The Sentry

 

Yesterday after my run at Fullersburg Woods, I began thinking about "feeling at home."  I was, at that time, feeling at home in the woods, at home in the FB parking lot.  

Strange connection: I am currently "indexing" my blogs.  I came across a posting called "At home in the world":

At home in the world - link - a list of 5 different ways of being at home in the world.  Life on the rocks, home activities, home activities, relationships, the hand-chosen life, claiming things as your own.

Here are my notes from yesterday:

Places I feel at home: now, in car 45 degrees. khaki grass in parking lot planter still standing in March, stirring in breeze, lights from black lampposts have recently turned on, cool spilling into the open window of car.

I felt at home on the rock along lake Michigan.  There's the feeling that there are other important things in the world - to do lists, shopping, cleaning -- these are important things, but ow just be a side actor in the drama of the world (I was thinking: "a side character in a bad novel where the side characters don't matter much, they don't have real motivations)

Home: I have arrived.  (Thich Nhat Hahn idea). Comfortable, not scrutizined... knowing your expectations... having no expectations ON you... at rest.

Thinking about the part of your brain that is an overseer, a spotter at the top of the mast.. the sentry... looking for trouble... eyes peeed not just waiting.. alarm system on.... not threatened yet, but ready to be threatened... scanning the horizon.... there's a desire to turn down the sensitivity of that 'triggering mechanism'.  (Later Jennie and I are talking about this concept in others... and how you can feel the radiatiing unhappiness, unat-home-ness in people.  

I relate this "feeling at home" (or the opposite) to amygdala hijacking - your body FEELS agitated, pset and your brain creates a story that accommodates THAT feeling.  (therapist job is to "reframe"... meditators job is to investigate that feeling... where does it come from? what are the causes of my brain reacting in that way). Maybe there's a kind of amygdala hijacking going on all the time... we are always trying to interpret.

Thinking about how drinking beer lowers your sensitivity (not just beer... any dulling drug) and awareness of others' judging/claims on you... it flips the switch off, it turns the dial down.

At the end of my thinking, I was questioning the idea of how feeling at home is having no claims but on you...reflecting on "having no claim on you"... because you can feel at home with claims put on you... but also thinking that we choose are our claims as true freedom (I say yes to my connections).... and I was thinking that I want to recognize when things/the world claims me (the gravity of curiosity).

Reflection on the phrase: I want you to feel at home.... and how I was unsuccessful in the past 4 years having my kids feel that way.