Friendship in Mid Life: Crisis and Beyond

When I started to write about this particular topic, I quickly found myself stuck, rethinking and rewriting a lot. It can only mean that it's a diffiuclt subject for myself, but I will still try and sort out some main concerns.

In the past, I have talked quite a lot about the interaction between people on internet forums. In general, my experiences have showed me that people easily forget all about good manners when they don't have to deal with you in real life. I too, have made mistakes; I easily open up and pour out all about my inner life and personal challenges, and of course it's going to irritate people or give them an incentive to be helpful in the wrong way. Many people, especially ones who work as healthcare professionals or have recently awoken to the new age spirituality, can be a bit over-eager to help someone they perceive of as needy. Oh how embarrasingly easy to slip into the victim mode even just a tiny little bit! We all do it - well most of us anyway - yet it's one of the hardest things to admit. And people can be very cruel in their dogmatic rigidity.

My inner alarm goes off when I get a sneaking suspicion that they are not particularly in tune with who I am and what I do but more interested in my 'issues'. I have learned valuable lessons in mirroring my own issues and the frustrations I have felt because of the responses from other people, but also about not continuing to project my need to talk to other people about the more personal challenges onto people I have never even met in real life. I have to have a very good feeling in order to go onto that level with anyone online. It's all about gut feeling or intuition - staying mindful is the key. The discernment I learned to exercise was nonetheless conditioning me to a kind of paranoia that carried over to real life - this was an over alertness that needed to calm down.

For a number of years the internet was an important outlet for my social needs, but eventually my real-life situation changed and I was very relieved to leave that stage behind. Blessed were real life people - I no longer took them for granted! I had seen a lot of depressing things, and preferred to continue leading my life knowing much less about other people's shadow sides. I rather turn a blind eye to a lot of it, something which strangely seems easier to do out in the real world as opposed to the confines of the internet. I don't need to deal with other people's neuroses. This is not to say that in a way, other people's neuroses aren't part of you, because in life you see what you need to see in order to learn your lessons of life.

The importance of saying no to all that cannot be over estimated, however. Perhaps it's a sign of maturity, a way of finally establishing healthy boundaries and recognizing you don't need all this mirroring and extreme emotion. Maybe you're just growing old, or even becoming more self-centred and conceited, having decided that people aren't worth your time. Whatever the reason, you do need to learn to filter your experiences in order to be less scattered, overwhelmed, confused and lacking in groundedness. You no longer have quite the strength and stamina to tackle the misery that abounds, whether it be conscious and ostentatiously out there, or subconscious and hidden from direct view. The idealism of youth is dissipating, changing into a more level-headed attitude to life. I never thought of myself as idealistic, but I can now see that I have been that way a bit in the past. The passion and ardour with which I pursued my 'mission' is no longer obvious, and I am yet to find what exactly will replace it. I believe that opening up to an equanimity that will help deal with this in a less pessimistic manner is vital, but I also think that you cannot know to look for this unless you have already experiences what is normally part of becoming middle-aged. It's easy to make excuses and give up in the name of old age; this is not what maturity should really be about.

The scary thing about the fatigue of mid life is that many people probably feel the same. While it was cool to get to know other people when you were young, and chatting was often deeply inspired and intense, it almost grinds to a halt when you reach middle age. It's rare to find a kindred spirit who also has time to spend chatting away. In general, striking up real friendship becomes slower and more arduous, because no one wants to get hurt and rejected again, nor do they wish to spend their limited resources on people outside of their family or work. People with some intelligence remember and imagine all the things that go wrong between people, and hesitate to take yet another risk. While I feel tired myself, and for good reasons, I also wish to counteract some of this tendency, as it can lead to complacency and unwillingness to embrace different ways of thinking and living life - you can lose the ability to listen to others. Self-acceptance mirrors the acceptance of others. It's a ping-pong effect, as more acceptance of others probably fosters more self-acceptance, and vice versa. It's complex and in this area, self-sabotage happens very easily. Very often people start competing to reject each other first. It's important however, not to dwell on who's to blame, especially be careful about simplistic new agey concepts such as self-rejection which hardly helps anyone in the facing of their blocks.

There is a spiritual viewpoint, which suggests that anything you react to outside of yourself is really only tickling your own repressed shadow issues. In other words, no one is 'doing' anything to you, but you are experiencing an emotional response because you have a problem. If you feel that people reject you, maybe you have a subconscious tendency to reject others. This tendency might show itself as defensive mannerism and jugmental attitudes. Maybe you're not as open and friendly as you thought you were. You might say, that it's the people in this particular place where you find yourself who are unfriendly and dismissive. Yet, there are all sorts of personal reasons of karma that took you to this place and made you attract the experiences that you find offensive. You can trace the whole line of cause and effect backwards in time - well, in reality it spreads out like a great net of causal events, in all directions. There is no point in trying to understand all that this entails; it's too complicated and most of it is imbedded in the unconscious anyway. It can be overwhelming and depressing. Beat yourself up for the repeated failure to learn your lessons and you have the start up of the darkest of depressions! What you need to do is locate the repressed feeling and liberate it; yes, it's easier said than done, but it's a vital part of our development as humans.

While I subscribe to this spiritual viewpoint, I do find it somewhat polarised and therefore a bit problematic. There are also collective energies and tendencies tied to certain times and places. While all this is no doubt intricately connected to you and your place in the whole so that you can live and learn lessons of unimaginable scope, there are probably also collective issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with you. In general these are things you don't feel attracted to or get entangled in. I'd therefore like to propose a slightly less polarised view, a paradox that encompasses a subjective and objective stance within one and the same framework, suggesting a less sollipsistic and claustrophobic atmosphere of 'me, me and more me'.

War or a natural catastrophy is something that goes on somewhere in the world but it may not concern you directly. However, as all the energetic movements on our planet and in our cosmos are so complicated, we are still likely to get affected by them in some ways. For instance, there may be very important cosmic changes going on but it's not necessarily easy to establish where your place in the grand scheme really is. I feel that this can sometimes make creative, sensitive people more withdrawn, and so it will reflect on my own social life. Or maybe it's as simple as your husband's ex feeling jealousy... how much of that has anything to do with you? You can see what your feeling response is and then walk away. It's up to us how we respond; this can always be made into a lesson of sorts. It's never really wasted, is it?

In the case of friendship I would thus conclude that you may have to look at a lot of unpleasant shadows in other people that don't have anything much to do with you, but you may still react to them. If you're a highly sensitive person (as defined by Elaine Aron), you are most certainly reacting to all sorts of things that are worrysome. Not only do you realize how little people actually care, how preoccupied they are with their own lives, and how limited their understanding of other people's problems really is... you end up sharing much less, as you know that many subjects are beyond authentic sharing. Wishful thinking is no longer part of your mental vocabulary. You have become so very complex (as opposed to just complicated), so people who really understand where you're coming from are rare and far between. Ironically, the oldest friends are often the most loyal even when you don't have a whole lot in common. Familiarity takes on a new meaning, providing a sense of much needed security. You're tired of being exhausted from feeling that you're giving more than you're receiving, thereby limiting your entanglement with anything that doesn't happen with directness and spontaneity. I try and act on spontaneity, even if it makes me feel pushy at times, but my Nordic shyness often gets the best of me. Insert some more bladibla... In any case it's hard to say whether the chicken comes before the egg. Ideally, you would give unconditionally, not expecting anything back. Yes we all know that, but how to put it into practice?

You do need to stop and revise your attitudes, with candid honesty about the issues that are keeping you from embracing others lovingly, while opening yourself to change. Hand on heart; how many of us are that filled up with surplus energy and unconcerned by past conditioning and trauma? For most of us, there is still work to be done not only to become more authentic, but also to open up more to our spiritual intelligence. As you clean out your subconscious mind of issues, you start seeing things more for what they really are. Even friendship itself may need to be redefined, for instance to encompass a more accepting attitude to the coming and going of people in our lives or more differences. I know that for myself, a problem is giving out a lot of energy to form relationships, and then seeing people disappear from my life. I believe the answer is to accept the ephemereal nature of all aspects of life, but also become a better conduit of energy so that you do not replete yourself. Or; you may find that it is better at this time to stand back and conserve energy by not scattering it about. It is your mindful choice.

When I got married, I was deeply disappointed with the lack of attention from people who I expected something from because I considered them my or my husband's friends. The wounds are deep, but at some point I had to just realize that most people have a lot of dark shadow stuff embedded in their subconscious minds, and that breaking the contact because of this was not always such a good idea. A lot of dark stuff is out in the open these days - this is a good thing. Making these decisions was very heavy, and I still feel hurt. I know I'm dealing with something on the inside that is escaping my mindful eye, because it's comfortable being the way it is. The mind can trick itself into seeing only what it wants to see, and even though I always thought of myself as being particularly observant of the workings of my own mind, something is obviously escaping me. It will be interesting to see what emerges, as it is already about to be exposed.

The question is, should we expect to do shadow work with our friends? Well, recently I have been despairing because it seemed to me that I had become so transparent and 'touchy' that the only way to relate to anyone was by opening up and dealing with disappointments and frustrations. It would require quite a motivated friend - again, I think that age brings about a sense that friendship shouldn't be yet another burden, and so it's not so easy to get to this point. I'm not sure friendship should be difficult, maybe it should really be an oasis, but sometimes we are so full of things to work out that it's the only way of getting anywhere. We may also be afraid of losing our friends by putting demands on them, and will thus hold back. Some restraint is probably necessary, as we need people in our lives and need to make informed decisions about how much to tolerate and how much to ask the other person to tolerate in return. Even the most motivated shadow worker probably has misgivings in this respect.

In practice, regarding friendship, you have to ask yourself, if someone doesn't cause you continuous stress then you should probably try and honour the years of friendship that the both of you have invested in it, and try and forget some of the hurt. I don't know how you stop expecting anything from people without closing off your heart, but I think it is definitely possible. The ongoing process is why making friends still seems like a big challenge and a source of pessimism or disenchantment, and I know I'm not alone in this. Like me, more and more people have challenges of a lasting kind that needs acceptance rather than overcoming (i.e. chronic illness), but the environment is not ready to accept deviance of any sort. Something still requires healing so that the heart ceases to be so vulnerable. A strong heart is capable of great compassion. Human beings are overwhelmed by life and few have a solid basis to stand on. Balance in give and take heals the ego self, whereas a lack of concern about giving unconditionally is part of a greater spiritual process. These are possible to attain, albeit amongst the most difficult tasks in life.

Nonetheless, many good things have come out of the internet.

What Secret?

I suppose that the craze surrounding the book and film The Secret is wearing off, but I still feel like presenting a few thoughts about the whole thing. When it came out, I went online and looked at the movie trailor and the author's website - at least I think it was her. I didn't like the hyped up energy and the way the woman in question was fixated on money. "I became a millionaire, and then a billionaire - all thanks to The Secret" I recall being her statement. Well yes... a nicely wrapped up ultra positive New Age book that encourages people to catch at a straw in a world full of stress and uncertainty is likely to get a lot of buyers. It screamed sensationalism to me. Anyway, I finally got a chance to get the book out of the library as it had been translated to Swedish. I was curious to see what exactly is in it, though I had a hunch from the very start that there was nothing that special about the concept of the law of attraction. Here is what I think.

First of all, notice that the message is packaged in a romantic sort of way that is sure to appeal to a lot of people. It reminds me of The Da Vinci Code. One thing that immediately struck me as phoney was the way the author makes references to people of the past and claims that they all knew about the secret. Where is the evidence? There is none. All that you get are some very obscure quotes by some of the people listed (Einstein, Emerson and so on) that tell you absolutely nothing and that probably were retracted from a context that had nothing to do with the message of this book. She also claims that all these famous thinkers and scientists owed their success to knowing the secret. In other words, they believed their way to success. Come on! It sure takes a bit of talent and education as well! Really! The book is really talking to us as if we are children who need to be convinced that the author knows what she's talking about and we have no right to contest this because we're somehow lesser knowing. Another thing that made me raise my eyebrows was the loose way of using the term "Spirit". The author claims that spirit is like the genie in the bottle, all ready and prepared to fulfil all of your most ardent wishes. Later on there is some talk about humans really being equal to God and thus in the position of creating the reality they want, but it's really not very good literature. Spirit as I understand it is way beyond our comprehension and certainly a very active part of existance, rather than a passive force that a human ego can control and demand.

I was a bit taken aback that the universe was likened to a postorder catalogue. All you have to do is choose your wish and send out the order. While I don't necessarily object to the profanity of the metaphor, I do think that it brings down a very complex process to a very banal level. What I feel is that there is nothing all that wrong with the concept about the law of attraction per se, the problem is that it's only representing a narrow scope of reality. Perhaps it does act as an eye opener to people who have never thought in terms of spiritual "truths" before. What I see as problematic is that people usually get stuck on the most obvious statements of this truth such as "abundance is your birthright" and "you must only think positive thoughts and make sure you're state of mind is always one of happiness and well being". These act as life buoys in an uncertain world and tend to freeze into dogmas. I have met people online who have been very eager to push these "truths" onto me although it actually does state in the book that you must never do that as it's only serving the ego. Other people have been very depressed because they failed to manifest their wishes and feel very guilty that they have negative thoughts. What I see as a big danger apart from egoistic self-gratification is severe self-blame! It actually does say in the book that you should embrace all of your feelings but it's not really coming out that clearly. The overshadowing statement is basically that you must not give into negative or doubtful thinking and feeling (this is being repeated many times though in fact there is a passage saying that one positive thought will outrule many negative ones...). This is a ticket to a very hyped up sort of positivity that is likely to undermine the work a person might be doing in order to attract what they want. You cannot command your subconscioius, negative undercurrents to disappear magically!

The bottomline is; you cannot make certain negative tendencies go away just by thinking positive thoughts. And what I really want to stress is that there is no short cut to deep insight and wisdom. I myself am the first to admit that I only learn the hard way! I simply cannot imagine myself going around faking my inner life to sound like a prayer wheel of repetitive, lovey dovey thoughts and feelings that are only about the wonderful things I have in this moment. "I have a lot of money, I have the perfect partner, I have perfect health..." are examples of the sort of affirmations that were actually very popular back in the early 1990s already. If it works for some; fine... obviously everyone must do what they feel is working for them. I just think that it would require an easily suggestive mind in order to work, and that it would feel highly unnatural. This is only my personal opinion, of course!

I think that a big problem with this sort of thinking is also the idea that all we need to do is know what we want and then ask for it. I believe that we rarely know what we truly need, and that this is way more important than wanting things. Of course, some people are here on Earth with a purpose of discovering ways in which they can attain a higher level of happiness and success, but if you're on a serious spiritual path I really don't see "wanting" as very relevant. I like to believe that I am always guided by the more higher spiritual part of me, and so whatever comes my way is there as a challenge that helps me gain a higher level of wisdom. I don't think we learn much of any value from a very easy life. If this was the case, we would probably not be on Earth, but in some other realm where there are less opportunities to experience the friction between polarities. Every dilemma that I manage to solve leaves me feeling more accomplished, and this is a deep experience that has little to do with the puny "little" self, the ego. Of course there is always the option of using spiritual insight as a way of growing the ego, but I think that the more humbled you are by life and the incredibly complex forces at work, the less likely you are to want that. I have to say that it wasn't long ago that I had an experience of surrendering part of my will to Spirit and it caused a surge of Kundalini (a strong energy current) in me.

I think that claiming that you can keep your weight only by thinking that you have your perfect weight is a bit strange. I understand the concept, and maybe it does work for some. In my case my weight depends on what I eat and how much I exercise. To manically focus on keeping it is not really my thing. I also have to say that I got through University because I believed I would. But I also got through it because it was quite important in terms of my self-esteem and my life's purpose. Manifesting something like that "just because" doesn't make any sense to me. There are also lots of people who believe they have tons of money and end up heavily indebted. Of course, if you really did what The Secret tells you would also make sure that you don't believe in being indebted or somehow change your energetic frequency to match a state of true abundance. But really... we can certainly try but how realistic is it that we would be able to juggle with so many elements that are actually subconscious, for the most part? Better, methinks, to just take a step at a time and see how things really work out on this level of reality..?

I also like to stress that people do need to talk about their own hardships, and not keep it all to themselves as The Secret suggests. It's simply very bad psychology! Dwelling on negative things incessantly is a different issue... still there's a time for everything. You also cannot force feelings of love so all the imperative talk about having to feel massive amounts of love all the time is not realistic either. First and foremost, be kind to yourself!

Some time ago I met someone who really fancied me. It seemed that I represented all the things that this guy had asked for (he confessed to having pleaded to the universe). However, there were other things there as well: I also brought a host of challenges into this guy's life. In the end he refused the good as well as the bad and went back to a more comfortable lifestyle. Perhaps I was a manifestation in this person's life? The thing is, that could very well be the case because we certainly are not islands and so oftentimes we act out a role that someone else is needing to experience. I'm sure I learnt important lessons from all this myself. But this person obviously didn't really know what he wanted, and so the scenario had to collapse. I also don't want to pretend to know exactly what was really involved in the drama. Only time and deep contemplation may reveal some of the reasons behind the encounter, but some of it may remain embedded in the unconscious forever. All I can do is try and do the right thing, which in my vocabulary means being intuitive and following thoughts and feelings with utter attention and discernment.

I also wish to give another example of the complexity of life. I became friends with a very nice woman in the spring and was hopeful about the contact. One day she texted me something very short and dismissive. I was quite hurt, and didn't hear from her all summer. Recently I deleted her from my list of Facebook friends. Suddenly I received a sincere apology from her. She was asking to be my friend and explained what exactly had happened. There was no reason for me not to accept the apology and so there is a chance that we will be able to carry on our deep conversations. But the point is; I didn't manifest her return, in fact I had negative thoughts about her. There was no direct law of attraction implied other than that me taking a decisive step made her realize that she was attracted enough to our friendship so as not to let it go!

Finally, I want to say that I think the law of attraction is really quite common sense (don't most of all realize already that we attract certain things into our lives depending on who we are?) and not some hushhush "secret"! Perhaps it's just me but I really like to live life in a natural way. To me it does not mean living an unconscious zombie like existance (cf. the state preceding the awakening suggested by The Secret), but being attentive to all that goes on inside and outside of me. It's relaxing into the real me the way this "me" is manifested by Spirit in this time and place. I don't want to control my environment or make other people become something that I want through some idea about manifesting the perfect people to surround you with. It's not easy, but that's my personal challenge.

Photo by author, all rights reserved 2009

Friendship - the Good and the Bad

The anatomy of friendship used to be something very self-evident to me. In short, it was about unconditional support. The whole point was to find things to share and thus focus on the similarities. The dissimilarities were tolerated because most friends were people you didn't have to deal with every day. On the rare occasion when toxicity arouse, one or the other would just drift away. Talking things through rarely worked out; people are not very eager to look at their own faulty behaviour unless specifically motivated to. Personally I often felt that it wasn't worth the trouble. I mean, you just preferred to get on with your life rather than stay in something that was complicated and where you didn't feel respected. I'm sure many have felt the same. What most of the people who drifted away thought of me I will never know. Of course it's quite possible that a few were mad at me for some reason that they never disclosed. I used to wreck my brain as to why someone never got back to me, but learned in time that on most occasions it was just a question of "life" and a simple lack of motivation that was not to be taken personally. I'm quite a loyal person but also had to realize that many people aren't. They just move onto another stage in their lives and leave people behind.

I'm not quite sure why so many people have come and gone in my life at a fast rate. What I find remarkable is that I always had at least one friend to talk to and share my life experience with. My life has always changed quite rapidly and so perhaps these people served a purpose in my life only for a little while. I didn't worry too much about it until later in life when I was more in touch with my emotions and started to get weary of all the changes. I was craving for more stability and thus also people who would not disappear after I had invested a lot of time and energy into getting to know them.

Unfortunately at this point I entered a strange phase marked by the fact that I was now middle-aged. People were busy with their families and all of my long-term friends had babies because they had decided to get them quite late in life. I was child-free and single, and now the resident of a small town where no one ever asked you to come and visit. Trying to play the dating game after a wrecked relationship was arduous and not very gratifying. Suddenly I was sucked up into the virtual world and making "friends" with all sorts of people online. Only very few of these people were sincere and seriously interested in me as a person. Quite a few people were in fact primarily looking for people to convert or someone who could function as a scapegoat that would carry their negativities. This has led me to distinguish a few signs of a non-productive friendship. Apart from the obvious one where there is no balance between talking and listening, envy and co-dependency, some of my most important deal breakers are the following issues:

1) a person keeps nagging about how much better your life is compared to theirs; this is usually a sign that they don't want to look at their own crap but rather project guilt on others so as to gain sympathy and feel better about themselves at the other's expense.

2) a person tells you that you're hard on yourself and wonders why you hate yourself so much. This is often a sign that they don't understand your self-criticism because they don't have any themselves. They also try and place guilt on you so as to feel that they are superior.

3) a person starts lecturing you about how to lead your life. For some odd reason they think that they know better than you. This is another sign of low self-esteem and a desperate attempt to raise it at your expense. Only when you know someone really well and both are clear that there are no power games going on, can a certain "lecture" be warranted. It can be very gratifying to hear a clearly voiced second opinion on something while knowing that there is no manipulation and attempt to bend your will behind it.

4) a person is overly secretive about their thoughts and feelings and argues for their right to be this way with very clever words. They are probably trying to appear mysterious and interesting so as to keep you captivated. What they want is your attention, energy and support, but they won't give much in return. You keep wondering what you're doing wrong so as not to earn this person's confidence, but when you try and talk about it they turn away and argue that friendship shouldn't be tiring. Since trying to come up with things to talk about is wearing you out for real, you had better leave this solitary ship. Friendship is about sharing and opening up to another person!

5) a person's irony becomes cynical and sarcastic, or they ignore you and keep you waiting. While I sometimes balance on the border of an unacceptable form of irony myself, I wouldn't want to be downright mean towards people who have done nothing to deserve it. To be unpleasant towards people you don't know that well is plain disrespectful. Having met many guys like this online I have become a little tougher myself, but it certainly worries me! I then turn to good female friends who bring out the niceness in me again.

Within the framework of a friendship you should be able to work out your issues without feeling judged. Some people who get into conflict with their friends like to argue back and forth in an attempt to sort it out but that's not really the kind of friendship that I care much about. When I see judgmental behaviour and feel negative vibes towards the person I am, I prefer to leave. This is because in most cases, talking doesn't help and the differences are at that point usually irreconciliable. In my reality, love relationships provide the intimacy and motivation to dig deeper. When you enter this arena, so much more is at stake and so the need to work in order to get a harmonious connection 24/7 should come quite naturally. The best case scenario is no doubt when you are able to establish a hybrid relationship that is based in friendship but takes everything several steps further towards the creation of a deeper and even more meaningful connection. In my opinion, however, the two should not be confused. In reality they serve different purposes and I don't think the adage that friends last longer than lovers is warranted. It's just plain silly to compare the two!

Artwork: "Choose Your Friends Wisely", handmade collage by author, all rights reserved 2008

Deceit

I am someone who believes in the intrinsic beauty and goodness of humankind. The rest is just the outcome of ignorance. Sure there are evil spirits and all that - dualism is a fact. I don't concern myself too much with such things. I look at people and all in all my heart goes out to them. Yet in my daily life I also get to see so much vile and selfish behaviour. If I didn't believe that things are shifting towards more awareness and that a lot of the crap that's now visible is out for reasons of purification, I don't know how I would have the strength to go on. I don't know why I am supposed to see all this. Perhaps it's part of the challenge of holding onto spiritual strength when everything around you crumbles to dust.

We all know that young people change a lot and even after 20 some adjustments happen to make the person into who they are supposed to be. It's all very well when you can see that good morals that have been installed earlier are still there somewhere beneath the seemingly chaotic changes and you know that things will be alright in the end. But when you witness someone who seemed like such a kind, talented and deeply reflecting person become superficial, self-obsessed and self-indulgent, it can really make your stomach turn. Even more so if this was someone you thought of as a friend and really felt that you connected with and respected despite the age difference. So what if they change - that's part of life and should be welcomed as an occurrence of some interest. Besides, anyone with a vivid inner life changes, even though at a slower rate as they grow older.

Ok, a few words first before I go on about observations I've been unfortunate enough to make throughout my life: Most men that I have encountered love to keep you waiting. Is it a matter of a power-game? Secondly, they make promises they don't keep. I know I'm not the only one who has noticed this, since there's plenty of womens' words of wisdom around that indicates that this is the case. Thirdly, men have trouble committing to anything unless it satisfies their egos. I know, it sounds absolutely awful to say all this. Isn't there anything positive? Right now I don't know. I know that I like men and am curious about them, but I don't know why.

Will I ever encounter even one man who is willing to committ to friendship or more with me? This I doubt today when my friendship with a young man has been cast aside out of convenience's sake. What infinite sadness to be discarded as a mere drop in their sea of exciting and self-satisfactory sea of indulgences. To find out that one's care and support (including a stern belief in them) was of no value whatsoever and that the only reason for the relationship was that one was willing to act as a trashbin. To be told off with words indicating that "it has nothing to do with you" (how often have we not heard that!) and that they need to be alone, yet still hear about all the interesting friends they are making meanwhile. Ok, I admit it could be worse. I could have actually done something wrong. But in a way it's almost as bad to find out that who you are mattered not in the least. And yes, I was indeed attracted to this person's intellect and now the excuses all sound so very self-aware and rationally justified. But the warmth and maturity that I percieved earlier seems gone out of the window and all that I see staring inbetween the fancy lines is self-righteousness and egotripping. A man's fear of committment seems to dominate any concerns about the depth of sincere friendship. Unfortunately this is not the first time I'm witnessing the change from a charming and interesting young man into a selfish bastard. What can I say to make it alright? Good riddance, I guess.

Artwork: "The Rise and Fall of Human Vanity", handmade collage by author, all rights reserved 2008

The Perils of Trusting A Channeller

I have to admit that right now I'm not on top of things. Some incidents relating to people I trusted that all occurred almost at the same time shook me up so much that I am having real trouble rising above them. Where do I go from now? I admit: I feel so lost, so abandoned, so clueless... This I have thought many times and will say it out loud: beware of other people's channellings. (A channeller is someone who transmits messages from the spirit realm). Exercise the utmost discernment when you allow someone else the authority to tell you truths about your life and future. It doesn't mean that everything that comes through is false, only that each person is a subjective filter. Here is the greatest reason for my present state of distress - and I feel a need to be quite open about it although it is a vastly complex subject. I hope it will make sense:

I met a woman online on another continent who channelled messages and started to pass some onto me - she said she felt nudged to do so and called to help me, and without asking money for her favours. I was very grateful for this since I don't seem to be able to get advice anywhere else. I mean, who would deny the need of some illumination? The messages seemed encouraging and earnest, yet all in all they were somewhat confusing (possibly because the channeller was distracted at times). I found this person charming, as well, and was very happy to have a friendship with her. It seemed I had found a real life soul sister! Our connection on a soul level was indeed in the center of our conversations, and something I was a bit reluctant to accept right off the bat, but what could I do? I felt I just had to take her and her messengers' word for it. However, when I started to talk about the difficulty in being dependent on her help, she suddenly turned her back on me. She complained that her talent tends to get in the way of friendship, and thought that I was only out to get information about how to lead my life. Although I don't deny that the messages were welcome, I didn't expect her to become my personal provider of advice. I just wanted some clarity as to the few issues that had been brought to our attention. Of course I was interested in her friendship, why would I not have been? I felt that it was hard to give it 100 % credit before we had a chance to meet in real life, yet I was starting to count on it and plan my life accordingly. She was, for instance, offering to help me create an ambulatory exhibition of my artwork in the United States.

It is still a mystery to me, what exactly happened and if I did something terribly wrong. It seems to me (but of course I can't be sure) that this person was hoping that I would become needy of her assistance, while on some other level she resented having to write this stuff for me. I have reasons to believe that this might be a pattern in this person's life, though I guess I will never know for sure. I confess there is something I tend to do subconsciously in relation to others: I know from experience that when I have doubts, I tend to provoke people to show me their true intentions. In other words, I push buttons. It's not that I necessarily poke around, I just tend to bring out my feelings quite strongly and very often they are not in line with the other person's expectations. This is why I often end up being cut off quite brutally from other people. Is what I am doing wrong? Well, I don't really think so - it's just not the thing to do among human beings. Most people are not prepared to look at their shadow selves. I know that something of the kind is coming to the surface when people's behaviour towards me changes very radically from nice to mean. I can only assume that my gutfeeling is directing me to expose the truth. Whether I would be doing this if I had not had a dysfunctional childhood where my authenticity was questioned during a sensitive age when I felt very awkward about myself and how to act is hard to say... I think I probably would, because I do seem to be dedicated to honesty all around (though there's no denying that my childhood experiences set a snowball rolling). I usually try and allow space for some talk about the issue in question but most of the time, people don't wish to acknowledge that they may have a side to them that is not quite so agreeable. I did try and suggest to the person in question that maybe we both pushed each others' buttons, but she would have none of it. The tone in the last letter was cold and calculating, and referred to the idea of possible money transactions between us. As soon as people start to talk business within the frames of a friendship, I back out.

I have no idea how much of herself this person put in the messages. All this left me very confused and sad beyond words. The last thing she said was, 'the guides say that from now on they will talk directly to you'. Well, needless to say my life only changed for the worse and I am not recieving any advice as how to cope and what to believe. I would at least like to know if I did do something wrong! It saddens me that this one time that I had decided to trust a person, I ended up abandoned so quickly. Was I tested and meant to become ever more resilient?

This incident took me by great surprise since I opened up to this person more than I normally do, and I thought some fog in my life would finally be dispelled. At the moment, I simply don't know how to rise above this. I've had friends abandon me in the past but it never hurt like this. It's possible that there was a true connection there that surpasses the mundane level we are residing on right now. On the other hand it was like the last drop; I have enough of people who so easily promise to stand by me (which she assured me a couple of times prior to disappearing) and who then just walk away without an apology and making me look like I am the one (the only one!) who is to blame. Most of the time people who are in a constellation are both responsible for their part in both the positive and the negative things that go on between them.

I am trying to be self-reliant and yank up my self-confidence. I decided that I rather bet that the guides are real and are trying to help me, than become a bitter sceptic because of some human dysfunction. However, it is very hard for me to accept that I have no way of communicating with my guides at this point in time, and since I am forced to be very isolated anyway, this is a tough issue to deal with. This will call for even more patience and persistence (as if there had not been plenty of that already!). I think the worst thing is that it seemed as if the guides really wanted for her and I to share and support each other.

Now was there any subordinate meaning to this incident? Was this a harsh reminder that I can rely on and trust myself only? I really thought I was doing well enough, but I admit that I fell for the temptation of hearing the messages out. In recent years I've been open to advice in the hope of enriching my viewpoints. However I've resisted asking psychics as what to do with my life, as I had a very bad experience some 10 years ago. This time the messages were just offered to me, "just like that", for free, and seemingly making a lot of sense. They also made me cry when I felt there was a lot of kindness behind the words. Was I wrong in accepting it? I believed myself to be a discerning person but this really took me by surprise. I know all channellers have their subjective filter, so I was trying to be careful, yet it was pretty stressful as I couldn't ask directly what something meant, but had to wait for the right occasion.

Now I don't mean to sound as if I am out to put a blame on everyone else. I'm sure this person thinks of me as having treated her unkindly - maybe in her mind I was ungrateful, jealous of her abilities, callous, or just plain toxic..? Don't you just hate the feeling of being the one that needs to be avoided because of some negative traits that you might be guilty of if you think really long and hard about it?! Well... we all have hissy fits sometimes (I tend to get them when I feel cornered) but surely everything can be talked through and sorted out, in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Surely that's the mature way that helps both parties continue their lives with a sense of closure? However there has to be that little mutual 'spark' or something, a vibe, that tells you it will pay off to open up and apologize. When it's not there and you find yourself talking to a wall it can bog you down immensely. It's ironic, because people that were pointed out in the messages as bogging me down with worries that prevent me from soaring higher have not made me feel even half as bad as this person did!

In order not to be too judgmental and narrow minded, I am trying to contain what I thought was good or reasonable information through the messages, and forget the rest. This in my opinion is the way of true positive thinking. But my heart is bleeding!


Artwork: "Who Cares?", handmade collage by author, all rights reserved 2008