The chapel

Our castles in the air are not a bad thing. Our thoughts are not a bad thing. Like most things in life they are neither bad nor good. They just are. They're not real, they're not bad, they're not good. Sigh, how comforting.

I like the analogy of castles on the air. It's a good story. I like thinking about how it would be to put myself inside someone else's castle and look out the windows from there. They might see a different view. Maybe a better one. Maybe their behaviour might make more sense if I understood that the beautiful garden I keep asking them to join me in looks like a dark and scary swamp from the window they are trying to see it through.

Oh hey! So that situation I was all up in arms about.. I don't feel like I learned much about that situation one way or the other. It came and went like the wind or a wave on the sand. Which is maybe teaching me something. Without the regular resistance there was a much less stressful and shorter experience. So, there's that.

What I do feel like I learned about was my own castle in the air. I noticed that after setting my catapults to ready, what normally happens is that I retreat to this chapel I have set up. A room with a monument to my being right. A room with no windows to the outside, completely surrounded on all sides with a wall constructed out of fear. I know this chapel well. I think I used to spend a lot of time in there. What I do in the chapel is worship this monument with mantras of fear. "this is not right", "things should not be this way", "I am a victim", "I cannot do this". Chanting louder and louder and faster and faster until something demands to be done. That's when I usually let fly the the catapults.

This time I noticed. I noticed that the chapel was not a holy place (like I thought it was). It's more like a panic room. (I wonder if panic rooms are not maybe rooms to alleviate panic, but rooms for panic to grow stronger.. As it is for me here). I noticed that surrounded completely by walls of fear I was unable to see what was really going on. All that I could see clearly was fear.

When I chose to leave the panic room, and exposed myself to what was really going on (without judgment), all of the fear and mantras kind of evaporated. They left, I think, because they were not a true reflection of what was actually going on.

Interesting.

I am interested to see what more I can learn about my castle of ideas. Looks like I have some renovations to do.