child

A child grows itself. It seeks and takes in what it feels it lacks, the objects of nd through countless unmapped inner processes, its body, and all its other parts develop larger, abler, resistant and skilled in the context of its life, via a continuous exchange of information with the world that surrounds it.

Its body grows with matter as its mind grows with concepts, information, and ideas. The body seeks nourishment via hunger and thirst as the mind seeks information via curiosity. With both, the child initiates his own search. With both, the child knows what draws him to help him grow, and it is then that he becomes receptive to grow in the direction for whatever he seeks, whether he is conscious of it or not.

This self-centeredness of grows does not, however, preclude care and guidance from others in the world. Neither of us could have arrived here without intensive attention and nourishment from our parents or other caretakers, and they also prevented many of us from dangers around us, altogether in physical, emotional, and social contexts, among others. That is to say, the inner drive and search that comes from within the child is not sufficient to lead a full life, as receiving care and guidance from the world is an integral part of human experience.

Nevertheless, I intuit that the child's primary guidance comes from within. It is the child's body which best knows what it needs to function properly, and it is the child's mind which best knows which ideas within him are aching to grow, and which knows which knowledge is he most eager for, most receptive to absorb. And as each of us children grows abler, more knowing and more confident, the intensity and the frequency of the guidance we receive lessens, allowing our choice and our trust to grow themselves too.

As such, I see a parent's role as a guide to be secondary to the child's. Atop the essential nourishment of all kinds and protection from hidden dangers, the parent's role is meager and ought not to override the child's unnecessarily. A parent or caretaker holds jurisdiction and authority over her household and family, naturally, and overrides are often crucial, such as when she knows the child's search will led him into needless harm. Or if the child's direction becomes aimless, his actions idle, or his spirit turns dim, a parent's forceful spurring may set him again on a useful path in life.

But if the parent turns overbearing, and restrictive in her ways, and forcefully pushes the child on a path, while listening more to her own fears and beliefs than to the child's guidance, she may unknowingly block a piece of the child that aches to grow, or pull out an aspect in him that was not yet ready to bloom.

Life is messy, however, and adhering always to the "correct" course of action, both for the parent and for the child, is nigh an impossible task. The monumental task of growing, and nourishing, a child, all the while paying attention to his needs and his drive, to his unique characteristics, all the while gradually releasing control and restrictions from the child precisely as he no longer benefits from them, is, I imagine, arduous, draining, often thankless, and long, sometimes lifelong. The task strikes me in intricacy and delicacy, not unlike the process of cell mitosis, which to this day baffles even the most dedicated and passionate researches in the biomolecular field.

I repeat,: Life is messy, and we children will break often as we grow and live. We will hurt, we will get lost and feel lost, and encounter countless vicissitudes, and it will feel like we lead a life far, far from the "ideal" life we feel we were "meant" to live. Nevertheless, I feel that it is the child's inner guidance *stronger* as he develops and grows, that best leads him onto what will best enable him to grow with health, fullness, and grace.

i want you to like this

From a Messenger conversation today:

"

Also, I was thinking: I think people rarely say something like "I want you to like this thing that I show you".

And I have the feeling that sometimes people do have that feeling, and do not express it.

This indicates to me a blockage or diversion of the feeling.

I think that the internal dialogue that happens when blocking this feeling is something like:

"I want her to like this thing that I showed her. But I cannot make her like it. Also, liking is not a voluntary thing. Even she cannot like it just because she wills it. It's outside her power.

Then why I would I say it? She can do nothing with the information, she will likely feel pressured into liking this thing, and may feel guilty because she cannot do anything about it. And for myself, I will present a need I have that depends on her, thereby displaying something of a weakness, a dependency in me, and I don't want her to know that, because that feels shameful."

Regardless of the strategizing, I intuit that being able to express fully is valuable.

A core part of this value, I believe, is the understanding of oneself one must have before one is able to express fully and clearly.

"

Blamelessness

The desire for blamelessness arises from a fear of being blamed. The fear of something can induce the desire for that things' opposite, for its negation.

The fear of blame arises from an experience in which one was blamed for something, and that caused a hurt in oneself, whether via damaging words, social ostracism, explicit punishment, or otherwise.

Hurt occurs when one believes one's own boundaries are violated, and something that belonged to oneself: goods, identity, reputation, is stolen, taken away or damaged, or something foreign was imposed within, an unwanted invader.

The boundaries by which one defines oneself encompass one's own identity. And with people as well as with nations, the more we encompass, the more resources we dominate. But also, the more we encompass, the more boundaries we are obligated to defend. For no one else truly can.

And the definition of one's identity is entirely one's own choice.

Self-restraint

Aug 11, 2021

It occurs to me that there are various types of self-restraint we human beings can practice.

On the physical level, our body mass is constantly pulled down to the earth. In our early years of development, we experimented and we struggled as we learned to align our muscles to our will, learning gradually to hold our head up, then our upper body, and then learned the balancing act of standing on our own two legs, and later even to shift our weight from one leg to another and to step forward, repeatedly, thus learning and mastering the art of walking. And though this struggle is oft forgotten by the regular adult, each of us, as we live and move in our daily activities, is practicing a constant and complex self-restraint against our body mass' tendency towards falling downward, whether consciously or not.

On the physiological level, we have also learned to restrain the natural urges our body feels fairly continuously throughout the day. Hunger, thirst, the urges to urinate, defecate, to sneeze, or even to breathe. These all the body seeks in order to survive, to seek homeostasis, as its design compels it to. And most of us learn to restrain these urges at some time or another in order to uphold values on a different plane. Social norms override the basic urges of hunger and lust, as they rank the values of neighborly respect and social cohesion higher than those driven by the primal urges. In these cases, among others, we exercise self-restraint of our physiological urges, and a large number of these overrides has also sunk down into our subconscious.

We have learned to restrain our emotions as well, though the process is still ongoing in the species, as can be observed when a person speaks or acts driven by emotional impulse, then suffers from his own remorse after the emotional wave has quieted down. We know sometimes to hold in our sadness, our anger, our jealousy, our hurt, and even our excitement at times.

Restraint of emotions recognizes there is a value higher than that of our emotions. It negates the priority of one's own emotions and yields it to another value within ourselves, such as our logic and ideas. In the same manner, restraint of thoughts recognizes there is a value higher than that of our thoughts. It negates the priority of one's own thoughts, which sometimes involves considering that our own thoughts are incorrect. Such self-restraint, I notice, is not common among humanity as a whole. Accepting, admitting that oneself is wrong - not only to others, but to ourselves, is something I have had difficulty accomplishing, or even realizing as a possibility; I notice in the behavior of other people that they have difficulty too, or do not even consider...

September 1, 2021

their mind may not be correct or complete, that it may have interpreted reality incorrectly.

Upon each of these levels we build the framework of our bodies. The elemental forces on each plane exert their own tendencies upon our bodies, be they to flow, to release, to yield to entropy. And at each plane we observe, we yearn to master our expression and our balance. And then we struggle, seek, fight to gain command upon these bodies, upon the various levels of our existence. Life struggles through us to discover Itself, to observe in these planes what It grows Itself into.

At each level we build. In the unordered elements at each level we learn to discern, we choose to grow, and therein our work lies. The struggle is to erect a framework in ourselves, and in the world, that is guided, operated, and controlled by our consciousness, by Life.

Self-restraint, I believe, is a key element to this struggle. It is the imposition of the willpower upon the elemental urges of the bodies we sometimes feel so much as our own selves. At each level we explore the shapes, patterns that align with our will, and via self-restraint we give it strength, solidity. And upon the framework we build upon the denser levels, can we rise and continue to explore and build upon the subtler.

And so we build. We began defying gravity while even in plant form, we detached from the earth as animals, and as humans higher still we rise. With healthy and self-controlled bodies, we now explore the planes or emotions and mind, seeking to build a stable framework upon these as well, guided by our awareness, driven by our will.

So it is worthy to realize that to grow, at times, it is valuable to restrain our own emotions, as well as to restrain our own opinions (thoughts), and to listen instead. When and where to do so is a matter entirely chosen by ourselves. And doing so can help us build ourselves, and rise to higher levels.