What is the deeper reason behind the ‘grapes are sour’ attitude?
What is the payoff of seeing something as desirable or undesirable?
What is possible to get and what is impossible to get?
Generally, we’d like to see what is ‘possible to get’ as desirable,
And what is ‘impossible to get’ as undesirable.
That way, the psyche remains stable, and its efforts bring continual fruits,
Without wasting effort on what is impossible.
I am going to look at the ‘grapes are sour’ attitude in the context of relationships.
Generally to bond with someone, you idealize them,
Which is the basis of the whole romantic fantasy.
That they are good for you, best for you, the perfect match, that they will raise you higher and so on.
Idealization is the process of desiring itself.
That is what motivates you to seek anyone i.e. to seek to include them as a part of yourself.
The whole life of the ego is the Kohut’s tension arc,
Driving between where you are now and the image of your ideal.
On the other hand,
Devaluation is the process of avoiding/fearing (vs. idealizing/desiring).
As an ego, one would idealize that which is in one’s interest, and devalue that which is not in one’s interest.
What serves one —-vs—- What does not serve one.
What is life positive —-vs—- What is life negative.
However this does not explain the ‘death drive’.
What causes a person to consume poisons? severely deprive themselves? self torture? and actively seek death and self-destruction?
The child idealizes the caregiver to bond with them.
Esp. the infant idealizes the mother,
Because the mother is the source of life and protection for its initial years.
So this is where the primary attachment is created.
A certain primary relational structure gets formed in those years.
If the mother herself is lost, and the birth was from unconscious compulsion,
And if the mother is severely misattuned to the child’s needs,
Then the child’s needs go severely unmet.
If its needs are met highly randomly and inconsistently,
Then it will develop disorganized attachment
(that includes anxious-preoccupied and fearful- avoidant attachment patterns).
If its needs are met consistently,
Then it will develop secure attachment.
If its needs are not met at all, even once,
Then it will become a dismissive-avoidant.
Basically for a dismissive-avoidant,
Opening up to an other fully is anathema to them.
It is as good as committing suicide,
It will de-structure the entire psyche they have built.
They live only relying on themselves for almost everything.
Now this naturally idealizes self-reliance,
While decrying dependence of any sort.
The world-view formed by a person with this attachment style,
Precisely mirrors his interaction with his caregivers.
The image could be something like:
“Everyone is selfish and serving their own interests.
So I too will do the same.
Nobody cares about me unless it benefits them.
I must avoid dependence at all costs.”
Something like that,
And there are many layers to this.
There is grief/sadness and great anger towards others.
Even ignoring something is a form of hostility.
The dismissive-avoidant may ignore others with such intensity.
In the deeper psyche, it is a form of punishing them for what they did.
Giving them a taste of their own medicine, what they did to him.
RULE: “We do onto others, what others did onto us.”
So their treatment of others is a reflection and it mirrors how they were treated in their formative years.
What matters here is “FORMATIVE” years.
Because that is the time the ‘Self structure’ is formed.
Thereafter the entire experience of the world is in relation to that structure.
So for the dismissive avoidant, there is no alternation between grapes are good and grapes are sour.
They don’t even talk about it, in fact they don’t talk about anything related to their needs for relationship. It stays preserved in their own unconscious darkness .
It is just stuck on “Grapes are sour”, the idealization part has been repressed and buried into their unconscious.
Because if that is brought out, it will dismantle their entire independence idealizing structures.
The irony is, it is traumatic for them to see the world as good.
It is much easier to see the world as terrible and keep finding more proof for that.
Because that would justify their position right, of being to themselves and independent like an island.
They believe they have separated themselves from the morass of an ugly uncaring hostile humanity.
Generally the ‘grapes are sour’ experience applies to people who go through its opposite too of ‘grapes are wonderful’.
It is the alternation between the 2 that gives the strong experience in either direction.
Since in their formative years, their needs were intermittently met, followed by long periods of the opposite, it is a torturous confusion.
It is like living in a place where a gale, hurricane, flood, earthquake and other natural calamities keep striking your house again and again, causing you to somehow survive that and build your house once again from scratch maybe in a different area, only for that to happen again, and only for you to once again build a new house, and so on.
It becomes like an eternal improvisation exercise,
Where all relations are nulled, and where you try all over again and again.
This is basically a situation of high insecurity.
Where all “basis, rooting, hinging, foundation” is lost on a dime again and again.
This can be quite maddening for them.
Why? Because the projections wildly alternate,
Swinging from one extreme to another extreme,
Canceling everything out as they move from extreme to extreme.
For instance, suppose someone does not like me,
Then I will tend to try to see them as undesirable/terrible,
Because only then can them not liking me, become a kind of ‘good riddance’, i.e. a good thing.
Else, if I see them as good/desirable,
Then that means I am not getting access to something good,
And that will entangle my energies where I keep making efforts to try to get them to like me.
So it is better to tune perception to see them as undesirable or poisonous,
Then them not liking me back will be good and alright,
Because that would only prove I am good and they are bad.
Else it would turn into, I am bad and they are good,
And that I have to be the sorry one to change and please them enough for them to accept me.
This is precisely the harrowing attachment struggle.
Preparing the body to bond OR to be alone.
Essentially, for the secure attachment people, the aloneness gets repressed in the unconscious.
For the dismissive-avoidant, the bonding part of them gets repressed in the unconscious.
They both appear to be stable, because of achieving successful repression from moving from chakra 2 to chakra 3.
Whereas, when repression cannot happen easily, because of conflicting caregiver’s attitude and behavior, then it results in the anxious-preoccupied or fearful avoidant,
Depending upon which side the scale veers to.
# If it comes closer to the secure side, then it has greater hope “If I can just try harder this time, I will make it to secure attachment”.
# If it comes closer to the avoidant side, then the hope is towards the opposite “If I can just become independent, then I can get rid of this painful need for others”.
So the scale is:
Dismissive avoidant —- Fearful avoidant –|– Anxious-Preoccupied —– Secure attachment.
This inner drama play between ‘he loves me’ and ‘he loves me not’, happens only with the middle 2. Because it is the middle 2 that are the realm of insecurity.
The dismissive avoidant is sure ‘he loves me not’.
The secure attachment person is sure ‘he loves me’.
So they both are somewhat settled in their lifestyles.
Emotional Themes I feel with Rock Music
Anger, Rage, Will, Domination, Confidence, Conviction, Resolve, Determination, Tenacity, Grit, Coolness, Expertise, Mastery, Strength, Brute Force, Inner Turmoil/Conflict/Disturbance, Intensity, Power of influence, Charging, High energy reverberation, Belief, Hope, Faith, Religion, Messiah, Savior, Hero, Purpose, Mission, Importance, Significance, Thump, Earth-shattering power, War, Violence, Attack, Fight, Expression, Overpowering, Overbearing, Being swept away, Lean muscles, Alertness, Fast reactions, Sharp senses, Hardness, Avenging, Revenge, Aliveness, Groove, Electric sensations, Existential fear thoughts, Powerful expression, Flow, Release, Catharsis, Deliverance, Rush.
The Schizoid/Split vs Depressive/Ambivalent position
Schizoid/Paranoid/Split —vs— Depressive/Ambivalent.
# Good and Bad objects are separate —–vs—– Good and bad objects are one.
# There is god and the devil —-vs—- There is only god who is both the angel and devil.
# There is a white paper with black dots to be eliminated —vs— There is white paper with black dots OR a black paper with white dots.
# Mother as good or tyrant based on specific behaviors —-vs—- Mother as randomly good or bad without my understanding/control.
# ‘World as rules driven’ hard right/wrong conception —-vs—- ‘World as mad’ conception
# AvPD, Schizoid, Autistic —–vs—– Fearful avoidant, Disorganized attachment, ADHD.
# Tyrant mother = Tyrant world (Fight/Flight) —–vs—– Crazy mother = Crazy random world (Freeze/Fawn)
# Catastrophic thinking —–vs—— Fantasy thinking.
# The desired object and feared object are separate in time —-vs—- The desired object and the feared object are one (accelerator and brake emotions on at the same time causing friction/resistance/suffering, causing hesitation/shyness).
# Splitting of self and object into good and bad —-vs—- Union of self and object into good and bad.
# [loving, gratifying] object vs. [frustrating, persecutory, hating] object as 2 distinct things —-vs—- Both of those mixed randomly in the same person.
# Binary logic (it is either fully A or B) —-vs—- It’s A, it’s B, it’s both A and B, it’s neither A nor B.
Emotional health in relationships
Here are some of the signs (imo) of emotional health in relationships:
# Consistent high emotional responsiveness
# Consistent high engagement
# Consistent high involvement
# Consistent high availability
# Consistent reciprocal/matched/tuned participation
# Consistent responsibility/ownership for the relationship
# Consistent proper clear honest emotional communication
# Consistent connection (not handling connection like interrupts)
Consistent and high [x] —vs— Erratic and low [x]
[Where x = responsiveness, engagement, involvement, availability,
participation, responsibility, honesty, connection]
The latter here would describe an environment of emotional suffering.
# Consistent high emotional responsiveness
# Consistent high engagement
# Consistent high involvement
# Consistent high availability
# Consistent reciprocal/matched/tuned participation
# Consistent responsibility/ownership for the relationship
# Consistent proper clear honest emotional communication
# Consistent connection (not handling connection like interrupts)
Consistent and high [x] —vs— Erratic and low [x]
[Where x = responsiveness, engagement, involvement, availability,
participation, responsibility, honesty, connection]
The latter here would describe an environment of emotional suffering.
Your compliments and criticisms
Every compliment you give,
Is more about you than the other.
It is,
# What you chose to see.
# How much you chose to see.
# How you chose to see.
Conversely, the same would apply,
To the criticisms you give too.
They too indicate,
# What you chose to see.
# How much you chose to see.
# How you chose to see.
Is more about you than the other.
It is,
# What you chose to see.
# How much you chose to see.
# How you chose to see.
Conversely, the same would apply,
To the criticisms you give too.
They too indicate,
# What you chose to see.
# How much you chose to see.
# How you chose to see.
The game of masks
The game of masks:
Some people wear an [identity/mask/role/act], enjoy it, and then remove it.
And once alone or in a safe place, they remove the mask and then reflect on the act/mask/identity/role from their Real Self.
Some others NEVER remove the mask of identity/role.
They want to wear it 24×7 and lose themselves into believing they are that.
Someone like a sociopath has a very tough and thick mask, because it has been created from very early in life from “extraordinary levels of shame”.
So accordingly, since structure = power, they exude more confidence, charisma, and power.
And then, they try to play the game of masks with others, lose themselves into their game, and a corollary/extension of that is that “they apply the same principle in terms of what they are interested in when it comes to others”.
Since they themselves are actors and are trying to find the ultimate act to lose themselves into, they are always on the lookout for how to make the mask stronger.
So they look at other people wearing masks, and are attracted to them, and they are always curious about what mask/act to wear.
Because that is their very mission statement “Find the greatest personality/mask/identity/structure/role, that will give the greatest rewards and goodies from everyone.” More importantly they want a mask that is invincible and indestructible -> because all masks are “inherently insecure” and are really dependent upon others and social systems for their mere survival.
So really, they are enslaved to what is allowed/tolerated/celebrated in the matrix because their entire identity/mask/role is really a socially and other-conferred one, and rests on mercurial flimsy ground.
They are living off the alms of others, in the most fundamental sense.
They are aware of this, and that is why there is a heavy investment in manipulation and defenses – so that not only are they never detected, they also do a preemptive offensive attack on anybody who even attempts to disillusion them of their act/role/mask/identity.
They try to secure love and admiration everywhere, shaping themselves into whatever it takes to get the maximum of that, as a permanent antidote to insecurity.
They are constantly on the lookout for conventional positions of power, because then with that stable position, they have much greater security, and people are far more likely to tolerate their whims, tantrums, oppression and so on.
They are also hyper-controlling of everyone around, they frame control everything everywhere, because really THIS is only an extension of the REAL frame control they are constantly doing to themselves in order to constantly make them believe in the mask.
A kind of self-hypnosis, that becomes automated in them to such an extent, it then extends itself into controlling all of their environment and all of their interactions – inevitably coming across as oppressive to others.
To make up for that, they go into episodes of love-bombing, great people-pleasing, gift-giving, inflating their value etc. something to compensate, something such that the pros outweigh the cons, to keep up the idea that it is worth/valuable/great living with them, and that they are great people basically.
Underneath all of that is toxic shame.
A shame so terrible, they would do anything rather than look at that.
Isn’t that the reason anybody would choose to wear a MASK 24×7 and choose to never ever remove it?
Imagine if someone close to you did that one day, wearing a full mask the whole day, what would you ask them? “What is wrong, did you get mumps? some lip infection? some acne? some other skin infection? some scar? some injury?”
Would you not associate this with something along the lines above?
This is the basis for all those who wear masks and never choose to remove it.
The shame behind those is so much, that it turns off self-reflection irrevocably/totally/completely.
Even if someone with that level of toxic shame reads this whole essay, it will still not motivate them to look at the source of his shame.
Rather he might try to use all of this information as TOOLS to manipulate someone else, to strengthen the mask itself, rather than USE THIS TOOL for his OWN reflection.
Such is the power of shame = More often than not, they will choose death over self-reflection.
Is shame worse than physical death? = Is a good question to ponder.
One thing is clear though, the deepest origin of all MASKS (when one chooses to lose themselves completely into it) is SHAME.
From a more abstract level:
The individual is the microcosm, while society is the macrocosm.
An individual suppresses/represses things depending on the severity of shame present.
The same holds true for the larger collective we call society.
Society suppresses/represses things in its own scale and this affects all the individuals too.
There is shame at the level of the collective/society itself.
Look at the criminals in jails, asylums etc.
They all represent what society has rejected.
Certain behaviors/potentials of god are considered acceptable, while certain others are simply not-tolerated/suppressed/shunned/or even attacked.
On Rejection
‘Rejection’ is the withdrawal of the ‘power supply/investment’ itself.
[‘Reality objects’ dependently arise from relationship]
So every-time there is hope and effort, and if rejection follows, then that:
{hope/investment -causing-> Efforts} = everything is wasted.
If this happens 1000s of times, you will get total drained from being unable to plug into the larger circuits, you have to withdraw your actions/efforts and go back to the philosophical drawing-board/introspection/remapping/reexamination.
Interestingly, very often, negative relationships are preferred to rejection.
Because when you are attacked, you are still validated as SOMETHING – a foe/a hateable person/a punishable person.
There is some identity that is being upheld and sustained by the attacker of you.
That is why when a void of neglect is created in a child’s life, it generally fills the void with a negative relationship, of, “I must be bad/defective in some way and that is why as a punishment I am neglected and if I do right I can earn back the love/involvement/relationship/inclusion into life”.
This could result in that child pursuing self-improvement/self-flagellation for the rest of his/her life to earn the missing affection/relationship.
Let’s take the case of a negative abusive relationship.
The person is allowing you to [be something] by virtue of his/her relationship to you -> and stirring up some [stimulation/some emotion/some drama/some engagement].
But in rejection -> it is like pulling the plug off.
The other gives you no sustenance whatsoever, and since reality is ‘dependent- arising’, when any one side withdraws, it comes to an end.
And your social-identity/ego is made up of nothing but the [conglomeration of all the projected images of others on you as relationships].
Relationships with others make -> ‘YOU’/your social identity/your ego.
Relationships with your internal imagination world objects keep those objects alive.
Say you are looking for a soul-soul relationship or individual-individual relationship, but everyone you know is plugged into a social system/circuit/frame.
In that case, you participating in their FRAMES is to only give strength to the already large-network they are invested in.
It is like investing the little money you have into a [large multinational corporation].
Firstly your [peanuts investment] means very little to the multinational.
Secondly, the person you are giving that too, who is inside the [power-grid web of that multinational] is only one of its agents and he could care less if he loses one supporter, even if you walk away.
But you know what, you would have lost a LOT of investment energy in that transaction.
For a person not invested, the social entities are just [larger impersonal uncaring alien organisms] that expand and take as many [life energies/souls] into their structure.
People are plugged into these systems/reality power-grids, and the life of these systems COMES FROM the PEOPLE who are PLUGGED INTO THEM -> creating a circulating circuit that gives power to the system.
The entire definition/structure/sustenance of these systems comes from the common investment of a LARGE number of people.
That is why people who have a ravenous desire for power will always go after the most popular well accepted things, because those circuits carry the most power from carrying the investment the highest number of people.
This is digressing from the original topic, but what I wanted to communicate here was that, if you desire an [individual-individual relationship] but find that 99% of the people you know are plugged into various social games and the only windows of relationship they provide you are for you to participate in those impersonal frames, it will eventually drain you.
Every heartbreak is a disillusionment
Every heartbreak is a disillusionment.
Essentially every break up is a break up with a certain alive context in our experience.
Our life consists of multi-layered hierarchical contexts.
For instance, it could range from a context as small as losing your favorite wallet to as large as losing all frame of reference/your ego/your beliefs/your religion/how to live etc.
I’ll focus on breakup in the context of relationship here.
It removes the context of what you thought the person was and what their relationship to you was.
That frame of reference is lost, and to the degree to which that frame of reference was integrated in your whole way of being in the world, to that degree you are now put in chaos.
It is a separation, a kind of ripping apart, and that is painful.
It has disillusioned you, and revealed your previous conception as illusion.
But neither does it totally reveal what that person really is.
It leaves you in a limbo of not-knowing/chaos/grief.
You don’t know if it was your fault or their fault.
You don’t know if this is in their best interest or not in their best interest.
You don’t know if this is in your best interest or not in your best interest.
You don’t know if you should try to get the partner back or let them go.
You don’t know if you should even try another partnership or just abandon that whole path of trying to secure a relationship.
You don’t know if you can trust your perception anymore, because it has just proved itself to be empty.
You stand at the precipice of the unknown with a fallen frame of reference.
It can throw you into an existential crisis too with questions like – how can you trust anyone? How does trust even work? Are we just under the mercy of god, who acts like a chameleon and suddenly changes color casting a cruel joke on us?
Then it just comes down to faith.
In time, the void of this chaos is filled with a new structure, healing happens, and you have grown.
Isn’t this how all growth happens – Isn’t all growth disillusionment in a sense?
Another facet I would like to include here is about success in terms of proven lovability.
And this variable would affect the intensity of your breakup too.
Failure is tolerated only by a person who has succeeded previously.
What if you have never succeeded?
What if nobody has ever loved you, no matter how much efforts you put?
Will you try again? Where would this hope come from?
Would you once again trust your bursts of irrational hope? or just give up?
The most painful wound of this sort can happen when the parents are on the extreme end of conditional love or if they just keep the child alive and barely functional as a duty/obligation and thoroughly neglect the child and kill its spirit.
I very strongly feel, romantic love is a replay of that original bond.
Because that is when we were THAT SENSITIVE to feel it in THAT INTENSITY.
So it is THAT memory that makes us seek partners with a kind of LOVE MAP structure (that has a lot to do with our parental conditioning, unless we overcome that with extraordinary spiritual effort).
Children who were loved by their parents well, have tremendous resilience to rejection, break-ups etc. Like a positive spiral they are quite unlikely to go through a break-up in the first place because they attract the conditions that mirror loving environments and perpetuate that.
Almost seems like a cruelty of nature, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer – even in the love department.
The only way out that I have seen, is to overcome the ignorance that keeps you repeating the same things and to just constantly keep growing.
The Magic of Sex
Sex = Sublime, Rapture, Surrender, Self-Abnegation, Ecstasy, Absorption, Trance, Timeless, An act of total trust, An act of total surrender, An act of fusion/merger/unison, A divine release, A losing of oneself, A deep focus into the NOW/Present, Relinquishment of all control, Letting our animal nature free, A satisfaction/fulfillment/release, A transcendence of one’s boundaries, a TOTAL offering of oneself to the other, Divine.
Sexuality is a trance of deep focus and present moment absorption.
It is about surrender, relinquishing control, and offering oneself fully to the other.
It is a symbol of great trust and acceptance – something we find so little of in our daily interactions.
Giving into sex, is like giving into ecstasy.
Sex is a celebration of desire, a dancing alive celebration.
It is a one-pointed timeless focused state of being.
Sex is a POTENTIAL.
It can range from the most superficial layer to the deepest layer to all of yourself.
Life itself IS sex – the intermingling, dance, transformation of energies.
Each person is like a galaxy/a universe.
Imagine one galaxy meeting an other galaxy, what a monumental event that would be?!
Sex is that grand event, no less grand.
To truly have sex with a person, is to have sex with their every word, their every thought, their every breath, their every heart beat, their every look, their every emotion…
Sex is about dying to another.
The more you offer, the greater your ecstasy.
There is a spectrum of sexual experience:
Mundane ————————- Sublime
“How do you want to experience this?”, rests on you.
Algorithm for solving all problems
Personal:
Look at the emotions now (look at the contraction)
Ask – what is the cause of them? – find the mental stories and write them down.
Ask – what would be the antidote for this? – find the antidote mental stories
Transpersonal:
Ask – what is the wisdom about such a situation/event/condition happening to someone?
Ask – what is the wisdom that someone would need to process/complete/let go of this?
Final Step:
Complete the process and Let Go!
Look at the emotions now (look at the contraction)
Ask – what is the cause of them? – find the mental stories and write them down.
Ask – what would be the antidote for this? – find the antidote mental stories
Transpersonal:
Ask – what is the wisdom about such a situation/event/condition happening to someone?
Ask – what is the wisdom that someone would need to process/complete/let go of this?
Final Step:
Complete the process and Let Go!
Journey to the Abstract 