Purgatory Soul

I was reading a post on facebook about "Soul Age."
I feel like I'm both a baby and an old person...
So I'd label myself a Purgatory Soul...
One who is between an unborn baby and an old person who has just passed...
I am paradox in regards to my mind's operation...  Polar ends...

Kraken Tears

While in the depths
The ocean gets a little deeper
Every time I cry
No one notices

Krakenator...

(A response on facebook I felt like cutting and pasting in order to preserve.  I know I've discussed these ideas with a fellow kraken before)

Swim to the depths of the ocean floor, many leagues under the sea, where the kraken reside... And if we can't find what we're looking for, burrow deeper into the Earth's crust... with hopes of encountering the core... Find out what burns within... while having courage to get burned oneself... (While secretly hoping to find fellow kraken while down in the depths...)

Eras and Lessons

I wonder if each time period in history is actually supposed to be an opportunity for humans as a whole to learn some sort of lesson...  It seems like every time period has its own set of challenges, while maintaining common universal challenges that seem more timeless...  Some of the wisdom and teaching that applied many many years ago still holds true today...

Fuel

If one had the courage to give oneself fully to the fire, even if it meant getting burned, would that give more fuel to the fire?  And would the fire lend its strength to the individual as well?  By melding, would the fire and the individual become more than the sum of their parts?

Loco-Motion

As a locomotive, how fast can I go, before flying off the tracks?  How hot can I make the fires burn?  Will the internal pressure be too much?

Abandon

With reckless abandon, be willing to be abandoned...  Say the things that make others uncomfortable...  Say the things that make ourselves uncomfortable...  If it's for the benefit of the whole, then abandonment is worth it...  This discomfort, the stirring within is worth it...  Rage, rant, roar!!!

Thanks"giving"

*Sigh*  I question the tradition of Thanks"giving."  We call it giving, yet our food choices often show selfish taking...  The taking of lives many of us don't really need to take.  And the way we treat the lives of the animals taken is far from being giving.  If there's anything we're giving, it's suffering.  "Thanks for giving me a life of torture and suffering," the animals would echo sarcastically...

Are You Serious?

My current thinking is that I'd like to focus on being serious and calm, and without an attitude of punishment...  with a smidgeon of light-heartedness for balance...

Deep down my nature is to be quite serious...  So I can't forget that...  I can't deny that part of myself...

Realist?

I'm a realist when it comes to my inner world, trying to be as authentic as possible... But when it comes to the Outer World of reality, I find I'm in denial...

Alarm

So how does one become a gentle alarm clock?  To be like the warm golden sun of the morning...

The Blips on Our Consciences

So often I wonder what creates a shift in our consciences.  What makes behaving in one way okay, and behaving in another not okay?  Over time my own conscience shifted, creating the vegetarian behavior I now engage in today.

We hold our own lives so valuable and dear.  We grasp so tightly to hold on to and defend our own lives.  Yet when it comes to the lives of other beings, we so easily take their lives without even a passing thought towards the plight of those beings.  Not even a blip on the radar of our conscience to direct us in changing our course of behavior.

I really don't understand what created a shift in my own conscience.  And I don't understand why others do not feel what I feel.  Are our brains really all that different?

In my own circle, so often I feel alone in my thinking.  How come it seems like people don't care?

Seeker of Beauty

Part of me feels like this is when I'm at my best...  When I'm able to see the beauty that exists within all things...  When I can see the underlying stories...  When I can see struggle and triumph...  When I can see depth...  When I can see truth...  When I can see potential for flourishing...

At my best I continue to attempt to uncover what is beautiful...  When I stop applying this to most everything and everyone I encounter I believe my soul suffers...  Well, of course there's also beauty in suffering...

Reflective, pensive, penetrating, seeking...  And it has to be my own quest...

Reframing Foibles

Lately I've been battling with some of my foibles, or what I believe to be foibles.  I've been thinking about the purpose of having such foibles, or the benefits.

I used to be a far more disciplined person than I am now.  I used to have more fire to drive me through what I was trying to do.  Now I find it very difficult to maintain a healthy diet and exercise routine.  The only benefit I can see with being undisciplined is the ability to understand how difficult it is for people to create and sustain desired changes in their lives.  Often times impulse wins out.  I recall being so judgmental of impulsive people when I was in my undergraduate studies.  I viewed impulsive people, or people addicted to substances like smoking as weak.  Ironically, now I'm the person I viewed as weak.  I easily give into impulse, and the desire to relieve discomfort, or the desire for pleasure in the form of being lazy or eating that delicious but not nutritious dessert.

I have a feeling that person that I was still exists within me, and my judgment is being shifted onto myself.  In yin and yang-like fashion, I now know what it feels like to be on both sides.

Another so called foible is that I've become very prone to bouts of sadness.  So many things can easily made me sad.  Thinking too much about my life, or lack of life (mmm, self judgment), can cause me to spiral down easily.  Also thinking about people's treatment of other sentient beings can send me into sadness.  I know if I drown into too much sadness I can't think as well, and overall I can't function as well.  Though the right amount of sadness drives me into action, attempting to do my part in the world. So there is a benefit to sadness, so long as it's not overly indulged in, or it's not too deep it seems.  A deep knowing of emotions firsthand also lends to a deeper understanding of what it's like for others who also suffer.  A willing raw heart is an open heart that can offer understanding.  A willing raw heart is also a courageous heart, one willing to go through the storms.

So I guess overall, foibles can be viewed as tools of empathy, since all of us are all-too-human.  Though somehow we have to makes friends with our foibles without indulging in our foibles too much when possible.

Who Am I???

I often question who I am, trying to monitor patterns in behavior that exist within me.  I seem to go through different phases of being.  There exists this fun-loving, and somewhat creative person that gets excited when it comes to exploring ideas and novel things/patterns/connections.  Novelty is recharging. There also exists a person who is fearful, and can get stuck in routine and the familiar.  Though having a grandma who super emphasizes putting together time and routine, I'm reminded how much I don't like too much routine...  Just the right amount.  I feel a bit dead when I'm caught up in total routine.

Then there exists a person who is quite reflective when given enough time to think.  This person explores and feels the gamut of emotions, and what it's like being human.  There also exists a person who when too busy to think, becomes more or less an automaton.  In the automaton state I'm too busy to deeply feel my emotions, which in a way is nice.  I'm less prone to feeling really crappy states of emotion, but yet it's also a dead way of being for me.  It's not satisfying.  Sometimes I feel I'd rather be able to feel completely.  Though I know, so often I lack courage to constantly truly feel what's going on inside of me.  So I guess staying busy, especially physically is a good way to temper any flooded emotions.

There also exists this person, who for a good period of my early adult life, operates in an All-or-Nothing hardcore fashion.  I set my mind on something, and become passionately obsessed with living out whatever I'm trying to do.  It could involve playing tennis, it could involve adhering to a healthy vegetarian diet, it could involve a number of things to be obsessive about.  Though the hardcore person that I once was seems much more difficult to access now than before.

Currently I want to access the hardcore person within me, but without the hard edge that came with it.  I used to have a chip on my shoulder with something to prove to people in regards to the causes I firmly believe in.  I'm unsure if my ability to be hardcore has been tempered by my dislike of being edgy, or if it has something to do with being discouraged (becoming apathetic), or if it's a shift in my patterns of being internally, or if it's some combination of factors.

Where has the crazy hardcore person within gone?  All-or-Nothing is where I often lived, but now I'm caught in some type of purgatory.  Who am I supposed to become?  Someone who exists somewhere in between?  What's the most satisfying way of being for myself?  In the ebb and flow of patterns of behavior that reflect our personalities, I feel like I'm mourning something that may not exist within me anymore.  Are you still there?  Or are you latent, hibernating until the right moment comes along...

Who am I at this given moment?

"I don't work. I don't have a real job."

I've heard the terms "work" and "job" used both synonymously, as well as having slightly different meanings...

It's been a major source of shame for me in my adult life to "not be working," at least in the common way we tend to view what work is.  I stumbled across a shared comic strip reminding me that our true work is the effort put out by the soul...

So what if during this time of "non-work" I've actually been accumulating wealth, but of the spiritual variety by doing the work of the soul?  If I'm honest with myself, asking myself "What's worth it?", I will answer that the work of the soul is most worth it.  The stuff that fulfills us on a deeper level than merely existing, doing things that don't fill us up inside.  One can have all the material goods in the world, yet be very empty and broke on the inside.

There are some activities which make me no money, but I can't help but do those activities.  The currency I'm working with is inner-satisfaction.  My carrot-on-the-stick exists on the inside, a fact I must truly accept if I'm to be more fulfilled.

I may not be working doing a real job, but reflecting back, and looking at what I currently love to do, I in fact do work, but it's from a different place than mere survival.

Now I wonder if my inner shame makes sense.  To sell one's soul so one can answer the question of "What do you do?" without embarrassment, is it worth it?  Is it even worth being embarrassed about, not working in the normal sense of the word?

Lately my sense of Self-Worth has taken major hits.  I feel unattractive.  I feel like someone unworthy of companionship.  Yet I long to bond deeply with others, while at the same time keeping distance do to fears of rejection and fears of abandonment.  My fears fulfill the prophecy of feared separation.

Now I ponder, "What is the real meaning of work?"  And if I can't accept my current self for "What I do", when will I ever accept myself?  When will my aggression towards myself end?  When will I no longer be ashamed of myself?  And is the meaning of life really to merely survive like animals, where our only concerns are concerns of survival?  Sustenance in the form of food, shelter in the form of a roof over our heads, and sex which can lead to reproduction, in the guise of romance...  

So what's the real difference between surviving and thriving?  Is it the difference between work as we commonly know it versus doing Inner-work?

If only I could wake up and see the answers to my questions...  One day I wish to wake up with a good sense of Self-Worth...  To be relieved of guilt and shamed for not doing what's expected...  I'm hoping one day that day will come...  Until then I just have to keep swimming, trying to survive the ebb and flow of changing tides and currents and conditions.  There are too many times I think of jumping off of the roller coaster.  I pray for continued courage and strength...