Time To Learn
Time To Learn
Monday, February 19, 2018
5:46 AM
I have the time. I think that is a more accurate assessment of my life. I hear myself say I don’t have time for this or that but they are all choices. I don’t need to arm-wrestle myself into doing certain things but the truth is I do have the time. It is a matter of me being honest with myself. I think I entertain a huge dishonesty daily when I say I did not have time this day to do a particular thing. Like the reading of the Torah and learning daily in the class. It is easy, effortless and enjoyable. I say I don’t have time for writing a page of my journey because it is a great effort to sit in front of a blank page and go inside and write. It is a great effort. If I know something is a great effort I might want to say I don’t have time. It is not really a matter of time, it is a matter of desire. It is a matter of willingness. More appropriately. I think it might be time blocking, a theory I learned this weekend at this conference, that could work for me in this. Time blocking is intentional pieces of time that I block for myself ahead of time. I did this before and then blew myself off. At that time, a few years ago, I had not spent 100s of hours in self care. See, I have had a huge shift in perspective from the actions that I have taken purposefully in self care. In self care I have gone against the piece inside me that says I don’t matter, my thoughts don’t matter, my intentions and desires don’t matter and especially my dreams don’t matter. By taking the time to go against these fake thoughts I have developed a self which allows me to do things today I was never available to do in the past. I only say I could not do them because there was no self that was available. Make sense? The daily Torah learning and the showing up for Services and the personal time I have taken to call people and show up for Rabbi consultation. All of these things have developed a Self that was not available before. Oh, it was there but it was absent. Understood? I showed up for therapy 2 years ago and my diagnosis was Absence of Self. That is a perspective I had never had and it gave me a viewpoint I could not grasp before. I thought I had low self esteem or deep insecurities but there was something that was deeper than all of that. The self had never developed. The Self was not available to grow and develop on it’s own. It wasn’t low self esteem it no self period. So the putting on the kippot and tallis at morning minyan, going against my own thoughts of being comfortable, the showing up at Orthodox services, Chassidic services — these are extreme Judaism. But I have learned from them and they have developed this self that was absent. The dates with myself to go places and not just with myself but with Self, consciously. To acknowledge this relationship is key to partnership.
Sure I have had opinions in my life but they could never develop nor could they be expressed. I have spent hours and hours expressing myself in the last two years to develop, a development which brings me to having time. Time for this Self to express it’s self, honor itself and recognize there is a valued place for it here in my life. Seems funny, huh? To mention it in this way is a little awkward but the point is the time-blocking is a real possibility for me now. Now I have value of Self in my life so when I block the time for writing or I block the time for playing piano or block the time for phone calls to people I don’t know about real estate there is a Self that will be showing up with availability and value. Not bad for a woman who a short while ago was running around town with a 23 year old gay boy thinking marriage and babies like it was real. The untamed monster inside has shifted to Valued Self. It took lots of effort with no knowledge of the outcome and look at what we have become. I am so proud of the Holy. It has never let me down.