What are We Actually Rejecting?

It is my belief, that sometimes when we reject an aspect of another person, we're actually rejecting a part of ourselves.  We are all human, and we share the same emotional makeup.  Some of us are better at hiding certain parts of ourselves than others.  I think my anger is deeply hidden, but I allow myself to see sadness.

For myself, I believe that if I can allow myself to feel my anger more fully, then I can allow the same for others as well.  In a sense I can truly be more accepting and loving of both self and others.  How to reach such levels of self-acceptance?  LOL.  I'm unsure at the moment...

Inner Control Freak

Sometimes I wish I had an On and Off switch that exists inside of me...  I'm so ambivalent about feelings of physical or romantic attraction...  At times it feels wonderful and exciting that I can actually feel something for someone...   At other times I wish I could turn it off...  If only I had some type of modulating dimmer switch of some sort...  I'd be able to adjust what I feel to just the right intensity...

Shadow and Hurt

I think I just realized something...  I think my anger is buried so deep I can't really feel it unless I'm really triggered.  When I get hurt I feel mostly sadness, but I act out in a passive-aggressive manner.  There must be deeper anger that I'm not allowing myself to feel.

Perhaps the times I feel hurt and sad, I should seek out the anger that's probably buried deep within so I can snap out of my state sooner.

Inner World versus Outer World

I constantly monitor my Inner World, but at a price...
I lose track of my Outer World...
It's quite lovely...

Inner Journey

I find myself consistently trying to discern what matters, and what doesn't matter...  Some parts fall away...  Some parts grow...  The ship runs afoul, and there's a need for change...  Or I'll see something I wasn't aware of before, something that needed to be addressed...  I die, and I'm reborn in a cyclical manner...

Taking Offense

Any time I take offense to some action or deed, I must remember that I'm fully capable of such action.  It's a part of me I haven't made friends with yet...  An area that must be addressed.  Strong reactions often show us something about ourselves that we don't like.  A strong reaction is a mirror for self-understanding.

Learning, Growth, and Punishment

When a baby learns to crawl, to walk, to talk...
Did the baby ever need Punishment in order to learn these things?
Is there way to learn to trust in the inner spirit to guide us towards Growth?

Blame and Gentleness

The more we Blame, whether towards ourselves, or towards others...
The more we lose our Gentleness...
A pointed finger is like a laser beam, with the ability to sear...

A Way to Hurt Me Deeply...

Accuse me of totally not caring and totally not understanding, when the complete opposite is true.  I don't know why it hurts so bad to be accused of not caring when I actually care very very deeply...

Influence

My dirty little secret...  It's my dream to have more power to influence others, hopefully for the better.  I often contemplate how people influence others...  Supposedly the deepest forms of influence occur when we allow ourselves to be influenced by others...  I guess without a bond, it's difficult to influence on a deep level.  And influence by brute force often drives people away, instead of bringing them closer...

Can the idealist in me ever be quelled?

L's

Loneliness, Longing, Loss, Love, Laughter, Light...

Relaxed Practice & No Big Deal

I know there exists a state that allows us to flow joyfully when engaging in an activity...  It's a kind of relaxed, yet focused state free of self-punishment...  The only correction is to keep concentrating on the task itself, and to have faith that the efforts put in will get us to where we want to go...  If we go off course, it's No Big Deal...  We gently come back to the path we were on...

On rare occasion I've felt this state while playing tennis...  By not being so serious and self-punishing, energy is freed up to concentrate on the task at hand...  There's a joyful flow to the process...

I'm wondering how on earth I can apply such ways of being, to more areas of my life...  Punishment, while it seems fruitful at first, with a nice kick in the ass... it removes the potential joy that can be had, and in the long run punishment can be quite paralyzing, creating the exact opposite of what was originally desired...

How can I let go of my punishing ways?  How can I lighten up and laugh at the absurdity of it all?  There is joy in the process...  How do I get there more often?

What Photography Teaches...

I'm sure I've written about his before...  But what I like about photography is seeking beauty that exists, but is not readily apparent all of the time...  There's a constant exploration involved.

It seems when I truly keep my eyes open, I can find something in the outer world.  What's kind of sad though, I have difficulty applying such open eyes towards myself.  So often I'm overwhelmed with feelings of self-loathing.  I become blind to the good qualities that exist in myself.  I'm unable to see beauty within.

When I go through dark phases, I'm not really sure what the answer is regarding how to escape.  It seems like seeking itself is the answer, along with lots of patience.  Lately I'm stuck in a dark phase, and I can't seem to get out.  Part of me feels like I almost don't want to get out, which is quite confusing.

I don't think I'll figure out any answers any time soon.  I guess I'll try to keep the lesson of photography in mind.  Within darkness make an effort to find beauty...  Within what we may view as ugly, keep making an effort...  *Sigh*  And maybe one day I'll be able to see myself through different eyes...  Though strangely I'm almost scared to be able to see in that way...  And I have no idea why...

How To Kill Empathy?

Fear...
Ignorance...

Fear of truly feeling pain...
Whether one's own pain...
Or the pain of another...

Ignorance towards the inner life of another...
An ignorance that creates something that resembles indifference...
Our blindness sometimes unwittingly creates suffering both to ourselves and others...
We lose our sense of connection to our inner selves, and the inner selves of others...

I Want to Be Okay with NOT Being Happy

If I don't feel happy, then it's fine...
If I feel happy at the moment, then it's fine too...

I want the freedom to be as I am in any given moment.

Strangely, allowing myself to feel my unhappiness...  I start to feel lighter...  I start to feel better...

Letting Myself Feel without Shame

Deep down inside I think I feel shame...  Shame that my heart is so slow to change...  Shame that time doesn't heal as quickly as they say times is supposed to...  There exists both rawness and tenderness I'm ashamed of...  According to some made up rules in my mind, I'm no longer supposed to love...  I'm no longer supposed to hurt...  I betray my own feelings of betrayal...  I try to ignore what I feel to be true inside of me...

Lately I'm overwhelmed...  I miss the bliss I once had in my life, however fleeting that bliss was...  I miss the drug, the feeling of melting with another...  I feel trapped in my self-created dungeon...  I don't know where these feelings are coming from.  I thought I had already dealt with what exists in me...

My body won't let me lie.  I keep trying to run but to no avail...  I have trouble accepting this reality...  To taste sweetness, then to have it taken away...  What lessons am I supposed to learn?  I feel so weak and helpless right now, the way I felt when wounds were fresh.

I feel hurt that's been buried inside...  I also feel ripe, wishing for a way to cover up the hurt.  I can't lie to myself...  I miss the sweetness...

So how do I give myself the freedom to feel what's inside without feeling shame?  How do I become more free with my emotions overall so that feelings don't continue to get buried or bottled up inside?  So often I'm embarrassed by the feelings I feel...  How can I find "okay-ness"?

Who Do We Love?

In an ideal world, I would learn to love those who are often deemed unlovable...  I believe this is related to the idea that deep down inside I often feel unlovable...  What I wish I could give to myself, or feel from others, I hope I can give to others.

For some reason I find it easier to love others more than myself...  Perhaps that's what it's like being a big-time self-judger...

Soul Blindness

When do eyes become blind?
When do we stop seeing the souls of others?

I Both Love Myself and Hate Myself...

There's this mixed duality that exists within me...  The parts I love about myself relate to my idealism and my values...  Yet there's another part of myself that experiences self-loathing, self-hate...

I'm unaware when these dualities came into existence.  When did I start loving myself?  When did I start hating myself?  Did this existence happen due to the conditions I've created?  Do I only love myself because of certain things I do?  And by not doing other things, I come to hate myself?

How do I reach a point of loving "Just Because," loving without condition?  Sometimes I feel I am there...  Other times, not so much...  Conditions seem to create some strange duality.  "This is good."  "This is bad."  Is there a way to see from a more detached point of view? Every state of being is like potential energy, able to drive us towards a certain way of being.

I know suffering can be a source of growth.  Suffering can be transmuted into something beautiful in the form of deep empathy and compassion.  Being so in touch with our own suffering, we can connect to others who also suffer.

Is there a way to transform and transmute my Hate Towards Myself into something helpful for growth? Hate Towards Myself creates self-inflicted suffering.  How can I connect with this in a beneficial way?

Sometimes I feel like I hate my own existence, that I somehow shouldn't be here.  Part of me feels like this is due to childhood experience...  I don't like blaming others... But in this case I do want to shift blame.  Why is that?  I want to blame others for not allowing me to be who I am in a given moment...  For not allowing me to feel what I need to feel emotionally...  And at the same time I want to blame myself for not being courageous enough to feel fully in my present state.

This Duality within me, I don't know how to resolve...

My Longest Lasting Positive Habits

I just realized my longest lasting habits tend to involve some sort of continuous exploration.  I mean, I've always known I love to explore, and it keeps me doing something over and over again...  But for some reason I've never thought of it as a tool for creating some semblance of consistency in my life...  The process of going deeper and deeper...  The constant discovery...  The paradox of repeat in order to find something new and fresh...

Now if only I can learn to apply this. lol.

Letting the Heart Melt...

Why do I find it so scary to allow my heart to melt?  Sometimes I'll see something that moves me... Perhaps a photo of someone who I can tell is suffering, or will suffer...  I feel warmth inside, as if I want to reach out...  Yet I'm afraid...

Meaninglessness...

Every now and then I find myself asking, "What's the point?"  I struggle to find the right answers.  I get stuck, and fires that were once ablaze go dim, turning into feelings of dark heaviness, like a fog stifling my being.  The energy that can sometimes exist in me gone like a faint memory.  All that's left is the smoke after the embers.  A smoke that's suffocating, clouding my vision.

The only answer I can come up with is to create some semblance of meaning.  This usually entails delving deeper into some of my idealism, or delving deeper into some of my passions.  To get the smoke to clear, it's like I need a very hot and clean burning flame.  It's a flame that burns me, causing me discomfort at times, but it seems a bit better than the alternative of suffocating.

The real world still looms, and I still find much of life quite meaningless.  "Have beautiful hair and you'll be happy!"  "Have six pack abs and you'll feel sexy and happy."  "Win a million dollars in the sweepstakes and you'll be happy!"  It's clear we all want to be happy, that's all I know.  And some say happiness is the meaning of life.  So perhaps I just haven't found the keys for happiness for me.  Perhaps in finding that happiness I'll find the meaning I seek.