Many ways we engage with our mind

Jan 30
Father, was too tired to do hata. Woke up at 5.40 am and did breathe watching, followed by shakti and shambavi. It was good.

Father, luckily I ignored my negative tots on Z and me. Z and I are still intact. We spoke nearly 2 hours yesterday.

Soul without shame
Ur normal reactions to judgement are not true defenses against attack; they are engagements. U tolerate the judge, accepts its terms (that it is the authority and can pass judgements) and endeavour to minimise, deflect or argue with the judgement. What u don't do, is to put an end to the relationship altogether.

To truly defend against an attack - that is, to disengage - would be to see the judgement as an unacceptable invasion or intrusion and take whatever action is needed to end it. This would mean not being involved with the judge at all.

Below are the modes of engagement;
1. Counterattack
U fight back and defeat the judge.
U usually blame others and completely rejecting an deficient feeling in urself.
It is normally explosive, intense and quick - highly reactive. No thinking involves, just action.
The result is an escalation of the interaction and continued avoidance of ur real experience

Soul
Tot of ex-boss.

2. Rationalise
U try to justify or explain urself to argue ur way out of the judgment.
Ur body may feel stiff and dry.
Men are particularly prone, which is experienced as withdrawal from emotional contact with themselves or others.
Normally rationalising to avoid feeling hurt.

Soul
I think I am rationaliser.

3. Absorb or collapse
U give up internally, replacing opposition with compliance in an effort to appease the attacker and make the situation ok again.
A feeling of dramatic loss of energy, a hopelessness and often depression.
Tend to exaggerate ur deficiency and failure, turning molehills into mountain.
This seems to be a more socially accepted way for women to engage than for me.

Soul
Tot of J and other gals.

Soul without shame
Ones normally rationalise to avoid feeling hurt. Thus u kept goin. Once u recognised the feeling, u be able to attend to that feeling and u will disengage from the judge.

Being able to recognise when u engage an attack immediately offers u an avenue of disengaging - simply to stop. This is a real option but it is more difficult. The next one will be to develop awareness of urself and the ways u engage. In addition, knowing which mode is ur familiar style can help expand ur awareness.

Soul
Exactly. Nowadays when I can see myself rationalising, I would stop and go into the feeling. The sadness will goes but rationalising is never-ending.

Soul without shame
Each mode of engagement roughly with one of the three centers of the body

1. Counterattacking - Belly
(Strength and weakness)
Instinctive, fast, without tot.
The underlying assumption is that survival depends on strength and power. The childhood belief of those who engage this way was that the only way to stop the attack was to fight back, to resist, not to be taken prisoner. For whatever reason, not fighting back felt too devastating to endure.

By counter-attacking, u unconsciously hoped to have ur own strength recognised, preventing further attacks by intimidating others. If u r the one who counterattacks, ur response must be immediate, and u will tend to have little feeling or awareness of urself at the time.

To stop the cycle of counter-attack, u will need to step back from that instinctual show of force long enough for something else to happen. What will help u is to slow down. By slowing down, u bring in more awareness of ur heart and head centers.
Counter-attackers find vulnerability especially difficult because to them it implies weakness.
Normally used in a sustained intimate relationship.

2. Rationalising - originates in the head center
(Right and wrong)
And tends to be quite mental and out of touch with feeling or direct action. If u habitually react in this way, u probably learned as a child that what was most respected was the power of the mind. Ur greatest hope for avoiding judgement was to justify urself and hopefully convince ur parents through reason that u were right and maybe they would accept and approve of u. The worst thing u could do was to become irrational or emotional, plead or throw urself on their mercy, for that would only prove that u had no logical support for ur position, that u were wrong. Feelings had to be hidden and no action could be taken without careful foretots

To break the rationalising engagement will mean letting go of the primacy of the mind. If u r a rationaliser, u must practice being aware of ur heart after being judged, or noticing what ur body wants to do.
For u, thinking replaces all other activity and basically locks any awareness of urself in the moment. It is particularly difficult for a rationaliser to feel the pain of the attack because pain implies there is something wrong with u.