songsfortheotherkind.com

I would love to hear about your own internal song of the evolution- where is it asking you to go? To set foot in? To explore now?

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"For every lie I unlearn, I learn something new"- Ani DiFranco

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go. ~ TS Elliot

Reboot regularly: I notice that over a few weeks, I'll get lost in everyday stuff and accumulate seeming obligations to things. I become bogged down and don't realize how debilitating it is. The obligations are interesting. They are a bunch of things I believe I need to deal with that occupy my mind and hold me back from thinking freely about what to do.

That TV I got to try to fix several weeks ago is a good example. It's still sitting there and I've been trying to find a tool I need to further diagnose it. Somehow it's this thing I have to do something about, and can't just say "fuck it, out of here". There are many things like that in this non-social realm. There are also social things that accumulate.

At the core I can sense that there's some part of me that's cut off, shut down, so that I can't fully assess things and deal with them in a timely manner. I can sense this so I put things aside that I can't make a decision on. All these things trigger stuff in me and get caught up like I have a net.

I have to regularly work on stepping back and assessing things freshly. A friend and I find this useful in our friendship as well, "pressing reset" regularly, since I'm great at accumulating an ever-growing set of rules I have to obey when I'm relating with someone regularly. I think they form when something triggers fear, with the yellow tape of the rule marking off some area I have to avoid in the future.

I'm enjoying some improvements to my room...



I've been hardly connected to my signal. I get thinking that all these other things are in the way and I need to focus on clearing them away before I can spend any time on myself.

Love your room.

Any Miyazaki movie is a sweet choice for posters

Sometimes I can't find anything to connect with in myself and write about. I believe that whenever that happens, it's because I have looked past something, like not being able to find my sunglasses because they're lifted up over my forehead, or looking for keys when I'm holding them in my hand. Some part of me is used to this disconnection and the things I do apparently to maintain it.

I'm disturbed delving into it. I can hardly remember the past few days, and in general much beyond a week, since it all mostly the same day over and over of doing hardly anything meaningful. I try to find something in me and there's nothing. I don't find any alive being with anything it wants to do, just drives to one addictive thing after another.

People here talk of different kinds of beings here and I often feel like a fraud, wonder whether I'm one of the dead ones who thinks they are alive and evolving. Hey look at the things I can write and get praise for. I have some sense of superiority, being able to see a bigger picture and manipulate people. But then this goes to my being, how confident I am when I'm connected with it, that I can do things. I have a faint memory of this and wonder where that went.

I've also been doubting everything lately, wondering if everyone here is just supporting a delusion and the attention each gets is the source of inspiration. I've made the mistake of watching several YouTube videos of someone, and meandered into conspiracy ones today (I avoid these since they're drama-seeking and it never seems to matter whether they're true anyway).

Somehow I don't have any kind of personal boundary, and all these things come into my awareness and then I feel like it's some part of my body that has a problem or needs some attention. There's so much complexity in everything and I have to classify and organize it so I can do my thing without it collapsing around me. This is at every level of my life: physical belongings, way I organize my days, how I relate with people. It's very overwhelming. It just gets more and more complex, less manageable.

And then, and then, people talk of some kind of end-of-world situation. Great, let's cause chaos while I'm still here and can't even get my own mess together if I'm alone for years. I keep trying to work on the external things (belongings), but never make progress. Now that? Yay.

Something else, I can clearly sense some kind of judgment of myself for not making better use of my time. Basically, whatever I'm doing now, I could/should be doing something else. I'm not where I should be at this point. It's not right. It's not enough. There are so many useful things I could be doing for myself.

And I'm sure that there's something in me, something avoided, forgotten, feared, that is feeding all this. You might say the virus is here, and I'm sure it is, but it's never something it does alone, it's always something that I went along with, that I took on. It can never force me to do anything.

I tapped some fierce anger and part of myself that had been disconnected. Someone whom I get financial support from currently sometimes calls on the phone. The first question is how I am. I tend to answer that I'm OK, but in a shaky voice that suggests otherwise. This person usually says "really, you don't sound like it". This triggers me greatly, and I feel like I must perform or else face great consequences. Being honest about how I feel at that moment seems entirely out of the question.

I started recalling this and became very angry. I realized that contratry to how this person made it seem, my response was perfectly appropriate for the situation.

* I am not generally in a very good place mentally. I'm living among people who barely/never show interest in anything real. I also regularly do things that distract me from realness. My days are filled with great challenges to make anyting useful of it. This weighs greatly on me.

* This person generally makes comments that dismiss my utter hatred of TV as silly, sometimes asking if I finally am OK with TV, etc. They don't seem to have a capacity for respecting people with different views. I also have little tolerance for people who want to reframe things I say in terms of their world view, especially when their world view is overly simplistic and rests on big fake things.

* When someone asks how I am, they are really invoking two inquiries: do I feel safe being honest about how I am, and, how am I? If I don't feel safe being honest, then I will answer that I'm OK. If they are listening, they will respect that and move on.

* When I have shared how I was doing with this person, they've given me immediate useless advice, like "take aspirin", "get better sleep" (when I said I didn't get enough sleep... I mean really, I would have never thought of getting more sleep the next night!). People who are quick to give advice cause me to quickly remember to not share myself around them.

* I know how I'm doing implicitly, so there's not a great need to even be able to consciously articulate this to another person. Not being able to give a pat answer to how I am is not a failing on my part. If you're really interested in how I am, you will accept and appreciate whatever answer I give, and perhaps ask an insightful question that shows me your openness and encourages me to elaborate.

* For fuck's sake, if someone doesn't think I'm OK, why are they asking how I am and then calling out the discrepancy? This is where I get triggered greatly. I hear that they are accusing me of something, witholding information in order to achieve some gain over them, or that I fit such-and-such classification and that people like that are always out of touch with themselves or not wanting to talk about it.

* I can't imagine responding, "I don't feel comfortable talking about how I am with you." going over well. I'd be fully prepared to explain that it's mostly about me and my own triggers and experiences, not a reflection on them, but I think they'd then just try to pry into that and let loose their opinions about my world. I spent my life learning to be able to talk about my world, and then sharing it way too much with my mother while she destroyed it every time.

So I saw that my being was doing the correct thing for the situation, and that any judgment on myself was me believing the crap from this person and people before them that I remembered. There's a lot of depth to this and I connected with a significant portion of my being with this recognition, looking on this interaction with eyes of compassion towards my being. The real situation is very clear to me now:

I don't have any obligation to tell you anything about how I'm doing. It's not your right and I'm not hurting you if I don't share. If you have a need to know, where you are dismissive of me for not answering, that's your own issue. There are good reasons to not share this information.

I have to run that image over in my mind several times to even get to grasping it. Me, walking around, has NO FUCKING OBLIGATION TO ANYONE to answer any questions about myself. If I deem it all private, then I'm totally within my right, and I have good reason.

To remind myself, I want to focus on what I voluntarily do here to buy into the false things this person and others have presented. I have focus on them (i.e. external) and want to keep it on the subtly different "backing" I give to it by buying into it, giving it credit. I absolutely believe that in every aspect of this, there's always my buying in paired with the external thing that triggers me so much. And, I don't judge myself for this, like "Why do I keep buying into this crap? Stop already!" Looking at this I'm doing illuminates the web of things this ties into, what's going on in me to motivate me to buy into these things. Hmmm, I guess this occurs when I'm fearful and thus unconscious of my actions to some degree, and looking back with consciousness allows undoing the choice to buy into it, since I'm not fearful now.

I noticed that I have an external focus when I'm manipulating things. I study the thing's behavior and form a model of it so I can easily plan and direct it. I've had years of experience doing this while entertaining myself with technical things in solitary, day after day immersing myself in something and finding endless new things it can do.

When I'm around people that I have fear of, I become externally focused on them. I am trying to manipulate them and be able to predict their behavior, to avoid them doing things that endanger me. I wonder how it would be if I never (felt I) had to do this, if I could just ignore everyone around me unless I wanted something from them or wanted to give them something. This is profound to imagine.

When externally focused on someone, I try to form a consistent model of their view and how they want me to act, so that I can work within it to please them and care for myself. But I take people at face value, and people tend to say things that they have no belief of, and present very inconsistent things. This is extremely distressing to me, because such people tend to be very volatile and I want to not be the target of that.

I noticed that if I could freely express what I'm experiencing and how I feel as I interact with these people, I would find it fairly tolerable. It doesn't seem like it would even require a change on their part; it's my self-censoring that causes me distress. This ties in with a belief I have that in every situation that I find intolerable, I am doing something along with the other person or thing that makes it so. But this is hidden in the shadow of that external thing, so it's very easy to miss.

So I don't think I have to avoid these situations to avoid getting disturbed by them. And avoidance is the most short-term crutch. Being able to express what I'm experiencing while it happens is a longer-term crutch. I see both as not addressing why it's distressing, that is, what deep fear it's connecting to.

In seeing above how being able to express the experience as it happens as an aid, I see that the experience of that is to put my world at center stage for me, to push away the other person's imposed version, to make space for me. This seems a good point for ideas of other ways to put my experience in center stage throughout my day. It's clearly important, maybe the determining factor in the meaning I get out of a day.

I remembered another thing that I still have work to do on. Same person as earlier whom I get financial support from occasionally does things on certain days of the year (e.g. Thanksgiving). This person likes to make food, and need people to eat it and enjoy it. I'm selective about what I eat, and this person didn't seem to be very happy about it. I explained that I don't care if I come over and eat my own food, but this didn't seem to be very preferable.

It all seems silly to me. Certain days of the year having to do special things on. Having to share meals with someone. Having to all eat the same food. Compromising for someone else. Having my eating preferences interpreted as anything more than what I like eating, and what I don't like eating, and my own damn business.

At the core there seems to be a strong need for connection to others, but in a way that requires arbitrary rituals and sacrifices on others' parts. I think that people generally approach relations with others like that, that they are obligated to compromise themselves for the other person, perhaps to get the other person to do the same in return. I can't see it as anything more than two addicts taking turns feeding the other's addiction. I don't think it leads to any growth.

Now, I sometimes want to make a sacrifice for someone, want to give them a gift. This is a self-directed act, and not compromising to me (though it may still be a substitute for something I haven't worked out with myself, I've often found). I just don't have any motivation to do things for others that I see as lacking any growth potential, like eating a meal because someone would like me to.

I get angry thinking about this because I don't feel safe expressing my experience and what I want. I'd like to say something like "Look, you're doing Thanksgiving. I don't mind joining you since I know you'd like it, though I don't have any personal desire to get together with anyone I know today. If I come, I'll bring my own food and may try some of the food there. There are some ingredients and kinds of foods I will not eat because they do not agree with my values and taste, and I want to be respected on this. I can explain this further if you'd like."

I don't look down on anyone for celebrating these days, I just don't care. I desire really connecting with people and talking about things that matter, no matter what day, but I find that basically everyone I know is pretty shallow and thus to get together but be shallow isn't a special day, it's just a usual day. To get together under the pretense of it being really meaningful when it isn't is depressing.

I have some clarity and motivation to write about it.

I've been in lots of distress recently over being referred to as a guy. I can tap into something in me that just yells over and over to stop, that it wants nothing to do with that attribution. If I verbalize it, even to just myself, I start sobbing deeply.

I notice myself angry a lot when I'm out. I wonder why the hell people have to even throw in things like sir/ma'am so much. Each sir accumulates on an outing. I'd love to stop next time someone calls me "sir" and say "I'm not sir. Stop calling me that." and they ask what they should call me. I want to then reply, "Why do you need to call me anything? Have you noticed how I have had no need to call you anything? We know we're talking to each other." Somehow this anger at everyone gets focused on these people. I'm frustrated at non-strangers (friends, family) who can't stop taking my appearance at face value, who insist on framing everything I say in terms of this.

Here, I feel "wrong" for even caring about this. Isn't this place about being beyond caring how others treat you, about your body, etc.? I've set up some kind of rules in my mind here and don't really know what's solid ground (and even here I'm beating myself up for caring what others here think, since again, that's what we're trying to get past).

In a way I am thankful for my experience. There're not a lot of other things I know of that would be this revealing of people's true nature, how much consideration they really have for me, etc. It's very simple in my mind, and clear what's going on when people have problems accepting what I say at face value and without coming up with explanations that invariably support their view of things at my expense.

But, there's some part of me that finds unbearable the idea of being forever invisible to everyone, alone, unheard. It's how I lived most of my life, without even realizing that anything was missing. I want other people I can communicate with. I had talked with songs about EFT and as I often do, formed a "rule" that I have to do that alone, rather than with someone else present as I connect with and discharge issues.

Identifying with Duchess lately, so here she is typing at the keyboard:

Duchess posed for a couple of photos. I'm inspired!

You know, in part this is what I've been processing while I went walkabout. I have met someone who holds space in a way I've never experienced before and I've learned what it's like to simply be in the non-judgemental presence of another. I've run in to all *kinds* of interesting virus programming, emotional turbulence and internal revelation that I simply have no idea how I would have got had I not gotten to experience this individual, my response to them and all the unpacking that this brought.

I hear you when you say



because for me, communication goes to so many levels and places that 99.99% of individuals cannot even begin to imagine, let alone grok- I had made my Self forget the level of connection I had originally wanted, at the core of my Essence, I had accepted the parameters here in this reality without even realising that I had done something profound to alter my own signal into a distortion

I was stunned to discover it, and the multitudes of layers beneath those looking at me, unexplored and undiscovered country that had been there all along, waiting for the revealing, the remembering

the multiverse is built on connection and interaction, interdependence, between all the elements of its Self-

and I for one love that about all this...

_________________
"For every lie I unlearn, I learn something new"- Ani DiFranco

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go. ~ TS Elliot