4 REAL
Healing (4)
Nothing ever becomes real ‚til it is experienced.
John Keats
Hi Y’all! This is Sean here! We are back! After looking at our firsts and our lasts! We are back again. The following exercise(s) will help to round out our experience inventories. Hence, we are going to take a fourth turn on the memory rollercoaster/carousel. We might even go three times around on this fourth round.
On the one hand our firsts helped us to look at our initial experiences. On the opther looking at our last experiences allowed us to contemplate our present reality. We are now going to look at some events in between.
Time after Time
In other words, we have the chance to use a different filter to look at our experiences and our memories of events which we have repeated, time after time, as well as, our interpretation of these events. That is to say, using a few superlatives we can customise our inventories to flesh out our feelings and thoughts about our intimate relationships and experiences.
In the last three Blog-Lesson we reviewed the most significant people in our lives, earliest experiences, and our most recent experiences and our memories. Hopefully these exercises were insightful and more titilating than torture.
Opposites
So, let’s to continue on our way. The next step is to choose which direction we want to focus on. Some identifier options include:
- best – worst
- perfect – imperfect/worst
- funniest – most serious/boring
- most favourite – least favourite
This is your inventory and you can choose any identifers you wish. I would recommend starting with opposites. Then you can choose how many memories you want to explore between 10 to 15. To be clear, I would again recommend giving yourself approximately an hour for the exercise. This would be between 4 to 6 minutes per memory.
Special Attention
You can also choose 5 encounters per identifier and then choose a third identifier for variety like:
- most memorable,
- best story,
- secret/most private
Remember this is a meditation for you and you alone to begin with. This allows you to decide which identifiers work best for you.
And what exactly is the next step?
This Time
We can restructure the records of our first/last experiences and select the ones you would like to revisit. For instance, with one word change. We change first to last. It could look something like this:
- 1. my favourite kiss
- 2. my favourite date
- the favourite time:
- 3. I saw someone naked (same/opposite gender)
- 4. I asked someone out
- 5. I slept with someone
- 6. my least favourite kiss
- 7. my least favourite date
- the least favourite time:
- 8. I saw someone naked (same/opposite gender)
- 9. I asked someone out
- 10. I slept with someone
- 11. my best kiss story
- 12. my best date story
- the best story about the time:
- 13. I saw someone naked (same/opposite gender)
- 14. I asked someone out
- 15. I slept with someone
Something like this. This list should include events from your firsts and lasts list.
(The lists and these blog-lessons are maintained in a google and family friendly format. For more information, vocabulary, more intimate or direct language, please contact me.)
Identify
Once we have our new „indentifier“ inventory we can add the first three words that come to mind:
For example:
- my favourite kiss = husband, first, dancing
- my least favourite date = whiskey, art, disaster
- the best story about the time:
- I asked someone out = bar, bet, YES
To be clear, I would again recommend giving yourself approximately an hour for this contemplation. Do your best to be honest about the first thoughts and words you use to deepen the experience without being too judgemental.
Once you have completed your list of identified interactions with your key words:
Take a minute! Breathe! …And Smile! You have survived them as well. Congratulations!
We have done quite a bit of memories and processing!
Inventory Alignment
The inventory process and stepping back in your life can sometimes be a very dark process. But it also can be extremely funny and surprising.
Craig Charles
We can look at our inventories – people, firsts, lasts and defined by printing them out and laying them side by side. Looking at them and their ratings and remembering our defined – (best, worst, funniest) can help us to explore not only our histories and experiences, it can als offer us an insight into our feelings, thoughts, opinions and preferences. Additionally we can begin to understand where these thougths and feelings come from.
Memory
If you are up for it, take a look at your four lists and see where there are similarities and differences. Look at how things have changed from your first to your last experiences and what happended in between. When we put our responses side by sides we can get a picture of our development and begin to understand the “results” of our choices, both positive and negative.
Otherwise, put your inventories away and let them rest for a while. Let them be. You can come back to them later. The meditations themselves are a big step towards healing and owning our presence and voice in our relationships.
I would love to hear how things are going.
Next time we are going to think about our thought and feelings and how this affects our ability to relate.
This is Sean
“Be good to you!”
Till next time.
Our earlier Blog-Lessons –1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–11–12–13–14–15–16–17–18–19
