Hi Peter

That is good. I was just checking because I didn’t want to overstep. I see it as an exploratory dialogue too. It is helpful to have someone to bounce ideas off of. It helps to create new ideas that I could not have thought of by myself.

Not at all! I am just too literal. 😂 Thank you for your patience and clarifying.

Oh yes. An example of unskillful hope would be avoidance. I want to stay safe and prevent myself from being hurt. By avoiding, it actually increases the fear, whilst actively confronting the fear lessens it as you realise that you are safe and have the skills to look after yourself. Realising that so many good things are missed out on for the desire to stay safe from a thing that is unlikely to happen.

(When I said you here, I didn’t mean you Peter)

Very true, we are often blinded by our own perspectives and feelings. Your perspective has been really insightful, so I’m glad that you shared it.

I think that you’re onto something with desire there!

Unfortunately, I don’t understand the reference. I’m gutted. 😂 Can you tell me the answer?

Love, peace and forgiveness! ❤️🙏

Dear Peter:

“I suspect a notion that most children have of being wrong is behind most of our struggles. Mine came from religion. I see in my journal quite a few attempts at trying to come to terms with the notion of ‘original as my understanding of ‘original sin’ was and is firmly connected to disobedience. (As I write that I notice anger – all the times I was told I could fix by obeying and didn’t question so much. FYI telling a type 5 not to question is telling them not to be.)”-

– The concept of original sin originates from the biblical account of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden, resulting in (my words), God overreacting to the smallest obedience imaginable by expelling humanity into a lifetime of Failure to Fix. Because you can’t fix an inherent fault that you were born with (“Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me”, Psalms 51:5, a fault that all humans share and no one can escape, prevent or avoid (“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, Romans 3:23), an utterly Unfixable Flaw, one that is beyond cure (“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure”, Jeremiah 17:9)

Guilt and shame are powerful tools for controlling people. By internalizing the shame and guilt that accompany the concept, people are easily controlled within families and societies.

You felt anger, Peter, when reflecting on how you were told that you could “fix” yourself by obeying without question, having your natural curiosity and individuality suppressed for the sake of fixing what authority insists cannot be fixed. It’s a deception- to push people to fix what is stated as unfixable.

You wait your whole life for the reward (being declared Good… Finally), a reward that never comes for a lifetime (and then you are promised the reward posthumously: heaven).

“I read a book way back ‘Surprised by Joy’ and thought their should be a book ‘Surprised by depression’ as it tends so sneak up on me. I’m never quite sure why but there it is”- Much of my life I was depressed because I believed that I was inherently faulty, unacceptable, bad (the personal presentation of original sin that I was subjected to).

The unexpected joy were moments when I forgot. I forgot what I just stated. These were precious breaks, only moments, or short periods of time because I quickly remembered or I was reminded.

Skillful Hope then is about no longer feeling joy or hope when forgetting, but feeling these while remembering, remembering that we were good at the start, at our very beginnings, not faulty at all. Abandoning Original Sin, Adopting Original Innocence…?

anita

Dear Peter:

“It seems you, Anita and I struggle with a similar deep wound of having been told who we were and believing it”- this is where labeling is necessary as I see it: we have to label parts of what we were told and believed about ourselves False, and what we are growing into believing- True.

Repeating positive affirmations in regard to new beliefs is not enough. The labeling has to advance farther, to be made clearer and more comprehensive, to sink in deeper and deeper. As I imagine the child-me right now, the young child- I feel resistance to the label “good”. I doubt it. Of course, impatience with this resistance can only backfire. Maintaining anger toward my mother, the person who introduced and instilled the bad-label, has proven ineffective, having backfired and kept me stuck.

* Thank you Peter for making me realize the above about my anger for the first time in my life, here on your thread!

It’s natural to not change core beliefs, such as I-am-bad, quickly and thoroughly. There are too many neurons and pathways between neurons, too much interplay between neuropathways to allow a simple, quick change.

“I think you defined Skillful hope best in the previous post ‘My Hope now is to say YES to me being me'”- The belief and label I-am-good is necessary for the purpose of me saying YES to being me.

Question is: what is good and was I born good? I think that we are born with the need and desire to please our caregivers, a survival need which can be seen as “good” because it’s about pleasing people. I believe that this early desire to please caregivers and other adults in our early lives, like teachers, can be expanded into a desire- as adults- to help people who are in pain and in need for help even though such help/ pleasing-others is not needed for our own personal survival.

I think that this is what is making me a good person today: the desire and commitment to do-no-harm coupled with a desire and commitment to help- not for self-centered or selfish purposes but because of a sense of connection with other humans, as in: we are all in the same boat: when I help you, I help myself; when I help myself, I help you.

“The hero’s Hope was that when times were hard and victory unlikely, they would stand and press forward remaining true to themselves and their friends… I think, if I dare to hope, it is the fool’s hope”- my goal then is to remain true to my commitments to do-no-harm and to help others and myself regardless of external circumstances.

After all, in the past I was miserable not only in bad external circumstances, but also in good external circumstances, sooner or later, because I believed that I was a bad person and understandably, I didn’t believe that it was right that I’d be true to a bad person. There is a line from a song that comes to my mind, translated: “a man lives within himself’, or “inside himself”. Peace of mind, thriving in life cannot take place in the external locations and circumstances of our lives unless it predominantly takes place in that short distance between our ears.

“Even with all the positive work we have done to return to that ‘stillness where no work is required’, we can still slip into depression. Wounds can heal but forgetting and transforming memory is another thing. Even the transformed memory remembers its source… A beginners mind would then be a mind free of Karma, free of attachment to memory. Easier said then done. I am reminded of that quote – that we see the world not as it is but as we are”- very well said!

“Hope it seems is not for wimps”- an original expression, articulated by Peter who is indeed not a wimp at all 🙂

anita

Dear Peter:

Quotes from my journals right here on your thread, Jan 11-29, 2025:

“Early in childhood, maybe I was six, maybe younger, don’t remember, I placed myself on hold so to accommodate my mother’s needs, as I perceived those to be. My needs became strangers to myself. The first vow I made was to be a good girl, a good daughter, so that my mother will like me. I feel like a little girl now, the girl that was put on hold for so long, too long. The denied little girl is here, typing these words: “Here I Am!”

It is only recently that I understand and practice self- compassion in the place of harsh self- criticism. This shift is a new practice for me.

I felt too guilty to become an autonomous entity, too guilty to exist outside my mother. Now, I can call it emotional enmeshment, a psychological entrapment. I craved freedom from her for more than half a century. There in the home I grew up in, there was no ME. There was ONLY her. Feeling disconnected from myself and from others was my brand of living- dying. I didn’t really know what I wanted. Had a sense of aimlessness, as if I was drifting through life without direction or meaning.

Growing up, joy and excitement were muted, absent except for when daydreaming while listening to music when I was alone. This persistent sense of disconnection led to my experience of chronic anxiety, hopelessness, helplessness, physical fatigue and exhaustion on a regular basis.

Trying to fix others by excessive intellectual analysis has been an ineffective habit of mine for the longest time. People need to be given space for their emotions to breathe, so to speak, a quiet space that’s not afforded when being the recipients of noisy analyses.

I remember how difficult it was for me to make choices that were the simplest choices for other people to make, such as which flavor to choose in an ice-cream shop. I stood there in a state of analysis-paralysis because my emotions (including ice-cream flavor preference) were, like I said earlier, strangers to me.

What I understand (for the first time in my life!) is that there is a difference between healthy boundaries and unhealthy boundaries. Unhealthy boundaries are those that are based on a negative foundation, which is the ongoing, long-term emotional experience of hurt and anger. It is exhausting, and it keeps the person hurt and angry way after boundaries have been established, while the person is no longer in the situation where he/ she is disrespected or abused. It means a life filled with hurt and anger that no longer serve to establish boundaries because such have already been established.

Healthy boundaries are based on positive foundations such as self-respect, personal value, and emotional well-being, rather than negative emotions. So, what a person with healthy boundaries experiences on a long-term basis (after boundaries have been established and while they are maintained) is not hurt and anger, but self-respect and peace of mind. Ongoing, long-term, chronic hurt and anger hinder personal growth, while ongoing self-respect, self-esteem and peace of mind promote personal growth.

So, as I retell my story with the hurt and anger, with labels that maintain the hurt and anger, I hinder my personal growth. My true self is one that no longer lives under the dark cloud of hurt and anger, but one who sees the light come through and feels its warmth.

I am… I don’t have words to describe this newness of this in my mind and heart. It will take time to take it in further. Thank you is not saying enough.

Personally, I have been heavily obstructed by my past, living under a very dark cloud of past hurts, sadness and anger, jealousy and envy, a deep sense of injustice. There is no way to find light under a dark cloud (beyond a moment here, a moment there, moments far in between). Got to transcend my past, to rise above it. To experience the Eternal Now.

I was a prisoner of the same-old, same-old pain of my childhood+ for longer than half a century, frozen in place, minimal, a life suffocated by the fear of (the same childhood) pain. It’s as if I was waiting the whole time for the pain to go away so that I can stand up and dare to breathe. It never happened and I remained on the ground being stared down by the pain, so to speak, while what I needed was to stand up and look it in the eye.

Transcending the fear of pain long- term then is a shift from minimizing myself so to feel less pain => maximize myself so to better be able to endure pain and enjoy the consequence of such endurance: joy as a way of life.

This reminds me of the chest-opener positions of yoga- expanding the heart, the shoulders, the upper back, undoing the common hunching over (contracted) positions of sitting. There is a sensation of power when I do every morning. I now need to do more of it, more expansion, opening myself to the experience of life from the position of strength and hope.

By accepting both comfort and discomfort as integral parts of the human experience, individuals can develop greater resilience and emotional intelligence.

Generally, we live in the Eternal Realm and in the Temporal Realm. it is not possible to live, as humans, in one or the other. It’s about living in both.

My Hope now is to say YES to me being me, a person who is no longer primarily suppressed and repressed, but expressed according to the values I believe in (do-no-harm is one).

The tragedy that hit me and stayed persistently for decades, is the accusation that I was a bad person, and that I was a bad person from a time before I had a chance to have a say about it: a chance to correct any (what?) bad deeds. The accusation just fell from the skies (my mother= god) and crushed me for so very long.

Running through an imaginary field of green grass, the gentle sun above, a child running, falling, lying on the ground frozen in time for decades, then getting up, an older woman resuming the run across field of green grass. Perhaps briskly walking across, don’t think I can run, not like a child ca run. Too hard for my aging knees.

I think that this is what is making me a good person today: the desire and commitment to do-no-harm coupled with a desire and commitment to help- not for self-centered or selfish purposes but because of a sense of connection with other humans, as in: we are all in the same boat: when I help you, I help myself; when I help myself, I help you”.

anita

* correcting myself: Problem is that as much as we want change, we also resist changing. We don’t resist change when the change is removal of pain, or when it’s pleasure that wasn’t there before. We’d welcome such change instantly! It’s change-the-verb that we resist.

anita