Tain't natural

Several things whirling 'round my already swirly twirly brain in these wee small hours of the morning.  

One is an awareness I can't shake since last weekend's Kirkridge Retreat gathering - of how often my thoughts still take me aback with their naked negativity.  

Another is a friend's comment, made two weeks ago, that still leaves me flap doodled with disbelief - that the tendency to put off, delay, just ignore doing things that clearly benefit us is a natural, normal inclination. 

The third is acknowledging it's nuts to drag my feet having two in-sorry-shape teeth - one frighteningly so - extracted, even though financing was arranged a year ago.

Shocking to realize a) my thinking still leans toward dark, harsh judgment, b) that human nurture is mistaken for our truest nature, and c) that it's possible that a stunning number of otherwise fine & dandy humans are locked in the clutches of pernicious self-loathing.


FACT:  all three of these are learned.  They tain't natural to any of us, but learned.  And all three are false.  False when we first stumbled across them, false when they seemed to explain something, false every time we fall prey to their mess.  The realities are... 

• It's not surprising my thoughts & comments still occasionally stray into the  weirdly negative - an unexpectedly yet unremitting dark view of life & others was my norm, decade after decade.  But it is nurture, not my nature.  And not their nature either, however it might have felt to them.

• Sorry, friend, but you are sorely mistaken.  Our true nature would NEVER support us doing anything that would harm others ~or~ ourself.  Our nature holds our existence on par with others. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" - as, not above or instead of. 

• My beyond decayed tooth might have nothing to do with my swirly twirly brain - but it might, and there is literally no reason it didn't come out early in 2015.

 

Heading back to bed.  Still over an hour before the alarm clock does its thing at 5:15 a.m.;  hopefully, will drop into sweet natural slumbers far from the fretting that woke me up & nudged me into the computer studio.  Mayhaps all I needed to do to drop back to sleep was acknowledge that what keeps coming up for me could be pegged as our normal, but tain't now & never was natural.