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PeterParticipantre writing a part
When reading your non-labeled version of your story. That’s I saw, a possibility, a space, to let go, to get to a place were their was no further need to tell the story.
In the non-labeled version I saw a person who did the work and created healthy boundaries that didn’t require any further explanation, exploration, justification, labels or re-telling. Bitter, as the hurt is and was real but sweet because, having emerged out the other side, better connected to the true self. The hurt and the labels no longer having the the hold they had.PeterParticipantHi Anita
Thanks so much for taking a second reading. I would never intentionally invalidate your experience. Sadly I can be clumsy with my words.
I am finding the dialog helpful.
Me: “In hindsight I’m wondering if I felt that I needed to feel the emotions and stay angry to justify the boundaries I was creating. (I notice today, not always healthy boundaries)”
You “you mean that you made some decisions in the heat of the moment, driven by anger and hurt, without considering the possibility of reconciliation, or the impact of the decisions on your life long-term”
Not quite, though I’ve made plenty of heat of the moment decisions based on anger and hurt.
What I was questioning was, now that years have passed, if I was still doing that. If I was retelling a old story’s then using that negative energy that would arise to maintain current boundaries. Realizing that boundaries that need the energy of anger and hurt to maintain might not be healthy boundaries. That said, in the heat of the moment that may be part of the process in developing boundaries but that process is exhausting and I want to do better.Sadly my journal clearly shows a tendency to hold on to the stories (with the labels) then using the anger and hurt that the labels created to maintain boundaries… Seeing that I also have to question whether at some level, I feel a need to justify my boundaries, which I don’t want to do that any more. The act of justification also being exhausting along with suggesting I’m not being honest with myself in some way.
When reading your non-labeled version of your story. That’s I saw a possibility, a space, to let go, to get to a place were I needing the story. In the non-labeled version I saw a person who did the work and created healthy boundaries that didn’t require any further explanation, exploration, justification, labels or re-telling. Bitter, as the hurt is and was real but sweet because, having emerged out the other side, better connected to the true self. The hurt and the labels no longer having the the hold they had.
That’s the hope on going through the non labeling exercise though as in all things, timing matters. I think I came across my old journal as now I’m ready.
Hope that made more sense.
Have a Good weekend. FYI I stay away from computers on weekends
PeterParticipantHi Anita
I can image that was exhausting. I’m sorry you had that experience but thanks for sharing the example.One of the things that stood out to me between the two versions was that in the non-labeling version there was no sense of victim villain feel.
Looking at my old stories, and not so old ones, they are filled with the victim and villain feel. Now that time has past, if I create the more neutral version I feel I can let it go in that and so stop telling it.
Looking back at the old journal entries the stories that I kept retelling stand out. It seems I was very much attached to the emotions retelling them invoked. In hindsight I’m wondering if I felt that I needed to feel the emotions and stay angry to justify the boundaries was was creating. (I notice today, not always healthy boundaries)
Now that time has passed do you feel you need the labeling experience to maintain and or justify the boundaries you created?
I still have a few stories I can’t stop retelling, I think to reinforce and justify the negatives I tend to apply to myself.FYI When I read the non-labeled version of your story, the picture of the person who wrote it that came to mind was of someone who has worked through their trauma, established healthy boundaries that need no justification. Nothing to fix. 🙂 The story of-course, as all such stories are, bitter sweet.
PeterParticipantDefeat: By Kahlil Gibran
Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness;
You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs,
And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory.Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance,
Through you I know that I am yet young and swift of foot
And not to be trapped by withering laurels.
And in you I have found aloneness
And the joy of being shunned and scorned.Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield,
In your eyes I have read
That to be enthroned is to be enslaved,
And to be understood is to be leveled down,
And to be grasped is but to reach one’s fullness
And like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed.Defeat, my Defeat, my bold companion,
You shall hear my songs and my cries and my silences,
And none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings,
And urging of seas,
And of mountains that burn in the night,
And you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul.Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage,
You and I shall laugh together with the storm,
And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us,
And we shall stand in the sun with a will,
And we shall be dangerous.PeterParticipantHi Anita
You seem to have understood quite well. I did laugh when I read the word cute, a label I don’t think has ever been associated with myself. I did wonder how the word was being applied and then used the Rule of Charity and choose the kindest reading which seems to have been correct.
“Accurately labeling emotions is necessary for mental health and healthy social function” – I would agree. My thought was that having done that work and as time passes it might be a interesting exercises to try to re-write the old stories or journal entries while trying to avoiding labeling language.
My first attempts were surprising. Without the labels it seem to free the memories, allowing them to flow. Their was still the memory of the experience and emotions but by flowing they didn’t become the emotions in the moment so I didn’t relive the experience by bring the past into the present.
I’ve also been playing with the idea of re-writing the old journal entries without using the word ‘I’ which isn’t easy but kind of fun.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
Your and Helcat response had me looking though my journal for the labels and measuring I applied to my stories. I was about to add a statesmen at how bad I was/am at labeling my experiences but the use of the word ‘bad’ suggests a label and a failure, when the truth as I see it today is that it isn’t/wasn’t a bad or good ability it just was/is me at the time.
I recently watched a documentary call The Stories We tell – by Sarah Polley. “a investigation into the elusive truth buried within the contradictions of a family of storytellers…”.
The stories told center on Sarah’s mother who had passed away years ago, who it turns out had a affair which resulted in Sarah. What struck me as her dad, brothers, sisters, mother’s friends… told their story’s was the lack of labeling, no blame, no wring of hands, no existentialist angst, no this was bad this was good.
I imagine myself or others learning about such things about their mother making them question their sense of self, and all that drama. Maybe that happened… but if it did they moved passed it. These were stories about a mother who was mother and a human being with dreams and faults and gifts… and that they loved. It was clear she influenced who they were but her story didn’t define them.
Not sure where I’m going with this… What struck me was how desperate we are to tell stories and make sense of them, but that we don’t get to do that having all the information at hand. What struck me was how we can let others peoples stories define our own but that we don’t need to do that. Doing that is a choice. At the end of the documentary my though was that the story about their mother the story tellers arrived at mattered, really mattered but that it also didn’t.
Sarah Polley choice in imagery and camera shots… she would hold the camera focused on the person while they waited in silence, to begin or process a end… and you could see…. them… all of it in their faces, the shots pierced the heart… the bitter the sweet, and it was beautiful in all its messiness, they were beautiful in their discomfort of sharing.
I could imagine people watching the documentary and labeling the actions of this and that person, or event, imagining how angry they might be if this happened to them… but I wonder to what end? And they would have missed the beauty. I can’t stop wondering why we label our stories as we do, or measure our experiences as we do, if perhaps were afraid of that kind of naked messy beauty. Have I missed the beauty?
I was about to delete the this post thinking it didn’t fit in with the thread, as this would be a new and not old journal entry. But then perhaps it does fit. As I go back over the old stories the old journal entries that I say I’m not looking to ‘fix’… fix in place? fix as in change, reshape?… but perhaps see with different eyes.. can I tell the stories today without the labels and let them be as they were/are/will be?
Can I allow the messiness of myself to be beautiful? LOL Why do I feel a need to label is so?
PeterParticipantHi Helcat
I guess it is a mixed message… and of course I hope you engage with anything that resonates. One of the great things about the site is how much people want to help each other, yet sometimes I feel we can get caught up in desire to want to fix things, fix others. I know that when I go into fix it mode I also go into measuring labeling mode which often isn’t helpful. I’m trying to avoid that. I wonder lately how much of the pain or anxiety we experience is created by the labeling and measuring vice the actual experience.
I liked reading about your bucket lists and how they changed over time. Looking through my journal and it seems I’ve avoided creating anything like a bucket list…
I’ve been reading your recent post and very intrigued by your thoughts on the void. I was very tempted to comment and go into my over analyzing philosophical mode but stopped myself. One thing I have learned by going back over my old journals to much information at the wrong time can get in the way. And for some things a person must push through themselves
I would share a experience I wrote about in my journal… wow 30 years ago.
I was in hospital and coming to consciousness after a surgery. What I remember is the awareness of nothing, a total black void. There was no fear no anxiety, or a I. Paradoxically their was a awareness that their was no fear, anxiety or I and that this void was also everything. (Was going to say – was at the same time everything – but their was no awareness of time – more eternal present?) It was bliss. Their is a memory of looking around for the source of this awareness and a question: what was conscious, then the question where is the ‘I’?
And like that scene in the Matrix where Neo enters the white void of the matrix and the rows of clothes and weapons appear filling the space of which he dresses and arms himself. I remember saying/thinking nooooooooooooo as I ‘dressed’ myself in all the things, all the data that is Peter, and of course with that the fear and anxiety. Compelled to dress myself I was pushed/pulled into consciousness.
I wasn’t afraid in the void and wanted to go back and though I couldn’t there was a kind of bitter sweet peace/longing about it. In hindsight I feel maybe because the notion of the void was no longer associated with fear but something transcendent, being completely empty and containing everything, a something that was also ‘me’ and everyone.
I’ve been wondering over the experience for 30 years. Its difficult to write about a experience without using the word ‘I’ when their was no I. As I write of the experience today I wonder at the words used – Compelled to dress myself – consciousness wasn’t a choice… how much of what I dressed myself, armed myself with, was?
PeterParticipantHi Anita
Yes, you understood the intent. Like you I also have a habit of trying to fix myself and others by excessive intellectual analysis so wanted to create a space where anyone could express their thoughts just to experts their thoughts. Journals are good at keeping things private but sometimes its not till you put those thoughts out in the world that you really see/hear them. Often, I think posting them enough. (Funny at work if I get stuck and ask a question to someone that might help, I find that once I ask the question I realize the answer before they respond. But it only works when I actually ask the question out loud or post it and not just think it. I assume this is the universe notion of a joke.)
“Contentment is life living through you. Joy is life living through you. Satisfaction and strength is life living through you. Peace is life living through you. “He says don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Look, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you.”
As I was rereading the above poem today, I was thinking about you, Peter. In my mind, it’s as if it was written just for you. But then, it’s as if it was written just for me, and it’s very relevant to every moment, every day of my life still.
That very much resonated, thank-you for sharing. Had I read that 20+ years ago I might have said yes that is a truth and great advice, yet not able to ‘understand’ or put it into practice. In this moment what came to mind as I read it is the experience of being ‘Transparent to the Transcendent’ – life living through you… in that experience further words fade… enough said.
I was inspired to go back in my journal and look for the words that started my journey. The event was a relationship that did not go as hoped. (I was going to say a failed relationships but today would say no relationships are failures, they just are. Relationships the crucible in which we discover ourselves… and everything is relationship).
Anyway, it was a title of a song that irritated me after my experience got me looking for answers. The song title was the question. ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’. It sounds silly, but I was so disappointed so angry about the experience the notion of ‘love’ was a abstraction I didn’t know how to come to terms with. It was clear I had no idea what this thing called love was. Why Love hurt… LOL, I have a list of song titles in the journal.
Then their was a email I received by the author of ‘Philosophy for Dummies’ by Tom Morris. The author at the time had a site where you could ask questions, and I asked a question about what I felt was a contradiction between freedom, peace and grace.
Tom Morris didn’t respond with a philosophical explanation of concepts of freedom, peace or grace. His response instead introduced me to the problem of perception and the Rule of Charity. The rule is that if there are multiple explanations for an event, statement, concept… and your unable to determine which version of the event is the ‘truth’, pick the kindest most compassionate one. (I was reading Life of Pi at the time which at some end of the story suggest the same).
This ‘rule’ changed my perspective on how I might be kinder to myself and others. What I was to discover was that most of the time I didn’t know, and didn’t have all the information, and wasn’t going to be able to get all the information, or get to know why or what… but that I created a story anyway. A story that almost always was a villain and or victim story. I wondered if it was the story was creating the hurt more so than the truth of the event.(What comes first the emotion or the naming of the emotion? I am surprised that my experience is that its the latter. I name something as so and then experience it, more often then not getting the naming wrong. What if instead of naming I just feel it?)
The second thing Tom wrote was that ‘we work for that which no work is possible’. I remember reading this and feeling a huge weight being lifted. I was oddly very excited, even as I didn’t fully understand why. How bizarre that the work we need to do is to get out of the way, where we realize we already are and always have that which we seek… In the words of Hokusai ‘Life living through you’. Perhaps the universe notion of a joke. Not till ask out loud…
I also found reading parts of the journal stressful, embarrassing… noting how I wasn’t usually ready to ‘hear’ what the words or experiences pointed towards. I look back and the self-critical eye wants to have its say, then I recall the rule of charity and chose compassion.
I note in my the first page of the journal TS Eliot’s words, (promise) that at the “end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” (perhaps a answer to why the Buddha laughs.)
For anyone else that wants to meander in their thoughts, what question and or words sent you forward on your quest?
PeterParticipantI forgot about the following entry, I think from a book from John Eldredge ‘The Sacred Romance’, and surprised how it resonated today.
The Sacred Romance
“There are only two things that pierce the human heart, one is beauty, the other affliction.
We cannot deny the Arrows have struck us all, sometimes arriving in a hail of projectiles that blocked out the sun, and other times descending in more subtle flight that only let us know we were wounded years later, when the wound festered and broke.What will we do with the Arrows we’ve known, or what have they tempted us to do? But to say we all face a decision when we’re pierced by an arrow is misleading. It makes the process sound so relational, as though we have the option of coolly assessing the situation and choosing a logical response. The heart cannot be managed in a detached sort of way. It feels more like and ambush and our response is at gut level. Our deepest convictions are formed without conscious effort, but the effect is a shift deep in our soul.
There was a girl I loved but couldn’t love, intimacy requires a heart that is released and mine was pinned down with unknown arrows of fears and grief and so I let her go. I place that last Arrow in my heart that day and shoved it cleanly though. I did it to kill the tears of mourning inside that would have insisted that there was something I had lost.
I had no one to help me understand the ambivalence created by the messages of the arrows. So I became my own author and killed the one to control the other. I broke my engagement. I gave up the mystery of the Romance for a story that was much more predictable – which is to say, aloneness. Yet there was still an ache and longing for something and someone, I couldn’t quite define and felt agitated and betrayed b such feelings, I pushed them down refusing to be healed. I lived those years in a tangled web of fantasy divorced from present living and reality. The outer story became the theater of the should and the inner story the theater of needs, the place where we quench the thirst of our heart with whatever water is available – sexual fantasies, alcohol, violent videos… The heart deadens and the arrows win.
The things we do to protect and preserve our hearts usually end up hurting us more. To choose to shut your heart to love – so that you won’t be hurt – is to deny the very thing you are made for. To demand perfection of yourself so that no one will ever criticize you again is to lay an intolerable burden on your back.
We must renounce our childhood vows. They trap our hearts, pin them down. They destroy us by getting us to agree with the lies. The pain makes the message of the Arrow seem so true, so deep inside; we believe the lie and make the vow. It is important to break the vow so it may not have a strong hold on our hearts.”
The things we do… my heart cried again when I re-read those words. I’d like to say that when I read them the first time some 20 years ago I was able to heal the wounds and break the vows I made… was in the possess of making after being hurt… I didn’t though, I held on tight. Today I wonder how many remain and how they have shaped my experiences.
At the time when I added my thoughts to the authors words I noted a memory of my 10 year old self making a vow to not be hurt again. I wonder if it was the moment I became a Enneagram type 5. I don’t recall the circumstances only how lost the young boy was.
Read a novel over the holidays –
- The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife
by Anna Johnston. The author asked herself if someone could redeem another persons life and then wrote her book. I love the book, funny and poignant, definitely worth reading.
Redemption and forgiveness, second chances and Found Family…. I wonder about the lost young boy making vows and the now old man.
Prayer
Somewhere deep inside my heart is wounded within me. I fear to even open up these places, and yet I long to be free. So come, take me by the hand, and lead me into the Arrows of my heart. Only do not leave me there but lead me thought to the fields of gladness and joy. – John EldredgePeterParticipantHi Kane
Interesting thoughts. I’m with Helcat and not that interested in emotional mastery. The word ‘mastery’ itself may unintentionally suggest the creation tension between the mastered and un-mastered, resulting in a blockage vice flow.
My own experience and observation is that we are really, really bad at measuring and labeling our emotions and I suspect that sometimes naming and or measuring them we end up creating and getting stuck in them. A kind of chicken/egg thing. What comes first the emotion or the label?
Lately I’ve been trying to feel what it is I’m feeling without labeling or measuring them… what I notice is that when I do the heart and breathing slows down. What I’ve found is that, one I don’t tend to notice and so take the moment to pause and stop labeling for the more ‘positive’ emotions, and two, that behind the negative ones that I very much notice there is a constrictive feeling just above the gut. A kind of constant general anxiety and or fear. It seems that for me emotions arise from that general state. I suspect it has become a habitual default.
PeterParticipantThanks Anita.
Merry Christmas Everyone. May we all find space to pause and be content.
I am a dream made real by virtue of the world touching me. This is what I know.
I am spirit borne by a body that moves through the dream that is this living, and what it gathers to keep becomes me, shapes me, defines me. The dreamer I am is vivid when I fully inhabit myself – when I allow that. Meditation is not a isolated act of consciousness. It’s connection to the dream. It’s being still so that the wonder of spirit can flow outward, so that the world touches me and I touch the world. It’s leaving my body and my mind and becoming spirit again, whole and perfect and shining. – Richard Wagamese – Embers (one of my favorite books)Richard life was not a easy one, his painted canvas contained many difficult and dark bush strokes. Richard had to climb the mountain a few times. I feel he was someone who got to where he was going, realizing the mountains as mountains and was content, Transparent to the Transcendent.
PeterParticipantHi Adrianne
The season can be a challenge with all the expectations and maybe feeling like your missing out on the ‘magic’ and joy, especially when the past is in the present. Not the most comfortable place to be in my own experience.
As Anita suggests its ok to ask for space to take care of oneself and to pause.
While feeling anxious at these times I like take a moment and ponder the Christmas tree. How the ‘Ever Green’ represents the Eternal Now and from which we hang the ornaments of our memories and hopes. How the lights is caught by those ornaments and cast shadows and color on those memories. Perhaps seeing memories in this way, changing with the light and perspective, we find the way to release them or let them be, their is no exception in that silence.
It feels to me a reflection bitter sweet, the cry that is a laugh the laugh that is a cry.I ponder the wrapped gifts placed under the protection of the ‘Ever Green’. I wonder… The promise of the planting of a creative possibility, a gift I could never have realize was within and only needed to be allowed, unwrapped… The promise of the hidden and unknown gift, can that be enough? The unknown possibility what flower might spring bring. The Promise and protection of the ‘Ever Green’, that Spring will follow Winter their is no need to know.
A meditation by Richard Wagamese came to mind.
“I am my silence. I am not the busyness of my thoughts or the daily rhythm of my actions. I am not the stuff that constitutes my world. I am not my talk. I am not my actions. I am my silence. I am the consciousness that perceives all these things.
When I go to my consciousness, to that great pool of silence that observes the intricacies of my life, I am aware that I am me.
I take a little time each day to sit in silence so that I can move outward in balance into the great clamour of living.”I wish you true peace
PeterParticipantHi Anita
On the contrary I found it quite ‘enlightening’ to have someone reflect my thoughts back to me. The way I communicate can be… confusing, and you were kind enough to read what I wrote from a place of compassion. I felt that we were both trying to, get at a something…articulate what maybe can’t be articulated..
You seemed concerned when I expressed disappointment in the events of the day wondering if it was disillusionment. That surprised me and still pondering that. As in the other conversation with Jana, I don’t think the experiences of anger or disappointment are ‘wrong’ in and of them selves, or to be avoided. They just are and can be useful in getting us to act. Its the energies (and where the energy comes from, often emotions) we feed those experiences that matter. I’ll need to take some time to see if I’m been honest with myself as it concerns disillusionment.
I also feel selfish for engaging in analysis that I find so enjoyable, without fully considering how it came across to you.
LOL you may have some type 5 in you. 🙂 FYI the supper power of a type 5 is detachment and not taking things personally… detachment sadly is also its kryptonite.
You might notice I tend to stay away from the post asking for advice, especially relationship advice. To be candid I tend to post when I’m trying to make my own thoughts clearer and or see if I can express something I’ve experienced. More often then not what sounds so good in my head/heart doesn’t come out that way. The Tinny Buddha is I feel a safe place to do thatHope your having a good weekend.
PeterParticipantHi Jana
I think that when anger is fed by compassion it naturally transforms itself into compassion and any action taken moving in that direction of compassion.
Perhaps that’s the Buddhas message; that when you feed anger the energy of hate the resulting action becomes hate, but feed it the energy of compassion the resulting action is compassion… and maybe even ends the cycle?
“Even if bandits were to carve you up savagely, limb by limb, with a two-handled saw, he who gave rise to a mind of hate towards them would not be carrying out my teaching. Even then you should train yourselves thus… We shall abide with a compassion…”
(The point I was making, if very badly, is that the trap of feeding anger with hate is much easier to get caught up in in then feeding anger with compassion, but that is what the wisdom traditions ask that we train ourselves, even if bandits were carving us up savagely. It would in my opinion be a error to then assume compassion means we are not to defend ourselves/others or set boundaries, only that we do so from the still point of compassion.)
PeterParticipantHi Jana
I am not sure if I understand this: “… using the adrenaline boost from fear, anger and hate, which I then take on as ‘being’ – I am angry, I am hate… and compassion nowhere to be found. When ‘I am anger and or hate’ getting even is the most likely driving force behind my actions.” Can you elaborate on it and maybe write some specific situations?
First I will say anger is a valid emotion often calling us to pay attention and take actions. The question is what energy feeds that anger? Compassion, Love, Fear, Hate…
Its difficult to explain personal observation…
Take Scenario A: where you noticed a injustice, to yourself or others, and you need to decide to act or not act.
Scenario A-1: your at a content place in your life and taking action is going to get messy. You see the injustice with compassion and it breaks your heart. You know that its a wrong that needs to be righted… do you act?
Scenario A-2: Your at a content place in your life and taking action is going to get messy. You see the injustice with compassion and it breaks your heart. You know that its a wrong that needs to be righted.. and you feel angry about it… do you act.
In which Scenario are you more likely to act A-1 or A-2 and why?
My observation is that for most people to act they need the energy from anger to act. This is not a statement of good or bad, right or wrong, it just is. And its my observation that the danger is that we begin to feed that anger with energy of ego righteousness and when it get really bad hate which history provides many examples.
There is another trap of most wisdom traditions and that is the practice as a escape from engagement with life messiness.
The Buddha suggestion is to avoid both those traps is to always act from a place of compassion. Its easy to sit by the side of a lake and be still. Much more difficult to take that stillness with you as you engage with Life, but that is what the wisdom traditions call on us to do.
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Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 