* one more thing before I return tomorrow: for the changing we’re talking about to last long enough to create a lasting change, a person has to be rewarded along the way in the context of connecting to others. For example, I referred to you earlier as “cute”. First you perceived it somewhat negatively, and then you applied the rule of charity and considered a positive motivation on my part. If next, you let the affection that I felt and expressed to you, if you let that affection reach deeper within you, if it made you smile and feel warm inside- that’s the kind of reward I am talking about. Without such rewards along the way, there’s nothing to motivate our social nature to continue the changing.

anita

Dear Peter:

“In my old journal writings, I also noted that I would try to do no harm. Next to it was a thought that if wisdom teaching weren’t leading a person towards compassion they were on the wrong track. I feel we are on the good track”- the commitment to do no harm suggests an intention to lead a life guided by kindness, ethical behavior, and a desire to avoid causing pain or suffering to others.

Alongside your commitment to do no harm, you had the realization that true wisdom teachings should lead a person towards compassion. In other words, any philosophical or spiritual teachings that do not foster compassion and empathy are misguided or incomplete. For you, the essence of true wisdom involves nurturing a compassionate heart.

* An example of a philosophical teaching that does not foster compassion for others is Objectivism where compassion for others is not a primary ethical consideration, and acts of compassion are only encouraged if they align with one’s own rational self-interest.

I agree with you, Peter, and I am glad that we are on the right track.

“Over the last week I’ve falling into the shadows feeling stuck. Going over the post in this thread I wrote the following… A part of me still attached to the original shame that I’m bad… A shame reinforced by the retelling of old stories… One might wonder if I’m out to punish myself and so deserve even seek out the shadows… oh”-

– the retelling of these stories triggers a deep sense of shame that is still attached to the stories you tell about your past experiences. You reflect on the possibility that you might be unconsciously punishing yourself by continually revisiting these painful memories. You question whether you deserve to seek out the shadows, indicating a possible belief that you are somehow deserving of this suffering. In other words, by repeatedly telling yourself these negative stories, you might be perpetuating a cycle of self-punishment and keeping yourself stuck in a negative emotional state. You recognize the destructive nature of this cycle but is struggling to break free from it.

“Unskillful reasons I retell and hold onto my stories of hurt? I re-tell my stories in the hopes that by retelling them I can change them. I re-tell my stories with a thought that I need to hold onto the hurt to maintain boundaries. I re-tell my stories as away to imagine I’m hurting those that hurt me. I re-tell my stories to punish myself”-

– You believe that holding onto the hurt helps you maintain boundaries. This implies that the pain from past experiences serves as a protective mechanism, preventing you from getting too close to others and potentially being hurt again. However, this strategy also isolate you and hinders the formation of healthy relationships.

You imagine that by retelling your stories, you are somehow hurting those who hurt you. This reveals a desire for retribution or justice, that reliving the pain allows you to take back some power, but in reality, it perpetuates the cycle of suffering.

While the retelling of stories might provide temporary comfort or a sense of control, they ultimately keep you trapped in a cycle of pain and prevent healing and growth.

“As we have explored we have noticed, if only peripherally, the Eternal. Realizing the relationship between the temporal and eternal is the sense of life. This realization itself isn’t hope but that the realization is possible maybe…”- if you see Peter from the Eternal perspective”-

– From the Temporal viewpoint, your identity is heavily defined by your past actions and experiences, leading to a narrow and often harsh self-judgment. This perspective lacks a sense of compassion and forgiveness for yourself. From the Eternal perspective, your inherent worth and value as a human being is untouched by your past mistakes or experiences, and therefore, you are deserving of love and compassion.

From the Eternal viewpoint, your true essence is not defined by your temporal struggles but by timeless truths such as your capacity for growth, resilience, and transformation, healing and evolving beyond your past. The Eternal perspective is compassionate. It recognizes that everyone has flaws and makes mistakes, but these do not diminish our worth. It encourages self-forgiveness and a deeper connection to universal principles such as love, empathy, and interconnectedness. Embracing the Eternal perspective can help us move beyond self-judgment and shame, and towards a more balanced and loving understanding of ourselves.

“So, the question is. How do we go from ‘knowing’ to living and resting in what we have learned?”- knowing + self compassion and forgiveness = living and resting in what we have learned.

“I think I’m asking why do I continue to fall into shadow?”- I think that it is Shame who is tripping you, again and again, causing you to fall.

“How is it we see but do not see?”- There are moments when we see and rejoice, hopeful, in what we see. We see bright blue, open skies. But then Shame- like a dark cloud- obscures the sunlight and we can’t see.

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead, you relax, and float.”― Alan Watts”-

– Just as trying to grab hold of the water while swimming can cause you to sink, clinging to Shame keeps you stuck in a cycle of negative emotions. Letting yourself to float can be a metaphor for releasing the grip of shame and trusting in your inherent worth. Overcoming shame involves trusting that you are enough as you are, without needing to prove your worth or relive past mistakes. It’s about allowing yourself to be carried by the current of self-compassion and acceptance. It’s about being gentle with yourself and accepting that you are human, deserving of love and forgiveness, leading to a sense of inner peace.

It’s about moving beyond the shadows of shame and finding lightness in self-acceptance.

After I started this post, Peter, I noticed that you submitted 2 new posts. I want to respond to them in this reply, connecting them to the topic of Shame:

(1) Your post before last: About Frodo and Sam: Frodo’s journey is marked by carrying a heavy burden—the One Ring. This burden parallels the weight of shame that you feel, seems to me. Just as the ring weighs on Frodo, shame weighs on you, affecting your ability to fully engage with life. Frodo’s inability to destroy the ring can be seen as a metaphor for the difficulty of overcoming deep-seated shame.

Frodo’s experiences, including the loss of his parents and the hardships of his quest, took a toll on his youthful innocence. Similarly, your past experiences and the shame attached to them eroded your sense of self-worth and innocence (the reason why it was difficult for you to accept the compliment “cute”, which implies youthful innocence).

“I think I saw Sam as the Hero because I wanted to be him. To emerge from the quest with the kind wise innocence needed to continue to engage in life after all the hardships. In hindsight it makes sense to me that I saw Frodo as failing and Sam as the hero. I wanted to be Sam and knew I wasn’t.”-

– It seems that your admiration for Sam and your perception of Frodo’s struggle resonate deeply with your own experiences. You see Sam as the hero because he embodies the qualities you aspire to: emerging from hardships with a kind and wise innocence, able to re-engage with life despite the challenges he faced.

Your wish to be like Sam reflects a longing to move beyond the weight of shame and fully embrace life. However, the acknowledgment that you see yourself more as Frodo, who carries a profound burden and finds it hard to re-engage with life, highlights the impact of your shame. This contrast between Sam and Frodo mirrors your inner struggle, as I see it: on one hand, you desire to be free from the shadows of shame and to engage with life as Sam does. On the other hand, you feel the persistent weight of shame, similar to Frodo’s burden, which hinders your ability to fully re-engage.

(2) Your most recent post: your references Krishnamurti’s argument, as I see it, expresses that a desire to overcome shame creates internal conflict, the shame becomes more entrenched as you try to force change.

You draw a parallel to Frodo’s inability to destroy the ring, suggesting that some burdens (like shame) are not for us to forcefully change or eliminate. Instead, they must be processed in their own time and space. This relates to the notion that overcoming shame requires patience, acceptance, and self-compassion rather than forceful action.

You note the theme of movement arising and returning to stillness, sound to silence, and time to the eternal. This cyclical nature reflects the process of healing from shame. Just as sound arises from silence and returns to it, your emotions (including shame) arise and can return to a state of peace.

“I feel I’m being asked to trust.”- I am going to connect this sentence to what I wrote to you yesterday. I wrote: “to create a lasting change, a person has to be rewarded along the way in the context of connecting to others. For example… if you let that affection reach deeper within you, if it made you smile and feel warm inside- that’s the kind of reward I am talking about. Without such rewards along the way, there’s nothing to motivate our social nature to continue the changing.”-

– to create a lasting change and to let it happen naturally, trust is crucial, trust in at least one person who tells you (as I do now): you are a good person, Peter. You deserve peace of mind. You deserve forgiveness- your own and others’. You made mistakes, you miscalculated, but who hasn’t. It’s human to make mistakes.

As I think about my mistakes, the most regrettable ones, the ones accompanied by the most intense shame and guilt, I still regret them just as much as I regretted them before. But I know that, being unable to go back in time and change things, the shame serves no purpose (I know-know it, I see- see it). Shame doesn’t help me; it doesn’t help anyone else. So, I let it go, the shame and guilt. I let them go rationally and naturally.

Shame and guilt (referring to your yesterday quote by Alan Watts) are still present in the water in which I swim, but I don’t grab hold of them, and therefore, I don’t sink.

Shame and guilt are still there in the shadow of my life, but (using your words from yesterday), I no longer “continue to fall into shadow”.

I suppose it’s about no longer sinking, no longing falling into shame and guilt. It takes trusting at least one person outside yourself who confidently tells you that you are a good person, peter, and that it is okay- for you personally- not to sink, but to RISE; not to fall, but to STAND STRONG.

anita

Dear Peter:

You wrote yesterday: “I think, as you noted, the notion of understanding excites me and doing so keeps its at arms length. There is a part of me that wants to ‘believe’ what I believe but another that is afraid. Its clear I use ‘seeking’ to protect me finding”-

– You use the act of seeking as a protective mechanism: by continuously searching for understanding, you avoid the more unsettling reality of actually finding and accepting deeper truths. This perpetual state of seeking allows you to maintain a sense of safety and control, while keeping the transformative impact of true understanding at bay.

This internal conflict highlights the delicate balance between the desire for growth and the fear of the changes it might bring.

Change is intimidating when it forces us out of our comfort zones and challenges our established ways of thinking and living. Seeking and finding deeper truths can lead to uncharted territories, where old beliefs are dismantled and new, unfamiliar perspectives are adopted. It requires letting go of the familiar and embracing the unknown.

Finding and accepting truths often involves confronting aspects of ourselves that we prefer to avoid. This could include acknowledging past mistakes, confronting deep-seated fears, or recognizing personal limitations and flaws. Such self-confrontation is emotionally unsettling.

You might be afraid of the responsibility that comes with acting on these truths: making difficult decisions and taking actions that align with these new understandings. You might be afraid of not being able to live up to the expectations set by these new truths, or failing to make the necessary changes effectively.

Our beliefs and understandings are a core part of our identity. Discovering and accepting new truths can feel like a threat to this identity, leading to a fear of losing a sense of self.

In essence, your fear stems from the potential upheaval that comes with truly finding and accepting deeper truths. The process of seeking feels safer and more controlled, allowing you to keep these unsettling realities at arm’s length. By staying in a state of seeking, you can avoid fully confronting these fears and the changes they might necessitate.

James Clear in Atomic Habits:

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become”- instead of desiring change and creating conflict, focus on small actions that align with your desired identity. This shifts the focus from wanting change to actively embodying it in the present.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems”- reduce the conflict by creating systems (habits and routines) that support your desired changes. This way, change becomes a part of your routine rather than a constant source of tension.

“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress”- progress comes from consistent actions and systems, not from a constant desire for change. This alleviates the inner conflict by focusing on the process.

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement”- embrace small, consistent habits that lead to growth over time, rather than being in conflict with the desire for immediate change.

“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision”- start with small decisions that align with your desired state, reducing the internal struggle by focusing on manageable steps.

“When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy”- find joy in the journey itself, which helps to end the conflict between where you are and where you want to be.

“You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results”- focus on your direction and long-term growth, rather than being caught up in immediate outcomes and creating conflict within yourself.

By letting go of the dependency on outcomes and embracing the process, you can end the duality of form (physical results) and formless (internal state).

Every significant achievement begins with a single decision and small steps. You can start with small actions that align with your desired change. Each small decision can build momentum, transforming over time into significant growth.

Finding joy and satisfaction in the journey, rather than waiting for the end result, is the way of progress. If you enjoy the process, you’ll be more motivated, regardless of the outcome.

anita

Dear Peter:

* I am adding this note after I concluded this post, right before submitting it: I started this post with the motivation of (again) trying to fix another person (you, in this case), but ended it with realizing something I need to fix within myself.

Peter, Sept 26, 2016: “It is in my opinion that it is our karma, our filters, that make it difficult to authentically love ourselves and loving ourselves, loving others, setting in motion the limits of our experiences… It is my belief or maybe it is a hope, that learning to authentically love ourselves creates the space to reshape our karmic story and so create the relationships that we yearn for. A reward not for following the rules and doing everything right but because it is, life is, and we are”-

– Our karma (the sum of our actions and their consequences) and our mental filters (the ways we perceive and interpret ourselves and others) can make it difficult to love ourselves and others. When we struggle to love ourselves, it impacts our ability to love others. Essentially, the way we view ourselves influences the quality and depth of our connections with others.

This message of more than 8 years ago is about the transformative power of self-love. This transformation isn’t about perfection or external achievements, but about embracing our true selves and the inherent goodness of life. By accepting the present moment without constantly categorizing experiences as positive or negative, we can find a deeper sense of peace and contentment.

Peter, Sept 28, 2016: “I would constantly replay conversations and past memories of perceived failings, longing for do overs, if only, should have, could have, a consent stream of negative self-talk. Of course I was aware of all the self-help advice to change the stories and think positive however I wasn’t able to do that… Worse I added the failure of not being able to create a better story or positive thinking to the list to make myself feel worse… essentially beating myself up for beating myself up, for beating myself up, for feeling bad, for feeling bad, for feeling unhappy, for feeling unhappy….. (Which is what I was addicted to, feeling something by feeling bad about myself)”-

– a habit of replaying conversations and past memories, focusing on perceived failings. You realized that trying to replace negative stories with positive thinking wasn’t working for you. Instead, you practiced stopping telling stories altogether in those moments. Instead of filling the space with analysis or positive thinking, you focuses on taking a breath and being present with what you were currently doing.

The lure to detach fully from feelings was a temptation for you, but you found that not filling every space with stories or analyses (positive or negative) helped you create a space to be present and avoid getting lost in frantic inner reactions.

Peter, Oct 11, 2016: “Depression is insidious, a vampire that sucks away ones creative energy, a zombie bite turning you into one of the living dead… I suspect my experience of depression is more Zombie like as it relates to the stories I tell myself and put on repeat, leaving me in a state where I feel I’m living life as one already dead… I am depressed because I am depressed because I am depressed..”.

Peter, Oct 19, 2016: “Loving ourselves means we live our truths in grace so that when we learn better we might do better. Holding ourselves accountable not out of anger or sense of justice but because that is how we learn who we are and experience meaning and purpose…We use hate and anger to hold others accountable, (and sometimes ourselves)… We say yes to life as it is by living our truths as authentically as we know them while being open to learning better. We will get it wrong just as the other we love will get it wrong yet in grace we create the space were everyone involved might become more conscious and awaken to who we are”-

– Grace: treating ourselves with kindness, patience, and understanding. Through compassionate accountability, we can learn about our true nature and find meaning and purpose in life. This process helps us grow and evolve. People often use negative emotions like hate and anger to hold others accountable, and sometimes even themselves, but this approach is counterproductive and harmful. Everyone makes mistakes, both ourselves and those we love. Acceptance of this imperfection is essential. By living with grace and understanding, we create an environment where everyone can grow, become more conscious, and awaken to their true selves. This space of grace allows for mutual growth and deeper connections.

In essence, this post is about the transformative power of self-love and compassionate accountability. By living authentically and with grace, we can foster personal growth, meaning, and deeper connections with others. This approach encourages a positive and supportive environment where everyone can become more aware and true to themselves.

Fast forward to Dec 18- 21, 2024: “I’ll be honest and say that sometimes to take action, I rely on the passion of righteous righteousness. Or using the adrenaline boost from fear, anger and hate… 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… 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”-

– When anger is fed by compassion, it naturally transforms into compassion. This means that the initial anger can be channeled through a compassionate mindset, leading to actions that are compassionate rather than vengeful or harmful. By integrating compassion, the intense energy from anger can be used for constructive and compassionate actions, leading to more positive outcomes.

Jan 27, 2024: “Today I reject that theology of ‘original sin’. If I were to think in terms of original sin, defining sin as in missing the mark, I will argue it’s ‘shame’. The undeserved shame of believing our ‘naked’ True self is ‘wrong’ even ‘bad’ and needing to be covered up. If you think about it, we’re born naked and then will spend most of our lives trying to get back to being ‘naked”-

– The quest to be “naked” again metaphorically represents your desire, my desire to return to a state of authenticity, free from the layers of shame, negative self-talk, and societal expectations. Our true, “naked” selves are inherently good and the journey of life is about shedding the layers that obscure our authenticity.

Your posts collectively illustrate your journey towards self-discovery and authenticity. Your quest to be “naked” again is about shedding the layers of shame and negative narratives to return to a state of authentic self-love and compassion. This journey involves embracing the inherent goodness of life and oneself.

* As I was preparing this post, Peter, I felt embarrassed about my yesterday’s post to you because as I read your past posts quoted above, I realized that you already have a deep understanding of the concepts I communicated to you, and you definitely read may more books than I ever read in regard to these concepts.

I felt like I was preaching to someone who didn’t need it, with the unintended tone of “I know better”, a tone that I believe ran through a lot of my posts to members in the forums over the years, a tone that undoubtedly turned people off to my input.

Maybe this sense of superiority has been a way to protect myself from deep feelings of inferiority. I suppose that by asserting an attitude of I-know-better superiority, I felt more empowered, less vulnerable.

True confidence and self-worth come from self-acceptance and authenticity, not from feeling superior to others. Embracing humility and empathy can help me connect more deeply with myself and with others.

Removing this sense o superiority is not something I was born with. Metaphorically, it’s a layer of clothing that covered my nakedness (authentic vulnerability). The quest to be naked again- I realize today- involves removing this layer off of me and being vulnerable again, as in: I am neither more nor less than anyone else.

I realize the above without much shame because prior to this morning, over the last few years, there’s been a significant reduction of shame within me, so the embarrassment I felt this morning (which I am not feeling right now) did not land on a minefield of accumulated shame and catch fire, overwhelming me. This is .. truly nice.

anita