Hello again, Kris Simmons:

The sentence that touched me most in what you shared above is this:

“I want to feel safe enough to be myself.”

And the sentence that makes me want to 👏 is:

“I feel like most myself than I ever have.”

Clearly, your older sister is unsafe for you, isn’t she.

I read your original post on your other new thread. I am using my phone, so I can’t open a new window and re-read it, or what you shared about her previously, but seems to me that it’s convenient for her to direct her hostility at you simply because she is so much older than you, and always had been.

Based on the little I know about your situation, seems to me, that her ongoing hostility toward you has nothing to do with you abandoning your old role (the goofy one), and nothing to do with you being your authentic self. But everything to do with her.. misery- within.

Picking on you may give her a break from that misery- within. It’s a very common dynamic when it comes to the scapegoating type of abuse.

Your thoughts?

“How do I get rid of this need to perform and just be my authentic self?”-

Maybe by knowing (if you agree) that performing will not earn you approval, and neither will being your authentic self. Your sister’s disapproval has nothing to do with who you are, or were, and everything to do with who they are? 🤔

✨️ 🌿 ✨️ Anita

Hey Peter 🙂

The meditation you shared has a refreshing clarity to it. The way it speaks about choosing love, widening the circle, and resting in what we already are — it feels spacious and grounding.

Your reflection about not needing to earn love fits right into that. I’m sitting with all of it. Thank you for sharing it 🙏

Anita

Good evening, Peter 🙂

“I ‘saw’ them. I saw how much love they held, how deeply they wanted to express it, and just how beautiful they were, if they could only ‘know’ it”-

As I re-read the above a few minutes ago, I saw you, Peter. I saw how much love you’ve held, how deeply you have wanted to express it, and just… how beautiful you are, and I hope you can know it.

And I see me, how much love I held for so long, how deeply I wanted to express it, but had to suppress it until conditions allowed it.

“How do I wish to Be? I wonder if we anchor ourselves in that state of *Being* first, in that dropped-luggage presence”-

To re- anchor myself in that state of Being (loved and loving) that was robbed from me early on, having led to my “What will I do” (without love)? and “How will I do it” (gain, earn, pay for love)?

The luggage for me has been the separation from Being.

Dropping the luggage is returning to Being, a return to the Beginning (not the Genesis kind though).

So, I don’t have to do anything to earn love. I already am. I want to rest in it tonight, tomorrow and every day of my life.

Thank you Peter for bringing this to my awareness 🙂

🌙 Anita

W.O.W, Peter:

“I would Be. Love. Presence”= “allowing grace to shine through”.

Rigid boundaries dissolving => grace, freed, flows through.

Maybe my invitation to answer or not (grace) freed something in you, and you answered.

You saw a person (over the weekend) beneath the noise of their defense and baggage/ beneath your own self-protective reaction to their noise?

What if I could see more of that in people. My need to analyze and categorize people is a defense.

Dissolving that? Wow (this “wow” is my simple expression of something that “can’t be defined by words”.

Fewer words, better.

🌿🌿🌿 Anita

Peter: “All our lives, we travel heavy. We pack our identities, our anxieties, our spiritual titles, and our past conditioning into heavy bags, dragging them frantically from one moment to the next.”-

Without any heavy bags, not even an ounce of a heavy bag, who would you be now, Peter? (not expecting an answer)

I just asked myself the same question and an unfamiliar, intense jolt of youthful fire-like burned through me for a moment. I won’t analyze it (analysis is in a bag right now that I’m not carrying).

Then that’s all I have: that feeling of an uninterrupted life.

Anita

Hello again, Sponge ✨️

I am using my phone, so no AI for me. I’ll be thinking out loud about what you shared.

Strict religious upbringing you say, and 7 siblings. Often, siblings take on different roles: the one rebelling against the parents and the loyal, obedient one; the responsible one, and the irresponsible, etc.

It may be that you didn’t have an intimate relationship with a woman until your late 20s because you were the loyal one, loyal to your parents’ religious principles.

You told your mother about the situation, and sounds like you felt comforgable doing so. Maybe because she’s been encouraging you to have a relationship, being that you’re approaching 30, and she wants you get married.

Maybe, just maybe, the rules of obedience changed: at first being told: no sex before marriage (and you obeyed), but then telling you that sex is okay (before marriage) in hope you’ll get married, leading to a conflict/ emotional confusion, and the resulting inability on those couple or few occasions to perform sexually.

Maybe.

You didn’t share much about the woman you had the relationship with: what were her values, her goals, her interests. Maybe those were not compatible with yours. Maybe you didn’t really like her. Maybe you weren’t really attracted to her, which would explain the conflict: wanting a relationship.. but not with her.

Just because she’s your first intimate/ sexual relationship doesn’t mean she’s the woman for you.

And about guilt, religious invoked guilt perhaps, that’s a tough one.

Again, I don’t know because you didn’t share everything, and that’s okay. If you’d like to share more, perhaps respond to my maybe-s, please do. If you feel uncomfortable doing so, that’s okay too.

Also, this thread is almost 10 years old (Aug 2015), and I think that I replied to members on this thread on the very first day Jaz started this thread (I appear as “anonymous” because at one point I deleted my account but returned under a new account. All my posts though close with my name, anita)

Maybe thoroughly reading the exchanges can help you.

🌿✨️🌿 Anita