The Sticky Morass of an Overthinking Mind (help!)

I would like to ask for help (clarification?) when it comes to dealing with internal tightness. Open, you do a beautiful job of explaining exactly how to work with tightness in quite a few different venues (e.g., here, here and here, to name some of the more recent spots):

“…the interplay of the old consciousness with the new - will most definitely animate internal tightness and resistance. If something comes up, in your family, circle of friends, at work, or in the wider political arena, don't deny it. Don't push it back down into the 'too-difficult-to-deal-with' box. Especially when it's most uncomfortable, bring it out into the light. Express the discomfort and become as one with it, thus you can let it go; then the higher beingness and behaviourisms may emerge.” (quote from “Taking the Greatest Evolutionary Advantage from the Election”)

Prior to waking up to a more spiritual focus, my perception of self was defined by my ego and I existed in a highly separated state from Source. I’ve come a long ways and made huge progress. But it still is a huge challenge for me to go beyond the intellect — my default waking-consciousness state is to be within the intellect. To me, what you explain above, as to how to face and deal with tightness (so as to unravel it), this is an intuitive exercise, is it not? It makes sense to me intellectually, but I am having a really hard time feeling my way through the process.

I had two, back-to-back incidents today that perfectly highlight this whole issue for me.

Here is what happened:

Incident 1
• entity A is bothering entity B
• B gets really annoyed at A and reacts negatively to A
• A wonders why B is acting so negatively (duh!?)
• me — I get annoyed at A for not seeing the truth of how A is treating B; I “come to B’s rescue” to get A off of B’s back
• A goes off to sulk after I chastise A (not belittling him, but trying to help him see what was going on)

Incident 2 (which happened minutes after #1)
• entity B goes outside and sees entity C
• C is minding their own business, but B decides to harass C
• this is a repeat situation — there’s a history of B harassing C and C
  responding to put B in their place
• me — I get pissed at B for doing the same thing yet again, despite having received repeated grief from having done the same to C before
• I holler at B, B goes off to sulk before forgetting the whole experience so as to repeat it all again yet another day

Okay, the way I related the two incidents above is from the 3rd person perspective. That of the observer. Is this the same observer as the Observer/Seer that you describe Open?? When I look at these incidents this way, they are lessons and what they are pointing out to me is obvious: “why the heck am I getting involved in drama that I have no part in???

Naturally, there are associations involved here, which is where the tightness and emotions come into play. Entity A is my 11 year old son and entity B is our dog Oscar. My son was pestering the dog, who finally reached the point where he was growling and snapping at him (my son does this a lot — he doesn’t generally focus on trying understand what others are experiencing). I use to intervene, thinking it was my role as a parent to take advantage of these types of opportunities to try to teach the boy “life lessons,” such as how to “walk in the shoes of others,” aka “the Golden Rule.” But that doesn’t work. I long ago realized that there are certain things the boy just needs to learn on his own. This time, I intervened only because I felt to help the dog, who was only trying to nap.

In the second incident, B is still our dog Oscar, and C is our cat Mango. I don’t know what is with this dog, but he’s wired with “stupid” when it comes to cats. No matter how many times I hear pathetic yelping as he gets beat up by the cat, that doesn’t stop him from harassing her. So in this case, the tightness was tied to my low tolerance for that kind of stupid. That and feeling for the cat.

So, I sit here fully ensconced in my intellect, evaluating all of this and trying to understand how to process these in-your-face lessons. I can feel my emotions and the tightness, and I know they were triggered by judgement and old patterns of behavior when it comes to perceiving how others are treating each other. And with kids and pets, well, there’s this sense of responsibility, too. Attachments.

I keep experiencing this type of lesson over and over. It’s like the movie “Groundhog’s Day” for me! I’m obviously not having success here! My intellect is telling me that the lesson to be learned is clearly that it’s silly for me to get sucked into the drama of others, pets/kids or not. But that’s the intellect. I need to focus on my emotions. I did bring my emotions out into the light and express them: I said my piece to the boy, and hurled something at the dog as I hollered at him. And then I felt like a turd! I made it all worse by intervening and absolutely nothing was gained.

I can still summon up the feelings of irritation, annoyance and anger I felt. This is where it all gets confusing and I feel lost. I’m okay with my emotions, because I can see what I did and why. “They are what they are.” On the one hand, I’m trying to reconcile feeling into these emotions and the tightness they cause, as you describe Open, with how I’m suppose to be a parent or caregiver for those parties involved, especially if the lesson here is for me to let go of external dramas involving my charges. Then on the other hand, when I feel my emotions, it’s like I’m looking to feel okay with them. But then isn’t that yet again the intellect doing that? Also, am I not suppose to be letting go of old-patterned beliefs that aren’t serving me or my kid and pets (being a loving parent that allows them their own challenges/lessons). Does this even make sense? I feel like I’m missing something. Or maybe it’s that I don’t know how to be dealing with any of this at an intuitive, feeling level? When I feel into the emotions, do I just sit there and Be with them? Is this entirely a passive process without any action?

Am I answering my own questions??