Sending hugs to you @Faith-and-Hope... thank you for being you. I appreciate the gift of your presence here in this wonderful community. Your warmth and wisdom and creativity really make me feel good, and it helps so many others too...
Sending hugs to you @BlueBay... we all learn together, as we strive to use writing as a form of therapy. It's best as a multi-pronged approach, I reckon. Talk therapy with a therapist or counsellor or psych, talk therapy with family and friends, talk therapy with co-workers, talk therapy with partners, all of this helps...
Communication. It is the only way that we have to be able to connect with others...
We communicate in multiple ways - through touch; through our stance, our body language; through our facial expressions, our smiles, and the infinite detail that lies in and around the eyes... eyes... the mirrors to our souls... the wellsprings of tears...
Our words matter. Our emotions matter. Our opinions matter. We matter...
We matter, because we are able to get beyond the belief that we don't matter, and that's a tough journey of self to go through... many fall by the side...
We are survivors. That is what we are...
We push on, and try to work out how to get better or get better at it...
Sometimes we find some wonderful communities... online, or in the Really Real...
Funny how "communities" and "communication" are so similar... hahaha... to me, they sound the same...
It all comes back to words, trying to capture things that can't always be captured.
I am a writer, pure and simple. Words are more important to me than oxygen. Without oxygen, soon I would die, but still, for a brief time, I would have my words...
^ That...
Word!
I am a writer, pure and simple. Words are more important to me than oxygen. Without oxygen, soon I would die, but still, for a brief time, I would have my words...
I thought I should repeat it, you know, just for dramatic effect... giggle...
I'm proud of writing that particular jumble of words. It captures a defining part of how I see myself...
I like to observe how I see myself. It is an interesting recursive form of observation... the watcher watching the watcher, whilst himself being watched by yet other watchers...
Who guards the guards, I wonder...
I have turned myself into something that I was not, just 5 years ago...
I have been on a journey of quiet observation, calm contemplation, furious inner wars, terrible inner Spanish Inquisitions, doubt-fear-hate-anger-rage yucky stuff, applied to self, in order to understand its nature better...
Observing, just simply watching the various fragments of my particular conception of "Self", seeing what they do and how they respond instinctively to life situations (the Really Real)...
Observing, seeing that it is possible to learn how to change the instinctive responses of my various parts ot Self, altering their responses to life situations in the Really Real... from harmful to helpful... sort of CBT kind of stuff...
Observing, seeing that it is possible to move beyond being the Changer, who strives to make themselves better, always improving, always the perfectionist, to a place where you Accept what is, without always trying to improve it or change it...
Just observing...
Quiet observation, calm contemplation...
A breathtaking world of inner peace opened up to me...
We are all incredibly complicated and wonderful human beings, each with the capacity to do so very many truly outstanding things with the time allotted to us in life...
So much we can achieve. So much we have to overcome. The obstacles, the fear-doubt-anger thing...
And still we are able to form communities, to communicate, to share and care...
This unity of disparate parts, working kinda-sorta together... that's what a community is...
On a more fundamental scale, that's what a single human being is... a unity of disparate parts, working kinda-sorta together...
I believe a thing. My man Jiddu Krishnamurti taught me that through his words...
I believe that all knowledge, all wisdom, can be found within our selves. By gaining insights into our selves, we gain insights into our larger social structures such as groups, mobs, associations, sporting clubs, tribes, communities, societies, states, countries, religions...
For all of these things are a gathering together of a whole bunch of selves, moving around in this world.
By understanding self, we understand, as if by gestalt, other self, for most, if not all, human experiences are universal in Nature...
Social constructions and communities (even communities such as this wonderful Sane forum) are an extension of our projection of self, interacting with other people's extensions of their projections of self...
There is much beneath the surface, much to explore, much complexity, much that is hidden from casual observation...
Life is a beautifully rich and wonderful thing. Even when we suffer, there is a grandness and a greatness that can be gained from it... growing in Love and Compassion...
Real-world example time, my lovelies... hahaha...
The toughest bullies at school all used to hang around the basketball courts. Slightly further up the gentle hill, there were further bullies in and around the dunnies and the canteen. Around the corner were more bullies at the Industrial Arts complex end. Oh, and then there were the tennis-playing bullies at the tennis courts. Then there was the anxiety-ladened crowded and noisy and chaotic quadrangle... gaaah... too much for me... too much going on...
I liked it up by the library... the quiet end of town...
Myself and 2 or 3 other like-minded peeps, hiding out from all the rest of the student population. Loners. On the outside...
Forming a community of sorts...
I used to run away to the safety of the library a lot...
You could talk to the lovely library ladies who were so sweet and had such nice laughter, and who knew a lot about a lot of different things...
Safe from the bullies...
And you could spend the hours, exploring the book aisles, enjoying that "smell" of books old and new...
Fingers idly travelling along, tracing along interesting spines, feeling the rough old hardcovers with their dull brown hard-wearing roughness, sliding along the plastic-covered smoothness of other hardcovers, exploring the paperbacks of every size and shape...
Genres, genres everywhere, and lots of drops to drink... books... everywhere...
No wonder I became a writer...
My safest place to be at the most vulnerable part of my life, was in a library, surrounded by books...
The English language, not my mother tongue, but a tongue I truly love with all of my heart...
The nuances of control, the depth and breadth of emotion... words... always back to words... at least, for this wordsmith...
And the formless, wordless stuff... that's there too. Those are the deep waters from which are drawn things such as Creativity, Love and Compassion...
Wellsprings and water, and tears that were cried are renewed and renewing...
We develop insights into the infinite complexity and subtlety of our selves by observation. It teaches us much about the universal nature of all things...
I learn so much watching ants scurrying about. I use it as a Mindfulness Meditation, but it is so much more. The ants are teaching me more about myself, because I see the similarity of the behaviours, even if I am just anthropomorphising human traits onto other species... hahaha...
Some of the very best lessons of kindness and unconditional love have been taught to me, not by Gandhi or Buddha or even Krishnamurti, but by dogs. Dogs have taught me much about what it means to be a better human being, or, more to the point, a better living consciousness...
All this feeling of "self" and "other" can create a lot of conflict. When we come to realise that all is connected (just like they say with The Force... hahaha...)... giggle...
All of life in this Universe is connected. What I do to another, I do to myself. My self...
If I hurt another person, I am also hurting myself. If I help another person, I am also helping myself. How is this a bad thing, I wonder? Hahaha...
Breathtakingly simple, and if every single human being on this confusing planet would stop for a moment and ask themself what they truly believed in and wanted, stripping away all of the conditioning of societies and countries and religions and cultures and all of that, much could be achieved in attaining a world peace and growing global consciousness...
Perhaps that's the hippy in me... hahaha...
Cyril?
[Sqwaark!]
Oh, you nodded off, did you Cyril? That's okay, I understand... it's another long Silenus ramble...
[Sqwaaaaaaarrrrrrkkkkkkk!!!!!]
Dude! That was my favourite shirt...
