Yesterday, in the midst of an experience, I was confronted with a risk taking moment. I became aware that I had a choice to make. Intuitively, I got the sense that I will fail and deliberately decided that I want to experience such experience. That felt as the right thing to do, and it was the right thing to do. The realisation came later, though. In the moment, the decision I took, felt like risk-taking. Only post factum I realised that it was the safe option under the camouflage of risk.
To provide a little context, the situation I am referring to was related to my ability to show myself in authentic way. It required my presence to be real and vulnerable, the setting included other people, this detail is important because of the additional expectation factor I felt I had to fulfil. I decided to present myself in a certain way, thought it through and finally showed myself. In the moment I was doing it, literally half way through, I got this out-of-body experience, suddenly felt a strong detachment from myself. I was in the centre of experience but couldn’t find myself in it. Questions like: What am I doing? Who am I doing it for? ran through my head but there was no way back. So that’s where the actual risk-taking started. I saw my behaviour, my so-called “superpowers”, buttons I am pushing, yet, I didn’t believe it. Instead, pretence, insecurity and the desire to pull the attention revealed to me.
I wanted to experience failing and so I did. I don't think anyone noticed anything unusual but I knew it wasn’t right. After the meeting I took time to understand what was happening and make use out of the situation. I also had a lot of physical and emotional discomfort. It was profoundly useful but also very uncomfortable. When I was looking back I noticed something distinct. My intuition prior the event was changing. First, let's call it “a wave”, I intuited that it doesn’t feel right to act this way I got this feeling just for a brief moment. Then the second, the ego wave, came in. Impulsive and explosive urge to be in a certain way. It came with more fire and daring quality. After that the third wave paid me a visit, felt like the default mode was activated of how I am supposed to do things. In terms of duration, each wave lasted longer than the previous one. All three of them were intuitions. The last wave, when I started to notice the external environment, transitioned into conscious awareness of others’ presence in the space. That’s where the decision-making took place. If I try to place these three intuitions in relation to truth, the first one is most aligned to the actual post effect of the experience.
This experience remained me of the man, the lion, and the monster Plato uses to describe consciousness. Where the man represents reason (first wave), the monster represents appetites and drives (second wave) and the lion stands for society and moral (third wave). Perhaps this connection is too far fetched but I think it reinforces the idea of layeredness of our information processing and reactions.
What was the most interesting for me is the relation to the first wave. It felt like it came closest to the real me, there was real honesty in it. Since honesty became the focus of my attention recently, the difficulty to access my own honesty is becoming more and more alive and obvious. The emptiness and inaccessibility that I encounter cause confusion and distress. I am soaking in the default mode of my imaginative identification, fearing of not being able to find anything in case it fails. In the meantime, as I am grasping something that is real, the clear sense of urgency to connect with a deeper truth is growing. The main question is how to reshuffle these intuitions and take the deeper one closer to the foreground. I’ll observe and try to move things around. The potential excites me and it seems there is a possibility to access the deeper truth beyond the ego and default mode.