We really do seem to be syncing up - it's a trip. Actually it seems to me that it's because we're talking about the same things, and I'm starting to understand them (and to understand that understanding is just intellectual blather, but a certain amount of learning/research etc is necessary to get to a place of enlightenment). Lol, shaking my head at how everything is turning into "It is, but it isn't at the same time, and that's the point. But there is no point. And yet there is..." (ah the rolling lol! Perhaps the perfect symbol of enlightenment). And that statement is not aimed at your posts, which are filled with the "it is but it isn't", but rather at my own understanding, which is getting all twisted up like that. I'm really digging your posts, but I have so much I need to write, I need to leave it at that for now.
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I’ve got this figured out.
Woke up understanding it this morning.
I already have exactly the tools I need to do this, and now I understand exactly what I need to do - it was figuring that out that was tricky. And I think the reason I figured it out is because lately I’ve been understanding more and more that it’s all the same thing. The many is really all the one (and at the same time the one is always branching out to become the manifold). I've been realizing more and more that all these different religions, spiritual systems, Individuation and Spiritual Awakening etc are all just different words for the same thing, with a few variations here and there. So are all the various techniques for freeing yourself of stress and anxiety, such as the Elliott Hulse videos I posted the other day, and many other similar techniques, which really are aimed at fixing very specific aspects of what the religions and spiritual systems are aimed at fixing in a more general sense - the anxieties and stresses of living (anxieties and stresses are the same thing too actually - why do we complicate everything so much?) They’re just fear (anxiety and stress I mean). We use many other terms for it as well, such as people pleaser syndrome, social anxiety, and endless lists of other ones.
But they’re all just fear.
And what is fear? It’s primitive survival strategy turned inward because we live in modern society. Originally the fear impulse was to make you jump if you saw danger - in the jungle or the veldt you needed to jump before you had time to think, because the dangers were very real and very physical. Saber-tooth tigers – snakes to bring Jordan Peterson into this. Mastodons - enemy tribes. You react to these things physically and FAST! Or you die right there.
But now we live in cities or subdivisions, surrounded by concrete, blacktop, brick, and people. No sabertooth tigers, hardly any snakes. The dangers aren’t really physical anymore, most of them. They’re social.
We still have those primitive alarm systems in place, but when the bells start ringing now we can’t jump, or fight anymore. So the panic gets internalized, unless you’re a real extrovert who might actually jump or react physically in some way. Maybe get loud and aggressive for a while. Those people probably get it out of their system, at least a lot better than the introverts, who internalize it all and repress it down. So they externalize the panic, and can vent it out into the atmosphere, purge their inner system of it before it gets them all plugged up.
This is what Elliott’s Bioenergetics is about. I remember a book called Complex PTSD: from surviving to thriving by Pete Walker, the gist of which is that when we suffer trauma there’s a need to externalize it through immediate action, but in modern society we don’t do that (I THINK that was the book - it was definitely related to CPTSD and I believe it was by Pete Walker, though it may be another one he wrote). The author figured out that you can bring those old traumas up by re-imagining them - put yourself back in the original situation when you experienced the surge of panic and internalized it, but this time ACT. Move violently around. He found through lab research on living subjects that if people sort of acted out violent fantasies with some physical motion involved of certain kinds it allows them to release the tensions that they stored in the body initially. I don’t believe they’re actually literally stored in the body, I think they got stored emotionally in the unconscious, but they can be accessed and released through physical action while re-imagining the events, or imagining ones that are similar to events you might not be able to clearly remember (because they happened too early in your life). He calls this somatic healing – somatic meaning of the body, or through active physical means.
I also have another very powerful tool called Stoicism, that I’ve already used to re-write some pretty deep templates and rid myself of some of my fears. Why didn’t it occur to me to use it to rewrite the people pleaser syndrome? I used to think of it as social anxiety. They’re not identical, but there’s a lot of overlap, and I probably have elements of both, but at the root they’re the same, just fear that we internalize when it should be externalized so it can be vented off.
So now I'm working up a Stoic meditation practice to do several times each day, at least in bed before and after sleep, when the unconscious is very near. I’m thinking about exactly what people pleaser syndrome consists of - the actual fears involved. Getting really focused in on what I'm really afraid of, and even just in doing that I begin to see how ridiculous the fears really are. My little child mind just didn’t understand that, and when they became habitual I never examined it closer - instead I always allowed myself to let them grow rapidly and overwhelm me.
So what is it that we fear in these situations? Certain facial expressions, certain thoughts that other people direct toward us. Things they might say, that other people might hear and join in the mockery or ridicule (which are the same thing). What is mockery/ridicule really? Well, it’s nasty thoughts a person can have about another person that might be embarrassing. And what exactly can these thoughts do to you? Hmmm… let me think about that. They’re thoughts, so not much really. It isn’t the thoughts in other people’s heads that can do us any harm, it’s only the ones in my head that can do that. Well Jeeze (which means Jesus, which means Yeshua, which also means Joshua, which originally in a way means God, which means Yahveh, which means Jehovah...) – so what am I worried about then?
Well - hold on. They can do some damage actually. People can communicate those thoughts to other people. A whole crowd can join in and the mockery can spread like wildfire.
Ok, so what? More of the nothing that doesn't damage you in the first place right? What damage can that actually do? Think about it. I’ll wait.
Ok. Well, it sucks to have a whole bunch of people laughing at you - it makes you feel terrible.
Really? Is that all?
Well, it can damage your reputation too. All those people, plus anybody else who hears the rumors or whatever, will think terrible things about you afterwards - it can follow you for your whole life.
Ok. And?
What do you mean?
What damage can be done by these thoughts in other people’s heads?
Well, you might not be able to get a certain job…
So get another one. There are many things that can prevent you from getting a particular job. This is only one of them. Do you have any control over it? Over what these people are thinking about you?
Well, to an extent I suppose. You could maybe straighten them out. Explain the real facts. But they might not believe you.
Ok, and then what?
Well, if they don’t believe you, then you won’t get the job, and those people still think terrible things about you.
Yes, we covered that. Terrible things in other people’s heads about you. Those really can’t do anything to you - to the real you. Only to your reputation, and reputation is a thing you don’t control. No-one controls their reputation. So just let that go. It does no good at all to worry about something you can’t control, does it? In fact that’s the REAL damage, isn’t it? What happens inside YOUR head. That’s where things really happen that affect you.
Hmmmm - yeah, I guess so. I need to think about it some more.
And that's one thing you CAN control.
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This is the basic form of a Stoic meditation. I presented this one as a dialogue because it’s a useful way to present it - and really it’s pretty much the way we think. A series of questions and answers. The cool thing is - the answers are largely coming from your unconscious. That’s a thing called Cybernetics. Not meaning robotic parts added on to human bodies - it’s the same word, but applied to a modern technology. The original cybernetics is a psychological technique of accessing your unconscious through asking it questions. The mind is set up specifically as a question and answer machine - ask it a pointed question without a lot of gibberish attached – pare it down to the essentials, and it will mull it over, usually overnight, and give you an answer. Ask the question again the next morning and you just might ‘hear’ a response. It does its work as you're sleeping. Look up cybernetics it’s really awesome stuff.
Stoicism is really meditation. It’s a particular type, which interestingly is done the same way as Jesus used to pray to his dad – I believe I wrote about it somewhere in all that mass of stuff I typed up so frantically about Christian Mysticism. He used to go out into the desert for some peace and quiet, and he’d pray to God (talk or ask questions) and then he’d listen (go silent and contemplate – Meditate). So that's Cybernetics. Which can also be Stoicism if you ask the right questions.
Combine all this stuff together. All I need to do is, each day before and after bed, and what the hell, maybe in the afternoon too if I want, think deeper and deeper into what exactly it is I’m afraid of. Get at the root of exactly what this template of people pleaser syndrome really is, and go in and re-write it.
I used to think in terms of re-wiring your brain. But I realize that metaphor doesn’t really mean much to me because I'm not an electrician. I can picture soldering different colored wires into a circuit board or something, and I’ve done a little of that ,but it doesn't really MEAN anything to me. So I’m switching to re-writing. That’s something I do all the time, for instance here in my posts on this thread. If anybody hasn’t noticed, my posts change several times throughout the day, I’ve got about 24 hours to edit, and I use it well! It can make the difference between a messed up post that doesn’t really say what you want it to, and a tight, well-formatted one that really delivers. Re-writing is also something I'm quite familiar with as a writer (I mean of stories, not forum posts). In fact it IS writing stories. And writing stories is how we create our lives.
We rewrite our lives frequently, when we re-frame events that were important to us in order to make sense of it all. Depending on how you frame things, your whole idea of your life changes. A disaster can become a triumph if you find the right way to look at it. So in that way writing and editing are exactly the same thing as Stocisim. It's technically a way to go in and edit your templates at a deep level. With enough meditation and conscious focus, you can dissolve old patterns that serve no purpose or that actually cause problems, and replace them with new ones that function properly.
I think when I go in to do my Stoic meditations I'll imagine myself hitting the Edit Post button here on the forum. Lol, and at the end, the Save button. Hah!! The right imagery makes all the difference. Maybe even hit the Go Advanced button which allows you to access all the deep re-writing tools...
Hah! Followed by seeing the screen that says "Your post has been successfully edited. You are now being taken to" (not sure what it says there - need to check next time I edit, which will be within ... oh, a couple of minutes I guess).
(Edit): I can already feel the new ego inflation coming on. Yeah baby, I GOT this!!!
Bring it on! Headed for the next big fall, and one step closer to - whatever the hell it is. Nothing and Everything. But it doesn't mean anything. And yet it's super important. Blah. I guess this is what Don Juan Matus calls Controlled Folly, huh?
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