flowers

nobody@vox.com(Michelle) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:38:16 -0700

No one has ever known me, I have never let anyone that close, and then I complain to myself about being misunderstood, i complain about people thinking they know me but not really knowing me, how could they? I have kept my Being, my Truth locked up so tightly, sealed away in the darkness, even from myself. And I have been so afraid of it that I locked it up in the dark and being afraid of it, afraid of the darkness too, I never went in to look at it. The mere thought of looking at it to see if it is still there, still like it was when I put it there however long ago that was....yeah whatever, look how much bullshit time I waste skirting around talking about what I am actually talking about by not directly talking about it.

I have never let anyone in. I derive great amusement by listening to other people talk like they understand me so well, like they feel like they've known me forever and they think they can read my mind or know what I am thinking. I nod my head and agree with them but secretly I am thinking...Idiot! Why don't they open their eyes and Look at me for once! LOL the joke is on me though. How could they if I am always wearing a mask, they have never seen me without my mask. No one has ever seen me naked. I could barely even stand the sight or thought of me naked until now. I have fought so vehemenently against appearing vulnerable, weak, fragile, soft. The joke is that I am all of those things and only those things, I am beautifully, wonderfully, perfectly vulnerable, weak, fragile, and soft. Flowers are vulnerable, weak, fragile, and soft, but the ego wants to be like a stone, permanent, unmovable, unchangeable, secure.

Look at us all running around trying to be special and different and extrordinary, standing out amongst the crowd. Even if we say thats not what we want, in some way or another, that is what we are alll trying to do. The funny thing about that is that we are all doing it, and the very idea that we are trying to be special, unique, immediatly means that we are not, because everyone else is also trying to be special and unique, which is not special or unique. Why dont we just be what we are. Accept and love ourselves as we are. We are already perfect. By not trying to be extrordinary, wouldnt that make us extrodinary? This is what our reasoning and intellect does. We reason that we must improve ourselves, fix ourselves, make ourselves better so that others will see that we are better, that we stand out and are unique....trying to be unique is not unique. Not trying to be unique is unique. LOL. Plus God made us anyway, so if we condemn ourselves and each other, we are by extention condeming our creator for not having made us to our expectations arent we? Or something.

But the real question is something must have caused me to hide, what was it? why am I so afraid of being vulnerable, appearing weak etc that I have to wear this mask. The mask reassures me that everything will be ok and that people will like me and I just have to keep pretending based on what society dictates is acceptable and desireable and I can get by without being hurt. I can not have to worry so much about being rejected because if people see my vulnerability, my weakness, my innocence, they might laugh at me, but only because they covered theirs up too and they are just as afraid. This develops in childhood I think, when we start out as flowers, but our parents and tv and society tell us it is better to be rocks because flowers are pathetic, they can be blown away with the wind or crushed so easily, it is better to be like a rock, better to be permanent and strong (except that is a bullshit lie, God created us like flowers, not lie rocks). So we start out as children (flowers) and we cover ourselve with more and more layers of bullshit (subpersonalities) so we can make it through life as comfortably and securly as possible. Except we end up like rocks. When we are born, we are soft and weak and innocent. When we die, we are hard and stiff like rocks. So that is a brilliant plan guys...lets run faster and faster away from life and towards death by making ourselves hard like rocks before we're even dead. We want to feel less and less because feeling hurts, but feeling is life. If you can't feel you can't love. Life is love. Death is a lie. (I like debating btw).

The other problem is the mask. Once we have this mask, we are constantly trying to make it better, more acceptable, and beating ourselves up because its not, and never will be what society tells us is "ideal." So we go on crying I don't make enough money, I dont have a nice enough car, I dont have a big enough house or enough influential friends, and we go on saying if only I had this or that...then I would be really happy. Except we arent. If only I had perkier boobs or a flatter tummy or less wrinkles...If only I had whiter/straighter teeth....if only I was skinnier or curvyer...if only I was more in shape...then I would be happy because people would accept me and like me more. And then we keep looking at these things we call flaws and then tell ourselves that we are fat or stupid or lazy and we should be doing this or that but we arent so its our own fault.

It makes so much more sense to just be who we are, to accept ourselves just the way we are. If we backtrack even just a little, we can see where we put more and more layers on to protect ourselves, and the big ones happen during childhood, those are the hardest, because what were you before you thought being human was an only? You cried whenever the fuck you felt like it, you didn't care if anyone told you not to cry, you felt like it so you did. No one has more authenticity than a child. None of us adults looks at the world with sheer wonder and amazement like children do. We are still children, children who picked up a lot of bullshit beliefes on the way to where we stand now, but we are still there. The wonder and amazement is still there. The authenticity of expression of our own Beings is still there, we just have to uncover it. Why don't we try to be who we are instead of trying to be like other people? God is never going to ask us why we were not somebody else.

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What is love?

nobody@vox.com(Michelle) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:09:59 -0700

"A certain ingenious mechanism is called a watch because we have all agreed to use this word to indicate that particular thing; but the word 'watch' is obviously not the mechanism itself. Similarly, there is a feeling or a state which we have all agreed to call love; but the word is not the actual feeling, is it? And the word 'love' means so many different things. At one time you use it to describe a sexual feeling, at another time you talk about divine or impersonal love, or you assert what love should or should not be, and so on." J Krishnamurti

So what is it then? Ever since I realized that all my previous "love" was pretty much my need for specialness, which is always conditional, I don't know anymore or I never knew rather. I know what its *not* and thats a good start i suppose. All this time I have been trying to fix it, to solidify and capture it, define it. But I keep getting eluded over and over. Duh! It is not the nature of love to be fixed. It is like the wind. You cannot caputure the wind because then it can no longer be called wind. But still its not like we talk about it, I wont even pretend to know how to talk about it or that I really know how to love at all because so far I have not been successful. All my previous definitions shattered. Part of me soooo badly wants to define it, to feel secure in it, and the other part just laughs at that idea. It only really ever makes sense in the white light. It seems to me, that love exists only right now and never in the past or in the future. That is curious because of course, fear only exists in the past or future and never right now, it is only memories, or projections of memories, neither of which exist. I want to know what it is, but the very idea of knowing what it is means that I don't. Maybe it is something you can never Know, because it is outside the realm of knowing, and it is something you can only be. It is a state of being. That is what I want to be then.

"We want to be sure of love, to peg it down, so that it won't elude us; we reach conclusions, make agreements about it; we call it by various names, with their special meanings; we talk about 'my love', just as we talk about 'my property,' 'my family,' 'my virtue,' and we hope to lock it safely away, so that we can turn to other things and make sure of them too; but somehow it's always slipping away when we least expect it....

Surely, to know love, truth, God, there must be no opinions, no beliefs, no speculations with regard to it. If you have an opinion about a fact, the opinion becomes important, not the fact. If you want to know the truth or the falseness of the fact, then you must not live in the word, in the intellect. You may have a lot of knowledge, information, about the fact, but the actual fact is entirely different. Put away the book, the description, the tradition, the authority, and take the journey of self-discovery. Love, and don't be caught in opinions and ideas about what love is or should be. When you love, everything will come right. Love has its own action. Love, and you will know the blessings of it. Keep away from the authority who tells you what love is and what it is not. No authority knows; and he who knows cannot tell. Love, and there is understanding." jk

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Inspiration

nobody@vox.com(Michelle) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 07:55:54 -0700

It is inspiration which unites all members
of the community of Hermeticists —without regard as to whether they are near
to one another or far apart, whether they know each other or not. or whether they
are living or deceased.
Inspiration, truth to tell, is what constitutes the Hermetic community. It is inspiration
which is the link between its members and within which all its members
meet one another. The community of inspitation — this is what in reality the community
of Hermeticists is.
It is inspiration in common which underlies the mental and symbolic language
common to Hermeticists—the language of analogy, the marriage of opposites,
synthesis, moral logic, the dimension of depth added to those of clarity and breadth
of knowledge, and above all the ardent belief that all is knowable and revealable,
that the mystery is infinite knowability and revealability.. .

"In the beginning was the Word" is the law not only of the world but also of
the realisation of inspiration in each individual biography. And the entire community
of Hermeticists lives under this law, under the law of inspiration.
Everyone lives under this law. The community of Hermeticists is distinguished
from the rest of mankind only in that it is borne —in an irresistible way—to be
conscious of it and to know what happens both to them and to the rest of humanity.
The lot of Hermeticists differs from that of every human being only in that
the former hunger and thirst for comprehensive knowledge of that which the latter
simply undergo. Their lot does not bring any privilege with it; on the contrary,
rather, it is an added duty with which Hermeticists are charged, notably
the inner duty to understand the totality of miracles and disasters which is life
and the world. This duty makes them appear presumptuous or childish in the
eyes of the world, but it is the arcanum of inspiration — the arcanum of the winged
entity pouring living water from one vase into another—which renders them such
as they are.

Another Gem from Meditations on the Tarot, from Temperance this time.

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Happy Birthday to me.

nobody@vox.com(Michelle) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:51:24 -0700

This is the first birthday of my working life that I have worked. I didn't have any particularly special things going on and since I took tuesday off, I figured I would not take another day of work off, gotta save up for august happenings anyhow. So aparantly someone at work found out it was my birthday, one of the supervisors decided it would be fun to follow me around for hours singing happy birthday, another one kept hugging me which was annoying, two guesses who that was. Anyhow, I left at 4 after accomplishing a decent amount of work while at the same time reading the temperance chapter from Meditations on the Tarot. Then I went home, hung out with Matt for a bit, and now I am vegetating. Tomorrow is the second sunday of the month, going to be interesting.

So yeah, 23 years and 9 months ago I made the *interesting* decision to incarnate again. It took me roughly 22 of those years to sort-of figure out why the fuck I thought that was a good idea considering all of the consequences of incarnation and all the awesomeness of noncarnation lol. Anyhow, the 22nd year of my life was the best year thus far. I learned things I never knew I could learn, from the persepective of a 22 year old human who remembers nothing before that other than there was a before that: I learned that I know nothing but that I am able to know everything. I learned basically what I am here to do and generally how I am going to live the rest of my life. I learned so many things about myself and about God that it brings tears to my eyes to think about.

I learned to be greatful. I am greatful to be alive and for the blessed opportunities I have been given. I am greatful for the wisdom and understanding that I have been granted through the grace of God alone. I am greatful for all the dificulties I have faced and will face, they elevate me to greater understanding. I am greatful for my teachers in this world and in the others. I am greatful for my brothers and sisters and my temple. I am greatful for my family and their difficulties with what I do, they are teaching me how to have compassion. I am greatful for my *other* parents, I can't even begin to express how greatful I am for your listening to me ramble on for hours on end about my self discovery, I learn so much by talking to you. I trust you above all others, I hope I am not too much of a drain, and I hope some day that I can help you as much you help me. I am greatful for my obstacles and opposition because they are teaching me persistence and determination. I am greatful for my demons and my enemies, for they are teaching me courage, strength, patience, and above all, Love.

"Teach me the value of self-sacrifice so that I shrink not in the hour of trial."

"Lead me unto immortality through sacrifice so that I may be found worthy to offer, one day, unto Thee, the water, the blood, and the tears for the remission of sins."

"The multitude is slowly moving in the right direction as led by the different churches, but there is an ever growing class that, so to speak, feels the wings of the soul body sprouting, people who feel an inner urge to take the kingdom of God by storm. Though unaware of any definite ideal, they sense a greater truth and more certain light than those which the Church radiates; they are tired of parables and long to learn the underlying facts at the very feet of Christ."

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Divine contemplation strikes again

nobody@vox.com(Michelle) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:17:05 -0700

The Tower

Tower

These are all ideas I am stealing, mostly word for word from Meditations on the Tarot, just so everyone knows, these are not my ideas...Im too lazy to put quotes around everything.

So some people think that if "there were no devil, no man would ever sin at all. We however, who look more carefully into the reason of things, do not think that this is so; especially when we consider the acts that arise clearly from the necessities of our body. Are we to suppose that the devil is the cause of our being hungry or thirsty?

-----

there is in man —notably in his soul, and not in his body—a seed of evil of his own, without which temptation coming from outside would not exert any action on him. Because temptation would be impotent if it did not find a terrain already prepared in the human soul.

-----

The unfortunate misunderstanding locating innate human evil in the body instead

of in the soul is due to a tendency towards a materialistic interpretation of

the Biblical story of paradise and the Fall. Indeed, if paradise is understood as

a place on the terrestrial or material plane, and if the Fall is similarly understood

as having taken place on this plane, innate human evil cannot be understood otherwise

than as biologically hereditary, i.e. that it is the flesh which bears it and

transmits the seed of evil from generation to generation. Then it is the flesh which

is the enemy of the soul and against which one has to struggle. Hence one "disciplines"

it by flagellation, one weakens it by depriving it of food and sleep, and

one scorns it and mistreats it in many ways —one is ashamed of one's body.

However, it is the body which, rightly, has more reason to be ashamed of the

soul inhabiting it, than the latter of the body. For the body is a miracle of wisdom,

harmony and stability, which does not merit scorn but rather the admiration of

the soul. For example, can the soul boast of moral principles as stable as the body's

skeleton? Is it as indefatigable and as faithful in its sentiments as, for example,

the heart, which beats day and night? Does it possess a wisdom comparable to

that of the body, which knows how to harmonise such opposing things as water

and fire, air and solid matter? Whilst the soul is torn by opposing desires and

feelings, this "contemptible" body knows how to unite opposing elements and

make them collaborate: the air that it breathes, the solid matter of food, the water

that it drinks, and the fire (warmth) that it produces unceasingly within it.

-----

Negative asceticism, directed against the body and not for celestial things, is

the practical consequence of the materialistic interpretation of paradise and the

Fall. However, the fact alone that a Cherubim "was placed at the east of the garden

of Eden, with a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the

tree of life" (Genesis iii, 24), suffices to drive away any shadow of a doubt: here

it is a matter of a plane higher than the terrestrial plane, and it was therefore souls

who committed the original sin —and the body had nothing to do with it.

The Fall occurred prior to the terrestrial life of mankind

-----

If then they ask us, this great diversity and these various and different conditions

of birth, in which certainly the power of free will has no place—for a man does not choose for himself either where or

in what nation or what state of life he shall be born,—if, they say, all this is not caused by a diversity in the natures of souls, that is, a soul with an evil nature is destined for an evil nation and a good one for a good nation, what alternative is there but to suppose that it is the result of accident or chance?

But since these rational creatures, as we have frequently shown and will yet show again in its proper place, were endowed with the power of free will, it was this freedom which induced each one by his own voluntary choice either to make progress through the imitation of God or to deteriorate through negligence. This, as we have said before, was the cause of the diversity among rational creatures, a cause that takes its origin not from the will or judgement of the Creator, but from the decision of the creature's own freedom. . .

-----

The doctrine that the pre-existent soul, in having sinned, took into itself the seed

of evil in the pre-terrestrial sphere, has as a practical consequence positive asceticism,

i.e. that of the soul's atonement and reunion with God.

Positive asceticism does not struggle against the body but rather against the

seed of evil in the soul, for the sake of its reunion with God. If, for example, the

only food that Teresa Neumann had for decades was the host from the Sacrament

of Holy Communion, this was not because she struggled against the body or

despised it but rather because she really lived from the Holy Sacrament without

prejudicing the health of the body. And if. for example, another passes the night

in prayer, without sleep, he does not do so in order to deprive the body of rest,

but rather in order to unite with God in prayer. St. Martin gave his coat to a poor

man not because he wanted to make his body suffer from the cold but rather

because he wanted to put an end to the suffering of his neighbour, whose body

was deprived of protection against the cold. St. Anthony went into the desert not

in order to make his body suffer but rather in order to be alone in the presence

of God. A monk renounces marriage not because he hates love, women and children but rather because he is fired by the love of God and there is no room

in him for another love.

Positive asceticism is universal. Everyone practises it. A scientist who shuts himself

in his room with a view to pursuing his studies does so because he is taken up

with the truth that he is seeking and not because he wants to deprive his body

of sun, fresh air and other benefits or pleasures of the world outside his room.

A ballerina fasts much so as to keep her body slender and supple. A doctor interrupts

his sleep during the night if he is called out to a sick person. A missionary

lives in a miserable hut in a village in Africa— as is his wish — not because he loves

misery but because he wants to share the lot of his brothers.

The principle of positive asceticism is found enunciated in the Gospel in a way

that could not be clearer:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which

a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells

all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven

is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one

pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought

it. (Matthew xiii, 44-46)

-----

The primordial and eternal mission

of mankind is thus to cultivate and maintain the "garden", i.e. the world in

a state of equilibrium and cooperation between Spirit and Nature!

-----

it is necessary to work, and to allow growth; to think, and to await the

growth and ripening of thought; and that it is necessary for the magical word to

be accompanied and followed by the magical silence. In a word, it is necessary

to cultivate and maintain'.

To cultivate and to maintain. . .culture and tradition. . .To will and to d a r e . . . to

know and to be silent.

Here is the essence of the mission of Hermeticism, which is the memory working

in the depths of our souls of the primordial and eternal mission of mankind:

that of cultivating and maintaining the unforgettable garden of the dawn of

mankind. There are "trees" to cultivate and maintain in this garden: the methods

or ways of uniting earth and heaven —the rainbow of peace between that which

is below and that which is above.

Such are the "trees" of the garden that we cultivate and maintain, i.e. the

mysteries of union —mystical, gnostic, magical and Hermetic —of that which is

below with that which is above. For mysticism, gnosis, magic and Hermetic science

are the four branches of the "river" which flows out of our garden of Eden "to

water"—the "river" which "divided and became four rivers"

-----

From the point of view of substance it was a multitude of souls

who caused and underwent the Fall; from the point of view of the act they were

only one, since their act was one —having been committed collectively —and it

was Adam-Eve who committed it.

-----

it is not a question

of the erroneous identification of the true Self (or "image of God") with the

"empirical self, but rather of the disfiguration of this latter. The identification

would be perfectly justifiable if the "empirical self" had remained in the "likeness

of God", i.e. if it had not been disfigured as a consequence of the Fall.

-----

he who builds a "tower" to replace revelation from heaven by what

he himself has fabricated, will be blasted by a thunderbolt, i.e. he will undergo

the humiliation of being reduced to his own subjectivity and to terrestrial reality.

a soul who enters into purgatory is plunged into the absolute

light of trans-subjective consciousness which, being so luminous, seems to

envelop and make the soul so concentrated as to become inaccessible to everyone.

-----

The purification portrayed

in these extracts amounts to a school of humility, and the divine light present

here, which puts the soul in darkness and bears down on it by making it experience

the weight of the inevitable necessity of the confrontation of human nature with

divine truth, can be summarised by the image of the tower blasted by a thunderbolt,

and the fall of its constructors, i.e. by the Card of the sixteenth Arcanum

of the Tarot. The thunderbolt which blasts is the divine light which dazzles and

bears down; the blasted tower is what the human powers of understanding, imagination

and will have erected, which find themselves confronted with divine

reality; the constructors who fall represent the "school of humility" for the human

powers of understanding, imagination and will. Purgatory, the way of purification

which precedes illumination and mystical union, the great historical events

which have had the effect that mankind had to begin again, lastly, the events in

the biographies of individuals where the latter were overwhelmed by a thunderboltblast

in order to rise again from it either illumined, like Saul of Tarsus, or alienated,

like Nietzsche —all these things which appear so different are only diverse manifestations

of the same law or arcanum: that of the tower blasted by a thunderbolt.

-----

To exalt oneself or to abase oneself, to specialise oneself in order to gain temporary

advantages or to be moved only by the hunger and thirst for truth, beauty

and goodness, to build a tower or to grow "sleeping and rising night and day. . .

without knowing how"—here is the choice that every human being, every community,

every tradition or spiritual school, must make.

Now, we occultists, magicians, esotericists and Hermeticists — all those who want

to "do" instead of merely waiting, who want "to take their evolution in their own

hands" and "to direct it towards an aim"—are confronted with this choice in a

much more dramatic way, I should say, than is so for people who are not concerned

with esotericism. Our principal danger (if not the only true danger) is that

of preferring the role of "builders of the tower of Babel" (no matter whether personally

or in a community) to watching over "as gardeners or vine-growers the

garden or the vine of the Lord". Truth to tell, the only truly morally founded reason

for keeping esotericism "esoteric", i.e. for not bringing it to the broad light of day

and popularising it, is the danger of the great misunderstanding of confusing the

tower with the tree, as a consequence of which "masons" will be recruited instead

of "gardeners".

-----

practical (i.e. lived) Hermeticism is neither occult science, nor magic, nor

gnosis, nor mysticism, but rather their synthesis. For it is a tree and not a tower.

And it is man himself, the whole man—who is at one and the same time philosopher

and magician, gnostic and mystic —who is this tree.

Is this therefore the Sephiroth Tree of the Cabbala? Maybe. Or the Tree of Consciousness

and Life in the middle of the garden of Eden? Yes. But above all I would

most love to see here the Tree of Death and Resurrection — the Cross from which

the Rose springs. This is the Cross that is mortifying and vivifying at the same

time — the Cross where the agony of Calvary and the glory of the Resurrection are

united. For the Cross is the law of growth: that of perpetual dying and becoming.

It is the way which does not lead to impasses of specialisation, but rather

to "throughways" of purification—which lead to illumination and end in union.

Practical Hermeticism is the mysticism, gnosis, magic and science of the Cross.

The object of its pursuit, its basic impulse and reason for existence is the great

work of growth— working through spiritual, psychic and corporeal transformation,

sublimation, ttansubstantiation and transmutation. Yes, alchemy, the alchemical

ptinciple. is the soul of Hermeticism. One finds this principle expressed

in the Gospel: "nothing should be l o s t . . . all should have eternal life" (John vi,

39-40).

-----

Adepts of the "great work", however, confess

to "the folly of the Cross" (I Corinthians i, 18), i.e. they believe, hope and

desire that "nothing should be l o s t . . . all should have eternal life".

-----

Liberation through spiritual surgery, power

owing to the construction of mental or other mechanisms, or resurrection thanks

to the Cross, to the law of spiritual growth — here is the choice of ideal that every

human soul must make.

Now, Hermeticism has made the choice. It has embraced for ever the law of

"living life"—the Cross —as its way and resurrection as its ideal. For this reason

there is nothing mechanical about it, nor is there anything surgical about it. In

Hermeticism one does not build any kind of tower and one does not seek to accomplish

any divorce. It is a matter solely of the transmutation of the forces and

faculties of human nature, i.e. the great work of human evolution, avoiding the

impasses of specialisation.

Hermeticism does not want to use any instrument that the abovementioned

excellent intellectual instruments were rejected by it. For Hermeticism

has nothing to do with the desire to have "ready made answers" to all questions,

obtained with minimum effort and maximum result. Its "questions" are crises

and the "answers" that it seeks are states of consciousness resulting from these

crises. This is why Hermeticism — being the art of becoming, the art of transformation,

transubstantiation and transmutation of human consciousness —cannot

make use of any intellectual instrument. The symbols which it uses —or rather

that Hermeticists let themselves make use of—are not intellectual instruments.

There is nothing mechanical about them. Quite on the contrary, the symbols are

mystical-gnostic-magical "ferments" or "enzymes" of thought, whose troubling

presence disquiets thinking, stimulates it, and calls it to immerse itself to ever

new depths.

One must not build; it is a matter of growth — this is its essential teaching. Fot all the towers
that are built will sooner or later be struck down by a thunderbolt —and let us add here that all freeing that owes its achievement to surgical operations entails the necessity of beginning again.

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Masks We Wear

nobody@vox.com(Michelle) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:27:09 -0700

What is the point of getting angry, but hiding it and pretending to smile instead? Its only a mask you put on to hide the truth, to hide yourself because you believe that anger is wrong. I realized have jaw problems because I have anger but I supress it without ever letting it surface, so the energy stops at my jaw. I have teeth marks all along the inside of my cheeks, have for a long time. They have gotten somewhat better over the last year or so but still....there is no other reason why I would be doing that other than repressed anger mainfesting itself through my teeth. Gum is anger represser, smoking, chewing tobacco, eating excessivly, all the same thing. The hands too, when animals are scared or threatened, which is really all anger is, they bite or scratch, teeth or hands is where our anger goes. It can get trapped there if we keep putting on these fake smiling masks and refuse to deal with the truth of our natures. I am one of the calmest people ever because I am very good at mask wearing, but that also means I am very bad at authentic emotions because I don't really remember how they work anymore. I might feel extreme happiness and joy but you'd never know, I might look mildly happy. I might be ready to punch you in the face for annoying the shit out of me and I look calm as a lily. I need to stop wearing masks, I bottle and supress emotions, there is nothing wrong with them, they become wrong when we make them wrong and start supressing them.

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Yay

nobody@vox.com(Michelle) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:22:00 -0700

Today is a very happy day. I have made measurable progress in those things I am working at. Seeing that makes me motivated to do more. Don't think about it, just do it. I, believe it or not, am pretty shy, which I like to call not liking to speak when it is not necessary, but then I am pretty sure I talk the ears off of some people. Still I am very reserved about many subjects that make me uncomfortable, so now starts battling the uncomfortable and improving my communication skills, which will be essential to my future. This started I think because my family generally completely avoids any uncomfortable or taboo topic of conversation, so I never really had much practice putting myself out there. I have this thing where if I say something I think might make that person uncomfortable then they might get upset and I would feel rejected or something so I don't say it out of protection of my own ego. I have gotten much better at this over the past few years, I still have a ways to go, however there was one situation a while back where my shyness came to rear its ugly head and I realized how selfish it makes me because I become so concerned with how *I* feel and completely forget to think about the other person or rather are afraid to move the topic of thoughts from me me me me me. I start projecting aka thinking about it, and that is what does me in every time. Ultimatly it doesnt matter, I am not responsible for their reaction, but at the same time, I can't go telling people things they aren't ready to hear because that does them more harm than good, must find a happy medium. So my policiy has been not to lie about a problem, but to cast as much light on it as possible so the person is less likely to wallow. So far it has been working, and it works great with people I don't have a close rapport with. I think it is because I am always afraid of pegging someone wrong, and it is easy to see the people that are farther away from me objectively, and very hard to see through myself to people I am close to. And no, I don't go around pegging people uninvited, dont have that much time thanks, but I sometimes think I have a sign on my head that says "tell me your problems." Which is fine, I have learned much about myself in the process of other people spilling their guts to me and have come up with some good advice that even I started following afterwards.

Everything-Will-Be-OK-Unknown-Posters

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rut.

nobody@vox.com(Michelle) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 22:59:04 -0700

I am calling this week my "only being in an abyss of darkness" week. Thank God for my teachers, they have shown me so much this week that I ignore. I have seen more of myself than ever. I am so lonely with no desire for companionship (lie), I want to go live in a hole. I have never had such overwhelming forward progress. but I love it. every second of it. I am loved. I am loved no matter what I do, we all are. But we have this ego cocoon obsession with being guilty, and beating ourselves up about it. We are the fucking oroborus, eating our own tails. Look what we have set up for ourselves: to lose is to lose and to win is to lose. My ego is sooooooo fucking smart. It says it wants you to be free of guilt so that you win, except it has a hidden agenda. It does not tell you that it is going to make you feel guilty about not feeling guilty if you ever get that far. It's just like the Truman Show. How to climb over this? Look what I have projected on myself, and I have projected onto everyone else just as much. It is going to be so hard, pride swallowing. But I am going to do it.

We all express our fake made up illusion of sin in different ways. Some people express theirs in drinking, some in gambling, some in smoking, some in cheating, some in eating, some in any variety of ways. We all like to think that we are the only ones with the problem. EVERYONE has it, everyone does SOMETHING. And we all have the seeds of every single one of those things because we are all the same. We are like bubbles. But anyway, yes, when I say I hate that person for being a murderer, it is because I am make-wronging them. I am saying to God that Look, I am not like that, SEEEEE, I am better, so punish that person and not me. But I am only trying to hide that I have the same sin in me, only I choose a different expression, and I like to point out what everyone else is doing wrong so I can pretend like I am not, like I am better, am not guilty, even though I am the guiltiest of all, or so says my ego.

We are all drug addic alcoholic violent child abusing lying murdering hipocritical gluttonous cheating bastards, we just express it in different ways, some express theres farther to one end of the spectrum than others, but it is in all of us, and by looking down on them, saying they are bad, we are only trying to hide from ourselves and from God that we are just like them. Do any of us really know one another? We all have things from our past we don't share, we all have things we are ashamed of. We all have things about ourselves that we hate, that we wish were different but for whatever reason we think we cannot change it because we do not change it. We have guilt. That is it. only two things exist in the entire universe. Love and The call for love. Guilt and Fear are synonomous with the call for love. God and Love are synonomous. Love is NOT an emotion. It permeates all things, like the air. We are part of it, we are made of it, it is all we have, we can't be anything or have anything, or know anything other than Love, because Love is Truth is Reality is Everything is God is Us. It is impossible to escape, but we think we have.

One of the most vivid dreams I ever had, was years ago, after some *amazing* sex (It makes me laugh to think that not a single person in my current life has really any idea about what I used to be like), I passed out cold for I have no idea how long. And then I had this dream, it was about bubbles. Just bubbles. I was making them and they filled up the entire world. Seriously. It was the most profound thing I didn't understand until today. I was making bubbles, infinite amounts of them, millions of them, and I was the only one. And then I woke up laughing hysterically and continued laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face and I couldnt talk or breathe hardly for about 10 minutes with many outbursts afterwards. God knows what my boyfriend at the time was thinking. I just remember waking up in his bed at his parents house laughing hysterically about bubbles with no idea what was so funny.

WE ARE BUBBLES. The air inside the bubble is seperated from the rest of the air because it is trapped inside this film of a bubble. When the bubble pops, the air becomes part of the rest of the air like it was never seperated from it, because of course it wasnt. It was still part of the air, the air was around it and in it, it just thought it was seperate because it had a little bubble body. Bubbles are very beautiful, they are round and bouncy and innocent, swirling with rainbow colors. This beautiful swirly film that I could get lost in and stare at it and wish it lasted forever but eventually it has to pop......this is our body. Our body is our guilt, it is our fear, it is the son of a bitch that makes me play this stupid fucking game of I am not Love and I am separate from Love and I am seperate from all the other little bubbles. But I love my swirly pretty skin, I spend hours gazing at it, critiqueing it, complaining about it, crying about it, wishing it was like the skin of that other bubble across the street.

When did we start playing this rediculous game? Maybe its like when I was a kid, and my friends and I would get lost in our imaginary barbie world of weddings and tea parties, only we forgot to stop playing so long that we forgot we were playing at all and just kept on going, and then among all kinds of other shit we created this story of this guy called Jesus, who was our savior, our God or the son of God, but some *other* people killed him, and they should be held accountable, but not us, we didn't do anything wrong. In fact, we accept Jesus as our saviour, and because we believe in him means that we can do whatever the fuck we want now and pretend that we dont have to be accountable. But those other people...its THEY'RE fault, punish them, not us. We are the ones that killed him though, we thought up the idea to kill him, and we thought up some other people to have done it so that we can tell God that's it wasn't our fault, because actually we think we "killed" God and replaced him (covered him up by putting paper bags over our heads) with one that we made by drawing him how we want with giant crayons on the insides of our paper bags. And our guilt just manifested this dream of Jesus, who came to earth to "save" us, but we killed him and he loves us anyway. Hmm, like we fell asleep and are manifesting out self imposed guilt in our dream that we think is this reality.

And then back in real life, where we actually are though our minds are stuck in this pathetic game, our loving parents are watching us curiously. They love us and we never got seperated from them at all, they are still watching us and loving us, and will continue to for as long as we keep on playing, but eventually we will come out of it. Our bubbles will pop, and we will see that God has always been there and always loved us, even as he watched us make up this rediculous play story of killing him and stealing his power, and then feeling guilty about it, and hiding our guilt in this material world we think we live in.... God is the air around the bubbles and inside the bubbles. The air is the air, it does not become something else when it gets closed up in a bubble.

So in this imaginary world where we have trapped ourselves, we are really just looking at the inside of our bubble, and reflecting all kinds of things off the projector screen that is swirling right before our eyes, and we forgot that there is something on the other side of the screen, the entire world is there, but we want to believe that the end of the bubble is the end of the universe. We are stupid, you see, because its like being in a movie theater, and watching the screen, and we see all this stuff we like, and stuff we hate, and have all kinds of emotions about it, but the funny part is that it is impossible for anything to get projected onto the screen other than what the projecter is projecting!!!!!!

Everything that is here...I created it. Everything that happens to me...I created it. I revel in the guilt, in the self hatred, in the denial of god, in the denial of myself. If I am not successful, its because I set myself up for failure. Its because I created this hole when I put the paper bag over my head so that I could pretend that I hurt God and stole his power and that I am seperate from him and that I have to hide because when he find's out, he's gonna punish me. But I secretly think I deserve to be punished, even though I never hurt God and never stole from him and he is not going to punish me, he Loves me no matter what...but I like to punish myself, and I like to keep failing, because that reinforces that I am worthless and weak and undeserving of love. So I have this hole where God used to be, but I ripped him out, hence the hole, and so I keep throwing stuff in the hole trying to fill it. I throw food in the hole mostly, always have. Some people throw alchohol, some drugs, some nicotene, some throw shopping in there, or lots of pairs of shoes, or sex, or television, or video games, some throw battered women or murdered people in there, but we all throw something in there, and its all the same. WE ARE TRYING TO FILL A HOLE THAT ISN'T EVEN THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Which is why it never gets filled. Never. The hole is where God is, and God is still there because God permeatues us, we could rip ourselves apart to specs, and God still permeatues every particle of our consciousness, of our being, but we covered him up and pretend that he isnt there and pretend that we have this hole and that we are lacking and that we must throw all of these things in there to try and fill it, which makes us feel better for about two seconds, and then its empty again, so we find some more or something else to throw in there......and then we feel guilty that we did that so we have to cover up the guilt that we put in the hole by putting more useless junk in the hole, and then we feel guilty about that so we put more in.......And then if we ever realize what we are doing, we start feeling guilty that we started playing the game in the first place and that we covered up God...so now we are ostriches with our heads in the sand, and we know that God is ALL around us, but we like to keep up the illusion that if we pretend that we can't see him, then he can't see us, and then we can go on feeling more and more guilty in this endless pattern of shenanigans.

There is no such thing is fear. We made it up, and we sustain the illusion that it's there.

I want to wake up now. I am tired of this game. Can we change the tape now?

Maybe someday I will find someone else that is ready to stop playing, and then maybe we can help keep one another from sticking our heads back in the sand by making it our soul purpose in life to keep the other person awake....what do you think would be the outcome of that?

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Guilt. That is all I have. That is what we all have. Fucking sucks.

nobody@vox.com(Michelle) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 09:25:18 -0700

Cic1py

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Self-Discipline

nobody@vox.com(Michelle) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:01:19 -0700

When people complain or are dissatisfied with their lives, they often blame others for their unhappy state of affairs. If it isn’t the fault of others, then they claim it is due to ‘bad luck’ or how ‘unfair’ the world is. They seem to blame everything except themselves. Such an attitude is self-defeating, for complaints are wasted effort and divert attention from possible solutions. They don’t yet understand that life doesn’t happen TO us. It happens BECAUSE of us. They haven’t awakened to the fact that destiny or fate is not arbitrary and predetermined. Rather, we create our own destiny. After all, our present conditions were brought about by our past actions, and our present actions will create our future circumstances.

Why do people blame everything but themselves for their unhappiness? Because it is painful to admit that our lack of success is not due to any quirk of fate, but to our own lack of responsiveness to the opportunities that were presented to us. But once we admit the truth, great power is unleashed. For then we will realize that our lives are not controlled by the whims of fate, but by ourselves, by our own actions, and by our own willpower. It is exciting to realize that we can do anything we set our mind to. Yet, after coming close to reaching this point, some then cop out by claiming they don’ t have any willpower, as if there was a willpower gene that somehow they are lacking.

http://www.personal-development.com/chuck/selfdiscipline.htm

That is Sooooooo me. Well kind of. I don't really complain about it so much anymore, I am pretty honest with myself, and I know why I don't do the things I should do. Often though, in the moment of these things, I am unconscious, and then just after starting or half way through or afterwards, I wake up to the fact that I said I was not going to do this or that anymore, but since I just started or are already in the process or already did the undesired though or speech or action, I'll reason that I'll let it slide this time .....slippery slope. Though I am learning to have compassion about it and not beat myself up about it as much which is helping me to remain conscious of what I am doing most of the time. I am putting this at the top of my priority list. I have tried this so many times before but started out with secretly no intention of following through it, unconsciously of course. So this morning I got up and went for a walk at 6am. It was nice. I think i must have prayed the whole time, I only walked for a half hour though, which is better than nothing. I realized I could pray the rosary every morning while doing that, that would be smart, two birds with one stone, well technically 3 because that would be helping my self discipline. One of my clients said the most genious thing to me the other day and I am sure she had no idea how much of an impact she had on me...she said "Don't think, just do it." OMFG that is brilliant, duh. Every time I sit around and contemplate doing or not doing something, I am bringing the past or future into it and projecting discomfort of the past into the future which does not even exist. If I don't think, I am right here, and the Present is the answer to everything. Fear does not exist here. It can't exist here. Right now I am free.

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