Anticipations, false assumptions, unfolding

1.  False Anticipations -

One of the reasons I distrusted the 'ask three questions of an employee' was my anticipation of the worker - a young, skinny girl working in the clothes department who disliked her job, and just wanted to get her work done and not help me out. 

There was also the anticipation that the first session with Daniel was how it would always be.  There was the resignation that fridays would, suck entirely.  That I would be small and cloistered every friday and just wish for it to be over.  Then, in total surprise, I learn that Daniel and me have all these similarities of being lonely, of having avoidance tactics, of trying to distract ourselves all the time from our thoughts.

And now my most current false assumption - I can in fact meditate.  I actually don't have to utterly mind wander the entire time.  It did help that I got to this in steps.  First was the 'non-judgemental' aspect; there was no reason for me to be judgemental about being mad at meditation.  I was adding to struggle by increasing that judgement on myself while meditating. 

Even the feeling of, 'I'll just feel helpless because every time I try to meditate, I'll fall back into mind wander, I hate to watch myself go unfocused', hasn't really come up.  Also I liked, 'the anxiety (the mind wander) is already there, so we are just going to take whats already there and work with it in a different way. 

And now, I'm all excited about meditating and find it calming because I just don't have any struggle with it anymore.  That total fear and trepidation over being stuck in mind wander for half an hour is significantly lessened.  I never ever would have anticipated that occuring - that I'll be able to not have struggle over meditation. 

The first time I meditated at home there was so much struggle - I ate furiously during the meditation and now I realize I missed a majority of what he was saying, anyways.


So of course, it makes me wonder what else I'm wrong about, what else I will come to misunderstand.  Perhaps all the cognitive defusions, the fear over being fused to my thoughts and feelings and lacking a self as observer, will come into place.  They may be hard at first, but perhaps they will become easier, like meditation.  I'm enthralled, floored, and find it promising and encouraging how I was sitting there meditating with my visualization.

Here is my most recent meditation - Life is unfolding constantly.  My first thought is to be freaked out by this because I don't want to be alive.  But here is the meditation that came -

Its a mix of the Anais Nin quote - 'At some point it becomes better to open as a flower than to stay closed as a bud', and Amie's "Are you at the point where you would face the discomfort in order to change?  Where you decide to open yourself to the world?"

So - Life is unfolding and I am the bud.  I want to be open so I can feel the sunlight (sunlight being warmth, love, self esteem).  Its imperative that I open up to the world to experience it.  Otherwise, how could someone come up and touch me?  They aren't going to be interested in the tight bud who is home is a room.  They want to see and touch the petals.  For this visualization I saw purple and white southern magnolia flowers.  It was sweet.