Feeling Bad.

Something occurred to me this 2009 holiday season, which I am unsure I can pinpoint my exact "ah ha" moment, but I think it had something to do with watching full seasons of the TV show "House" back-to-back on DVD.

If you have never seen an episode of House, as I hadn't until sometime in 2009 at which point I became almost a House junkie, but I digress...you wouldn't know that House is short for Dr. Gregory House, a highly sought after medical diagnostician who basically by most social conventions (and his staff and boss on the show) would be considered an asshole.  He appears to be able to get away with it because despite his motives (his patients and curing them are more like solving a puzzle to Dr. House than anything else) he is almost always right and saves lives.

Between watching this and all the family dynamics in my family at the holidays, I realized how much I feel like I have been programmed to feel bad about so very many things.  I don't seek to play the blame game here.  At this point in my life there are probably so many contributing factors it would most likely take the rest of my life to track them all down.

Anyway, I feel the real "ah ha" in it for me is that despite all my spirituality searching, self-help reading and seeking to apply this knowledge in my life; when it comes to feeling bad because I feel like this is the socially acceptable way I must act not to be considered a "bitch" (or probably closer to the truth...so you will like me), I appear to be a frequent flier. I seemed to be on autopilot unaware of this behavior and its effects.

If the Law of Attraction has taught me anything, it is that like attracts like.  Looking back over my life I can so see how feeling bad energetically has attracted more events in my life to feel bad about.

While the whole law of attraction thing seems to be dying down; I still feel much of what Esther Hicks as Abraham includes in her books with her hubby, Jerry, applies.  To really synthesize it beyond "like attracts like", I offer " the better you feel, the better you feel".  Conversely, the worse you feel, the worse you feel.  In the same way that no matter how many times I might want to write the word "good" by spelling it "bad" ain't gonna fly, feeling bad will never radiate an energetic vibration of attracting outer experiences to feel good about.

Plus, it seems like the rules about what a person is socially supposed to feel bad about are so subjective anyway.  It would be one thing if there was say ten commandments for what you should feel bad about and everything else you can feel good about, but there is not.

For instance, a friend had lent me a book.  While reading it I folded over the edge of one of the pages because there was something on that page I wanted to remember.  I do this in my books all the time.  It never occurred to me that someone thought so much about a $10 book that they would never dream of defacing it in anyway.  Anyway, this made my friend very angry.  So much so that she yelled at me and basically called me a moron for defacing her book.  Truth be told, I felt bad about that for quite a while.  Would House?  Would I now?  I don't think so.  How did I know?  Would feeling bad bring the book back to pristine condition?  And why would we feel that a loving friend would really desire to make their friend feel bad?  Or just because they felt it was okay for them to try to make us feel bad for our actions (which I believe technically they have the right to do) does this make me obligated to have to feel bad?  I don't feel it does.  What is funny is it seems it usually makes someone angrier when you don't give them the behavior they were expecting to illicit from you. 

For example, the dreaded "silent treatment".  This was a biggie in my family growing up.  Not as much as it was for my dad.  My dad's mother use to go weeks without talking to anyone if she got in a mood for whatever reason.  And back then what was her husband going to do, divorce her?  I don't think so.  Luckily, my current relationship is a million times less dysfunctional.  Although, I find it interesting that it is about the only way my man ever acts out, so to speak.  At least in this case, I was conditioned to be wise to this behavior.  Instead of feeling bad or giving in to the silent treatment by trying to appease him, I simply went on my merry, happy way with life behaving as if everything is fine.  Truth was he was actually in the long run punishing himself more than me.  When he was ready though, we had a very grown-up chat about it.  I mention this because he did say that it made him angrier to see me not engage in his power play.  In his mind it meant I didn't care.  I do care.  It's just that I am finally strong enough to realize I have the right to say "no" when I want to without feeling bad about it or feeling like I should be punished or feeling I've done something wrong.  He has the same right when it comes to things I ask of him.

It says something about you if you are the person engaging the silent treatment.  It says something about you if you give in to it.  It says something about you if you choose not to give into it.  And lest you think I am a saint (LOL), I used to have a bad habit of writing hate letters.  I used to think that if I wrote to someone to complain about the person I was angry with listing all the so-called horrible, awful things the person I was angry with had done to me...well, revealing this would make the person I was angry with see the error of their ways.  Result:  they'd come rushing back to me apologizing profusely for being so horrible to me.  Truth is it just really made me look psycho.

My real point in all of this is that if one can rely on things written in books by Abraham and the like, then each present moment is like a blank slate as far as the Universe is concerned.  A fresh start.  An opportunity to create anew.  An opportunity to redefine yourself and start being someone you feel good about with everything past forgiven and forgotten.  By becoming a little more aware of when we feel bad and why AND if it is really necessary or healthy, for that matter, or simply something we had always done because we thought we were supposed to; we might be able to make a choice to not feel bad.  Instead we may choose to feel good for loving our self in this way.

It seems to me we expect as a society that people are supposed to act a certain way and if they don't then we somehow have the right to make them "tow" the line, so to speak. Or we should feel bad because we don't drive a certain car or live in a certain neighborhood or wear a certain designer label or act our age or watch TV or eat certain foods or be a certain weight or not have the most current hair style or not be cool enough or have a great job or this list could go on and on.  None of this can hurt you or "make" you feel bad about your self unless you agree to allow it to make you feel bad.

Instead, if you allow yourself to feel good about being the best you (by which I mean the you that you love...and you know the difference of how it feels when you do things you love compared to doing things just 'cuz you think you should love them or to impress someone else or prove something, etc.) and making choices from that place, in my mind it is like living on the bonus plan.

The bonus:  you feeling bad less and radiate that vibration less.  You feel less like you have to do or be something you don't desire to.  You feel good because you have reclaimed your God-given right to do what you want as much as someone else who has claimed their God-given right to do what they want (not to mention, they thought it was their God-given right to make you do what they want or else you should feel bad).  AND you are enjoying your life on your terms more, living most of it being, doing and having things that feel good.  The more you feel good, the more you feel good.  The more you feel good, the less you feel the need to have another do what you do or fit in or any of those things.  You celebrate originality.  You are content.  You feel good.  And your feeling these things is not predicated on the opinion of others, which can be given or taken away at their whim.

Okay, you may lose a few friends when you take this stand.  Yet how much of a true friend were they anyway?  You may also lose a most favored status with some family members, especially parents who we have been conditioned not to say no to without fear of punishment (assuming this is your experience).  Still, you gain in peace of mind.  You gain in feeling good.  You gain in feeling good attracting more experiences in your life to feel good about.  When the heart and mind are at peace and feeling good, the health of the physical body can't help but follow.  The mind is first cause over the body.  And it has to be true if House says so.  Right?  Psycho?

Or perhaps true to my intent... Bjork's BLEEP Blog: you never know what I'll blog about next?