TERMINAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

   The other day something reminded me of what I used to call my terminal self-consciousness. It was as if there was a camera in the ceiling recording my every move and I worried constantly about how I was doing. Sometimes, I felt I was lurking behind my eyes, looking out at everyone and everything, assessing. What did this person think of me? Was this the person I should be talking to, instead of someone else across the room? That person is wearing the wrong shoes so I should get away as fast as I can. 
     The camera in the ceiling, the lurking behind my eyes - nothing happened without my constant worry that I would be seen in the wrong way, or reveal something shameful, or be found wanting by the cool people, whoever they were. It was all about judgment, judging myself and all the rest of you. It was exhausting but I couldn't rest - judging others and being afraid others were judging me kept me very busy. 
     I couldn't be in my body and I couldn't be in the world. In that self-consciousness, I didn't see anything apart from myself. Everyone was an object that revolved around me. I didn't understand it was narcissism; how could I be narcissistic if I was afraid all the time and condemned just about everything I did? 
     I couldn't survive in that place. In a way, it was a matter of life and death - self-consciousness and its friend ambivalence would have taken me down, stripped my life of pleasure, enjoyment, the freedom to create. Desperation made me willing to surrender, just surrender all the anxiety, judgment and second-guessing. You take it, I said to the universe, because this is killing me.
     I can narrate some of the steps in my changing. Surrender created a sliver of space in which I began to understand that my terminal self-consciousness and reflexive judging weren't standing on anything solid; they were habits of thought, ephemeral patterns of behavior that were just passing across my vision. I saw that they weren't "reality," whatever that was, and there was at least the possibility that reality might be something different. Surrender, hope, willingness became my building blocks and their solidity gave the courage to untie the knots inside. A slow process began, one that's still going on, and I hope it will always go on because I will never come to the end of the possibilities of getting free.
     I can narrate the steps of this process, but I don't know why it came to me. It's not because I'm special or more deserving that anyone else. I can see that at every step I made the right choice, the one that would lead me on toward change, and I can see that I was willing to stay in the process, not matter how painful or frightening it was. But I don't feel I can take much credit. I didn't make something happen. Something happened to me.
     I was talking about grace this morning which William James defines as a sudden inrush of energy, energy that seems to come from outside us, beyond the confines of our consciousness. I have felt that energy many times and when it was most needed. The energy of grace has kept me moving on.