Tuesday 28 October 2008

The Paradox of the Moths Attracted To the Light


I'm not sure I will be able to make sense in this line of thoughts, but I will try... The subject is a complicated one, and my brain may well prove to be too small to express what I feel.
In my opinion, moralist creeds of a Victorian kind are of a lower level on the evolutionary ladder (a friend pointed this out and I whole heartedly agree!). On the contrary, speaking the truth the way it is (though without any kind of manipulative intent) is of a higher order. I also think that if you do speak your mind in a straightforward sense without assertiveness, you might still be looked upon with the evil eye by those who adhere to a more moralist, law abiding way that likes to apply rules and not freedom of speech. I think this happens to some people, and it is not a funny constellation for either party. Of course, no one can help that they are at a certain point in their own evolution, and so each should be met with due respect. Easier said than done, however! I find, that sometimes resorting to strong words is the only way of being heard and gaining respect when in conflict with strangers in daily life. It is deplorable, but is there any other way? Of course, one could try sending love to the enemies, but truth to say not many of us have it in us all the time...
Observe, that I am not advocating immoral behaviour or that we should not respect social laws. I am only saying, that there are areas that are ambiguous (such as religion and texts related to them) that can be interpreted in various ways, and so a very rigorous fundamentalist approach to such creeds is truly dated and obviously not a working concept in the modern world! I venture to suggest that rituals and formulae belong to a lower level of existence and don't matter in the higher dimensions where the consciousness of only very few human beings reside. I leave it up to each and everyone to ponder the meaning of this statement.

Some terminology before I go on: by evolution I mean the development of the individual as well as the collective consciousness. By frequency I mean what colloquially speaking people mean when they talk about being on a certain wavelength. This is connected to the point at which a person is on their own evolutionary ladder. By dimension I mean steps on the evolutionary ladder, almost interchangeable with frequency. These dimensions are represented in our body by energy centres or vortexes of energy, commonly called chakras.
I think we live in a time that is very trying on us and so occasional lack of motivation, apathy and even depression is to be expected. Some of it may be due to a kind of hibernation in which the mind and the body allow for changes to occur in the unconscious parts of the self. Some of it may simply be sensitivity to all the heavy issues that are being dealt with on the collective level. Some agree with me that there is something like a suffocating blanket of darkness arisen from a process of purification of the collective mind. I do see and sense a lot of processing going on among people in the media. I do believe this will amount to a transition of the general level of understanding and insight, but as in all processes of change, both joy and suffering is present.
I've been having problems with the beginnings of an ulcer, and it's very obvious that it has a lot to do with being dependent on other people's decision making and how they distribute money to me that is rightfully mine. A big issue is the feeling that people don't see or hear my needs, but impose their own view of who I am and what my problems are in an assertive way. Another issue is disappointments in regard to friends who seem to care less than what I'd expect from a friend. The standard answer would be to let go of expectations and whishes, and not allow yourself to feel like a victim. Well, I'd say that is easier said than done! However, I've heard that abdominal problems do occur on a large scale among sensitive people right now, and so I feel quite confident that it is also a matter of picking up collective issues. It's also tough to be sensitive and see such a lack of altruism in this world, and this must surely affect our emotional self. In addition, the evolutionary transition or shift is now supposed to arise from the dimension represented by of our third energy center (the solar plexus) to the energy center of the heart (the 4th chakra/energy level). So, is pain in the solar plexus area and maybe lower too as many also struggle with second level issues, really all that surprising?
I want to point out, that in no way do I feel truly powerless. I feel powerful beyond measure, but somewhat powerless within the confines of the reality that my persona has to endure. That is but a part of me, however. I am not speaking of mental division such as schizophrenia, but a deeper sense of not identifying all that much with the smaller self.
I ran into a question today though, and am still not sure how to tackle it. I read, once more, how we should embrace the qualities of people who annoy us and not only love them, but see them as part of ourselves. Of course, we are a collective entity and so individual separation is ultimately an illusion. Now I've been very much into shadow work so the idea of people projecting onto others what they don't want to see in themselves is not foreign to me at all. However recently, I've started to feel completely incapable of looking inside for resonance with people around me who create disturbance. It's as if somewhere inside, I feel I've had enough of that and that it's time to see people for what and who they are and stop taking on part of their issues. Why must I always take the blame for everything that is going on in my life? Maybe some things just are the way they are regardless whether my consciousness is there or not, and so the crap that I happen to recieve is arbitrary in the sense that the target could be anyone, but I happen to react to it where someone else wouldn't say a word or think twice about it. I am trying to say, that things are so many faceted, that saying that there is always a clear one-to-one relationship between you and something bad that's going on is simplistic. I mean, a person might be born to face a war, which is perhaps part of his or her life's purpose. On the other hand, the war might be a side line where something else is a more important reason for this person to be born at that particular time. In the end I'm sure all these issues are intertwined, but perhaps not always quite as we think. What people think usually has very little to do with the truth.
In a way, if you accept what wrong others are doing, surely you are then sliding into their frequencies? These might be lower than where you want to be. I was quite surprised that this particular person whose view point I am referring to and who is an authority in this field, was advocating "the embrace" and at the same time saying that lower and higher frequencies cannot exist in the same place. To me this sounds very contradictory. I understand that we are all one and so in a sense acceptance is a valid and even necessary attitude. But on the other hand, do all of us really have to do shadow work (looking inside to see what in ourselves matches the external reality) for the rest of our lives? She seems to be saying that on the one hand we have to co-exist, but on the other we don't have to. Get my meaning?
Could it be that some of us just have to take a lot of crap because the world is now in a state of chaos and people who represent "higher" values (by this I mean that they have a more spiritual and above all, broader, frame of mind) attract more narrow minded humans who are possibly a bit like moths attracted to the light? After all, forerunners and prophets have always been spat on or adored in an obsessive way. Or is there a third alternative, a paradox, where both viewpoints are true, and how in this case does it manifest? This is, after all, a dual reality, and in order for anything to move forward in an evolutionary (developmental) way, opposites must be joined together. I keep hearing proposals of a new reality that is very much caught in an either-or constellation. So maybe my question is not so much whether those lacking in light are attracted to those who are able to manifest the light or whether some who manifest a lot of light attract negative things because they fail to shine all the light they really are. Maybe it's rather, what is the way in which one can accept a conflicting constellation based in dualism and transcend it? I have been thinking about this for so long, yet all I hear within myself is: "just relax into life the way you know how to!"
Artwork: "Emotions 3/6", handmade collage by author, all rights reserved 2003

Sunday 5 October 2008

Beware Of Online Tests!!!


This blog relates to what I was saying about depression in my last one, but also some critique I had of tests that pretend to be spiritual in nature. Well, yesterday I was trying to look up a medicine on the internet and came across a site that was called "Pshych..." something. Well, there were three tests there. I took the one that was supposed to determine whether you're depressed (so the name suggested).



I've taken those tests that pshychologists offer to determine if a person is depressed or not, and I liked them as little as I like any tests, as the questions tend to be suggestive and stereotypical. They always compare your present moment with your past, something which in my case seems totally absurd. Life is not necessarily like that, white one day and black the next! Some people suffer from dysthymia (mild chronic depression) or other forms of depression for all their lives, yet they get by. To them, a certain way of being may seem normal and it would definitely be hard to compare the past with the present unless there was a significant increase in dark thoughts and feelings. Some also suffer from SAD, seasonal affective disorder which is related to the lack of light in the winter. These tests really leave you no leeway. And this one was the same, but possibly less formal and definitely full of inexcusable spelling mistakes! Come on now, make an effort for goodness sakes!



So I filled out the points and got my results. Now I want to say that the results were somewhat hard to dechiffer, and might suggest that you need help to understand it. Indeed, there was an offer to recieve help from a "professional psychiatrist". I see. Well, it seemed that I suffer from some absolutely hair rising predicaments that would pretty much grant me a place at the funny house without many more questions asked. I also did a personality test and I believe that was the one that gave me a - hear now! - the diagnosis of what mental illness I suffer from! The thing that they claimed I "must" suffer from was... schizophrenia! I mean, when this dawned on me I was stunned. I am not kidding: this is as far from my issues that anything could possibly be. I could admit to some depression as life has been pretty tough for a long time and I have lost a lot of stamina from struggling hard to make it through so much adversity. Sadly, depression can certainly keep you in a state of negativity that prevents you from opening up to life, or life from opening up to you (depending on what your belief system is, I guess). On the other hand, good things happen to depressed people as well. To always go around with the torch of the law of attraction is an abomination.


So my most severe verdict was, schizophrenia. Maybe they wanted to get back to me (though I was apparently not paranoid, according to their criteria!!) because the first question was: "Do you like doing tests", and I said "no!".
There was something else too that I have no idea what it's supposed to represent, except that I am obviously a total social misfit and not really good for anything in this life. I suppose that this came up because I'm in a less sociable mode at the moment and not feeling terribly confident all the time about the future of my book. But come on!!! This is not a constant, so again it is hard to fill in a test that seems to expect you to stay in the same state of mind for long periods of time. Perhaps this is why I have "put ants in the heads" (as we say) of all the shrinks I've met. Only saying, that not all people are so easily categorized and that it's obvious that psychology is struggling to justify itself. But being given such terrible verdicts on such loose grounds is in my opinion an inexcusable and horrifying deed that should be punished by law. The interpretations offered were indeed scary! I got the feeling that nowadays, it's a given that a person suffers from at least ONE serious mental issue (haven't you noticed how every second seems to be at least bipolar, have ADHD or be seriously depressed? What does that say about society, eh?) Some people are, after all, impressionable. They may not suffer from schizophrenia or any other of the strange diagnoses that were listed, but they may start to fear that they do. So please, please, do not believe in these things! They are stupid, stupid!!! Be very careful who you listen to you and get as many opinions as you can. After all, your depression may actually only be a case of thyroid malfunction or the natural result of some hard times. "May you live in intersting times", as the Chinese say.



Artwork: "The Melancholy of Ambivalence", handmade collage by author, all rights reserved 2008