204. I have been using the technique you shared with me in confronting specific ticks. I have always been able to stop a tick with a lot of effort, but I usually just replace it with a different little ritual, and it would wear me down to do it. I found myself sort of wandering around in our yard the first two weeks of practicing this, and I had the very real sensation of something physically sloughing off my back as I walked, just like some great weight, of feeling much lighter. This wasn’t an intellectual thought, it was really happening. I have to be very careful not to try too hard, as I get great tension headaches like I am going to fall down. I have to remember to be nonviolent with myself. Usually if I relax and let the force that seem to be rushing up my spine pass through, the tension passes with it. If I resist it, I can hardly stand the pressure, until I remember to relax.

Last week I was letting my mind drift back to my childhood and these ticks, grunts, and movements I remember. I tried to remember how it felt, and I remembered the terror I had. I was afraid that there was something in the room with me that was going to get me, to take over if I wasn’t on my guard. These ticks were a protection, I suspect of my false ego. I think that I was feeling the unconscious side of myself trying to express itself, and I was guarding myself from it coming forward, or at least trying to. Some of these ticks are quite bizarre, and I really do look silly if someone sees me doing them, at least that is what I was told as a child. I still can hear my grandma yelling at me, "You look like a sick cow!" Why would I do such bizarre actions? It was as if the normal ticks were enough to keep me thinking my false ego was in control and I had an arsenal of really bizarre stuff when my unconscious really pushed to come forward. I could picture myself on that battlefield, in the chariot, in the middle of the war in the Gita. These ticks aren’t just some passive foolishness that I am just doing because I forgot I don’t have to do it. I am at war with myself, and I will go to really great lengths to keep my unconscious from expressing itself. When I feel I am losing control, I have a whole set of things I do to keep control, to stop the anxiety. Sometimes the loss of control feels to me like I am going to throw up, or that I am going to be so dizzy that I can’t stand up. My joints can ache, I get hot all over, like having the flu. I can wrestle with it, or if I remember to relax and trust, and take a chance on change, all the unpleasant feelings go away, and a lightness follows. Of course, I watch to make sure I am not actually sick, but I rarely am. And all the symptoms seem no more than part of my battle with myself.

Anyway, that is how it seems right now. The battle is so automatic that I think I had some sort of truce going that could have kept me distracted for the rest of my life if it weren’t for Yoga. Something is happening, something is changing. I have read your book "Yoga of the Heart" so many times the pages are falling out of the book, but I never saw what I am reading now. I really want to be free from this prison, this fear of change prison.