Day 1609: No One Can Cast Haste on You

No one can rush you. X tried to rush me: “I can only get the things I need from the fridge if you move aside.” I replied, “I KNOW!”

What ran as a program that led to my reaction was a history of being led down a path in a queue. I imagine myself being a slave being told to move along, move faster, along the queue. Anger is always fear. My greatest fear in this context is being led down the wrong path. I mean, even if I was led down the wrong path, it is my responsibility, because I accepted and allowed it. So really, I fear myself misleading myself.

Isn’t it irritating how some people try to get you to walk at their pace? Think the way they do, react the way they react? We don’t say it but everyone, including me, lives this life as if everyone was me, always somehow with an innocent will bring out the worst in each other.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame X for ‘pushing me into a corner’ and ‘making me wrong’ and ‘pushing my buttons’ apparently causing me to react in anger towards X, instead of realizing that program of fear of initiating and maintaining a program that specifically does not have my intent or best interests at heart, also articulated as being misled down a path that is ‘not my own’.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the belief that a person can embroil you in his/her pace, and make you obey the rules that he/she laid down as the law, and that a person can mould and shape you against your will through conversation, such as when X made the snide remark, “I can only get the things if you move aside.”

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the belief that people take you down different paths within the only “possible path” which is self interest as greed and being enslaved to self protection and defense, according to how people direct you through the remarks and words they speak.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the belief that the words people speak have power over my will ‘if the stars align and they press my buttons’, instead of realizing that people can only trigger what is pre existent within me according to my own acceptances and allowances throughout all time, just like how the creators of this existence could only control humanity because of each of our own fears and desires, which is why the saying goes to “Give away all your possessions and follow me (Life).”

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to reject the simplicity of adding my and the other person’s will together as 1 + 1 = 2, where I can actually decide what direction I will go, and the other person has their choice both equally as one always.

Day 1608: Naive

Rather than embracing and defining what energy I am dealing with, I sort of retract within myself when I believe myself to be immature, small, unripe, a clumsy beginner, naive. The outcome of this withdrawing of participation and intense participation in thoughts, backchats, imaginations is becoming fearful. I stop focusing on what matters such as my behavior, my voice tonality, my physical presence and how I do things, and start obsessing about the past, what I used to value as important, trying to control in enforcing my past scheme of what is important.

It’s important that I recognize that I see myself as a character amongst characters, and do wish/desire for some measure of fame, importance, money, intimate relationships social and romantic. When my character is lacking – according to my method of judgment and the game I’m playing – I will dread and hang on the question of why I don’t have the things that I believe everyone else has that IS under education or work. And I believe I will only be satisfied when I obtain the things that make my character complete: recognition, position, money, friends, family. Money, sex, relationships: the big three preoccupations that I must include myself within humanity.

What if the judgments and criticism from myself were designed to keep me in the same place, and not change at all cost? That’s another general effect of participation in the mind: it brings you into an infinite pause where you believe consequence can be delayed and paused while you think things through. The mind and my attention on it can make me believe that physically maintaining my body and the environment that nurtures my physical body is a nuisance, meanwhile the nuisance is my mind.

Day 1607: Embarrassed and Ashamed and Not Constructive about it

Always approach Life with humility and humbleness, no matter its appearance.

I am always welcome and willing to eat my own words. Lately, I’ve been having trouble starting the day. Waking up, it feels like the only thing I can get right is stay within the warm blankets, and anything other than that is my immaturity, is my lacking, is my insufficiency to take responsibility in every case absolutely.

I tend to believe that the last stage of development as an adult, where I have the position and money but maybe lost my youth, that that is the only acceptable stage of life. So I would put this imaginary self on a pedestal, while judging and really complaining about all the steps and stages literally necessary to get there. This is an example of feeling like I am superior to the Life I already am, at the stage I’m already at, and belittling and breaking myself down. The self corrective application is to ‘reason’ to myself that every breath/step/stage I take in its verbatim, literal form immediacy is equally as one important, and that all my explaining and theories and principles must enact themselves in this here now moment right now. Meaning, I can explain and theorize and prepare as much self change as I want, but if I’m not actually applying it immediately, then I have the evidence of the uselessness of what I see but don’t act on.

I also have this observation generally judging young people that aren’t too young, like 18 years old, for being naive and impulsive and being so certain of themselves when what they consider is not the real reality. It’s like I am relieved that I swung past this stage of naivety. This is where I’m wrong. I’m really judging myself as that part of myself. In this Physical reality with its immediacy and excellent process-effect immediate manifestation property, and this ‘awareness’ of myself that is equally in every human being, what we use the most and thus is most important is a kind of emptiness. It’s this rawness and wielding of a shape with no shape, a great fullness that seems empty, that we begin to aim at the goal of seeing things as they are, without our own opinions interjecting and interfering with our sight.

Perhaps I’m fearing reverting back to the stage where I’m together with my own hypotheses separated from what is here and making mistakes because of my adultness. But that is almost guaranteed that when I participate with something I’ve never explored before, that I will meet my own hypotheses, I will default to old habits of seeing, and I will make mistakes because of my habits. But then again, I have to thank the new thing, I have to thank the unknown reflecting myself back to me, so I can identify the habit circuitry and delete it, forgive it and let it go without letting it go to my head.

And there is that saying that ‘woe to him that makes a child stumble’. I see it as woe to me, as that part of me, that makes that aspect of myself that is like a child, call it awareness, call it self honesty, makes that aspect feel shameful and embarrassed instead of owning that step/stage/breath/beingness/be and being unconditionally constructive with it. Because a journey of a thousand MILES starts with one STEP, every step, each and every single breath is counted, equally significant, equally potentially useful if I would exercise my wily way to transmute all things into assistance and support. Quite literally, if I would skip just one breath I might be dead and not be writing.

Equally notable is challenging my relationship to young people. What behavior am I harbouring by maintaining this judgment and scoffing at young people? Does that part of me unconditionally assist and support and makes use of all things toward an outcome that is best for all? As a thing, unconditional is brutally reverent. It’s so timelessly matching well in all contexts that it’s an archetype. Rather than keeping young people at arm’s length while counting their blind spots one by one, what can I communicate and share about me as a self expression, that maybe short circuits the number of detours that young person will take, and thus give as I would like to receive? What of their example is something of myself that I can utilize to support my utmost potential? That’s another fine detail: our superior moments tend to be extremely one dimensional, as only good or only bad when in love/hate respectively.

Day 1606: Doing Time

Sometimes, just getting through, walking through the time to change is already change. Though I do enjoy it, I hate it when I reach a climax and the moment to change is here, then I default to old patterns and it repeats again, ad nauseum, and I am back to day one. As much as time is precious, it’s also expressing and reflecting myself in quite a literal way. If I did not do the necessary time to stop an addiction, or I don’t have the physical time period as evidence, then my change is not real yet, and it’s easy to think up a mental change.

What’s difficult is walking the actual time. What’s difficult is changing the mode of engagement from resisting, fighting, ignoring, ridiculing, denying, to understanding in self honesty. Just because I’m turned on in a moment doesn’t define who I am, I can decide to let it go. Just because I get anxious doesn’t define who I am, my response over the necessary space and time will be the literal definition of who I am, quite verbatim. So change is not a function of intelligence or smart methods at all, it’s abiding by the obvious, such as physical length of time, and sticking to the development of the awareness of the balance between positive and negative, and to admit to myself when I am in either which means Energy is defining my experience instead of breath defining my experience.

The process and journey to Life as a process toward self honesty really emphasizes the fundamentals. In one touch, one exposure to one’s own mind, how much do you gleam, how much do you see things as they are and direct them immediately, how deep can you see when you look? And everyone has this balance between things that we immediately see the root, and things we have yet to specify to absolute specificity. It’s really like a yin and yang, there will always be that possibility of something overcoming you, thus you become defeated, thus it’s a learning opportunity to apply understanding to the problem that is you. It’s one of the problems about adults, we’re given this extreme consistency in our routines that we sometimes live as if we believe nothing can take away our perfection, and when Life unexpectedly takes perfection away through ourselves making a true mistake, our tendency is to blame everyone and everything instead of applying understanding, self forgiveness, and making lemonade out of lemons. A gentle, too-slow-for-the-mind breath by breath approach of responsibility within living the word to look at and understand, is timelessly practical.

Day 1605: The Difficult Conversation, Conclusions Drawn

It’s as if I’m circling. This whole path I am walking since “The Difficult Conversation” series feels like, to me, a circling. I was once told that one word connects to every word, which is another way of saying everything is interconnected. When I look at the word summing up The Difficult Conversation, the word ‘education’, I see what I’m really wrestling with is the word ‘purpose’ within ‘education’.

Now that I’m equipped by education, to think for myself and be able to investigate all things, what now? What of it? It’s like aside from the ever profound unveiling of who I really am, who each really is, the root of our difficulty and troubles and stresses and strains and suffering, aside from that, there is the ever relevant purpose of making money. We’ve made the current system into kind of a backwards system, in the sense that we place Life as our Life, as the path and journey to uncover who we really are and allow the bag of lies to burst to see what remain, we put that Life second to money. If anything, the obvious is it is this Life and changing it, and realizing it, and not changing what cannot change, is the only path to changing ourselves, and eventually this world and this current system as we know it as co-creators. But we double cross ourselves by placing money first, above Life. We’ve created our own imaginary weakness by embracing that a word like money or profit will cause us to be irrational and compromise everything, Life is no exception, for its sake. But Life is all we have, it is our only real possession that never changes.

The words we live are our real possessions.

And what if education doesn’t have an answer nor a method to uncover who each really is, in the consideration of the statement “Know thyself”, “Know thy flesh?” What if education has become a tool and method of abuse passing through our own hands to delay the pertinent question of who am I? Am I real? And education has been used as a palpable justification to be allowed more money as more salary with which to buy our lives. But can Life be bought? Is Life something that must take orders from the profit motive, even if the drive to profit is destroying Life as the Physical, Life as our common sense, Life as the path and journey to who I am, the journey to Life?

And what if work’s intention in the greatest level of authority, has been to obscure and delay the pertinent question? What if work is just something to preoccupy our attention while the real work, the backchat and the impulses to do stuff in which the most effective impulse has been fear, are running in the background? What of our life purpose? What of the purpose of Life, if it has been defined not to know our roots and origin, but to profit from the journey in every conceivable way, where in a way we desperately don’t want an answer, but a management of the journey to profit every step of the way? What is the purpose of the physical existence, and the physical existence as ourselves, beyond any emotion or feeling? Certainly, that isn’t something that can be changed through human laws of right and wrong, can it?

Day 1604: Disassembling Freedom Part 2

Who am I as freedom now?

• enough money that it gives a sense of freedom and power

I’m beginning to see that drive, that force that possesses, is my own, is by my own doing. Call it the impulse to survive at all cost. The great thing about investigation for yourself is it sort of guarantees the result to be best for all, in that with absolute certainty, you can know, for lack of a better word, what the outcome is immediately, and what the outcome will be. That’s sort of the implication of investigating.

It’s really easy to confuse money with life because they have been amalgamated together sort of. Rather take from my understanding about money, that which is life that supports all life always, and take from life what will support in the principle of what is best for all. Discard the aspects/definitions about money, like profit, that form the driving force and justification for allowing abuse. Discard that about ‘life’ that hands itself to the hands of abusiveness in service and unconditional slavery. As much as saying yes placates everyone’s ego, learning when to say no and realizing there is a clear line dividing actions, personal or interpersonal, into support and abuse.

Rather than fear the influence of money, or fear life exposing what a lie you’ve lived, investigate always, and be sure of the nature of the outcome that will be best. What’s there to fear if each action has its paired consequence, and living is a matter of only keeping that which is best for all in company? I and everyone will become abuser if we participate in the action that has the corresponding consequence. Could that be our equality?

• the opposite of slavery in all ways

Seeing in person the practicalities of subjecting someone to slavery puts me down. I mean, I understand that no matter what the condition, one can never see oneself as a slave and therefore despite all odds, one is not in a way because one is not defeated or giving up, and a large part of life is keeping in the game, that realization that simply being alive, no matter what one was forced to do it did not decide who one is, simply being alive already gives you so much access to this physical existence. Imagine – one and each human is connected to this entire Earth’s atmosphere, to all the earth, sun, water, air, clouds, each other.

It’s like animals really know their part and role to play in the whole, that no matter what their personal experience, it’s equally part of the entire design of wealth and poverty for example, and their experience is a matter of luck BUT the corrective action is the same for the one in wealth and the one in poverty. The aspiration to harmony, to not being prostituted or become a prostitute of knowledge, that kind of living that is best for all that deserves to be called a principle and not attributed to any name of any person, all that is the same, but the response as how we express our understanding will be unique.

• the emptiness of having no slaves, seeing no one as a slave

Emptiness is crucial to realize and look at and look deeper into the obvious, it’s vital to the complete reception of the present moment. And we shouldn’t bring past moments or past conflicts into the present moment. It’s a case of being added to by being diminished, and diminished by being added to.

Even if the system announces that there must be slaves, that there must be a hierarchy, that doesn’t change the responsibility I have for my own treatment of others and if I treat all people, no matter what their position in the hierarchy, as equals – it’s the reality of the relationship formed having more power than rules, structure, and traditions passed on through generations.

Day 1603: Disassembling Freedom

Who am I as freedom now?

• absence of an external controlling factor/person/system/rules/structure/tradition etc.

This translates to a fear of tradition etc. brainwashing me in an unknown way. There has been for a long time, a voice in my head doubting, “Is the tradition I’m absorbing really what is best for all? What if the structure I’m integrating as myself was designed to produce a damaged character with weaknesses and sins?”

So that translates into a fearful, doubting, cynical, and reluctant attitude and approach toward culture in general. Funny thing is I wouldn’t investigate all those things myself and see for myself whether they will directly contribute to weakness. Because looking at it now, culture will have aspects that are the foundation for what is best for all to emerge, and obviously other aspects that form the foundation of abuse. But the proportion or quantity is not important, what’s important is I know exactly which parts I can use, which parts I can discard, and both form the manure for the tree of life.

• the ‘freedom’ I experienced at my first school

I was a content child under the Montessori system of thought. One of its beliefs is the child knows exactly what it needs to nurture him/herself to his/her utmost potential. So I was basically put on a pedestal, given free reign to learn whatever I wanted within what was available, and that really stroked my ego.

An abundance of time outdoors and in touch with nature, really imparted a profound sense of harmony and gave me a great source of contentment. Giving things their space and time to grow into their utmost potential, so that I live my utmost potential.

• being given the specific instruction and making it a rule that ‘your interest is divine, therefore it must be respected’

See above.

• not being told what to do

Indicating an anger thus fear of being told what to do, but what was told is not best for all. Thus a fear of others imposing their will on me, when that will is not best for all. Or even worse, the will is self interested. I can look at my life as a series of meeting figures of authority, giving conditions for my inclusion into society as being told what to do, and my own reply being yes or no. Truth be told, I really want to say no but I’m starting to realize that saying no to society is spiting myself and stunting my own utmost potential actually.

So it’s like I’m blaming figures of authority for my own ignorance and dumb faith in them that they investigated what is best for all and enact the greater will, instead of taking my own authority as an equal human and investigating all things and keeping what is best for all. I don’t think it is ever an authority figure’s wish that you become lazy and rely on their sight for all decisions. I like to think that an authority’s greatest desire is to stimulate common sense reasoning, and promote that while everyone is independently managing their area of affairs.

• no one I can blame for being controlling
• an absence of excuses, reasons, and justifications to identify anyone or anything in my world as something that is controlling me

In a mode of thought of wanting the environment to adapt to my own preferences, which will never happen. In a way, making the statement that I’m not capable enough to adapt to the unrelenting environment which is never perfect, and in a living statement of weakness creating and holding a weak hope that one day, the environment will give itself on a golden platter.

To be submissive is not to abdicate responsibility. It’s to stand and stand up for what is, measured and cross referenced to reality, what will be best for all and is actually that after many experimentations in physical reality. Realizing that no matter how a person imposes their will, they can never change my decision to do what’s best, and my decision as a directive principle is what cannot change, and so is kind of untouchable.

• often enough being given the power to decide some things

This is within the design of giving some things more importance and other things less importance according to my ambition. Even in the lowest of positions in the hierarchy, everyone meets decisions. There is no such thing as a job or position or education that has the power to control every decision you make. But there is one thing – fear – that makes us all zombies, and makes our decision making predictable. Living what is best for all also makes our decision making predictable, so why choose fear to rule over us and not what is best for all as a principle of living? It’s the funny thing about best for all, it applies and expounds from exactly where we are in the position of the hierarchy, no matter how high or how low we are in the pecking order.

Day 1602: Naming Freedom

Who am I as freedom now?

• absence of an external controlling factor/person/system/rules/structure/tradition etc.
• the ‘freedom’ I experienced at my first school
• being given the specific instruction and making it a rule that ‘your interest is divine, therefore it must be respected’
• not being told what to do
• no one I can blame for being controlling
• an absence of excuses, reasons, and justifications to identify anyone or anything in my world as something that is controlling me
• often enough being given the power to decide some things
• enough money that it gives a sense of freedom and power
• the opposite of slavery in all ways
• the emptiness of having no slaves, seeing no one as a slave
• not seeing myself as a slave
• a strict attitude of violence towards all slave-producing behaviours in people
• abolishment of masters meaning a deletion of master-slave relationships
• win-win, not win-lose
• reality crashing down often so it’s not painful as the truth hurts
• a method of prevention of possession/obsession with illusions
• the giving back of power from holy spirit of education system back into my own hands
• annihilation of education containing a spirit, a starting point, a secret intent

Day 1601: Exploring Control

What is control within me? How am I controlling me? What is defined as control when I look at my mind, myself, my relationship with me and my definitions?

Control brings up a memory of an observation I had about my family life at one point, where in a family with two siblings, we each went into our rooms and did homework, and I noted the division of labour amongst the family. I knew that the driving force of the family was my mom, and strangely enough, rather than seeing the nurturing part of the whole ordeal, I interpreted the situation as quite cold, mechanical, systematic. Like a factory to produce people like my parents through me and two siblings.

I would eventually admit that the times when control gave me a result that I wanted, that was control too, but the intense force of control, feeling claustrophobic, I defined as my relationship with education. Because I was given a taste of ‘freedom within control’ as a Montessori school, the whole idea of having homework, tests, and exams I felt I was not briefed on its role in my entire life’s arc. I held the interpretation that I was doing fine until one day, some authority called teachers and school and education system told me those days are over, and I will be subjected to a lean regimen of homework, tests, and exams according to a preprogrammed curriculum.

It was at these moments of wanting to fight the homework, tests, and exams, but not knowing how to, that I downgraded my participation at school from a mental exercise into a great excuse to hang out with friends. I relished the time that I had to be with my friends. Making friends by seeing where they can be guided to an equal standing, thus equal understanding, and assisting and supporting people in a gesture to make friends with them, that kind of gift is always appreciated. Inevitably, the only way I thought I could voice and stand up for my reluctance that became procrastination, was failing to study for tests and exams, and refusing to do homework, or do homework with the bare minimum effort and attention.

I realize now that what I wanted to communicate and make real was my observation of the weaknesses of a system based on competition, thus the dysfunction of a person whose mental design is primarily based on competition rather than cooperation. I felt that the education system was hard selling me to become an ideologue for competition and inequality by controlling as much as possible what I am allowed to do, and because I couldn’t see within me anything that would prevent brainwashing or conditioning, I resisted each step that teachers laid down as the rules by doing each step halfheartedly. I couldn’t shake the sentiment that I was chewed up, and spit out by the education system. Left with 20 year’s deficit with at least 20 years of time that I felt were wasted.

Day 1601: Never Retract Participation in Anything

Almost dreading and feeling the doom very well, today’s theme is retracting. From birth to now, my life can be summarized as a cycle of attracting, then retracting. Getting my head stuck in and focusing on what is most obvious here, then thinking about myself and my total life’s arc and what meaning can I thread from this immediate action right now and the moment I die. For example, education and studying. I’m absorbing, I’m standing stable in a position and routine of studying, then at the moments where I am able, I think about myself. I doubt that what is presented to me right now is what is important to all Life. I doubt that this day by day, moment by moment participation is amounting to anything. Then I retract. But with retracting there is no understanding nor embracing of what I note about my observations about what is here as reality.

For a long time, I have been in a cycle of ‘sucking it up as a man’ and ‘manning up’, that led to my observations carrying more and more weight while I resist them, thus they persist. And they have persisted until I place myself in a no man’s land, an ‘in-between’ purgatory where I don’t want to work, and I don’t want to study. But the days I have been diligently sinking deeper into embracing and understanding, the more I get the sense that I’m doing this to myself. In a world of co-creators, where the basic constructive action is to reveal self deception, my experience and process and journey to Life will be so much abundantly less if I cut people out of my life, and don’t plan on meeting new people sometimes.

It’s like I’ve been consistently been disappointed by meeting people ‘in the world’. I’ve had the impression that one of my role models, Bernard Poolman, faced a similar thing with people. So it’s very easy to get lost and lose yourself if, before you’ve made your own direction clear, you think about other people and for example, how much they disappoint you and make you suffer. It’s an impossible choice to choose to retract from one’s world in a world of co-creators. In my example, thinking about myself not in a results-oriented way sort of allowed an infection of a laziness, a loss of meaning, a confusion about what purpose is the best purpose, and basically all summing up in a retraction of my participation and an isolation into my own mind of thoughts about what is here. The infusion of emotions AND feelings into my observations only exponentially raised the confusion factor. It’s like – the physical is what it is, and I’m telling myself my mind is more trustworthy as an advisor about what is life than the Physical? Why do I believe my mind so readily and automatically, but not what whispers in silence as the Physical?

So the way or method I found worked for me was 1 + 1 = 2, this is the summary of all relationships that can ever possibly be made in real physical reality existence. Trace the stories I tell myself to their root and origin, admit to myself my own sentiments and observations and instead of delaying their consideration by ‘manning up’ or ‘taking it like a man and getting over it’, for a temporary moment hold each sentiment in the human physical body, and define the energy. The thoughts that circle are already defined, but it’s important vitally to define the energy amongst them.

It’s one of the key observations about the difference of mind and physical. The mind repeats the episode with a different appearance. Physical practical permanent change makes everything unpredictable because in a way, you’re stepping out of character by committing to permanent change, and asking what is the best directive principle you yourself can manage. You don’t just uproot a tree, being of mind substance or physical substance, just like that in one moment.

So it’s one of these confusing statements about ‘living and applying yourself’ let’s say, and stopping ‘thinking about yourself’. Everyone has always been in the perfect condition with the critical details already known necessary for permanent change, we just haven’t been good parents with our own knowledge/information-children.