I can't seem to write short posts these days. I keep trying.

You know what's interesting? How much it hurts when I confuse my feelings with my thoughts/stories.

This is a very interesting dynamic I've noticed. Here's how to see it for yourself:

When you are going through a rough time emotionally, pay attention to what your body feels like. Is there a tightness in your chest, a pressure in your forehead, a constriction in your thought? What does that actually feel like? Without all the thoughts about what's wrong and how your dieing and life is horrible. Just the literal sensation.

When I do that, I realize first hand: this is really not so bad. This is not very painful, physically. It's usually no worse than slightly uncomfortable. When it's by itself.

There is something that happens, when thoughts link up with physical sensations. It kind of looks like two crystals linked together by some sticky goo, maybe a green color, spinning around in space.

...

erm, I'm not sure that's really relevant. Anyhoo, when there is a thought that says something, like the thought, "something is wrong with me." and it is attached to a feeling, maybe a tightness in the chest, then it suddenly becomes this thing that we are really scared to face, that we are willing to do almost anything to try and escape from, and that we seem powerless to be able to control or understand.

I think this is because when this happens, we are dealing with something that doesn't actually exist. There isn't actually a connection between the mental auditory phenomena we call "thought" and the tactile internal phenomena we call "feelings." But we use one as proof of the other. For some reason, we assume that because our chest feels tight and our temples are throbbing, that means the thought that is going through our head about being a failure is true.

Once that imaginary connection between the two is snipped via direct perception (aka, looking at it, perhaps via the questions: what am I feeling in the body right now, and then, what am I thinking.) For some reason, for me, they loose there power. The situation is seen for what it is: some sensations, and some talking going on in my head. Vs. actually believing the story that the voice is telling me.

As far as I can tell, all suffering comes from these weird entity's I'm calling beliefs. We take these individual experiences, these crystals, and we try to link them together in weird ways, make up stories about them. Sometimes the stories are fine, or even nice. But often they are nightmares, or turn into nightmares, and then is when it's nice to know the dis-assembly instructions.

I've tried to just stop believing beliefs, but that doesn't seem to work at all. You cant' stop believing, as the song goes. But you can look for truth. If you look close enough at beliefs, with the intention of finding the truth of them, they dissolve. That is my experience. So far, the process of learning how this works has been both simple and complex. The actual process, when it works, is simple. You see how what you were believing isn't necessarily true, and you can no longer believe it is true. In practice, it's taken a long time, and I'm still learning, because a lot of the minds job seems to be erecting and maintaining defenses around your beliefs, and these are as complex and confusing as the mind can get. And for someone with a mind like mine, that gets pretty fucking labyrinthine.

What amazes me is that the mind can create the elaborate and ingenious defenses that it does, without even being conscious it's doing it. If I were to do what I love for a live, I suppose I would be a dream mechanic. I would use my belief engineering skills (almost entirely demolition based ;) to help people who's dreams had become nightmares. I would help them dismantle the beliefs that cause them pain, that make there life hell.

Fuck, that's an awesome job. I should create that. Heh. Just as soon as I'm done with the prototype (me).

Anyways, lesson out of my engineering scrapbook:

Figure 72.

a) Belief, Front View: "I'm not good enough"

i) I'm doing something wrong

ii) I'm a failure

iii) I need to do something different than I'm doing

notes: this is one of my core belies. It hurts like a mother fucker out of hell and makes everything not fun. Saps my desire to do anything (why bother, if I just keep telling myself I'm doing it wrong) It's one of the most resistant to dismantling I've ever come across. This is because of the much lesser known:

b) Supporting belief, side view: "This belief is true and if I stop believing it I will become an even bigger failure"

notes: The reason a) remains in place inspite of all my attempts to reverse engineer it is simple.

I don't want to stop believing it.

This is an important, very important lesson for anyone engaging in dream mechanics. You need to be coming from a desire for Truth. If you are instead coming from a desire to have a tighter butt, or more money, or a girlfriend, etc., then the belief will remain in place. It will remain in place because you have decided to hold onto the desire for a "thing" rather than trust that the truth will give you what you really want. Maybe I think I want a girlfriend. So I do the work (belief engineering) to try and get one. If I was able to approach that issue from the motive of truth instead, then I may or may not get a girlfriend, but I would have access to the love, acceptance, worthiness, and joy, that I was trying to get, by obtaining a girlfriend. From there, everything else is icing on the cake.

It's like the monkey traps they have in India: there's some fruit placed into a jar with a small mouth. The monkey's hand can fit in, to grab the fruit, but once wrapped around the fruit, the monkeys fist is too big to come out again. And the monkey refuses to let go of the fruit, thus remaining trapped.

So too, by holding onto our desires, we are trapped in suffering. Byron Katie, a belief engineer par excellence, suggests that, if there is some belief that you can't come at with the motive of truth, then work on another belief instead. Something smaller, because it's hopeless to confront the one you're not willing to look at for the sake of truth. There are always plenty of others.

[end of scrapbook section]

I should mention that you're not going to understand this from reading it alone. You have to get your hands dirty, to get the experience that will make this make sense.

Anyways, that is where I am right now: poised on the brink of the belief, "I'm not good enough. I'm not a success. I need to do more than I am doing." asking myself the question: "are you willing to be no more than exactly what you are right now?"

Of course, if I was happy and skipping, I'd say, "hell no. I want to be super awesome, if I can." But right now, the pain of that thought has become so great that just being who I am, without that thought, is starting to look like a better option.

The bottom line is I'm going to be that anyways. I can be miserable about it and fighting it every moment. Or I can be happy about it.

"I'm not enough."

is it true?

Coming back to Myself

first, a Porno Title: "Pounding Square Pegs into Round Holes"

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.

A long time ago, in a michael far, far away

I was going to do a charecter sketch of Michael Cook, a friend of mine, many months ago. I asked permission and everything. Well, now I'm doing it.

Michael Cook is one of the people I turn to when I want to feel bad about myself.

I turn to him, internally, and think about him, who he is, what he has accomplished and is accomplishing, and then feel very, very bad about how little I've done and am in comparison.

Phyisicaly and in demeanor, he is unassuming. Brown curly hair, usually short, thin, average hight, soft spoken and humble.

He's also one of the funniest people I've ever met. Genuinely funny, not forced. Maybe it just matches my sense of humor, but something about his demeanor, mixed with his creative mind makes me laugh as much as anyone I've ever met.

I only know this from hearsay, not being a part of the program called Destination Imagination, which is a kind of competitive problem solving contest, mostly for highschoolers I think, but apparently Michael was awe inspiring to watch at work. Of course this is from his girlfriend, now wife, who also did DI, so it's a little biased but it's easy to believe, interacting with him. She knows how to speak and write elven, is extremely smart and sweet and as cool as you would expect someone who knows elven to be.

The impression I have of Michael is someone who is always doing something new, creative, exciting and well done. He's got so much danm enthusiasim in all that he's doing. He's so excited about it, so passionate. He's working for a city repair group, bringing community back to the fractured and isolated suburbia and city-scapes. He's single handedly invigorating the program, creating his own projects and pushing the already existent projects further than they were.

Last I heard, he's doing this all for no pay, using his ingenuity and the goodwill he genrates in people to live. That's tough. Hell, all of what he's doing sounds tough. Tough and amazing. I already told you, he's who I turn to when I want to beat myself up. Because he's doing so much good. As far as I'm concerned he's living the dream. Not nessisarily an easy dream, but an adventursome dream, a meaningful dream, a life that he can be happy to have lived.

Passion. Mike has passion. He has this bright shining enthusiasm for life that makes you feel confident whatever he decides to do, he's going to do very well. And he is dynamic. He doesn't sit around and talk and think about what to do without moving forward. Mike is always dynamic, doing something. Working on his delightful, whismical illistrations, designing and creating videogames, improving, gardening, learning, community making, street running...

I wanted to do this charecter sketch, incompleate and vauge as it is, to illustrate part of a point I want to make.

The point runns something like this: "I really wish I was more like _____" where the blank is the charecter traits I'm trying to describe in this wonderful Michael person. He is a real person, I assure you. So being like that is possible. I'm not sure his reaction to to this, probubly embaressment. He is a human to, of course, he's not a plastic perfection. But that enthusiasm and dynamic action, that willingness pursue his passion, that bravery to pursue his dream...

Those are great qualities, qualites I wish dearly that I had, and that I constenly try to figure out how to get.

That's what I'm trying to figure out right now. Well, a part of that, anyways. I'm serching for my passion. I'm searching for passion in general.

This is one of those phrases, like "self love" that, when I sit down to think about, I realize I actualy have no idea what that phrase is reffering to. Sure I could give you a dictionary definition, like anyone else, or even a pretty philisophical explenation, which would satisfy those looking for something more complex. But I fundementaly do not have a connection between an experience that lives within me and the phrase, "live with passion." And so it is meaningless. Just as the phrase, "self love" is just meaningless sound until I find the living exprience that correlates with what I am looking for in that phrase.

To get to either of these, we need to go behond the catch-phrase and get to the operational meaning. What does the phrase, "self love" mean, in the senes you are using it? Insead of "self love" we can just say "X", which is as good a name, for now. So, what I am looking for, in that case, is a way of being where I feel the appreciation, intimacy, and confidence that I get when I feel really loved by someone. "X" is when I have that feeling in some fundemental way, all the time, without reliance on changing circumstances/apperences.

"live with passion" refferes to a way of being that is highly internaly motivated to action in a positive way. That is, motivated by strong positive emotioins. Really enjoying doing something, or doing it for a reason that feels very meaninful or worthwile. Or both. Also, it should be the most effective form of motivation, creating results that are far more powerful, than any other form of motivation, because this method of motivation generates more engergy, rather than takig away energy or keeping it the same, and generates the greatest focus, becuse what is being focused on is inherently very enjoyable, or very meaninful and applicable to some goal that is very importaint to you.

I have on occasioin lived this way. The main block I see to living this way is my extream discomfort at not achieving my goals. When I am passionate about something, and it doesnt' happen, I am crushed.

Babies

It's almost too cliche; as my best friend dies(/is killed by himself), a baby is born into my family. End of movie. Fade to black. Cue credits and touching music. Nonetheless, that's what happened. Within about two months of the suicide, a birth. Perhaps I'm creating order and meaning out of meaningless static. They've got a word for that. It's a natural tendency of the human mind, to recognize patterns. Thus, seeing faces in the knots of some interesting wood, or in the stucco of a ceiling, if you stare long enough. However, I notice this with a certain tongue in cheekyness, not attempting to draw overmuch meaning from the incident, except noting the interesting effect created by that juxtaposition:

Life goes on.

we keep making babies, at an unsustainable rate, no less, and so the race goes on. Holding my newborn niece in my arms, this is the thought that kept coming into my mind. "This little lump is going to be a teenager in 16 years. Now, she is simple, her life is eating and sleeping and growing. Her understanding is barely different from a newborn kitten. But in a year, she will be learning things no other animal will ever get close to understanding. In ten, she will have a full mind, likes, dislikes, self-consciousness, a distinct personality. Another ten, she will be a grown up like me. I looked at her and saw her future, her life. The person she would become. A whole person. A whole life.

I suppose dan could have lived another three times as long as he did. Another three lives. Then again, any of us could die at any time. These bodies are not invincible. But whether it's dan that grows up in this world or Noa (my niece's name), someone will. Someone will inherit the earth. Someone will screw and have the next generation. Hopefully they won't just screw but enter into the procreative act with love and intention, but it's not necessary, apparently. If it was we wouldn't have an overpopulation issue but an extinction issue, at least until the figured out what was wrong.

The baby is cute, just like all babies are. Kittens, puppies, and sprouting sunflower seeds, they all have this beautiful freshness, newness to them.

That's not a good enough reason to have a baby though, since they're a crapload of work. Few if any animals are as helpless as a newborn human baby. Animals in general are tougher than humans. We've traded that in for adaptability.

I still want to have kids though. Not because I think it's cute, or I'm supposed to, or I've got some idea that it will make me happy. All those things may be true, but the main reason I want to have kids is I think I'd be a good parent, and I want to give that to some kids. Most of what we learn from our parents is by osmosis. Not what they tell us but what they are. I've focused my whole life on becoming a good person, on healing myself first, and doing what I think should be done, rather than telling others to do what I myself have not. When I see someone doing something I don't like, I look within, and see if I can change that behaviour in myself.

It appears that, for the most part, people in our society do not grow. They get older, but they stay basically the same, inside. That is not the way it has to be. I myself am constantly morphing, purifying out constrictions, fears, illusions. And it makes my life richer, day by day.

I'm not even particularly good at it. There are lots of people I've read about that seem to go about the process I'm doing much quicker. Maybe they're better at it than me. Maybe they were born less messed up than me. Don't know, doesn't matter.

A lot of what I do, in terms of my own growth, I do for the next generation. I think, I hope, that they will start off closer to where I am when I have them. I have dreams, for who I want to be, but I don't see them happening, for myself. Not this lifetime. Not at the speed I'm going. I'll still try, because there's nothing better to do, but maybe I can give it to the next generation. What they do with it is not my concern. They will have to make there own choices when the time comes. For now, my job is to make myself ready for them.

This is of course jumping the gun a bit on a more immediately relevant issue: how to pick up chicks.

;)

-io

Insanity and Relationships

Girlfriends. Romance. Addiction.

It's not fair to anyone, the illusions we cast over ourselves and other people, playing make believe. I was never good at acting charming. I used to be good at manipulation, but it hurts way to much to do that any more. So my illusions hurt mainly just myself. Internal fantasy, rather than externally acted out. I guess it hurts the people in that they don't get to meet the cool person named Isaac, when I withdraw.

And it certainly hurts me, when I decide I need someone else to be happy, and I don't have someone else. I'd like to meet me, and become intimate with that person. But I have the hardest time of all loving myself. But I'm the only one I can count on for sure. If I can't get what I'm searching for, inside, then getting it outside is a lot harder for me.

Not for some people. Not everyone has trouble with getting relationships. Perhaps most people have trouble getting relationships that are consistently nice, but they still exist. And probably without all the time spent on internal work that I've spent. Most likely, I'm either in a remedial class, or else I've just got a specific relational problem. Or else it's just a part of my personality that's not actually a problem but becomes a problem because I think it should be different, and because I think I need to have a relationship to be happy.

Lets take a look at a transactional relationship analysis of recent days.

Me meet girl. Previous acquaintance. Attracted to girl, think that I want a relationship with girl. Want to share my feelings honestly about these feelings, way, way, way too much thinking beforehand about it. What I'm going to say. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of conversations in my head. None of them satisfactory, because I don't know what a satisfactory initiation of "dating" looks like. My experiences with dating girls has been woeful. Perhaps not significantly more woeful than the rest of the population, is essence, but in appearance, more woeful, because they haven't even resulted in a relationship. Part of that is my inability to date someone I'm not attracted too. It feels sleazy to me. Like I'm using there infatuation for my own personal ego stoking. I want something mutual, but perhaps that is too much to ask for the beginning of a relationship.

Anyways, girl mentions "incidentally" that she is dating someone. Obviously she wants to clarify our relationship, not get my hopes up, because I've been fairly upfront and I'm sure she strongly suspects, if not outright knows, that I have a crush on her. I on the other hand, am very confused about her. Sometimes I think she's interested in having a relationship, other times (certainly when she has a boyfriend) there is definitely not that vibe there. Not sure if she 'just wants to be friends' (blow my brains out, but fine, at least I've got someone who really triggers my emotional romance issues to help me find hidden places of pain) or is keeping me around as a back up boyfriend (not sure how I feel about that either, kind of disposable and cheap.)

Anyways, I get sad, because when I ever have expectations about women and romance they get kicked in the balls repeatedly and then thrown into a sewage treatment pool with concrete boots on. (the ideas, not the women) This is no exception. Expectation = let down, in my book, specifically in regards to women/romance.

What I really need is probably very simple: I need to learn how to give to myself the feelings of acceptance, love, safety and constancy of love, and worthiness that I seek through the validation of a loving partner. I think there must be more to it though, since there are plenty of people who have relationships and still seek those things. I think part of that is maybe an ability to settle. Another part is an ability to present an attractive image and be charming. Another part is perhaps the ability to quickly connect with people and keep then interested/feeling good around you.

I'm not sure if I should try and develop these skills, or just work on the primary problem:

that I am deeply attached to having a relationship. it would be a lot simpler, perhaps, if I could actually just get a relationship and then see for myself if it gave me any of what I'm looking for. I know, in the part of my mind that's not insane, that it won't. Just like I knew with sex. With sex I ended up learning through experience. It was useful to know, but it was only necessary because I didn't trust myself and my knowing.

So I need to trust myself, here, if I want to move through this issue quickly.

Here's the problem in a nutshell: I have a strong attachment to having a relationship where I like a girl romantically and she feels the same about me. I get my feelings of love and particularly worthiness, from other people, though it always feels partial, not enough. I believe, insane as it is, that someone I 'love' 'loving' me the same way, is how I will finally be able to believe in myself. Without that, it seems impossible. That love is an ideal for me. it's the highest, bestest most complete form of acceptance and validation I can imagine. The fact that I haven't had that kind of relationship is proof to my subconscious that I am not worthy, not a worthwhile human being. Maybe this is hard to believe that someone could actually think this way, but it's entirely probable that you, the reader, have something that you believe that is of a similar level of insanity. the trick is it hides itself, justifies itself, so you don't see it. Because if you did see it, it would start to shrivel up and die in the light of obvious common sense.

However, with some of these big issues, even recognizing the insanity isn't enough to heal it. Eventually, the belief is hanging on through shear emotional tenacity. It is completely illogical, it is just a crazy person, railing against the world, blinded and maddened by hurt or fear or rage.

Like this thing. The bottom line is, for whatever reason, I feel like the crud you scrape off the bottom of your shoes with a stick, and I see a mutual romantic relationship as a way out.

No wonder there is so much energy being put into it. It's almost unavoidable, for anyone put into a similar internal environment: factor a) you feel horrible. factor b) you've been led to believe that there is a way out of feeling horrible.

It's an innocent movement, though it is sad in that it's doomed from the get go.

But until I can find a way to give myself the feelings I'm looking for, I too am doomed to search for it. As long as I'm suffering and sad, I'm not going to stop searching. The pain eggs me on. Say what you will, but pain is an powerful motivator.

The best I can do, as far as I can figure, is to search in the most likely location. Which is within me. As for methodology, I think my principle angle is the right angle for this problem: Truth. Be truthful. Particularly with yourself.

I am grateful for the opportunity to heal, though it hurts quite a bit.

signing off

-me

Current status

It's hard to describe how I'm doing right now. It's hard to know that. I've gone through huge changes in the last few months. That's what my memory tells me. But I can't feel that. I only feel the changes when I'm in the midst of them, screaming like a little baby, helpless and confused and not caring much that this discomfort is allowing me to open in new wonderful ways. When the discomfort is there, I'm just thinking and feeling the discomfort. That's my job.

I've been dealing, and have dealt with, some huge failure issues. I'm currently dealing with sex, relationship, and self-love issues. I'm a very different person than I was, three months ago. Dealing with the suicide of your closest friend will do that. But that can either destroy you, or be a portal into deep levels of healing and growth. There's nothing in this world that isn't safe. Pain is safe, injury is safe, death is safe. The only thing that feels unsafe is you beliefs about these things. And that is something mental, and can be seen clearly, and thus unwound. And often the only way you even find these areas of pain is when something crazy happens, something you absolutely, really strongly don't want to happen. And then it happens and it hurts in all sorts of ways and you get to be led by the pain to the places within you that are scared or angry, the areas of darkness in your heart, "where the sun don't shine."

And with a good pure, simple method of piercing through that darkness (and it requires awareness, you can't just tune out and let something else deal with it.), the worst thing that could happen to you is your greatest gift, once you are done unpacking it.

I recommend Byron Katie, I recommend Tree Preaching, I recommend feeling the body. If you don't know one of these things, drop me a comment if your interested in an explanation.

I don't care what method you use, just fine one that works for you. Works means: the emotional block that was bothering you, gets dealt with, and gets dealt with quickly, because this process doesn't need to take a huge amount of time, if your doing it correctly. And works means that, to whatever extent you've dealt with it, you've dealt with it for good. This is not about things that you distract yourself from, or pretend away, only to have them come back bigger and stronger than ever once the stimulus gets big enough that it breaks through your wall of denial/distraction.

When you finish work on an emotional issue, that level of the issue is done, gone, no longer exists and an energetic block in your emotional body. You will almost certainly meet it again on a deeper and more profound level, when it's time, but you will notice serious differences in how you act and react in situations related to the issue. You may have to use your memory to make this comparison though, because once an emotional block is really gone, it's like it never existed at all, and so its hard to remember it was ever that bad, because the memories that involve that issue have lost there emotional charge.

That's my experience, anyway.

Current Issue theme: Sex and Romantic Relationships as addictions (addictions to fantasy or onanism, in my case.) And self love.

On the horizon (maybe): Boredom, and feeling like I'm not doing anything useful.

Current physical status: Fairfield, Iowa. Sitting on a futon I'm using as a bed at a friend's house. Thick, egg shell colored cotton sheets. A bowl of cereal to my right, a wireless router in front of me that makes a constant, high pitched screeching sound at all times that I imagine is what it's like for mice living somewhere that someones plugged in one of those ultrasonic "mouse be gone" emitters. A white noise creating AC unit to my left, drowning out all sounds not in this room. It's dark because all the Venetian blinds are shut, to keep the heat of the day out. I'm about to delete some of my porn collection from my little laptop, so I won't worry if it breaks or someone decides to snoop around in it. Then, I'm going to go get some weird type batteries for my camera, because I found an old but nice film camera in my aunts house, alone with a bunch of unused film. I've been considering getting a digital SLR or slightly lower end nice camera, but I didn't, because I wasn't sure if I'd actually use it. So now I can find out. If I use all the film up, then I guess I would. If not, then I've just saved a couple hundred bucks.

Feel it in your body

I like that blogger keeps tabs on when I write things, so I can just immediatly free flow and not have to look at the date. When I've journaled in the past I've waited till the end and by then I've forgotten to put the date in at all. anyways, here we go, it's been a little while:

Saw the sunset driving to the grocery store. As I started down a hill, a break in the tree's, and a magenta haze, with purple mountain silhouette emerging from the fluffiness, sharp and crisp. And a single wisp of cloud, bright blazing orange.

Gencon was very fun. It made me happy, it made me laugh. Being with friends and fellow gaming enthusiasts. People who like to dress up in costumes and play games and sword-fight. People who like anime and solving puzzles and magic and fantasy. People who needed some way to be with friends, because for one reason or another, sports wasn't an option.

I fought with some professional boffer sword fighters, I learned the secrets of making boffer swords (fun noodles (the pool toy), pvc pipe, and packing tape, mainly) I participated in a Mystery science theater 3000 with hentai, I played true dungeon, where I went into a dungeon with some friends, solved puzzles together, fought monsters, and role-played. And I made some new friends.

Then on the plane ride back I promptly started feeling very bad. Hit by the truck of sadness. I've been trying to process through it in two ways: trying to trace back the answer to the question, "who is feeling these feelings?" and alternately just feeling the physical sensations accompanying the mental anguish. The second one is more do-able, though less powerful and immediate in it's results, but sometimes the issue takes some softening up before it can be penetrated directly with the light of awareness. Whatever this is, I'm on to the next cycle of whatever it is I'm dealing with.

I'm going to take an intuitive stab, and say it's my identity as someone who is put upon by depression. For a long time I've seen myself as a somewhat Byronian character (not Byron Katie, but Lord Byron, the poet, who was very melodramatic, romantic, brooding.) It was how I coped with the shittyness of my life as a kid. I was lonely, I loved girls and the love was unrequited, and I was too shy to really make something happen. I was too shy to do anything, and I didn't have the attention span or discipline to excel in something and thus feel good about myself that way. So, I interpreted that as meaning I was just cursed by life. Which I still feel is a fair interpretation. I just bit it with the birth lottery, and randomness gave me a bum hand.

Interesting that I also sometimes think of myself as exceedingly lucky, to have been given all the opportunity and teaching that I have gotten. The circumstances, the people who've crossed my path, the experiences I've had, my families support. It's really a mixed bag, and I see the glass in the light of whatever I'm going through at the moment. It just so happens that for the first part of my life, most of those moments were negative. More recently, there's been more of a balance, beginning to lean towards more positive even. Dan's suicide temporarily changed that balance back to mostly negative, but that is moving slowly back up to where I was. Which apparently is not a given, in the case studies with these kinds of things. I may have some fucked up karma, if you believe in that, but I've still got better luck than those who are fucked up and never learn ways of healing and real growth. Though I guess there are other ways of dealing with that stuff. Like breaking a bone, even if you don't set it right, given time, it will heal anyways, and you'll adjust your posture and gait so you can get by.

In any case, I was recently reminded of one of the best "experiences" I've ever had. It lasted for about two weeks, I think, but maybe it was less. It was characterized by incredible surges of bliss and energy. As far as I can remember (which is pretty badly, I admit) the main theme of that time period was that I took the point of view that everything that happened to me was a lesson, and really lived that.

The dude I'm working with suggested I take the perspective of being the healer, rather than the victim, of the depression, sadness, whatever. I like that.

He also reminded me of the saying, that you are what you eat, and what you eat is not primarily what comes in through the mouth and gets pooped out the butt, but what comes in through all the senses, and the mind. This is one of the reasons I often do so little art: If I create something, I like to create from what I am feeling, right then, and if that is something negative, I don't want to release that into the world. I don't want someone reading what I write and being brought down by it. I realized I might be doing that with some of what I post, since it is sometimes rants of that nature. I'll try to keep that in mind for the future, and save the toxic stuff for my private journal.