Tag: Self

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Are you sure you want to be healed/cured/healthy?

Lets really dive deep into this matter.
Everyone assumes that their desire is always for a greater, better, and nicer life filled with health, vitality, exuberance, joy, prosperity, and riches.
That is the collective assumption each person holds about their innermost motivations.
But really? Are you sure? Have you ever REALLY looked inside and asked yourself if that is what you really want?
Maybe you want to be sick? Maybe you want to be seriously sick? Maybe you want to punish yourself to death? Maybe you want to end this entire life, that is commit suicide (suicide as an attitude, not the act per say)? Do you want to live a ‘living death’?
Is your innermost motivation to die? and facilitate dying in every possible way by constantly attracting severe and hostile circumstances to your life?
This may sound morbid, but the truth can be quite eye-opening if this is really examined without ASSUMING stuff just because it sounds normal or good.
Do you really want to get alright? OR Is there much more going on than just simply believing that?

Lets consider the 2 basic orientations:
Life drive ——————- Death drive
Life drive moves towards enhancing life while fearing death.
Death drive moves towards enhancing death while fearing life.
In a way both are orientations based on fear of the opposite.

I’ll speak about a few cases here.
In childhood, were you the spoilt child or the lost child?
Spoilt child —————- Neglected child
The spoilt child lets say becomes a narcissist, which means there is great love for the ‘self’ (whatever structure it has formed), and there is a desire to enhance the self at all costs even if it means sacrificing and destroying others.
The child then endlessly looks for ways of self-aggrandizement, glorification, beautification, and better survival OR he may become a fire-starter, notorious, attract negative attention etc.
Why? Because they value that structure of self so much.
This is actually an internalization of the “positive or negative parent attention” that was received.
Even if his life circumstance becomes terrible, he may wish for the destruction of the world and other people, create justified rage for everything(rage = anger, and anger cannot be there, unless there is desire, and desire cannot be there unless there is love(in this case for the self)).
However, he would still work towards preserving and enhancing himself to the hilt from the love of the self-image.

The profoundly neglected child on the other hand receives no parental attention at all.
It tends to develops a self that acts more like a martyr and also operates in a primary mood of despair.
The despair of having to put in a bunch of efforts to constantly survive in order to protect a worthless self anyway.
The profoundly neglected child may get burnt out later from all his martyrdom, and then retreat more and more into hermetic isolation with profound hatred/detachment towards everyone and everything.
The deeper truth about this is that, the parental rejection of him/her in childhood has been internalized as the self (phantom critic self) which then subjects the ‘real self’ to the same neglect and hostile attitude(of endless deprivation, slow poisoning, condemnation and punishment).
The message internalized is “We dont want you, nobody needs you here, you are a waste, you don’t deserve to exist, why don’t you just die and relieve us of the burden of having you around?”

Let’s talk more about the latter case.
Because narcissistic personalities abound in society and have been studied quite a bit.
But what has not received attention in my opinion are the silent people on the periphery living on the boundary between life and death – the profoundly neglected folk.

It does not matter how smart or erudite they may seem.
In fact more often than not, they are extremely knowledgable and intelligent too.
They become so, from all their efforts to overcome their own impossible inner critic.
The death drive(internalized phantom self critic), drives them to the height of accomplishment, but no amount of accomplishment is remotely enough for the death drive to be released.
That is why they are just assaulted from every direction with a sense of hopelessness, abandonment, isolation, despair, futility, pain no matter what they do, all of which only serves as distractions from avoiding the true harshness of their underlying condition.
It may lead to:
– compulsive isolation (because that is the only thing that feels safe), daydreaming, fantasy
– OR compulsive busyness
– OR martyrdom in the form of service for others
– OR belief in some kind of myth like “knowledge will free me” or “perfection in obeying laws is the answer” etc.
– OR may become a pleasure seeker.
There are different ways of coping with this condition, but the underlying cause is from “internalization of the rejecting neglecting other (parental figures or caregivers etc.)”
Nothing can redeem the ‘fallen self’ from the eyes of this ‘critical phantom self’. This phantom self is ruthlessly punishing and tormenting – so much, that the only real wish of the living self is for death which sets up the death drive.

So, if your condition is of the ‘neglected rejected self’ and if your ‘internalized myths’ are similar, then “failure = success”.
Changing your diet, lifestyle, doing yogic practices, exercise, herbs etc. whatever you do may not really REMOVE this shape shifting tyrannical monster that torments you from within.
Because the origin of the condition is from the MYTHIC level of consciousness.
Find out the root of your self-rejection.
It takes immense courage to face up to it, because all the other stuff actually is more of a distraction and patch-work compared to the true work of understanding the matrix of your own innermost intentions.
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Loneliness is the thirst for connection/relationship

Loneliness is a kind of thirst.
A thirst for what? A thirst for relationship/connection.
Thirst for ‘BEING’.
It is the thirst to BE.
BE what? Just to be anything, something…
OR a thirst to be more than what you are.
To ‘relate/connect’ is the same as the ‘Will to BE’.
Greater the ‘Will to BE’ = Greater is this thirst to relate/connect.
It is possible to BE anything only through relationship.
You are a some-body only in relation to other-bodies.
You are a personality only in relation to other personalities.
The self and other are emergent phenomena that are mutually interdependent on relationship.
The other does not have to be a person, it could even be ANY EXPERIENCE including abstract ideas, philosophies, inanimate objects etc.
Remove the relationship, and both the self and other vanish together.
The game gets disbanded, and identity is dissolved with it.
For example: In the movie ‘Cast Away’, Tom Hanks draws a face on a football and keeps talking to it to maintain his identity. If he did not do that, in the absence of all human contact, his humanness ITSELF would fade away (from the disappearance of ‘relationship’)

A ‘Relationship’ is the ‘AXIS’ that creates the respective players on both the sides.
Be it:
To love ——— To be loved [Axis]
To desire ——- To be desired [Axis]
To need ——— To be needed [Axis]
A relationship axis creates polarity, the 2 poles.
The poles are not fixed but can switch too.
A relationship is alive too, it is a dynamic, an alive dance.

We derive profound meaning from each other.
A profound dance transpires in every interaction.
The deeper we understand this, the more it brings out the depth.
Ultimately it is life interacting with itself.
That which is alive in me interacts with that which is alive in you.
I create myself through relationship with you, you create yourself through relationship with me.
Even what we call we call as negative relationship which includes seeing oneself as rejectible, contemptible, unlikeable, unlovable, unworthy, unfit, uninteresting, unimportant, unwanted, undeserving etc. is also a [REAL TANGIBLE INTERNALIZED NEGATIVE RELATIONSHIP IMAGE].
It is not non-relationship, because non-relationship would simply remove everything.

The loneliness is the helplessness of being unable to let go of this [internalized negative relationship image], and being unable to let go of identification with that.
That gets frozen inside us, and keeps getting reinforced in every interaction.
We ignore the interactions where that is not affirmed, and emphasize the interactions where it gets affirmed, and it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All identity works on this internalized bias, isn’t it? (whether positive or negative)
What would you be without that identity?
Isn’t that thought more terrifying than simply holding on to the known identity?
So it is like being caught between the devil and sea.
We hold on to the known devil, than let go into the unknown sea.
Unfortunately, this is trans-rational, there is no rational explanation that can truly convince you to let go into the sea.
The negative relationship identification eventually fades and wears itself out, plays itself out, and a new era is gently ushered.
We can help this process by accepting and fully experiencing everything.
We transcend this by FULLY EXPERIENCING the negative relationship imprint itself.
Feel your deepest loneliness fully with as much as you can muster, with the attitude of dropping into it, and giving in/allowing.
When fully experienced, when you feel it with your whole being and apply your whole mind and soul to it, even the loneliness will look sublime, and you will see it for what it truly is – a phenomenon.
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God is present when you are not

Internal noise/sound ——- External noise/sound
When internal noise is lower than external noise = there is reception, the world enters you. [There is awareness of the world]
When internal noise is greater than external noise = there is emitting, you put out to the world. [There is awareness of the self]

So when you become a vacuum and empty your ‘self’ = the world pours into you.
When you are filled with really loud emotions/mind = all you can feel is your self, and you cannot feel anything out in the world.

The emptier you are = the more that enters you [nature fills vacuums]
If you become absolutely empty = you will get absolutely filled from the outside.
On the other hand, if you are full of yourself = you will see/feel/hear only yourself and nothing of the outside.
That is why it is said:
God is there, when you are not.
You are there, when god is not.
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States of consciousness vs. movement(happening)

fadingaway

Today I met my cousin after a long time, and the conversation we had seamlessly flowed from topic to topic on auto-pilot.
I was barely conscious in the whole of the conversation that transpired, it just flowed spontaneously and I was dimly witnessing the happening with very little control or consciousness of it.
These kinds of dissociated blank states happen a lot to me, esp. when I am engaged in a conversation.
Suddenly I lose consciousness of the entire context, and I feel like my memory is wiping out and refreshing every second as I speak.
Like to keep writing on water and watching your writing disappear spontaneously as you write, but yet keep writing without any plan or consciousness of the goal or context.
This always puzzled me, this state of consciousness that is.
Later after the 3 hour conversation, I wrote down everything I chatted about and it seemed to make sense in retrospect.
I felt the urge to run through the whole conversation in my mind and correctly contextualize the whole thing into my memory framework.
I often do this and resolve incomplete memories by retrospective analysis.

So I wanted to create a map for these kinds of experiences of dissociation and a loss of consciousness.
Generally when we lose consciousness, we assume we will just faint and fall down.
But this is not necessarily the case.
There are a lot of cases where our consciousness goes dim but yet that does not stop interactions and movement from happening.
Take the case, when you are crazy drunk, so drunk that the pyramidal cells in the brain are stopped from encoding to long term memory. In that situation, you move, talk, laugh, have a lot of emotions and conversations, but it is all spontaneous without any ego presence.
These are times, where things happen, but your story-making/contextualizing apparatus is offline.
The most scary version of this might be the date-rape drug or datura, which causes you to lose all will power and simply comply blindly.

I have had these experiences happen even on weed, when there is total absorption into music, so much, that when the song ends, you forget that you even heard a song and it feels like the song lasted an eternity.
Another example of this would be skydiving – that one minute fall was so immersive, my ego/contextualizing/story-making apparatus went offline during the 1 minute fall. So the fall felt like just a few moments vs. a full 60 seconds.

These experiences have always disturbed my ego/central narrative making/story making apparatus.
These events represented holes in my ego control.
Generally prospecting the future requires holding a lot in memory, we prospect the future from this memory base.
For instance if you are playing chess, to decide your next move and plan/strategize requires you to use a lot of your memory.
Imagine if you looked at the position of one chessboard piece, and then as you moved your eyes to look at the next piece, you forgot the position of your first piece, how would you ever strategize how to make the next move?
It takes an incredible amount of working memory to play.

Earlier when I had a strong ego narrative going, all my actions were much more top-down.
In the sense all my actions would be mainly determined by my central practices and goals.
Nowadays, that central narrative has thinned out so much, I find myself in a chaos, a state much closer to a incoherent dream, with various snippets of coherent meanings arising and passing with no central unifier.

So nowadays, events happen by themselves with little consciousness from my side, and then I reflect and write about it later on – extracting insights, weaving the story thread and so on.

Now coming to the abstract part:
There is either a shortage of consciousness or an excess of it relative to movement/happening.
Here are some interesting spectrums to consider:
Unconscious doing, doing > consciousness ————– Conscious doing, doing < consciousness
Happening without consciousness —————— Happening with consciousness
Little happening, high consciousness —————- Lot happening, high consciousness
Little happening, little consciousness ————— Lot happening, little consciousness
The prospect that there can be happening without my consciousness is terrifying for me.
But consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg.
Most of happening is infact unconscious, an enormous amount.

Another interesting connection is between will-power and memory.
The lowering of memory (holding on) fades away will-power in equal measure.
The self/ego is memory. And will power is a function of this.
So memory is the key stone here.
Remove memory and all vanishes.
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Prayer of a weary soul

prayer

[I] hand over my really tired, weak, and weary desireless exhausted [self] over to thee
There [is] an incredible amount of emptiness in [me]
[I’m] barely conscious
Like [I] have been fully knocked out
There [is] not much left in [me] to put up a fight or resist.
[I] can barely stand on my own feet, let alone walk
What [is] this deathly condition?
[I] feel heavy, encumbered, overwhelmed, paralyzed, burdened, weary and can barely keep my head up
[A] severe deficiency of will power/desire/energy
The viruses or entropic agents within are getting the better of me, and [I] have exhausted [my] fight now
[I] can no longer ward off this inevitable destruction
So [I] stop resisting and surrender to death or total transformation
Which [is] what [I] avoided, most of [my] life
Why resist [the] inevitable? This has always been waiting for me anyway
So [I] give myself fully into [the] fire and chaos of transformation
[I] am actually dying into [the] fire of life
[My] avoidance of death [is] the avoidance of life
Because to give [oneself] into the fire, is to give in to 100% change or the ‘life process’ itself
[I] am fulfilling “Thy shall be done”
[I] have no belief anymore regarding what is on the other side
Because to have belief [is] to not give in sincerely
[I] am willingly entering the chaos of profound unknowing
Paradoxically entering this space [is] giving me profound knowings
How can [this] ever make logical sense?
How can [the] substrate underneath every possible contradiction make sense?
[I] previously lived in the digital world whereas now [I] am collapsing into the analog world
[The] analog world of the felt presence of direct indescribable experience
[I] know not where [I] am going, [I] have no map
[I] realize true life is the full entry into mystery and this is also a full entry into dying each moment
Each time [I] fully refresh and re-cognize, [I] create vacuum for the unimaginable to enter
This pulse of life [I] feel [is] similar to the pulse of breath [1/0]
[I] take a breath in fully leaving no gaps -> [I] Experience/Feel it fully -> [I] release it fully leaving a total vacuum
The more [I] give in to the fire, [I] see [I] am none of what I believed [I] was
[I] am a witness of this flow and all is changing
[I] drop into the [Abyss] and lose my [self]
[I] see nothing of true value is ever lost
The [self] BEHOLDS everything, but holds nothing
Like a mirror, Like water and its reflections
Every loss [is] gain
A trading of [the] finite for the infinite
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Deeper aspects about BDSM

bdsm

Spectrum: Polarization:
Delicate target -to- outside violent strong sadist ——— Strong violent sadist -to- outside vulnerable soft target
Submissive(2C), Controlled(3C) ———- Dominator(2C), Controller(3C)
Note: C = chakra
BDSM is a higher polarized version of regular domination and control facets, and it falls on the ends of the bell curve.
The dynamic is between the poles: [dominator – submissive], [controller, controlled].
But take it to the extreme and you get harcore BDSM.
And since this is a spectrum, there are mild, medium, high forms of it too before the extreme end.

The sadist denies his vulnerability while the masochist denies his strength.
So the 2 look for each other, to stabilize and balance their consciousness.

This game can be played until it is interesting.
The way to come out of it is to acknowledge your denied side.
For the dominator to accept his vulnerability.
For the submissive to accept his power.
The shadow of the submissive is the dominant.
The shadow of the dominant is the submissive.
You are seeing your own “projected repressed qualities” in the others you attract, and thereby completing the denied consciousness via consciousness of the attracted other who is lived through vicariously.

Submissive, controlled:
The image of self is cathected to a tender, vulnerable, soft target -> and the other is seen as the violent predator looking to attack and destroy you.
Dominant, controller:
The self is cathected to being strong, powerful, invulnerable -> and the other is seen as a weak vulnerable creature to be attacked.
Spectrums:
The submissive is trying to kill of his power ———————– The dominant is trying to kill off his vulnerability
Attachment to helplessness/powerlessness ———————– Attachment to total power and agency

To be in-between is painful.
So the tendency is mostly to polarize to any one end.
And since addiction works on denial primarily, each is addicted to the other.
So those denied aspects prevent wholeness and set up desires which can get overpowering, because ultimately they are a desire to bring the repressed part into consciousness via. the other.
So the more your deny yourself a pole, the more extreme the desire gets to obtain that pole through the other in consciousness.
The beauty is, both recognize each other.
The dominator lives the vulnerability vicariously through the submissive he/she attacks.
The submissive lives the dominator role vicariously by receiving his/her power.

Society and conventional relationships too function on some degree of polarization.
In the typical societal dynamic -> girl = submissive, guy = dominant.
This is acceptable and the norm. If the guy or girl is extremely dominant or submissive respectively, then one moves further from the norm but is still somewhat accepted.
However, to be a dominant girl or a submissive guy falls out-of-sync with the polarization of conventional/typical society.
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Depression is a protective system

printed-circuit-board

The psyche is like a dynamic living structure/circuit.
Its physical correlate might be the ‘nervous system’.
There is a variable amount of electricity/spirit that can be passed through the nervous system.
The self (ego/self structure) is the determiner of how much spirit (dynamic energy) should be received.
The brain is a reducing value rather than the creator of reality.
The brain is more of a focusing instrument.
The RAS(Reticular activating system) in the brain determines how much power/electricity/spirit must be passed through the nervous system – and this also correspondingly activates the psyche structure.
We could say the ego/self controls this RAS and uses this like a volume control to optimize output based on its goals.

The psyche structure has a circuit.
– If the wiring is very chaotic and silo like(i.e. there are multiple contradictions, conflicts, incompatible compartments, lot of split-selves(locus-es, clusters)), then there the self turns down the RAS to maintain circuit integrity and limit circuit connectivity.
– On the other hand, if the wiring is sound, well integrated, without any incompatible wiring, then the RAS can be comfortably turned up and the system can work more powerfully and efficiently without a short circuit and the parts can function coherently, harmoniously with minimum interference.

An important thing is remember is that, PAIN in essence is from conflict.
So depression is a protective mechanism against PURE PAIN.
Opiates are released in response to pain.
That is why depression and high opiate release are highly connected (which also explains why the depressed person feels a flat AFFECT and loss of memory access).

A depressed person has a lot of internal chaos and conflict.
[Conflicting values, conflicting drives, conflicting ideologies and so on]
This chaos and conflict creates pain.
Now, if greater energy is passed from the RAS through the conflicting circuits, then there could easily be a short circuit and something may blow up.
Whereas if the energy passed through the circuits is lowered, then only the critical circuits receive power, and large areas of potential conflict could be kept low-key and relatively dormant.
So depression kicks in, to make chaos manageable, to mitigate pain, and it is an attempt of the organizing system to handle one thing at a time starting from the most critical.

That is why sometimes LSD and Ayahuasca can cause violent reactions, because it would increase the circuit power and connectivity reach via. RAS, forcing disconnected, compartmentalized, and dormant parts to interact with each other, which could potentially cause a lot of conflict/chaos = pain.
But however if one wants to function as ONE integrated personality, then such a pain could be a good learning experience in terms of facing this chaos so that one could see through the transcendent principle behind it.
These transcendent principles thus seen can be used to integrate the disconnected parts.
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The final rites of letting go

letting-go-hazel-billingsley

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.
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Hate crimes are the tip of the iceberg

iceberg

We all have our unique points of view (from long causal chains) and it may happen that the system around you (which has its own causal chain) might get seriously hostile to you (it’s relative, like an unfolding drama).
The hostility may be a direct abuse or even through utter neglect of you or whatever you are offering.

THERE ARE 2 BROAD BRANCHES:
Blaming of self/self is responsible —————- Blaming of other/other is responsible
The 2 are not water tight compartments though, they are oscillate.
Also at a broader level the basic emotion is the same, but the center of gravity of the individual may differ widely based on the conditioning he/she received. The arrow of it points to the self or the other and accordingly has consequences.
We usually do not look into self-destructive types much and usually a lot of them stay totally invisible, however the other-destructive types usually hit the limelight.
So the phenomenon itself is much broader, we only see the tip of the iceberg which is the people who commit really prominent hate crimes against others.

INNER FEELINGS:

* So the first feelings to arise are: SADNESS/HURT which comes from THWARTED DESIRE or FAILURE.
* You then re-examine, re-evaluate, try again with a new strategy and if you either fail to break through or you realize the situation is quite hopeless from your analysis you fall into GRIEF/DEPRESSION.

So depression is the lower part of the iceberg while hurt is the tiny upper part.
Similarly grief is the lower part of the iceberg while sadness is the tiny upper part.
Sadness is the ‘pain of loss’ or ‘failure’ or ‘realization of the impossibility of achievement’ of a quick immediate goal.
Grief is the failure/loss/’impossibility…’ of the entire context/ground on which you are standing.
“FUTILITY” then arises, which is when you cannot conceive of a way out no matter how hard you try.

FEELINGS TOWARDS THE OUTER: “Which mirror the inner states in an attempt to amend”

* In the first encounter with ‘hurt/sadness’, the outer feelings could be:
– ‘ANGER'(if you think the other was unfair or you were unfair, which implies you have a firm fairness structure in you) = translates into you projecting the anger into suppressing yourself or suppressing the other – violence to self or violence to the other.
– ‘CONFUSION’ (if you cannot figure out what happened/no structure in which to understand) = Here you invest all your energy in a hyper-vigilant state of other-awareness and most of the time, you behave like a zombie when in this confusion.

* Then secondary outward feelings develop on repeated failures and pain:
– Anger turns into HOSTILITY/HATE/CONTEMPT = directed to the self or the other.
– Confusion turns into RESENTMENT/FRUSTRATION/RUMINATION = directed to the self or the other.

* Then tertiary feelings happen when the previous step once again fails with intensification of pain:
– The hostility turns into BLIND RAGE/AGGRESSION/MURDER – towards self (self mutilation, suicide) or the other (hate crimes, murder, mass killing)
– The endless frustration turns into TOTAL NIHILISM/PSYCHOSIS – here it is only to self because he/she barely has the strength and structure to affect others who may just desert him/her.

So to sum it up, I have laid out a model here. It isn’t complete but I wanted to demonstrate the complexity of these phenomena. What we call serial killings etc. are the tip of the tip of the iceberg of some of the dynamics and mechanics I have described here.