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December 5, 2016 at 10:06 am in reply to: Is it really better to be alone than with the wrong person? #121970
PeterParticipantI struggle to feel its truth.
Clinging on to a relationship that I know is not what I want and not good for me because I’m so afraid of being alone and am unsure if there is anyone better out there..I firmly believe that we create what we fear. On the upside that also implies that we can create what we hope for, it’s just more difficult as it is the nature of fear to grab our attention, (And so intention), and once fear has our attention, it takes skill to look past it.
As long as you hold onto your fear of being alone and worry that something better “may or may not be out there” your relationships will always be at risk. Authenticity/nature/self/god demands that you to become and so you will find yourself recreating and reliving scenarios where you will be faced with this fear over and over again until you overcome it.
PeterParticipantFor what my opinion is worth
Trust your initial instinct of blocking all calls and creating a clean break.
Noting is worse than the drama of a on again off again relationship based on inferred intentions.
We can never know with certainty what another person is thinking or why they are doing what they want to do. However one would hope that a authentic relationship those involved would not have to to infer intention but could be honest with each other.That you are playing the inferring intention game could be a sign that the relationship is not authentic and that it is time to move on and seek out better. You deserve better.
Through personal experience and observation I know how strong the pull is leave the door open just a little after a break up. There are psychological reasons behind this need and overly simplified perhaps I might call it the ‘Just in case’ affect.
Keep the door open: Just in case something better doesn’t come along, Just in case I start feeling lonely
Just in case my ego needs the boost of knowing someone is waiting for me – control, just in case….Just in case isn’t good enough. Don’t accept Just in case from yourself or from others.
PeterParticipantIf I’m reading you post correctly you’re an intuitive introvert and a bit of a dreamer. Living more in your head then in the material world?
In an overly extroverted world qualities such as introversion and dreamer can be experienced as being at odds with everyone made worse as we imagine that everyone else’s life is so much bigger than our own.
Sometimes to get out of a cycle you have to fully enter it. Like getting caught in an undertow while swimming you can struggle or let go and let it run its course as you keep your eyes open for the moment to start swimming again.
Instead of fighting the qualities that are part of your authentic self my advice is to learn how to accept them. Once you accept them you will better understand how they are influencing your experiences and then what you need to do to grow.
Recommend: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
PeterParticipantPolitically I do think we are heading into a time of a shadow as it seems the lessons we learned through the experience of the horror of past destructive wars was not enough to remain conscious to the reality that we are our bothers keeper and in this together.
“we’re big and I guess we’re small – If you think about it man you know we got it all – Cause we’re all we got on this bouncing ball
PeterParticipantWe recreate and replay scenarios that our authentic self needs us to work through and become conscious of.
‘When the Past Is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds that Sabotage our Relationships’ by David Rich
We all have a tendency to transfer potent feelings, needs, expectations, and beliefs from childhood or from former relationships onto the people in our daily lives, whether they are our intimate partners, friends, or acquaintances. When the Past Is Present helps us to become more aware of the ways we slip into the past so that we can identify our emotional baggage and take steps to unpack it and put it where it belongs.
• Understand how the wounds of childhood become exposed in adult relationships—and why this is a gift
• Identify and heal the emotional wounds we carry over from the past so that they won’t sabotage present-day relationships
• Recognize how strong attractions and aversions to people in the present can be signals of own own unfinished business
• Use mindfulness to stay in the present moment and cultivate authentic intimacyPeterParticipantIn the natural world there is no such concepts of good, bad, justice… life is.
There is a time and rhythm for all things and at the core of our experiences of life rhythms is the reality that life lives of life, life requires the sacrifice of life. Every breath we take is a sacrifice of life, one form of life for another form. That is life’s awesomeness-it wonder and its fear.
It is I think as we experience the tension that comes about through the confrontation with that reality, sometimes through major life changing experiences but usually the accumulation of 1000 cuts, that we label our experience good and bad.
The question becoming is life, even as it must live off life be good? Can we say yes to life as it is and label it not only good but that it is Love?
In the story of genesis we are confronted with the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Note that it is not the knowledge of what is good and what is evil but only the awareness of a difference in our experiences that we might label good or bad. It is the awakening to the problem of opposites.
What is the good and what is the bad? How can something that feels good be bad? How can something I experience as bad be experienced as good by someone else? How is it that what is good one moment becomes bad in the next? How is it that good often arise from our deepest pain, and pain from our deepest good?
I might argue that it is the tension created by the problem of opposites that creates consciousness. (is consciousness a good?) As all the wisdom traditions teach us one of the steps in the art of becoming requires us reconcile the problem of opposites. Good and Bad are not opposites and so do not ‘win’ over the other.
But that answer does not help when you are in pain or witness the pain experienced by others so perhaps not your real question. What is the point of being good?
You must live your truths as you know them to be as you live life within your destiny.
There is no point in being good other than that is who you are. That must be enough in and of itself. Not for some future reward or fear of punishment but because you are being true to your authentic self. Yes you will get it wrong, yes others will hurt you but I truly believe that if you live your truths while being open to learning better and learning better doing better that that matters, and that is good.
I very much recommend the book Fault in our stars‘ by John Green who effectively through the power of story explores the question of the problem of good and evil and what is the point.
“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is probably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed.” ― John Green
“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.” ― John Green
That is the key – grateful- grateful for the good and the bad we experience, the experience of noticing that if we push through reveals itself as love.
My favorite song “The Riddle” – Five for Fighting
There was a man back in ’95
Whose heart ran out of summers
But before he died, I asked himWait, what’s the sense in life
Come over me, Come over meHe said,
Son why you got to sing that tune
Catch a Dylan song or some eclipse of the moon
Let an angel swing and make you swoon
Then you will see… You will seeThen he said,
Here’s a riddle for you
Find the Answer
There’s a reason for the world
You and I…Picked up my kid from school today
Did you learn anything cause in the world today
You can’t live in a castle far away
Now talk to me, come talk to meHe said,
Dad I’m big but we’re smaller than small
In the scheme of things, well we’re nothing at all
Still every mother’s child sings a lonely song
So play with me, come play with meAnd Hey Dad
Here’s a riddle for you
Find the Answer
There’s a reason for the world
You and I…I said,
Son for all I’ve told you
When you get right down to the
Reason for the world…
Who am I?There are secrets that we still have left to find
There have been mysteries from the beginning of time
There are answers we’re not wise enough to seeHe said… You looking for a clue I Love You free…
The batter swings and the summer flies
As I look into my angel’s eyes
A song plays on while the moon is high over me
Something comes over meI guess we’re big and I guess we’re small
If you think about it man you know we got it all
Cause we’re all we got on this bouncing ball
And I love you free
I love you freelyHere’s a riddle for you
Find the Answer
There’s a reason for the world
You and I..I love you free…
PeterParticipantI would love to work on improving myself if the rest of the world won’t change for me… I have to accept that we’re all humans but that is very hard for me to do.. It’s hard for me to lower my expectations. So please?
The rest of the world is not going to change for you however you can find happiness becoming the change you would like to see.
One of the things I noticed in your post is a concern for how others see you and then how that impacts how you see them.
No matter how intuitive a person maybe we can only imagine what other people are thinking and feeling and the reality is we are wrong most of the time. It is also true that people do not think about us as much as we imagine they do. Like us they are trying to work out their own issues.
The rule of charity suggests that if there are multiple possible explanations for some experience and there is no way to determine which is the correct on, pick the better story.
The truth is it’s usually not a matter of not being able to determine which explanation or story is correct but that we don’t ask or act to find out. Instead we tend to assume that we ‘know’ and more often than not pick the most negative story that then sends our experience spiraling downward.
My advice stop worrying about what you imagine others are thinking about and focus on the person you want to be. Like will attract like.
As above so below we are influenced – by focusing on your outer experience your sense of self will be influenced even determined by outer experiences of which you have little control if any.
As Below so above we influence – by focusing on your inner experiences and who you are, becoming the changes you want to see, you take ownership of your sense of self and in that way start to influence your outer experiences.
There is a suggestion to ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ Note that it does not say like.
The reality in life is that we will not always like everyone all the time, even those we love the most and that’s okThat’s the thing, you can still Love someone even in those time you might not like them. In fact those are the times when love is exercised and put into practice and not just some concept or feeling.
If you can connect to the Truth in that and let go of this fear of liking or not liking your heart will lighten.
Start by working on how you love yourself in those time when you might not like yourself or are disappointed in yourself. Can you acknowledge your humanity and still love yourself enough to do better when you learn better without the negative self-talk. Forgive your failings as you forgive the failings of others?
PeterParticipantSorry to be a naysayer
My opinion for what it’s worth – move on.By all means be upfront with him about what you want, but be honest, you don’t just want to be friends.
Any “lets be friends” conversation will likely be interpreted as you wanting something more anyway.Ask for what you really want and be ok with the answer. Yes or no
If you settle for maybe, “lets be friends” in all likelihood he is going to open and close this crack in the door over and over again and your worth more then that.
The end is in the beginning.
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Peter.
PeterParticipantSo what is Change? Everything changes but stays the same.
To “make America Great Again” is that a change or a regression?
As a call to return to some “magical” past would it not me more correct to call it a regression. But regression is also a change, if illusionary, as you “can’t step in the same river twice”. We fight to hold a moment that no longer exitsThe only thing that never changes is change which means everything stays the same but, perhaps as Nina points out, it is our perception of what we see that changes. The reality was always there we just never notice it and till we do, if always incompletely.
Gnosticism has always fascinated me as it is based on Gnosis, the knowledge of transcendence arrived at by way of interior, intuitive means. Yet the moment such knowing is codified and taught to others as the way such teaching is no longer Gnosis. I view Gnosis as an individual experience that might intuit change but not create it.
I’ve been reading quite about the Gnosis, Goddess, and shamanic cultures. One thing that I have noticed is that they were not able to stand up against the desert masculine god religions. I think that the reason is due to innovation. The above cultures are more likely to accept “life as it is” which has little energy for innovation and so easily overcome.
I see the current tension between the ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ movement in the same way. The conservative will always be more “innovative” in the ways of politics then the liberal
PeterParticipantI know you are correct Jeena
I’m just disappointed that the movement of awakening to this awareness changes so very little. The pendulum still must swing.
And this is the time of the shadow.PeterParticipantThank you all for all the responses.
I wrote the post after the US election and the disappointment I felt at seeing the American people fall under the influence of the shadow. Historically when nations give into the shadow it does not end well
It had been my hope that the movement of awakening consciousness would have rallied and point to a better way. Instead I saw the movement rendered helpless, we would not change and history will repeat itself. Worse I saw no energy to engage.
I understand that the principle of polarity and rhythm are realties of nature and that light changes to dark through the swing of the pendulum and that this realty are attributes of love as light and dark are not opposites but part of each other. Still I had hope.
I read the posts on the site and am equally discouraged as I hear story after story of people repeating there history in hopes of this time for sure things will change.
I am discouraged
Does accepting the world as it is, life as it is, mean we stop standing up for our truths as we understand them in the moment. Yes open to learning to do better when we know better but still be must stand.
Its sounds like a contradiction to simultaneously stand for your truths and act while at the same time accepting life as it is and that the present is exactly where it is meant to be. This is love
Only I’m not sure it worth it anymore.
Today is Remembrance Day. We remember so that we don’t repeat past horrors and yet as the services end and the people walk away we do forget.
I apologies for the rambling and what likely sounds like babble. I know what it is I want to say but seldom know how to say it.
I am disappointed that Love does not conquer all as the bitter and sweet, light and the dark are also qualities of love. I just tired of being in a time of darkness.
Melanie you my find David Richo book – How to be an Adult in relationships helpful.
Our expectations on what love should look and feel like within committed relationships are often at odds and can get in the way of the intimacy you are seeking. We tend to keep looking for that something and because we are always looking miss the moments when we have it.PeterParticipantI have similar struggles with negative thoughts and measuring myself against what I imagine other people’s lives are.
One of the questions I had to wrestle with as i attempted to work through this problem was the question of love itself and what it would look like to ‘love’ myself. Like Joni Mitchell I discovered I didn’t know love at all – “I’ve looked at love from both sides now from give and take, and still somehow it’s love’s illusions I recall I really don’t know love at all”
So essentially I was trying to learn to love myself when I didn’t have a clear picture or idea… of this thing called love.
(Today for me the word love contains qualities of meaning, purpose, accountability, discipline, spontaneity, authenticity… which might at first glance qualities that might appear to contradict but they don’t.)When you say you don’t love yourself what would loving yourself look like?
I also noted your comment about losing your ego which was also part of the struggle.
In in the west we tend to over identify with our ego – I am my ego, I am what I do, I am the roles I play… While the east negation of the ego has when practice unskillfully I think leads to the loss of sense of self and lethargy. The submission to caste and fate is a natural outcome to the loss of connection to our I and me.By negation of my ego I could find peace of mind and being (is this love?) but only as long as I removed myself from interaction with life as it was. I noted even Gautama had to leave his family. As I need food and shelter I didn’t see how this was going to work.
It seems to me that what I call the ego was an import part of the whole of who I was and that my attempt to negate it was like cutting off an arm or a leg. Through mediation I understood my ‘I’, my sense of self was not my ego, I was not what I did for a living, I was not my thoughts… I noticed however that it was my sense of I through which I set intention and was the part of me that was conscious. What is aware? I am. Limited though the I is, it is the part of the whole that experiences..
I am not my consciousness yet it is though the I that the I become conscious.
I began to think of my ego not as a CEO or captain but a kind of librarian that filtered information and experience, a communication channel that connected the unconscious, memory, filters… to the conscious and from that intention.
Anyway maybe that doesn’t make any sense or matter…. It just that I know that I’m not alone that my unskillful desire to lose my ego left me feeling listless and disconnected from my experiences (defiantly not love)
The shift from no longer trying to negate my ego but accept my sense of I as playing necessary role in my experience of becoming has help me let go of the negative thinking associated with the labels (usually based on comparison to others) I have applied to myself.
I am not my ego, however my ego is a part of the whole that is me, my authentic self, and as such has value.
The ego wasn’t something I had to lose but acknowledge… and well lovePeterParticipantThe nature of change is that it happens slowly then all at once. What I means is that we tend not to notice the string of small causes and effects until we notice the moment that of the big effect.
You say “I have zero ability to change even small matters”. The irony being that making that statement is one of the small causes that isn’t being noticed. Will the statement push you forward or will it be one more brick in the wall of the effect that is stuckness.
Viewed in this light the statement “I have zero ability to change even small matters” can only be false as every breath you take every thought you have, though the impact may be small, effect change. The difference perhaps is between active and passive Do we write our stories or do our stories write us?
One of the ways we get stuck in our stuckness is to expect change to happen immediately and exactly as we imagine. Such hope for change is more likely to prevent us from seeing and so nurturing the small causes that might actually lead to the change that would get us unstuck.
I think to influence the change that we want we have to create space to notice the small causes and nurture those that point in the direction we want to travel – however at the same time always aware that the direction we think we should go might not be the best path to get there.
- “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us” – Joseph Campbell
- We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot
When I read your post the word that came to mind was pause and then Claude Debussy quote “Music is the space between the notes”
When stuck in quick sand or a strong undertow the first step to getting out is to stop struggling.The first step in getting out of our stuckness is to remember to pause. The Pause is not simply an absence of content but intention that creates the content. Without the pause you would only have noise.
“In bullfighting there is an interesting parallel to the pause as a place of refuge and renewal. It is believed that in the midst of a fight, a bull can find his own particular area of safety in the arena. There he can reclaim his strength and power. This place and inner state are called his querencia. As long as the bull remains enraged and reactive, the matador is in charge. Yet when he finds his querencia, he gathers his strength and loses his fear. From the matador’s perspective, at this point the bull is truly dangerous, for he has tapped into his power.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a BuddhaStopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going by David Kundtz
PeterParticipantI also recommend the book ‘Learning to Fall’ by Philip Simmons for those fated to having to find the way out by going down.
Came across this Post which said what I was trying to say much better
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/permissiontolive/2012/07/learning-to-fall.html“Learning to Fall”. I came across this idea recently and it moved me. It’s from Philip Simmon’s book called “Learning to Fall”, and it is written from his perspective as a 35 year old husband, father and teacher diagnosed with a neuromuscular disease which killed him a few years later.
It’s the first time I have ever heard of “The Fall” as anything but this evil horrible disobedience of humanity that has led to all things that are wrong with the world. But it also speaks to me on a very basic level.
I used to think that being a Christian gave me this magic out. If I just lived the “right” way, and did all the “right” things, then life would be peaceful and calm, perfect as god was perfect. Whenever life was hectic, stressful, confusing or imperfect, I thought it was my fault. I just wasn’t being close enough to God.
As time has gone on since I took a break from my perpetual hamster wheel of trying to be close enough to God to be fixed from all my imperfection, I am slowly becoming OK with the imperfect.
I am a woman with an imperfect body, imperfect parenting abilities, imperfect housekeeping abilities, and imperfect relational knowledge. But even if I managed to make all of that perfect, it would still be impossible for me to control everything else. Like death, or illness, or loss of relationship. No matter how good I got at “standing on the solid rock” life was still out of balance.
And now, I’m OK with that. I’m learning to be OK with being unsteady, putting one foot in front of the other and stopping here and there to take a breath and catch my balance. I don’t have to pretend to have it all together anymore. Sometimes I am happy, sometimes I am not. Sometimes I am confident, sometimes I am depressed. Sometimes I feel beautiful, sometimes I don’t. And that doesn’t make me a bad or deficient person. Life throws curve balls. Life changes. Life isn’t always exactly what we planned. But, life is good, even though it isn’t perfect. In fact, all kinds of things are beautiful and good without being perfect. And in learning to be OK with falling, I’ve learned to be unashamed of getting back up. I’ve learned to embrace fear.
PeterParticipantSorry you’re having such a hard time.
I know when people say thinks like “it will get better” they mean well but often such statements come from their own need to believe it.It is not clear in your posts is your hope/prayer is passive or active. Passive hope can be destructive when it’s the type that waits for something to change. Perhaps magically, that if we just wish hard enough, pray hard enough things will change in the instant of our wishing.
The thing with change is that it is something that happens slowly and then all at once. Meaning we don’t tend to notice the little causes that have to happen before the effect is noticed. These little causes of changes could then already be taking place in your life.
Active hope is hope with eyes open, hope that seeks out those little causes and nurturing them till the day the hope is realized.
A part of the process of active hope is to refrain our experiences when we can. In your post you say everything has gotten worse and that you’re the type of person that a stranger can come to when they are in need. While you actively hope try paying more attention to this positive person who can be present to others. It’s a place to start.
The reality is we are all falling and have been since we took our first breath. How we fall, ah there is the trick. Arms and legs frantically flailing or like a sky diver, arms and legs spread out, enjoying the ride.
I am reminded of a story of a sparrow trapped in an empty grain silo frontally seeking out each ray of light that appeared through various cracks in the wall only to find they were not big enough to get through. Defeated the sparrow lays exhausted on the floor failing to notice the dark tunnel that if traveled would take it under the wall and out of the silo
There are those that find their way out seeking the light however for many the way out is not up but down.
The Art of Falling – by Kathryn Craft
“All Penny has ever wanted to do is dance—and when that chance is taken from her, it pushes her to the brink of despair, from which she might never return. When she wakes up after a traumatic fall, bruised and battered but miraculously alive, Penny must confront the memories that have haunted her for years, using her love of movement to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.” -
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AuthorPosts
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. 