The Choice

This meditation contains some salty language.
Sometimes, it’s easy.
Inhale.
Exhale.
That’s it.
That’s what it takes to center, calm yourself and relax.
Inhale.
Exhale.
That’s all it takes to let it all go.
I call bull.
And I bet you do too.
Yes, inhale, exhale is great, and believe you me, sometimes it can center you and help you through the toughest moments of your life. Moments you might not otherwise have been able to bear.
But often, that doesn’t happen.

Reviews

smile at Lord of the Rings reference😃🌺

I love the power in your voice. Such a "to the point" meditation. Thank you. 💖

Brilliant! love this one, thank you. Love and blessings 💙 x

How much do I love this? A LOT! This shriveled creature tips her hat to you and gathers her burden for one more day, with a tiny bit more hope than she had 10 minutes ago. Thank you. 💚

Love a little salt in the morning!
Easy sweeezy :-)

it isn’t fair… Fair comes to town twice a year for a week :-) thank you

Ha! Loved this. Thank you.

Well ......that came at a good time for me.
I decided to be the latter at 4 am this morning. Long story. Hope you are OK?
Like the new photo and wishing you the best in your new home. T i n y population according to Wikipedia. Had a great time in Tutukaka🌞🏊🍦 my visitor leaves soon.

Spot on, Life isn't easy. Namasté.

(Fair warning, I took notes again. ☺️

Also acknowledging here that I am fully aware that "The Hobbit" series is not the same as the LotR series, but as Bilbo is Frodo's uncle and is the first to deal with Gollum/Smeagol in that precursor series to the LotR books, I think it perfectly germaine to the subject at hand.)

I'll move in order along with the recording here. My initial curiosity was what my personal "Precious" would be. Back in the mid-1980s, we had to read "The Hobbit" in English Literature class, and create a project representing some aspect of it. I made a doll of Bilbo, complete with the ring on a chain which could be placed inside and removed from his waistcoat pocket. (By the way, it takes a LOT of Elmer's glue to get fake fur to stick on the foot area of the cotton stuffed nylon stockings which comprised Bilbo's nicely and comfortably rotund body at that time.) I recall our teacher making a point that the ring was an object of desire, and challenging us to think of what our own objects of desire might be, much as you did here. (Only my teacher made us write an essay to turn in with our responses. Thank you for not following suit! 😆)

I found - not surprisingly - that my answer now is the same as my answer was then. It is, however, not a physical object. That very much concerned me at first in that class, given the directions we were provided, but my teacher assured me it was the identification of an item, tangible or not, that could potentially lead us astray from our true core selves that she was looking for us to figure out. That made sense to me. My personal "Precious"? Learning and the resulting knowledge.

Digging deeper, I am an adrenaline junkie at heart. Yes, I have done the physically challenging things - bungee jumping from the world's highest (at the time) suspension bridge, hot air balloon information at sunrise over the Australian Outback, scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef right alongside the sharks, staring down bears in my backyard, waiting for bobcats to clear the way for me to walk a mountain path, sitting in a car while my headlights were spotlighting two fully grown bull moose who had decided that was the perfect spot to engage in a mating battle, hiking through ancient Mediterranean ruins, getting list and literally walking around an entire country (the Vatican's walls encompass a much larger area than I though at first - oof!), hiding from patrolling Russian guards with rifles while in Finland just so I could reach a foot under the barbed wire fence separating the countries so I could say I had touched Russian soil, and (a huge thrill for me) lining up on the ancient starting stone in the stadium in Olympia, Greece, where the original Olympics were held and racing classmates the length of the stadium and back. Among other things. But it was the thrill of doing something new, dangerous, learning how things were done, what I was capable of, the history of the place and people, all that.

There's a reason I always wanted to be a scientist since I was a kid. A paleontologist, archaeologist, microbiologist, astrophysicist - if it ended in -ologist or some variation of it, it was fair game. The thought of being the first person to discover something never before seen, or re-discover something that had been forgotten for thousands of years makes my heart beat fast even now just thinking of it. I got that feeling wandering through Herculaneum and Pompeii, as there was active excavation going on there. I sensed a much broader story lurking just under the surface at Stonehenge (and I was proven right). The Viking ship on display at the cultural center my undergraduate college helps maintain brought me closer to my ancestral line, and cleaning and preserving fossilized dinosaur bones gave me a deep appreciation regarding how much can be learned from the smallest of things if one only takes the time to pay attention and truly LOOK.

So the intangible "Precious" for me has been learning and knowledge. That was more physical when I was younger, but books have always been the physical representation of this. However, I can and have donated and gifted books from my collection, so I am not as attached to them as Smeagol (Gollum) was to the ring.

Then as I contemplated that, you mentioned Samwise. Samwise has a "Precious" too, though you didn't state it as such. His "Precious" is intangible like mine is. His is loyalty to and love and for his friends and family.

You say we can make a choice between being Gollum or Samwise. I cry foul. We are, each and every one of us, both at the same time. Much as the old parable asks which wolf will win (with the answer being "the one you feed"), both aspects exist within us all at all times. The choice isn't so much which one to be, but which one to be front and center at any particular moment.

Now, in my professional work, I have had clients with Disassociative Identify Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder). That is taking this concept to a clinically maladaptive level, although the split in personalities is generally regarded as the mind's efforts at instinctual self-preservation under intensely traumatic circumstances. Reintegration therapy is often suggested and is sometimes successful - but only if all personalities are agreeable, which is often not the case. (Also said slightly differently by a friend of mine with three "alters" and is in conscious communication with two of the three, which is somewhat unusual.)

An offshoot of this is a practice I first encountered here on Insight Timer. I had read mention of it before, but not really explored the topic much until then. It is quite simply that even those who meet generally accepted parameters for good mental health still have subpersonalities that are distinct and separate.

A quick example of this is perhaps how you behave and your thought patterns when you are around a respected elder (grandparent, parent, clergy, teacher, mentor, etc) versus hanging out with your wild and crazy (or quiet and dorky in my case) friends. Totally different ways of being. You think differently. You act differently. Your preferences may be drastically different. That trashy, campy horror movie you can't wait to see with your friends? You don't even dream of bringing it up to dear old grandpa who has that old-country farmer's ethos and thinks such things are a waste of time unless they're somehow educational.

Another way of looking at is the variety of masks we put on, roles we play, hats we wear, etc. They do not separate so much from us as to become pathological as in the case of DID/MPD, but they do exist. The practice I saw on IT regarded taking the first steps towards integrating our subpersonalities. It was hard for me to do this practice. It still is. I have "met" my main subpersonality who seems to run the show, and it isn't at all what I thought it would be. I have only managed to get through that practice in full twice, as it is so overwhelming and there is so much to unpack and process as I move along.

However, I have seen a lot of outward progress even from that small amount of work. Recently, another Insight Timer publisher posted a track about how the way to know if you are truly enlightened is to spend extended time with your family. If you maintain the same equanimity with them as you do away from them, you are well on your way. That sounds to me a lot like integration of the subpersonalities.

So I don't think we need to choose between our Gollum nature and our Samwise nature. Perhaps we do initially, but if we want to do the work to bring them together within us, we will find they are both "us" and not all that different. (And if course, they are both Hobbits in any case, even if Smeagol doesn't even remotely look it anymore.)

My various subpersonalities and my core being, along with my physical body, are a team. I grin and say I have my own cheering squad. The only rule we have is the same rule my spouse and I have - we can't all freak out/get depressed/become overwhelmed/go off the deep end at the same time. We have to take turns. SOMEONE has to take care of paying the bills and personal hygiene, after all.

So Gollum and Samwise could easily become partners rather than adversaries, with a bit of encouragement and work. Gollum's "Precious" is the physical ring. Samwise has his intangible loyalty and love for friends and family. This could work if they both agree - and you do too. Maybe at first you do need to choose one or the other. Just remember that choosing one does not make the other go away. The other is still there, part of you. It is up to you to decide if you're willing to coax the both of them near your hearth fire, open a conversation, and begin learning from them and them from you, becoming integrated with wisdom and insight multiplied as a result.

If you're willing to do the work, of course. And it will be work.

Me? The downside of my personal "Precious" being learning and knowledge, exploration and discovery is that it has created a deep-seated fear in me of losing my faculties and cognitive abilities as I age. It terrifies me. I spend much time now (with this awareness heightened by family losses over the last couple of years) working on developing my equanimity and general acceptance of what is, emphasizing my gratitude for what I have, what I am, what is around me, and for my simple existence. It's hard work too, but part of my own subpersonalities integration work.

Gollum, meet Samwise. You two will be spending a lot of quality time together with me in the days and weeks (or longer) to come. ☺️

(End musings)
Very interesting subject matter as usual. I often save your pieces until I have ample free time to ponder and reply. I wanted to do this one before work, but had to wait until afterwards so I had the time to devote to it that I feel it deserves, always. Thank you for sharing so openly with us. I see the light within you. 🤲🏻❤️🤲🏻

As always. I just love your down to presentation of messages with great meaning.

Loved this - and the salty language!

Thank you for always being so honest and straightforward that what makes you different from everyone else I love your talks and meditations thank you so much💛💚🧡❤

Betsy, I think that you might be the only teacher on here who doesn't just TAKE IT FOR GRANTED that people can inhale and exhale without effort or pain and completely on their own. (I may be wrong about that though) A helluva lot of people have to fight a monumental battle every single moment of every single day to breathe, to stay alive. True warriors who have had to accept the loss of what is one of the most precious things to lose and who have had to be their own Samwise. If you were a character in the books, you would be called Veritywise Kickass 💪 Namaste 🙏❤️

Superb just what I needed to hear !