I figure it would be an interracial piece.
Anyways, a realization I had about two weeks ago: When I was feeling lonely, it was because I had left myself. My locus of awareness was no longer in my body, but in someone else, or in a beautiful mountain sticking out above the clouds from an airplane window. And I could return myself to me, and I would stop feeling lonely. It was kind of like keeping a friend company, except that friend was me.
I noticed this from an exercises I was doing about relationships. I was just noticing how I tried to manipulate people. Nothing horrible, just the normal stuff most of us do; acting a certain way so that people will like us. Trying to get love and appreciation. Anyways, what I noticed, when I was in the middle of a conversation with someone who I cared about the opinion of, and who didn't already like me, and I tried to bring my awareness to the ways I was violating my own integrity in an effort to get them to like me, was a shift.
The best way I can describe it is it felt/looked energetically like I was drawing an amorphous, hazy mass of soft light out of there body, back into mine, and then a single shining star of light, from them back to the center of my heart. And then I was aware of how I was trying to control what they though of me, and then I mostly relaxed from doing that, and felt much better, more in integrity. And I could observe and laugh at all the silliness that went on within me in the hopeless pursuit of winning other people's approval.
What I didn't expect at all, was it's effect on my loneliness. And how it worked with inanimate objects or people who weren't even there. What I realized, and quickly had words for, because I'd read of this before, was what it meant to leave myself. To be lonely because I was with someone else, and nobody was with me.
In effect I realized that the personality of Isaac is a separate entity from me, and it can keep me company just like any other person can. Maybe not as well as some of my closer friends, who I like better than Isaac, but still, it has the effect of being with someone. Which is to get rid of the feeling of being alone.
I want someone to care for me, and I've found someone, one person, who will always be with me. I know it sounds cliche, but that person is me. Kind of. It's mine, anyways. Like my body, it will follow me around my whole life, except even further than my body, my mind will follow me even into dreams.
This is not an automatic thing. This requires, at least for now, my conscious attention and intention to return to myself. And remembering that I can do that, and that I've left myself, whenever I'm feeling lonely.
The really interesting part is getting to meet this person who I've spent my whole live with. I don't really know him very well. He's got a strength I never new of, since I never let him take care of me before. I tried to go it alone. without even myself coming for the ride.
It's still a bit confusing. I'm not sure exactly what it is that happens, when I do the thing where I return to myself. It's awareness focused back onto me, but it's also me giving the care and support I normally give to friends, to myself. To do that, I kind of need to create an image or a voice that's semi-separate, so I can be told what I need to hear.
In other news:
I remember a time, not too long ago, when dan was still alive, when I was happy. Really ecstatic about life. I can't remember it clearly, I can't picture what it felt like, why I felt that way. I'm wondering if maybe I'm depressed since his suicide. It's hard to compare, because of the lack of clear, emotionally vivid memory of that time. But my reason tells me it was so. Which makes me think it likely that my current state is not normal base-line. Which is good to know. It means I'm not stuck this way forever, and it means I need to keep moving, because there's a better way to live.
I'm trying to find it. The better way of being. A life that's deeply satisfying and full of joy. I feel like life should be that way. It's a dream worth realizing. And if I can get there, then I have some wisdom of utmost value. Not to mention a life of great value.
Part of that is for sure realizing the good that is already within me and around me. I have a belief that some things are better than other things. I don't know why I have this belief, because... No I guess I can think of reasons. They are my false idols, my fake religions. I was thinking about this as I walked through the old growth forest this last weekend. How much more important and impressive these giant thousand year old trees were, compared to a single little ground cover plant. It seems obvious that a millennium old cedar is more important than a little weed, but I couldn't actually find a reason. Each reason just lead to another question.
Like this: Well, the cedar is bigger. It provides more raw material, for other plants, more niches for eco-systems. The forest will miss a tree more than it will miss a weed. If one weed is missing, another will take it's place almost immediately. It will take a thousand years for nature to replace that tree. That's more important. So other people or things rely on it more. does that really make it more important?
As I apply that to my life, I think: well, here are all these people I look up to. They are obviously more important than me, because they are stronger smarter kinder more active. They help more people, they do more good. If one of them goes missing, it's a big loss. If someone who does nothing, or mainly bad, goes missing, there's nobody there who will miss them. some might even be happy they're gone, if they've been doing bad. I do good. There would be people who miss me. But I don't do much good, as far as I can tell. I'm pretty neutral. People would be sad that I'm gone if I went, but if I had never been born, the world wouldn't be that much poorer.
I'm not a failure, but I'm not much of a success. I'm a pretty small plant.
I asked myself how I measured success. Here's what I came up with:
Ability to help people.
Ability to get what you want.
Happiness.
How much power and grace are given you by God.
That's my list. That's my set of beliefs whereby I measure myself against others. I'm not doing horrible, but I'm not doing very well. Especially considering the potential of a human being demonstrated by some of the shining examples.
This has always been my thought: that I'm supposed to be something good, or great, and that if I don't look like my images of success, then I'm doing something wrong. It hurts.
I've got a new thought. Maybe I'm not supposed to be anything. Maybe that's just a belief without inherent truth to it. It feels more free to not believe that I'm supposed to be something I've imagined or seen.
But it's a big thought, with deep roots, and it may take a while to get it out of my subconscious. And I'm not sure my definitions of success are wrong. I still seem to believe them too.
And I watch myself, ignoring the voice inside of me that is telling me the right thing to do. My voice of integrity. I am sitting in my head, aware that I am being given clear directions, what I should do, and am willfully ignoring them, doing something else, for some reason trying to ignore them as hard as I can. I think maybe I'm afraid. Afraid of the pain of all that bottled up emotion and raw fear I'll have to feel if I don't keep distracting myself. I'm scared of sitting with those thoughts. Thoughts of being worthless, of not doing enough, not doing the right thing, not being good. Scared of what I really am.
I'm trying to get in touch with my desire, my passion. So I can have force behind my action. So I can get in touch with my motivation. But I think I'm scared of what I really am. I'm afraid it's wrong, and not good enough, and I'm afraid to meet it. To see it. And I'm ashamed because I keep losing to that fear. That's some of the worst of it. Feeling integrity and seeing myself helpless to act in it. Or worse, choosing to not act in it. I don't know which it is. Both are painful thoughts.
I want God to let me know that I'm doing good, all things considering. That hey, maybe I don't look like superman, but considering all the hurdles I have to overcome, I am superman for my life. That I'm doing a very good job, with what I've been given. And what I'm afraid of, is having that conversation with God, and having him say that I've been really lazy, that, given most other souls in this predicament, I should be way ahead of where I am, and that I have been acting in a way, making choices, that don't deserve the resources I've been given. That I've been doing a bad job at life.
I'm afraid that's true. I'm not sure I'll ever have a satisfactory answer.
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