{"id":72,"date":"2009-04-01T18:55:21","date_gmt":"2009-04-02T02:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.erniethayer.com\/?p=72"},"modified":"2009-04-01T20:41:54","modified_gmt":"2009-04-02T03:41:54","slug":"the-middle-of-the-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/01\/72\/the-middle-of-the-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghosts In the Middle of the Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the wee hours of last night I was confronted once again, as happened several times past, with all the thinking in me that insists, suggests or demands that I am insufficient, wrong, lazy and self-deceived<\/em>. My mind threw up at me all the past events where someone disapproved of me, found me wanting or even hated me. From my father on down the years till now. I can’t say what may have occasioned this, but there it was, forcefully demanding my attention, after I woke to go pee. There was a short time where I tried to justify or explain myself, but soon realized this too was part of the same old pattern. This has arisen before (and may again) because it is such a big part of “Ernie’s” nature \u2013 to doubt himself and wonder about his worth. I know I am not alone in this…<\/p>\n

Unlike earlier in my life, where this doubt would creep into all my relationships and was triggered by all sorts of situations, this was just a raw, unencumbered assault, having and needing no special provocation. And, fortunately or not, I was at it’s mercy because it was, after all, the middle of the night! I was alone and no distractions were easily available. Even my little dog Tilly slept through it all. So I did the only thing left to me, I hung out with it. I let it have it’s say, allowed my body to ache with the messages, but did not interfere, justify, identify with it or resist. In the process, I realized afresh that what I truly am was hanging out with what I had identified with for so long. Nothing urgent was happening, no crisis. It went on for a good long time before I fell asleep again and woke to realize that the thing was over. I even felt refreshed if not rested.<\/p>\n

For me, events like this are astounding because they plainly make the point about us that we are not who we think we are<\/em>, no matter the strength of belief that insists otherwise. These are deeply embedded core beliefs about ‘myself’ and I can often feel their presence as I go about my day. They must’ve believed they could arrest my identity once more, though happily on this occasion, they failed to do so. <\/p>\n

What a gift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you ever find yourself wrestling an old demon, and for no particular reason?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussions","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85,"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/85"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erniethayer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}