Boasting

I suspect I may be hiding my self-worth

behind the commonplace social custom

that eschews the act of boasting.

In my western culture experience,

boasting is disliked, suppressed.

He who speaks well about himself

implying "I am worthy" or "I am good"

is met with caution and confusion,

with uncertainty of an adequate response,

unable even to evaluate

or celebrate his claim

for they rarely are required to do so.

most often a claim of goodness

of achievement, of self-worth

is suffixed with a redirection

of the energy of worth

towards another factor

another person

or the surrounding conditions

or a stroke of good luck

or a leaking of laughter

to release the bright presence

of true self-worth.

sharing one's own self-worth is disliked

due to the legacy of generations

why is it so disliked?

the quick answer is:

the claim of self-worth indicates arrogance

and arrogance is unwelcome.

a little deeper, I find

a claim of self-worth may cause others to believe

that his fortune is my misfortune

by principles of competition

and feel thus attacked by the claim.

Such comparison only occurs

if the spirit of divisiveness is present

and such joy cannot be shared.

In truth, shared joy is blissful

and need not be translated

into unworth for the rest.

In the tribe,

let the hunter who brings the deer be celebrated,

let the woman who gives birth be honored.

And most importantly,

let each person honor himself

unhidden and unashamed.

Worth

I continue to feel drawn

to women in this or that way

not so much triggered by the carnal

but I still seem to hold them as

the holders of the answer

the ones who can free me

from my undying addiction to them.

like I once believed them to be

without me knowing it.

they do not know, my child.

they also seek and worry and are lost.

there is no answer to be found in them.

no pity or ultimate answer

they can bestow upon you

to quench your thirst

for worth.

worth is not bestowed

it is only hidden from us

unbeknownst to us and to doer

when I once believed

that something was wrong with me

because others thought so.

believing in peer-pressure truth

can quickly yield false results.

worth is not granted

it is innate

remembering this may take a lifetime

but remember I must

lest lost I remain.

Mistrust

ahh

the feeling of wanting to be better than the other

of outcompeting the other

of defeating the other

of surpassing the other

of conquering the other

comes from mistrust.

one does not trust the other

to make good decisions

and if he holds more power

than i

then more incorrectness spreads across the world

and against that i must fight.

and it comes from fear

that the other will abuse his power

to subjugate and abuse me

also a mistrust

that power will be abused.

and this mistrust

of the other

comes when we believe the other's

true intents and methods

are lesser and undesirable.

corrupted or undeveloped

and must hence be subjugated.

in short, mutual parties

mistrust one another

because each believes the other

to be lesser or undesired

rejected.

mistrust occurs when we reject one another

and rejection happens when the unit

has built a wall between him and others.

when he believes the other to be separate

of another kind

when we believe that their intentions

are different from ours

and they may very well be

because each has grown behind their own walls.

feeling such rejections

against all those around

it can be hard to remember

that the core intent of humans

is one and the same

the one we were born with

the one we forget

under layers and decades of training:

to see, to seek, to desire, to chase.

to feel, to connect, to share, to grow.

enmity and mistrust are grown

not core

perhaps we can dig in and find those weaves

of default mistrust and consider

whether they still truly serve.

Shame

shame

what is this urge

that brings us to hide?

what do we hide

and why?

tis pride proven incorrect

the sun without its shine

the rainbow without its colors

the river without flow

tis the thing without its thingness

that makes thing wants to hide

for the identity it believed

is gone.

the leader without his power

the mother without her child

the dancer who breaks her body

the singer without his voice

the salesman without his clients

the magnate without her money

the champion outcompeted

the mind without its reason

the showman with no show

shame comes from the rupture

between self and the thing it believed it was

a discord that makes the believer

want to reconcile

his outer perceptions

and his inner sensations.

this discord begets confusion

about what self is

the identity can no longer express clearly

and shame is born.

self had placed it-self into a category

and his perception can no longer support

that he still belongs there.

shame is then perhaps the urge

to reconcile this discord

via one of various ways.

self can revalidate.

it can find enough evidence in the world

to place self back again

into the category of thing.

that is, find enough thing-ness

so it may return to the box of thing.

or, self may recalibrate

and search for the next box to drop into.

this second method brings conscious pain

because the connections self has formed,

built on top of his thing-ness

all need to be overhauled.

some of these may be deep-rooted,

the deeper, the more tendrils

and membranes and layers within

this removal will touch.

a surgery of identity

hurts pieces of self

both known and unknown

and pain results.

and it matters how one chooses

to care for self in this time.

with awareness it can be done gently

feeling the roots dug into the thing

one by one

and consciously and with kindness,

cut off the obsolete root.

to do so, one only needs to accept

this root's usefulness is past due

and trust that the next box it lands in

will have enough space to grow too.

or, self can ravage.

if the pain of moving out from the thing box

brings unbridled frustration and rage

one can also bring spite to the method

and rip out all his connections instead.

though this may disconnect self from the old thing

it is also destructive to self.

for the force of the ripping can damage

the deep-hidden roots

and bring eventual deeper need to heal.

like an inflamed appendix

if ripped out can damage the healthy bowels

so ripping out our obsolete identity

can hurt the healthy parts of self.

so it's worth to take care of our own tendrils

to see and disconnect one by one.

for with care each tendril can then realize

its own usefulness date has expired

then gracefully accept its disposal

and wither

instead of living on without aim.

moreover, a self who rips out his connections in rage

has no time to find where to land on

and can end up lost and unhinged, instead.

or, self can retard.

another technique of the ashamed self

is to hang on to thing for dear life.

to ignore the path he was walking

and choose to stay in the cozy behind.

self grabs on to thing as he knows it

and shuts out what leads him otherwise.

he'll filter out any perceptions

that threaten to remove him from thing.

the dangers of retardation are twofold:

he'll knowingly make himself blind

and by ignoring the flow of the river

he'll eventually be left behind.

until he finds, but later,

that thing turns to ash in his grasp

for the value that thing once gave him

was but the river, that has left him behind.

shame then, is perhaps the indicator

that a thing has run out of time

and it's time to look hard at the bindings

we have collected

time to consider what we wish to keep from it

and what to discard

for though the thing is left behind,

self continues on its path

and the lessons learned in each box

can help self in the next.

from box to box to box we go.

we crawl, like the walking tree.

at each spot we lay our step

and make roots to dig in

to hold us and sustain us

for a little while.

and when the flow

is past each space

we are bidden to lift root and go.

move, forward.

ever forward.

with sticky steps

we crawl

finding things to hold onto

to lay on and rest.

just remember no step is eternal

and thus every step ends.

and with each step we become

more agile and strong

though at first we may crawl

and all parts of us may need a root

like mold

perhaps soon we shall need less roots

like a sunflower

until step by step

our steps become less sticky

more fluid, more graceful,

until we are running and dancing

and flowing

atop and across all the attributes and categories

we once thought defined us

and bound us.

Inmodesty

facets of myself I feel within me, either mainly or only residually:

• an agile mind, able to understand many complex problems with a minimum of preparedness and effort.
• a fountain of spontaneous ideas, by which people are surprised when I express.
• reluctant to act until the task becomes urgent, interesting, or challenging enough.
• a source of unique ideas, and powerfully concise in their expression.
• individually able to achieve most things in the world by myself.
• uninterested in unoriginal activities.
• a special carrier/conveyor of truth, and of the idea of truth.
• curtailed during childhood and adolescence from coming into full strength of my unique powers.
• particularly brave during introspections.
• a special/unique source of help that others can rely upon, and thereby feel glad to know me.
• a recipient of powerful emotions, tragically repressed and distorted throughout my life.
• a talented computer programmer with high potential, yet neglected skillset.
• uninterested in the mundane.
• interested in the special.
• someone who intuitively feels his way towards the correct way of living, and the path of truth.
• someone who refuses entry to any statement unless I find it is in accordance with the truths I have found.
• self-thinking, undogmatic.
• powerful in the logical and in the creative.
• a skillful and graceful body which can efficiently keep up with the fluid demands of the mind.
• someone who can control and subjugate his emotions, no matter how powerful they rise.
• a mind of such speed, curiosity, and inconstancy that it refuses/is almost unable to remain on a single topic for long.
• one who can help many others in a variety of ways.
• one who permits the surrender of my individual priorities to the conscious collaboration towards an idea I consider worthy.

and more.

I wonder which parts of these conflict with one another. Like the e.g. left and right political parties in a nation struggle and battle with another, unknowing that they are but two hands of the same body... how do my own parts battle amongst themselves, ignorant of their underlying unity?

A common pattern among these attributes is that, when I ask myself "what does special or unique mean?", the meaning that comes to me is: "that means that it is better than in others".

Like a competition.

And hence there's a constant attention and struggle placed upon checking and ensuring that I continue to have more specialness/uniqueness than others. Somehow. Within.

Smile

A smile denotes acceptance.

An acknowledgement of seeing

and accepting what one sees.

not necessarily support

not necessarily understanding

but acceptance of what is seen.

Why is it so often

held back from fellow street-goers?

Why does it feel at times

that a smile can be menacing

that giving a smile can be dangerous

that a smile needs to be returned

or else shame ensues?

In this game of avoiding

the risk of smiles

often not a single one is given

nor received

as we walk through herds of hundreds

as we keep our precious acceptance away

from the unknown masses.

And even eye contact

is also pushed away

for the subconscious conversation that arises when it happens:

- "Oh hello, I see you."

- "Hi, I see you too."

- "How nice. Do you accept me?"

- "What? Hold on, I don't know you, and I don't trust you. Do you accept me first?"

- "What? No way, I don't trust you either."

- "OK, so we see each other, but we do not accept each other."

- "I guess we reject each other then."

- "Well, I don't want to see the thing that I reject and that rejects me."

- "Me neither, I'm out of here."

in an anxious shared split-second

feels hesitant and draining

and it is much rather avoided

by our subconscious taskmaster

who, incognizant, merely feels

the wordless discomfort,

and would rather place his attention

on most anything else

just not their eyes

please.

The belief that a smile can be dangerous

derives from the assumption that

mostly, an unknown person will seek me

only if he/she has something to gain by doing so,

and that his gain

necessarily means my loss.

Three examples

of mostly-undesired interactions come to mind.

- "I want money. Give me some of yours."

- "I want your beauty. Let me enjoy it."

- "I want your attention. Listen to me."

All of these derive from lack,

and seek to feed by taking from another.

They all begin with eye contact,

and are often followed with a smile.

If we come to realize that such eye contacts and smiles

are almost always lures to take something away from us,

we learn to see smiles as dangerous,

and we all end up avoiding each other's gazes

as we do now.

But the withholding of acceptance

between the billions that roam the earth

has us starving for acceptance

as we hide each other's water

within our pent-up fears.

To loosen up these fears

the proportions must be altered

the assumptions must be defied.

If so many believe that smiles

are only used as lures

let us challenge that by offering

smiles that ask nothing in return.

Not surprise, not a smile back,

not even acknowledgement,

not even non-aggression.

We can open our own outflow

as wide as it feels right.

If only a drop each time, so be it,

or a trickle, or a gush.

May whatever offered be offered freely

lest we again ask for something in return

and are thrown back into the pit of lack.

And drip by drip, I posit,

the waters of acceptance will rise.

Smile by smile, the ratio

of pure to lure will grow,

and slowly we will notice

that the dams are not all dry anymore.

Some will drip, some will trickle,

and some will flow like walking springs.

Then as each receives the waters

of simple acceptance

soon many will realize

they no longer walk amidst a desert

and they no longer need to hide

their half-empty bottles

from each other.

They can drink their fill amongst them

quench their thirst along their way

until their fear softens

and they willingly offer their own water

to others still dry behind their dams.

Then perhaps may we walk lighter

free of general mistrust

and with water and light abundant

we'll find newer ways to grow.

Greed

greed

derives from hunger

from the fear that our needs will not be satisfied

in the future

so the unit reacts by acquiring, and storing

enough to survive the oncoming

feared, dangerous, unknown future.

Enough to feed all those pieces of us

that need to be nourished to survive.

Our body's health and function, for one,

requires shelter and sustenance,

so one must have the ability to acquire these goods

and keep the body alive and well.

Our social standing

and dynamics, our traditions,

we value them as parts of ourselves

that we are not willing to part with

so we ensure that we have and keep

enough value at our disposal

to keep these traditions alive.

Such upkeep of social standing

requires uninterrupted

appearance of well-being,

and the fear of blemishes upon this appearance

keeps many strongly invested in masking

the messy innards and fluxing states of being

with an image of self-sufficiency

and a balanced, genial emotional attitude,

or whichever mask we choose for ourselves.

A single blemish or crack in our masks

is seldom forgotten by society,

many believe,

and much effort is placed into

the perfect upkeep and polish of the mask.

The fear that we might not be able

to nourish and sustain all these parts

that we value and believe to be our selves

powers greed.

These fears are not unlike

the fear of having an ear or arm cut off,

for we feel them as ourselves

whether tangible flesh or not.

Such fear is born out of lack

in the past to care enough for ourselves

and the desperation to acquire in order to survive.

What we often lack

is understanding of this our own fear

and a method to turn it off,

to let it go.

Such fear may never be satisfied,

if it believes that our resources will be exhausted, slip away and vanish

unless we sustain all the layers around us we have built

and believe to be our self.

It seems to be constructed,

this greed,

from a layered chain, one layer upon the other.

The one need begets the other,

a chain of dependency

that requires one resource to acquire the next.

Money to acquire food and shelter.

Social value to acquire money.

Social status to acquire social value.

Trinkets and habits to keep social standing,

smiles and tradition to upkeep an image of value

and a stable social community.

A constant unconscious struggle to keep all parts of our self

whole and undamaged

because we fear that what comes

may rip parts of us away.

Each layer begets the next atop it to protect it

necessarily larger and heavier

to shield it from the unforgiving world

to keep us whole and safe

sometimes forgetting those layers were made by us

but are not truly us.

Violence

I carry violent urges within me.

They rise when triggered by frustration or by desire for revenge. They live at the back of my consciousness, like in a prison.

It's like a violent being is a prisoner in the back of my consciousness, and he seems very tightly locked up. Even when I have tried to bring him out, I feel unable to do so. And he's always making noise. Shouting, clanging on the bars, or raging in his cell. If I am busy, I have something to do, and keep myself busy, I forget he is there. I go along my day, planning plans and completing tasks, and I smile outwardly and feel jovial and feel useful in the world.

But when my world quiets down, when I have no one to show my smile to, when I have no task to focus on, his voice sometimes returns. I can hear him again, clanging at the bars, demanding to be let out, mocking my lethargy and my uselessness when I do nothing. In the silence I hear him, and I have always felt him somewhere, at least since I was 12.

Its urges come in two specific forms. It wishes to rage against people around me, whether towards a focused antagonist, or against everyone around me indiscriminately, and attack anyone who is close enough to damage.

In the focused form, it wishes to suddenly stand tall and straight, look at the other person directly in the eyes, and see his/her puzzled look when he notices my sudden change in behavior. The next few movements I feel like a single sweeping graceful movement. I launch myself towards him at full speed, grab him/her by the neck, full-on across the front of his throat, and land without losing momentum. Grounding myself firmly in a split second, with my weight having brought him off-balance, I pull on his neck with both my hands with all the force and weight my body can muster, and I swing his body straight on towards the ground, against a nearby wall or window, or against a metallic rail, like I would a sack of potatoes. If thrust upon a wall or window, I would firmly ground myself again, then kick him as damagingly as possible on the most easily-accessible vulnerable area. A steel-pointed toe kick into his abdomen to pierce into his bowels, a crushing two-legged stomp on his ribs if he's down on the ground, or a throat-smashing stomp that crushes his windpipe and prevents him from breathing evermore.

And if he was thrust onto a metallic bar, I then press his legs under the bar and kick his torso above and behind the bar, aiming to snap his spine in two, and have him hang inert over the railing, like an old towel of flesh.

The other form of violence my urge visualizes is a cutting form. It imagines people around me, whether enemies or consoler or bystanders - what they are is irrelevant. I have a cutting implement, powerful like a lightsaber but much longer, and I wield it. I crouch midway while holding my sword, then with my outstretched arms, I spin around one or two full revolutions with a swift swipe, and everyone around me is cut down into two pieces, across their waists. And I leave them all for dead. And sometimes there is a specific person around me, someone who I mean to especially shock/surprise with this act, with the intent of proving to them that I do have power and rage within me, and that I am not to be trifled with.

I feel it is telling that this part of me has accompanied me for all of my adolescent and adult life. I have never given it the manifestation it desires, yet it does not go away. Whether I experience joy, sadness, frustration, calm, and even what seems like enlightened moments of introspection, these violent urges remain, and I have been keeping them prisoner for most of my lifetime.

I feel them in my body when they come. In times of frustration or of anger, when I feel unjustly treated or abused, my body heats up with anger. My muscles twitch, and I know exactly which poses and places I would take to launch myself at him from which specific angle, which direction to throw him onto, which piece of furniture he would hit, onto which edges and corners he would be the most damaged, and which part of his body I would endeavour to crush, pierce, or snap. I feel it in my muscles, my body readies itself automatically in a flash. And then, reminding myself of the social and legal implications such an action would have, I take a deep breath, impose my reason upon my body, and seek another manner to sort out the situation.

And every time I do this, it hurts. My body hurts, in my solar plexus. It feels like a power, a heat that wants to come out of my solar plexus gets suppressed, shut in, and the intense heat and pressure cooks inside a small container in my solar plexus, and it hurts me. And I often cry instead, frustrated at my inability for true expression.

In the last five months, I have been feeling just such a constant discomfort in this exact area. Exactly along my midline, just below my ribcage, I now feel a constant, unrelenting ache. I respond to it instinctively by eating and eating, and eating some more, perhaps to numb the sensation down a little. I seek tasks, I look for entertainment, sometimes desperately, I notice, seemingly unable to not feel discomfort.

It is barely painful, but it is a constant discomfort that prevents me from ever feeling calm. Activity, eating, and movement all mask the sensation enough for my mind to go somewhere else. But in the last few weeks, I have had enough idle time for myself that I can no longer ignore it, and tonight I haven't been able to sleep. I suspect the recurrent emotional repressions have produced a physical anomaly near my stomach or intestine, and I am concerned about my physical health.

I somewhat hope that by giving these violent urges any voice, even if only a textual description of what it wants to do, something in it can be released or loosened, and perhaps it can help my body process this unease.

Pride

Pride is a reaction

of the unit

who rallies and rises in attempt of survival

against the threat of assimilation or subjugation

by the swallowing mass.

It emphasizes distinction

To reassert its self.

It draws borders and boundaries

it pushes against them and proves itself separate

from the will and the identity

of the rejected collective.

Because it rises in opposition to entities

that symbolize the threat

an overbearing parent

domineering companions

an insipid context

an abhorrent environment,

as long as the threat is still perceived

as external entities

or as a hurting wound

the threat lives

and pride persists.

It does not fade alone

it must be consciously unstuck

seen, recognized,

accepted, understood,

known to be now obsolete

and taken off our walls.

For pride does not judge

it merely repels and safeguards

for the sake of maintaining the integrity

of the unit within,

like a membrane of oil

around our drop of water

within a watery world.

Hence consciousness must judge it

if we are ever to be free

from its long-lasting grip.

For past its useful lifetime

Pride isolates, rather than protects.

It disconnects, rather than defines.

And keeps us unable

To see the world as it is.

Not as an enemy to best

Nor as a wrong to rectify

As it is.

Discomfort

Discomfort brings about the desire to find its source. this, so the discomfort can be dealt with.

The search for a source is the search of "why", and it traces through causes and consequences until it finds an assignable discrepancy.

When found, the discomfort is assigned to this source, and that is the act of blame.

A common human habit is to separate, or reject, pieces of the world from ourselves, and to use them as common or default repositories of blame, like (giant) conceptual trash cans. This reduces the effort it takes to find the source of a discomfort. Such a habit is preferred by many because the process of searching for a cause is effortful, uncertain, treads in the unknown, and in the case of discomfort, this search is done while feeling discomfort, which can motivate one to speed up and rush the process.

Like it is easier to throw all waste material into a large garbage container, than it is to differentiate it and place it in different containers, each with different modes of treatment.

A default source of discomfort, we need to reject from ourselves, because it needs to be made foreign and unknown. Were it not, we would be faced directly with the task of fixing and healing all the discomfort we have assigned to it.

As that seems an unpleasant and often gigantic task, most people choose to not venture into it.

And while it is not ventured into, those conceptual areas, those sources of discomfort, are considered the "enemy", or "evil". And if sufficient human units agree on what these sources of discomfort are, they coalesce and congeal into the well-known "common evils".

And these vary in generality and in scope. From the bulk of humanity that blames its miseries on the fabled devilish fiends proclaimed in stories and religions,

through the national rivalries and splinterings that consider each other the source of their problems,

through the rivalries between families in a neighborhood or between individuals or siblings,

into the very splinterings of our personalities that allow parts of us to blame the other parts for our failures, miseries, and mistakes,

these splinterings result from the congealment

of sources of discomfort we "learn to default to"...

and eventually separate and reject from ourselves

as fiercely and as radically

as sports teams reject their rivals,

as political extremes reject their opponents,

as quarrelling couples reject one another.

We have a mechanism of fixing our discomforts,

and we turn it into a method of segmentation,

because we procrastinate on diving into the complex and uncomfortable

that, regardless, is part of who we are.

Common blame-recipients are:

"the government"

"the ambitious politicians"

"the unthinking masses"

"the greedy rich"

"the desperate poor"

"the criminals"

"the greedy corporations"

"the foolish religions"

"the tyrannical systems"

"the deceitful media"

"the evil spirits"

and many more.

Any conceptual entity can serve

as a default source of discomfort

and it will remain like that

neglected, rejected, unfixed, un-understood,

especially within us,

and the pollution of its rejection will seep into other parts of ourselves

unless we dive deep into it

and strive to understand

past the facade of the "evil entity"

what is inside it.

What causes the discrepancies

that affect us and we directly feel.

What is IN what we reject?

How does it work? What is it made of?

What are the forces that guide it and coordinate it,

and how would I feel, to be THAT,

and why does it do

what it does

or what I THINK it does.

There is not a thing we are not.

Blame is not a solution.

Healing needs understanding

at least to the point of acceptance.