Bail the Boat Again (Time Off RV)

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 28 March 2006

Taking a break from RV for too long can sure put the brakes on your RV progress. Eons ago when the RV Oasis/pjrv email list had an RV Haiku contest, one of my entries was:

My ship is sailing
Till I miss practice awhile
Bail the boat again

I may be the poster child for the longest RV development curve ever. My intellectual understanding of the process surpassed my experiential rating years ago, and at this point I'm more like some idiot-savant about the subject.

I tell myself I have talent (we probably all tell ourselves that). If I actually work on doing RV regularly even for a fairly short time, my ability increases exponentially. My cycles of denial try to keep up, of course. But in general, it's clear that if I make the time to do it, I do fine. Alas I only tend to make time to do it in "chunks", separated by weeks (sometimes months) of not viewing at all, where I am working my butt off, way too many hours, spending time with my little girl, whatever, not making the time for RV.

Then I have to start all over.

I have more experience working with others on their development than on my own, and while some might say that teaching has value of course I'd say more time "doing" and less time teaching would make me happier, not to mention a better viewer. I have that Virgo x4 service ethic, where the good of 'the world' seems more important than me, but the Scorpio-Aries part of me is trying to re-educate my priorities. I should let the rest of the world go to hell in its own handbasket and worry about myself a little more.

Work that body...

It's not a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of being limber. If a ballet dancer ceased training for weeks or months (in the case of ballet, literally every day is critical), it would be a disaster when they returned, they would be working frantically to try and recoup their losses in strength and flexibility and it would take quite awhile just to get back to the place they were when they left off. They would not have lost any of the knowledge or generalized skill related to their moves, of course. But their body would simply not be as fluent. That isn't about what you know or understand, it's simply about what your body is used to doing, allowing, and expecting.

I feel with RV that ceasing practice does the greatest damage in this area. There is what I call "the dive," meaning, the first 30 seconds of a session basically. When I do RV regularly, it becomes common to simply "fall into it". Usually, data comes pretty promptly, and usually the first data off the boat -- which may fly by fast, so ya gotta be ready -- is the core of the target. If I can anchor with that and keep going back through it for more I do ok. The whole session follows on that. It's like a good dive when you are swimming: it not only gets you far inward, but helps propel you forward through the initial swimming to set a good pace.

When I lose that fluid, fluent 'allowing' and 'expectation' that regular practice breeds, my dive implodes. I sit there waiting for data that never comes. I can "feel" that I am "in my own way" and yet feel helpless to fix it. I eventually feel myself trying to invent data, as getting nothing is far more horrible than getting data that is wrong, at least for people who really hate suspense I guess.

I sometimes think that viewing is sort of 'forcing open' a small opening in the belief systems, and the more you view in protocol the bigger that belief-system opening gets and the stronger the doorway is. But it seems like, when you allow yourself to stop for very long, that opening slams shut with more force than if it had never been opened. And then it's like pulling teeth and squeaking hinges, trying to force that door open again, enough that you can get through it at all let alone comfortably.

Today I have to view because I promised my buddy LD we'd do a session on the same thing sometime this afternoon. I probably wouldn't get around to it if I hadn't committed to someone personally. I'm beginning to think sticking with viewing every single day without falling off the wagon is about as tough for me as a 12-step program and I probably need a buddy-counselor-keeper to kick my butt about it. Sort of like a diet-buddy heh heh. I should script something in the galleries that lets people commit to doing a certain amount of viewing within a certain time and rewards 'em if they do (I could go broke with amazon gift certificates I suppose).

Sigh... I'm beginning to think public mortification may be the only thing that finally leans on me hard enough to get me out of my workaholic mode and into more consistent viewing.

Heh. There you go, on this both my enemies and I agree: My ego is the only thing big enough to really move me.