Hi Helcat!

I miss this chat and especially you and Anita. I have had a busy summer, and find myself missing talking with you guys but not liking the part where I have to come to my computer and type. I wish we could have an in person book club or some other way of meeting. Even a set time every week on this site when we come and chat back and forth about current life 🙂 what do you think?

“Haha I doubt it is your first go around either. There was a Buddha that would predict how many lifetimes it would take to achieve enlightenment. It usually measured in the hundreds.”

I think you are right, that this is not my first go around. Honestly it feels like this has been a very pivotal lifetime for me so far, because I’ve had some major shifts, that afterwards looking back on myself realize I was not seeing things clearly as they are. My constant intention is to see things as they are. It can still be a haze sometimes though, where I feel like my thoughts and emotions are clouding truth. I am proud to even be aware of that haze though. I know I still have habits and triggers that cloud my vision, third eye. I wonder how many lifetimes it has taken for me to get to this place of seeing the fog and trying to see through it. If in this lifetime I can not only notice there is haze, but also learn to not let it cloud my vision, I would say it was an incredibly pivotal lifetime and I’m excited to start the next at that checkpoint 🙂

“Well the goal is for a soul to eventually achieve enlightenment and apparently the human realm is the only realm in which enlightenment can be achieved.  It is very curious. For you interest, the other realms are gods, demi gods, ghosts, animal and hell.”

Do you think our souls get to choose? or is the idea that it is some sort of order we are all put in.. to become gods? I want to learn more.

“I definitely see those things in you. You have a very special soul and are a wonderfully open person. I always liked people who are like this, it takes a lot of courage. “

🙂 <3. Recently I am finding myself draw more people like this into my life and it is so refreshing. I met a special soul while I was recently in Colorado, his very open and light heart was so curious to me. We decided to go to a concert together and found me had this openness in common which made for just awesome conversation and connection 🙂

“I don’t know what your beliefs about souls are? If you have any I’d like to hear them. “

It is definitely a developing belief. Right now I feel like souls radiate at different frequencies and those frequencies are where they live. Victim mindset being a low frequency for example and drawing to it more events and people on the same frequencies, sort of like self fulfilling prophecy. I think souls get stuck in those cycles. I think I have gotten stuck in cycles. On a high frequency I think of someone who is unattached to earthly possessions, and souls who see every day as a new day, and every experience as new, not seeing things through the lens of their past. I want to get there, but I still notice myself analyzing other people and situations based off of my past, but I don’t think that is seeing things ‘as they truly are.’ I’d also like to believe that souls pass on with the knowledge or Karma, that they accumulated from past lives.

Seaturtle

Dear Anita,

“a recent awakening for me has been to see myself in a positive, empathetic light: something I needed to see so badly and for too long.”

– wow, I keep running into this within myself and others, being seen. You saw me in a positive and empathetic light 🙂 If we treat others how we are treating ourselves on the inside, then I’d say this forum is probably a great place to see others–> see yourself.. do you think so?

I wrote the above before seeing your next line. 🙂

Something I am learning about myself, through the special person, we will call K, revealed to me very intensely. He asked so many questions about me, my upbringing and surroundings, because he genuinely wants to understand me. However,
as I would express myself, I recognized in me, that after a certain amount of time talking I would start to feel like I was making things too much about myself. And I start to tap out, get shy and not want to talk about myself anymore. I think this applies to this forum as well. I think to come here with a current thought/struggle or question, but then I feel like I am being selfish.

I know I have run into this before with you, remember when I was questioning myself, wondering if I was narcissistic like my parents? So I ended up in a thought trail online, the other day, starting with “why do I over take responsibility in situations.” I searched this because I found, and my sister told me, that I have a pattern of blaming myself for a dynamic that isn’t my fault. Thinking it is my fault for feeling something, rather than it actually being a real feeling I need to validate and accept. Or thinking someones emotions are my responsibility. I read the article on “How toxic guilt and false responsibility keep you in dysfunction” (PsychCentral)  “as children and adolescents, people feel responsible for the needs and emotions of their parents. Usually this sense of responsibility comes from being overtly or covertly blamed and punished.” “…child is punished for making mistakes”

And this is where I got my answer on this fear of narcissism I have: “unlike people with strong narcissistic tendencies and similar dark personality traits who never take responsibility for their actions, people who suffer from false responsibility and toxic guilt are very quick to attribute what went wrong to themselves and blame themselves for it.”

Another thing that really resonated with me was this “Since people who suffer from chronic self-blame constantly feel shame and guilt, they are exceptionally susceptible to manipulation. The manipulator can always appeal to their false sense of responsibility…” I have had a fear of manipulation for a long time, after leaving my dads home, realizing only after looking back, that it was happening.

So to wrap this back to me feeling like I am taking up too much space, making things about my emotions or experiences. Doing this is unfamiliar to me. My parents always made things about themselves. I was allowed a small window of self expression, but after that time limit hits I feel I am too much. What do you think? I feel like this is alot of information I am still trying to process if you have a perspective to add or perhaps relate? As I know we both have parents like this.

Seaturtle 🙂

Dear Anita,

You wrote: “ I feel I am too much. What do you think?“- I realize that before I respond further, I need to understand what you mean by being too much: can you explain to me what you mean by it, dear Sea Turtle?

– K is very self reflective and asks me questions he’s asked himself, or ones that he thinks would be relevant to me. If I am opening up about a childhood memory he asks more questions, rather than trying to change the subject like N or my father. His questioning, his wanting me to open up, makes me uncomfortable. It’s made me realize that my relationship with N made me feel so capable of vulnerability, but actually it was not hard to be more vulnerable than him. So really it was me just attracting someone who was less than I was, now I am communicating with someone who welcomes vulnerability and I am finding it actually makes me uncomfortable. I feel like I am oversharing or over-burdening him with information. I have told K this, and his response was that I did not make him feel that way at all. So I realize it is in my head and I am wondering what that’s about. I am also just curious about this dichotomy that I having been aching to be seen, and now that someone is trying I am uncomfortable, which makes sense cause it is unfamiliar, but I want to learn how to be comfortable with it. Did this answer your question?

Seaturtle