish what I start. If something sounds great today, the next day I am back in a low-energy state where I cannot even listen to what I created. I barely listen to music anymore for enjoyment. It's like the moment I get a spark of creativity, a great darkness blocks every motivation to continue or do anything else.

Should I set an intention to "keep at it" even if I feel zero motivation on the days when I have negative motivation? I know that it's all related to my emotional blockage... but I don't know how to process it. I meditate daily, have done a thing called the Presence Process and lastly stumbled on your book. But it has been almost a year and a half since I started, and I still feel stuck.

Thanks for reading and for any advice you might have.

-S