I had this wacky train of thought come to me.
Hope viewers of this post find it entertaining/interesting.
The whole idea of romantic relationship is a societal/cultural/civilizational/human-organization based construct.
If all humans just lived wild,
Males would randomly have sex with 100s of women, and probably have 30-40 children each or more.
The male would not know who his child is.
Also, there seems to be no easily observable causality linking the sexual act to the consequence of pregnancy, and the consequent children that come from that.
There is just a wild instinctual desire for the male.
Similarly women too feel this same wild desire, in certain time periods, and depending on their mood they may run away, resist, or allow the sex to happen.
The man in his prime years would probably be more motivated, since he can easily manage to do 1 or 2 every day without any time-off periods.
The things is, after the sex, the woman too may not be able to causally connect the act of sex to the pregnancy that happens after.
Could she not take it as something that just naturally happened from God?
So the causality is not known from either side, male or female.
The female would bond with the child from the oxytocin and breastfeeding period, and that bond may result in the child and mother recognizing each other.
But there is no way the child will know the father, and neither will the father know.
It could be anybody.
If the woman has had sex with 5 men in a day, and gets pregnant, how would she have any idea who caused the child OR if the 5 acts had anything to do with the child at all?
The first symptoms of pregnancy after all come much later, probably a fortnight later at least, right?
Another aspect is that, if the child grows up away from the mother from a young age, it is doubtful if the mother can recognize the child.
The child may recognize the mother, because her age may not change her appearance as much in the 15-45 zone, but even that may not be easy.
So it seems like the entire notion of civilization/society is to regulate birth and to ensure the spread of resources to everyone.
By putting the responsibility on the father, the father is deterred from following his raw instinct and seeking new mates.
Similarly, a responsibility is also put on the mother, to take care of the child for much longer than she might have otherwise done.
The socialization/enculturation/civilization process is to suppress the sex instinct’s wildness, and instead redirect it into the structures of society, that is, to gain status/position/rank and then seek out the opp-sex of similar status/position/rank etc.
This I guess spawns the whole matrix of mating/romantic fantasy and social status/rank/position/specialness.
The fantasy of being the elite and mating with other elite,
Like the notion of kings/queens, emperors/empresses, prince/princesses and so on.
Names are used in societal organization to TAG the person.
It is an identifier similar to your debit card number, social security number and so on.
Similarly even the roles of mother/father are tags society puts on folk.
Like XXX is the mother of XXXX —–OR—— XXXX is the father of XXXX.
Also the agreement of marriage itself, is really a contract/agreement that serves the children who will be born from the mating of the 2.
Marriage was essentially a system created for the bringing up of children.
Nowadays people use it for companionship, but that is a conscious contract of sort, and it does not have much binding, since both the parties are independent.
It is only the child that is born helpless, and needs a lot of nurture at least till the age of 10.
There seems to big rift in the way “natural biology drives/impulses/instincts” operate and in the way we view everything from the “societal/cultural/civilizational lens”.
The former is generally subsumed into the latter in the process of socialization.
I guess, based on seeing the consequences, ramifications, and aftermath, birth causation etc. – Wise people with vision created systems such as culture/society/civilization to organize and regulate the different drives so that the system could serve in the longer term as a win-win for everyone.
Society/Culture then seems like a long distance vision of how people can live together and mutually fulfill all their needs .
As more needs get satisfied, people may become conscious of finer and subtler needs, which would gradually make their way into modifying society’s formal or informal structures.
Some thoughts on dating
This is a very vast subject,
And no matter what I write here,
I’d still only be scratching the surface.
In my understanding,
All relationships/dating/romantic pursuits,
Are about mutually fulfilling needs.
At a broad level, the needs might be:
Emotional, Social, Psychological (Companionship),
Physical, Financial…and so on.
I feel the root of all of these needs starts from early childhood,
From the relationship with the parents.
How did the parents reflect the child?
In the formative stage,
A child knows itself only by parental reflection/mirroring.
If the parent treats the child like a satellite,
(Like an extension of themselves instead of an independent entity),
That has to revolve around the planet,
Which is the parent in this case,
Then that creates the co-dependency dynamic.
If the mother/father is herself/himself profoundly needy,
They may project the role of the hero/savior/martyr to the child.
Due to this, a role-reversal would take place,
Causing the child to be the caretaker/peacemaker/emotional-regulator for the parent.
This would create the hero/martyr/savior dynamic.
In other cases,
The child may be conditioned to be overly dependent on the parent,
And the parent would encourage that to keep them dependent/enmeshed.
An opposite kind of enmeshment is also possible,
Where the parent depends upon the child from an early age,
Causing the child to be unusually independent early-on,
And assuming adult-like responsibility from a very young age.
There are many more cases like this,
Which then create a plethora of possible dynamics.
I feel it is these dynamics that are once again enacted in romantic relations.
The role-plays conditioned early on,
Perpetuate themselves in future relationships for most.
Whether negative or positive,
The dynamics go on unless deeply introspected.
Essentially the holy-grail sought in these romantic relations is:
If original dynamic was positive: To perpetuate that same successful dynamic with the other, and have that pattern simply live on.
If the original dynamic was negative: To once again find someone to trust, and then attempt to get our narcissistic wounds healed through their positive reflection of us.
Generally, I observe, that if the original dynamic was positive,
The person has very little trouble finding a partner and continuing it.
Trust comes easy, it happens seamlessly somehow,
And suddenly in a wink of an eye,
You see them all settled, happy, continuing their shtick(lol).
Most of the drama however, happens in the latter case,
Where the original dynamic was negative.
I feel the reason why this case is so difficult is because,
Not only was there a lack of trust to begin with from both sides,
But also, each of them continues to be still attached to their parent(s) in a negative way.
After enduring huge amounts of narcissistic injury, they buried all of their hurt/shame/anger/sadness…and so on,
And all this buried resentment and unprocessed parental enmeshment/attachment,
Makes both of them project their own ‘unfulfilling-parent’ onto the other.
For each of them:
The real quest is to get a cocktail of the following validations from the other:
Emotional/Self-esteem/Achievement/Specialness,
/Significance/Importance/Greatness/Worth/Value,
Trustability/Lovability/Likeability/Attractiveness,
Intelligence/Status…and so on.
It is a quest for redemption:
To be seen in a positive light,
And granted entry into a better world,
That is now finally safe for them to enter.
But in order to get the above,
They first have to become vulnerable to the other,
And open themselves up to a new internalization.
But to have history not repeat itself, and double the hurt,
They would have to test each other first.
And this testing part is where things break off eventually.
Because:
1. Usually nobody passes their tests (far too steep).
2. Secondly they attract partners who resemble their parents (the ones who created the issues to begin with).
It then becomes a sort of negative-prophecy that keeps repeating.
The quest could be worded as:
“How do I find an other,
Who is safe/trustable/adept/and wants my best interests?,
Who gives me the positive-reflection of myself I have longed for,
Who thereby opens up a new safe world for me to start thriving,
Which is the opposite of the hellish in-between ambivalent place I am in now.”
Most of the time, such an other is never found or never passes the tests,
And therefore results in “serial-monogamy” or other forms of disguised-despair.
Imo the only way out of a negative illusion like this,
Is to wake up (to awaken).
Unfortunately, it is not as easy to change a negative illusion to a positive one.
The only way out is to make EVERYTHING conscious.
And no matter what I write here,
I’d still only be scratching the surface.
In my understanding,
All relationships/dating/romantic pursuits,
Are about mutually fulfilling needs.
At a broad level, the needs might be:
Emotional, Social, Psychological (Companionship),
Physical, Financial…and so on.
I feel the root of all of these needs starts from early childhood,
From the relationship with the parents.
How did the parents reflect the child?
In the formative stage,
A child knows itself only by parental reflection/mirroring.
If the parent treats the child like a satellite,
(Like an extension of themselves instead of an independent entity),
That has to revolve around the planet,
Which is the parent in this case,
Then that creates the co-dependency dynamic.
If the mother/father is herself/himself profoundly needy,
They may project the role of the hero/savior/martyr to the child.
Due to this, a role-reversal would take place,
Causing the child to be the caretaker/peacemaker/emotional-regulator for the parent.
This would create the hero/martyr/savior dynamic.
In other cases,
The child may be conditioned to be overly dependent on the parent,
And the parent would encourage that to keep them dependent/enmeshed.
An opposite kind of enmeshment is also possible,
Where the parent depends upon the child from an early age,
Causing the child to be unusually independent early-on,
And assuming adult-like responsibility from a very young age.
There are many more cases like this,
Which then create a plethora of possible dynamics.
I feel it is these dynamics that are once again enacted in romantic relations.
The role-plays conditioned early on,
Perpetuate themselves in future relationships for most.
Whether negative or positive,
The dynamics go on unless deeply introspected.
Essentially the holy-grail sought in these romantic relations is:
If original dynamic was positive: To perpetuate that same successful dynamic with the other, and have that pattern simply live on.
If the original dynamic was negative: To once again find someone to trust, and then attempt to get our narcissistic wounds healed through their positive reflection of us.
Generally, I observe, that if the original dynamic was positive,
The person has very little trouble finding a partner and continuing it.
Trust comes easy, it happens seamlessly somehow,
And suddenly in a wink of an eye,
You see them all settled, happy, continuing their shtick(lol).
Most of the drama however, happens in the latter case,
Where the original dynamic was negative.
I feel the reason why this case is so difficult is because,
Not only was there a lack of trust to begin with from both sides,
But also, each of them continues to be still attached to their parent(s) in a negative way.
After enduring huge amounts of narcissistic injury, they buried all of their hurt/shame/anger/sadness…and so on,
And all this buried resentment and unprocessed parental enmeshment/attachment,
Makes both of them project their own ‘unfulfilling-parent’ onto the other.
For each of them:
The real quest is to get a cocktail of the following validations from the other:
Emotional/Self-esteem/Achievement/Specialness,
/Significance/Importance/Greatness/Worth/Value,
Trustability/Lovability/Likeability/Attractiveness,
Intelligence/Status…and so on.
It is a quest for redemption:
To be seen in a positive light,
And granted entry into a better world,
That is now finally safe for them to enter.
But in order to get the above,
They first have to become vulnerable to the other,
And open themselves up to a new internalization.
But to have history not repeat itself, and double the hurt,
They would have to test each other first.
And this testing part is where things break off eventually.
Because:
1. Usually nobody passes their tests (far too steep).
2. Secondly they attract partners who resemble their parents (the ones who created the issues to begin with).
It then becomes a sort of negative-prophecy that keeps repeating.
The quest could be worded as:
“How do I find an other,
Who is safe/trustable/adept/and wants my best interests?,
Who gives me the positive-reflection of myself I have longed for,
Who thereby opens up a new safe world for me to start thriving,
Which is the opposite of the hellish in-between ambivalent place I am in now.”
Most of the time, such an other is never found or never passes the tests,
And therefore results in “serial-monogamy” or other forms of disguised-despair.
Imo the only way out of a negative illusion like this,
Is to wake up (to awaken).
Unfortunately, it is not as easy to change a negative illusion to a positive one.
The only way out is to make EVERYTHING conscious.
Madness is a distorted mirror
Madness is a distorted mirror.
For someone with a concrete identity, who is clearly identified with a specific structure of human experience and possibility, the mad person does not affect them much.
Because they do not identify with them at all.
We are not affected by things and people we do not identify with.
They see the mad person as totally separate from them.
However, for someone who is highly open, fluid, with vast vision and empathy, who recognizes in himself the potentials of the entire collective human consciousness itself, this witnessing of madness will hurt/pain a lot.
Because, here the deep visionary and empath can recognize himself in the mad person too.
It is like seeing a funky mirror at an amusement park, that distorts your face making your nose super large, eyes and chin super small etc.
For the person with a concrete identity, he just looks at it and flatly denies having anything to do with that reflection, he just says “this is not me”.
But for the deep visionary, it is trickier, because he is not identified with any fixed concrete identity as such, and sees himself with all possibilities of the collective consciousness.
So, when he sees the distorted mirror in the amusement park, he knows that, that is his face, a distorted version version of his original face.
The difference between the concrete person and the visionary is that, the concrete person believes the mad person is totally separate and has nothing to do with him, while the deep empath visionary can see the mad person IS HIM, in a greatly distorted form.
We are not affected by the things in which we cannot see ourselves in.
That is the root of empathy, is it not?
When your identity is sufficiently subtle, you see yourself in and as everyone and everything.
When you are young, you are mirrored in your mother’s and father’s image of you, which becomes your social identity (relational identity, ego).
If they mirror you in a seriously chaotic inconsistent mirror, then that becomes your “social identity/relational identity/ego”.
You are then never sure of your security, desirability, lovability, value etc.
Because the parent’s mad fluctuations keeps changing you from an angel to a devil randomly.
So then you start living in fear/anxiety all the time because you never know what wrong you have done, what punishment you are going to get, what expectation is going to be shoved on you etc.
They then keep you walking on eggshells all the time.
In order to adapt to those mad expectation projections on you from the parents, you have to keeping shaping yourself too accordingly.
So the end-result is, even your structure will mirror the mad parents.
The interesting thing to note here is that, madness at this intra-family level is only related to “inconsistency”.
A consistent interaction pattern no matter what it is, within the family, will be coherence and sanity. It may be totally mad with respect to the outside world however.
That is why the tyrant is a particular adaptation to madness, where he creates some arbitrary pattern and then stays ultra consistent in his investment to that, forcing others to abide by the same too, punishing them whenever they don’t.
A second adaptation to tolerate madness would be, to completely sacrifice yourself to the other and always changing yourself to match and harmonize with the changing random moods of the mad person.
The third adaptation I can think of is to completely isolate yourself, so that the self-other “painful difficult dynamic” can be totally avoided.
These 3 types of adaptation are essentially the: fight, fawn, flight responses.
If nothing works, and you are stuck in a inescapable situation, then the freeze response happens, where you lose consciousness of the entire self-other dynamic and float away in some out of body dissociated state.
At the societal level, the macrocosm mirrors the microcosm, that is:
The 4 categories of fight/fawn/flight/freeze form:
tyrants/followers/outcasts/hermits
The insight I get is: “People see me as they are, not as I am”.
But then it is also true that: “What I know as myself is only the internalized reflections from others”.
Because one cannot know oneself any more than a candle flame can burn itself.
So this is part of the “self-other” interdependent matrix.
Disharmony/Distortion/Projection = madness —vs— Harmony/Clarity/Independence = Sanity
Madness is always relative.
It is the discordant note in the symphony.
If you were born in a mad family, then the structures that you form mirror that circumstance and outcast/separate you too.
The same can be said about the parents themselves.
Maybe they themselves were the effect of mad circumstances.
So in this way, madness propagates itself in the genetic chain.
The way I deal with madness is, I work to transcend it.
By understanding the higher laws/dharma/truths beyond the madness, I work from that footing on fixing the madness in me and others.
For someone with a concrete identity, who is clearly identified with a specific structure of human experience and possibility, the mad person does not affect them much.
Because they do not identify with them at all.
We are not affected by things and people we do not identify with.
They see the mad person as totally separate from them.
However, for someone who is highly open, fluid, with vast vision and empathy, who recognizes in himself the potentials of the entire collective human consciousness itself, this witnessing of madness will hurt/pain a lot.
Because, here the deep visionary and empath can recognize himself in the mad person too.
It is like seeing a funky mirror at an amusement park, that distorts your face making your nose super large, eyes and chin super small etc.
For the person with a concrete identity, he just looks at it and flatly denies having anything to do with that reflection, he just says “this is not me”.
But for the deep visionary, it is trickier, because he is not identified with any fixed concrete identity as such, and sees himself with all possibilities of the collective consciousness.
So, when he sees the distorted mirror in the amusement park, he knows that, that is his face, a distorted version version of his original face.
The difference between the concrete person and the visionary is that, the concrete person believes the mad person is totally separate and has nothing to do with him, while the deep empath visionary can see the mad person IS HIM, in a greatly distorted form.
We are not affected by the things in which we cannot see ourselves in.
That is the root of empathy, is it not?
When your identity is sufficiently subtle, you see yourself in and as everyone and everything.
When you are young, you are mirrored in your mother’s and father’s image of you, which becomes your social identity (relational identity, ego).
If they mirror you in a seriously chaotic inconsistent mirror, then that becomes your “social identity/relational identity/ego”.
You are then never sure of your security, desirability, lovability, value etc.
Because the parent’s mad fluctuations keeps changing you from an angel to a devil randomly.
So then you start living in fear/anxiety all the time because you never know what wrong you have done, what punishment you are going to get, what expectation is going to be shoved on you etc.
They then keep you walking on eggshells all the time.
In order to adapt to those mad expectation projections on you from the parents, you have to keeping shaping yourself too accordingly.
So the end-result is, even your structure will mirror the mad parents.
The interesting thing to note here is that, madness at this intra-family level is only related to “inconsistency”.
A consistent interaction pattern no matter what it is, within the family, will be coherence and sanity. It may be totally mad with respect to the outside world however.
That is why the tyrant is a particular adaptation to madness, where he creates some arbitrary pattern and then stays ultra consistent in his investment to that, forcing others to abide by the same too, punishing them whenever they don’t.
A second adaptation to tolerate madness would be, to completely sacrifice yourself to the other and always changing yourself to match and harmonize with the changing random moods of the mad person.
The third adaptation I can think of is to completely isolate yourself, so that the self-other “painful difficult dynamic” can be totally avoided.
These 3 types of adaptation are essentially the: fight, fawn, flight responses.
If nothing works, and you are stuck in a inescapable situation, then the freeze response happens, where you lose consciousness of the entire self-other dynamic and float away in some out of body dissociated state.
At the societal level, the macrocosm mirrors the microcosm, that is:
The 4 categories of fight/fawn/flight/freeze form:
tyrants/followers/outcasts/hermits
The insight I get is: “People see me as they are, not as I am”.
But then it is also true that: “What I know as myself is only the internalized reflections from others”.
Because one cannot know oneself any more than a candle flame can burn itself.
So this is part of the “self-other” interdependent matrix.
Disharmony/Distortion/Projection = madness —vs— Harmony/Clarity/Independence = Sanity
Madness is always relative.
It is the discordant note in the symphony.
If you were born in a mad family, then the structures that you form mirror that circumstance and outcast/separate you too.
The same can be said about the parents themselves.
Maybe they themselves were the effect of mad circumstances.
So in this way, madness propagates itself in the genetic chain.
The way I deal with madness is, I work to transcend it.
By understanding the higher laws/dharma/truths beyond the madness, I work from that footing on fixing the madness in me and others.
The final rites of letting go
I have relinquished almost all investments with others.
Now, I stand alone with only my parents around me.
As I let go more and more, I am falling into an energy space that has no overlap with my parents.
My parents are my final investment, and I am getting desperate in trying to connect with them in some way.
This is because if I don’t achieve some connection/structure/basis then I will fall into no-self, chaos, the dream, and emptiness.
This is scary to me, and that part of me is driving my efforts for desperate connection.
Even if it means finding fault with others(parents), and infusing urgency into the fact that they MUST solve their problems, and I will help them, and so on.
I can see through this though, and I have compassion for that part of me.
In fact I see that there is no overlap between my energy and ANYBODY else.
I see the part of me that is freaking out
That part which seeks out support/connection/bolstering for my identity.
That part is actually my identity/ego/social-self itself.
Without this bolstering one falls into the unknown, into the dream, and into emptiness, without a story, continuity, identity, or a structure.
That is how it appears.
The illusion of continuity and structure is maintained by others.
Without others, there is nothing to UPHOLD the self/ego.
Our self/ego is only a social-construct thriving on continual reinforcement.
The grief is in dropping this mega-project of the hope of securing validation of my value and worth from an other, and of contact with an other who would give me the respect of fully seeing me.
I have never received the “seeing/validation of worth and value” in any consistent way all through my life.
It has come in bits and pieces and has created so many fragmented selves.
Maybe that is what drove me towards the project of freedom, because the chaos and a lack of a stable pov was getting painful.
But now, I want to be emptied of all these dependent coagulations/structures/identities and give up everything that is not upheld inherently by existence itself.
The price to pay feels like everything, but I can also sense that nothing of true value is ever lost and all I am losing is my burdens.
Parents are the life enabler for the child
Parents are the life enabler and mentors for the child – they have lived here longer, and introduce the child to society and nurture the child’s INHERENT potentials.
Parents who are blind to their children’s potentials, not only thwart the child’s deeper inherent flows, they also impose a DEAD operating system (dead in the sense, not based on the reality of the child, which they are blind to).
This dead operating system might mainly serve the parents and the factions of society the parents are connected to.
Parents impose these “dead/hard and fast/rigid/militaristic/inflexible” systems by using GUILT AND FEAR because OBVIOUSLY the child’s natural inherent potentials would abhor and resist such a system being imposed.
Imposing such a dead operating system is a good way to guarantee depression for the child who has to not only GET RID of this toxic system (filled with guilt and fear) but also rebuild a system that supports his inherent potentials.
Parents usually do this, because they themselves are disconnected from themselves and are simply perpetuating a dead failing system providing by their parents onto them. A chain of “dysfunction/abuse/neglect/misdirection of energy/faulty beliefs” simply passes on and on, until someone has the intelligence to LOOK AT IT SQUARE and remove this toxic programming.
Until one’s cures one’s own dysfunction, it will simply PERPETUATE.
Unhappy parents, will most like impose their unhappy algorithms on their children too.
Not only that, needy unhappy parents are even worse, because they isolate and trap the child into serving them.
There is no limit as to how bad this can get, and therefore, it is never too late to take responsibility.
Parents who are blind to their children’s potentials, not only thwart the child’s deeper inherent flows, they also impose a DEAD operating system (dead in the sense, not based on the reality of the child, which they are blind to).
This dead operating system might mainly serve the parents and the factions of society the parents are connected to.
Parents impose these “dead/hard and fast/rigid/militaristic/inflexible” systems by using GUILT AND FEAR because OBVIOUSLY the child’s natural inherent potentials would abhor and resist such a system being imposed.
Imposing such a dead operating system is a good way to guarantee depression for the child who has to not only GET RID of this toxic system (filled with guilt and fear) but also rebuild a system that supports his inherent potentials.
Parents usually do this, because they themselves are disconnected from themselves and are simply perpetuating a dead failing system providing by their parents onto them. A chain of “dysfunction/abuse/neglect/misdirection of energy/faulty beliefs” simply passes on and on, until someone has the intelligence to LOOK AT IT SQUARE and remove this toxic programming.
Until one’s cures one’s own dysfunction, it will simply PERPETUATE.
Unhappy parents, will most like impose their unhappy algorithms on their children too.
Not only that, needy unhappy parents are even worse, because they isolate and trap the child into serving them.
There is no limit as to how bad this can get, and therefore, it is never too late to take responsibility.
The trap of opposing what your parents want you to be
Interestingly, in opposing my parents, I get stuck in a even bigger trap.
Lets say, parents want me to be X.
So then the algorithm I use is to BE[Not X]
Which is the same as -(-1) which is NOT = 1, unlike what mathematics may say.
Another way to put it is, a negative[negative] does not make a positive.
It in fact makes it even more complicated than 2x of the original negative.
In the task of opposing something totally I become more limited and narrow than the original thing itself.
I become even more narrow because now I am preoccupied with 3 things:
X, opposing X/finding its opposite, choosing to not be X.
This process is counterproductive because my ultimate reason for this opposition is to be FREE.
But this opposition puts me in an even bigger trap than the original trap of an image being imposed on me.
The solution here seems to be pointing towards LETTING GO of resistance and simply flowing as smoothly and unattached as possible.
In a way, I have further crystallized X by opposing it, when the goal itself was to let go of X in order to be something free’er and larger.
Lets say, parents want me to be X.
So then the algorithm I use is to BE[Not X]
Which is the same as -(-1) which is NOT = 1, unlike what mathematics may say.
Another way to put it is, a negative[negative] does not make a positive.
It in fact makes it even more complicated than 2x of the original negative.
In the task of opposing something totally I become more limited and narrow than the original thing itself.
I become even more narrow because now I am preoccupied with 3 things:
X, opposing X/finding its opposite, choosing to not be X.
This process is counterproductive because my ultimate reason for this opposition is to be FREE.
But this opposition puts me in an even bigger trap than the original trap of an image being imposed on me.
The solution here seems to be pointing towards LETTING GO of resistance and simply flowing as smoothly and unattached as possible.
In a way, I have further crystallized X by opposing it, when the goal itself was to let go of X in order to be something free’er and larger.
Journey to the Abstract 