Processing and Purging
I’ve mostly been laying low the last several weeks. I had the stomach bug, which put me down and out for a few days, and then I did a whole lot of cleaning. Laying in bed all day while sick forced me to seriously evaluate the present state of my life. It looked like my life was a disorganized mess (in addition to my bedroom, hence the cleaning). It looked like I’ve been flailing around, trying uselessly to force things to work.
I
decided, as I said, that I need to pull back and return to a state of pure
intentions. As often as I can, choose love over fear. That’s what I’ve been
focusing on lately, and so far I’ve been less distressed than usual. That doesn’t
mean I’ve been hiding from life—it just means that I’ve been fighting with life less. I’ve been
making fewer futile efforts, and putting my attention instead on what I can do.
It sounds obvious and dirt simple, but, well, I guess I’m not immune to
becoming short-sighted at times… Or a lot of the time. Sorry man.
Cleaning my room was an emotionally heavy process. I came across so many old papers, notes, cards, photographs, and other objects that carried so many memories and old emotions. At the beginning I wanted to get rid of about 90% of the possessions I have that have no obvious practical value. I did throw out a lot of things. However, it was emotionally exhausting, and before long I picked up things I just didn’t feel ready to part with. So, they have remained.
This wasn’t about erasing my past identity or anything like that. Instead, I found that by keeping a smaller number of items I truly value, I actually value them more. Before, when I had a lot of clutter, it was tough to recognize I owned much worth caring about—especially things that carry memories from the past. Now, however, I know what those objects are, and I enjoy looking at them. I feel a connection to the people who gave them to me and the part of myself I feel they represent.
So, between the bug, the cleaning, and the website downsizing, I’ve done a lot of purging lately, yet through that purging I’ve connected more strongly with what is truly important to me. There have been a lot of emotions and memories to process, but I’ve come out the other side feeling both lighter and more solid—overall, more self-assured.
Hiding the Crazy
I’ve noticed, from some of the old letters,
that I tend to relate to people on a basis of believing that I’m not enough—that
I should be apologetic for talking to them.
What’s interesting is that all this can be going on without having to actually state any of it. It is possible to appear relatively fine and normal and to make statements that are socially acceptable, while on the inside you are an absolute crazy person. Trust me—I would know.
I spent the first 17 years of my life trapped in this dichotomy. I thought that because I didn’t express my complaints and fears out loud, unlike other people, that I was healthier than and morally superior to them. I was dead wrong. By the time I was so far down the rabbit hole of this insane vain of scarcity thinking that I wanted my life to end, it was obvious that what I said and did on the outside didn’t matter as much as what I felt, thought, and believed on the inside. Why? Because eventually, those beliefs on the inside would overtake what I did on the outside. I could be a good actress and appear as a normally-functioning human being for a while.
But, eventually, the truth would catch up to me, and I wouldn’t be able to hide behind a disguise anymore. So I got to the point where I was screwed up not only on the inside, but on the outside too. So there wasn’t much hiding I could do anymore.
What’s futile about this game is that people can pick up on when you’re bullshitting them. Let me tell you straightforth—if you’re basically a nice person, but you have a weak social life, it’s because you’re a bullshitter. You try to keep yourself hidden. You make yourself laugh at jokes you don’t really want to laugh at. You try not to rock the boat. You try way too damn hard to appear normal.
Yet, you carry around an extensive list of subjects you hope people won’t ask you about, such as that weird website you’re running. You compensate for your chickenshit by going home and being excessively rude to your mother, or your dog, or the ants in the kitchen, or whoever it is you happen to live with, which is probably not a lover, unless it’s a lover you are with begrudgingly—a lover who runs all these malignant patterns even worse than you do, and you feed into each other’s bullshit to an extent that is so disgusting that, if you have a modicum of intelligence left, will inspire you to leave this relationship, so that you may free up space to live and to love more honestly.
Untie Yourself from Fear
Anyway, the point is that, if you try to hide who you are, it’s unlikely that people will say anything about it. They’ll just do what you do—they’ll make superficial conversation with you, and then shrink away from you. You’ll likely leave that conversation feeling drained.
Again, the fallacy here is the belief that appearing normal on the outside means you’re healthy on the inside. Make sure to slap yourself across the face the next time you think about that one. The flipside of that is believing someone isn’t healthy because their behavior is unusual. This leads people to think that genius and mental illness go hand and hand, which is a ridiculous idea. Tell me how much I felt like a genius when I wanted to end my life. Actually, I’ll tell you. It was zero. Nada. Nil. In fact, I thought I was the dumbest person on Earth.
Sure, it is possible for a mentally ill person to express genius in some way, as Van Gogh did, or even to turn their lives around and then begin to live brilliantly (or even more so, if they already did to begin with). Maybe it’s even common. I have no idea. Maybe touching the depths of insanity and despair can better enable you to reach the heights of joy and brilliance.
Does that have to be the case? I don’t think so. But maybe there is some merit to the idea. Certainly, being mired in negativity for a while can help to illuminate what is truly important to you—just as having the stomach bug did for me. Then you can shed the stuff you don’t need, so you can embrace more strongly those truly important things.
The hiding from other people, the brilliance, the scarcity, the joy—it all comes down to this. In every moment, you have a choice. You can choose to live either a life of fear or a life of love. You can see the world as your friend or your foe. You can try to take all you can get or give all you have (which you know, at bottom, to be infinite).
Whichever side you prefer, you will choose each one at times. Perhaps there are certain situations where you tend to choose one more often than the other. When you’re in a place of fear, you may look back on your past expressions of fear and see that you haven’t changed much, just as I did when I looked at the old letters. I saw that the fears I expressed at age 13 and age 18, at least in regards to relationships, were largely the same.
However, you aren’t tied to those fears at all times. Maybe my fears remained the same over the course of five years, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t get weaker. At 18, I knew that I had the ability to choose love instead of fear. Even if I couldn’t do it all the time or even most of the time, at least once a day I could remember that choice and then make it. I didn’t know that at 13. At 13 I was trapped in those fears pretty much all the time. At 18, however, I had the ability to turn away from those fears. Because I could get away from them sometimes, they couldn’t build as much momentum. That meant that they were weaker. They didn’t have as much power over me as they did at 13, because I consciously pulled my power away from them, and instead I channeled that power into something more uplifting—into expressions of love.
It’s just a matter of doing that more and more often.
An Epic Adventure
Anywho, what I’m exploring right now is fairly general—it’s how to live intelligently. It’s how to live in stronger alignment with Truth, Love, and Power. It’s how to live in accordance with my desires. It’s how to listen to my intuition while making use of a sound intellect. It’s choosing love over fear. It’s creating a lifestyle that supports continued personal growth. It’s doing work that cultivates and expresses my brilliance, while simultaneously contributing to society (or, I’d prefer to say, the noosphere). It’s choosing to value internal resources over external ones, and recognizing that abundance comes from intelligence. It’s about having and refining a purpose for my life. It’s about living joyfully.
I might not have said all that 11 months ago, but that has more or less been my focus for 2015. In 2016, I’m hoping to take what I’ve learned this year and apply it to an adventure of epic proportions (I know, that was cheesy). This is going to be way bigger than anything I’ve ever done before. I don’t feel prepared to say too much about it just yet, but I assure you it will be awesome.
I originally thought about heading off at the start of this month, meaning I would be gone right now, but it felt too soon. I recognize the danger of waiting until all your ducks are in a row, but I do feel that I have some growing to do and a few loose ends to tie up before I begin this phase of my life.
I don’t know what implications this will have for the long term. My life might go back to the way it is now after 3 months, or it may be the complete opposite. As for the external world, there is a lot of uncertainty in my future. However, as long as I continue to consult my intelligence (and improve my ability to do so), I say I have nothing to worry about. That doesn’t mean I won’t worry—but, at the end of the day I know that I’ll basically be fine, whatever happens. As long as I am committed to becoming a better, smarter human being, and to living in alignment with love, what do I really have to worry about? When you’re committed to the truth, what do you have to lose-- except for false ideas? The only true failure consists in giving up on myself. My body may not be invincible, but consciousness is. As long as I live in a way that contributes to the elevation of consciousness, then, ultimately, I am safe. That is the ultimately security. As long as I live in such a way that I push myself to learn something new and become something more every day, then there is no failure. As long as I do that, then I can die peacefully—regardless of when I do so.
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