Month: April 2022

There’s a force within that compulsively sabotages well-being. It is addicted to disharmony, nervous system dysregulation, unhealthy cycles and patterns of behavior, pain and suffering. It gets bored with well-being, a regulated nervous system, non-addictive behaviors, harmony and goodness.

It feeds on overwhelm, dysfunction and desperation. It keeps dysfucntional cycles in endless self-perpetuation. Working with opposite extremes; healthy, unhealthy, good, bad, fat, thin, pretty, ugly, success, failure, love, hate. Moderation, balance, equanimity are enemies to the saboteur.

It likes to swim in muck. It’s an extremist by nature. It wants to keep looping in hope and despair. In ‘maybe one day’ and ‘it’s never going to happen’. In worthlessness and grandiosity. Constantly projecting plans for an improved self in the future where perfection is possible but with no real intent on ever arriving.

The saboteur is critical by nature, wired to be negatively oriented – a perfectionist. It thrives on comparison. That’s where it feeds. Comparing in time, comparing to others, comparing anything other than what’s here and other than what’s now. Its motto is not good enough. Its engine – fear, anxiety, restlessness, dissatisfaction, unworthiness, the need to belong.

The saboteur cannot satisfy any sense of lack. It can only create a mirage of projected satisfaction in the future. And it has a vested interest in keeping the sense of lack in place even though it advertises otherwise.

The saboteur is binding in the sense that it banks on you taking things personally, being invested, buying into the premise. It does this by wrapping itself around old wounds; unworthiness, abandonment, being left behind. It subconsciously convinces you that in order never to feel these things again, you must do what it says. That there’s hope for you yet.

The saboteur creates an illusion of autonomy, self-reliance, free will and that’s its genius. Because in fact, the opposite of that is the case. By design, the saboteur strips you of those things and makes you a slave. A slave to imagination, comparison, unconsciousness. It makes you an addict, a prisoner – at the mercy of.

The saboteur cannot be fought against. Cannot be willfully changed or re-programmed. It can only bring you to your knees to be defeated.

Growing up in an unhealthy home environment looks like:

Not being mirrored or seen or acknowledged in your basic existence.

Not being nurtured in your body, not being shown how to eat properly, not being shown how to express physicality.

Not being heard or listened to as someone of importance in the household.

Being dismissed in your expressions both positive and negative.

Being brought up in an environment where you need to prove your right to exist.

Being made to feel like you’ve failed before you even started.

Not being met where you are wounded.

Not being taught self reliance and simultaneously not being protected through healthy or necessary dependence on your caregiver.

Being made to feel like your basic needs are a burden or an inconvenience on the family.

Being mirrored in a negative light is the norm unless it is complimentary to your caregiver to do otherwise.

Being made to feel responsible and accountable for your own failed nurturance. E.g. being made fun of for being unhealthy, not having nice clothes to wear etc.

Being unseen, unheard, unrecognized in your right to want, need, express or defend yourself.

Being made to feel like any emotion on your part is unwanted and/or excessive.

Being used for company when there’s no one else around but being discarded when there are others.

The pain is not your failing,

The squeeze is not your failing.

The thoughts are not your failing.

The restlessness is not your failing.

The deep exhaustion is not your failing.

The fear is not your failing.

The conditioning is not your failing.

What speaks to you and what doesn’t is not your failing.

The hate is not your failing.

The loneliness is not your failing.

The dreams are not your failing.

The circumstances are not your failing.

The reaction of others is not your failing.

The feeling of failure is not your failing.

The meaninglessness is not your failing.

The feeling of heaviness is not your failing.

The grief is not your failing.

The mindset of doing is not your failing.

Being in the middle of nowhere is not your success.

It’s just the way things are.

If you haven’t failed, you can’t succeed.

You can’t succeed and you can’t fail – even though everything will tell you otherwise.

No one can.

Realize this.

There’s freedom here. Freedom from comparison. Freedom from success. Freedom from failure.

Freedom from I’ve made it or I haven’t.

The most successful and the miserable failures are one in the same.

I’ve been wanting to fit in for as long as I remember.

Fit in anywhere.

Jumping through hoops, putting myself in danger, going to extremes within and without just to fit in and belong.

How painful it is to live in this way. How lonely it is.

To want to be accepted. To want to have a gang, a family, a troop, to be taken in.

Feeling left out is such a familiar feeling that has haunted me from place to place.

And the shame of that desperation. The desperate one that wants to fit in. That feels as though everybody can sense and smell her. The fear of rejection, the fear of being found out as the stench of desperation wreaks off her. Sniffed out as the desperate one.

You belong to God they say, but what does that mean? Where does this longing to fit in come from?

If I’m not with that longing in my body, it takes me on a long car-sick ride. Homesick ride.

Maybe that’s what the longing is, a homesickness.

A homesickness that can’t be quenched by a physical home. By a gang or family to call me one of their own. Because that’s slavery. At the mercy of others to belong.

Something in me doesn’t want to be left behind. In the smallest way and in the biggest way.

Maybe it’s a deep knowing that every thing will leave me behind… Eventually.

Maybe this homesickness is a blessing. Not a curse. Maybe it’s a compass.

Follow me, follow this longing, it says. Not outwardly. That didn’t work. That led to trouble. Heartache. Bad decisions. Impulsiveness. Desperation.

Maybe inwardly. Follow me inwardly, in the body. Maybe that’s yin.

But let’s not stigmatize that outward reach. Let’s not make it shameful. Abhorrent. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be with others, to be taken in. It’s deeply wired in the nervous system to want to belong, it’s human. It’s survival. Not a stench of desperation but a human pull, a need even. A wiring.

And is it so bad that you can’t fit in? Is it something to be ashamed of? The group mentality will tell you it is. Because our culture is deeply wired to shame those who stand alone because we fear them. We fear the rejected. Their power. We fear their aloneness. Because it mirrors back to us the reality we don’t want to see. We don’t want to face. The reality of aloneness.

They will all leave you. Everyone will leave you. Everything will leave you. These are the calls I heard from my father’s death. His passing. These are the whispers, the rotting, the disintegrating, the turning to ash, the reminders he left me. Everything will come to pass. Sandcastles.

But the human wants the company, the love, the gang, the safety, the comfort. How can I reconcile this with that? Is it kind to deny that humanness. And only point to stark reality. Is it kind? It is and it isn’t.

There’s no answer here.

I’m not yet on the ‘other side’- if there is one – I’ve only heard reports, had inklings. I’m still wretched. I can’t say with full authority there is only the glory of God. That authority hasn’t been given to me. If it is to be given.

I can’t deny the pulls of the body, the creature -that’s for sure. That feels violent. I acknowledge trauma and have learnt to deeply respect it because that’s what it asks of me. It’s asked for acknowledgement and mercy. For slowness and gentleness. It’s not interested in the ‘Truth’ not in absolute sense anyway- whatever that means. And it’s been placed here by something, it’s not a mistake.

No mistake.

I don’t know what’s kind. But there’s mercy here in the simplicity of this moment. Beyond the narrative.

Everything else, I don’t know about. But everything beckons the second you move through life, through the day, the second you get off the ‘meditation cushion’. You’re pushed, you’re pulled. And it’s not easy to find that mercy sometimes. Beyond the narrative. Beyond the trauma.

I sense it now, and that is enough I guess.

Your conditioning is not a mistake. You don’t have to make up for ‘lost time’. You haven’t been forgotten by Life. Your love for Life is immense. Like a flower cracking through the pavement. Breathe that in. Your causeless joy. Trust that. You can be happy. You can live a life without the gloom veneer. It is your right. Why you were born into existence.

It’s important to validate that madness is madness. Not giving it your attention is an act of self-love. Self-preservation. Self-care. And is possible. False guilt and false shame have plagued you for long enough. To not trust in your inherent goodness. In your pure intentionality. In your simplicity and good heartedness. Beat up like a dog badly abused by its owners. Limping, distrusting.

The madness of not seeing the goodness in Life, let alone trusting it. The madness of creating problems out of thin air. The madness of living in the murk and fog of the gloom veneer. The madness of not prioritizing love. The madness of not recognizing loyalty, camaraderie, beauty, good fortune, preciousness.

You are radiant and gleaming. Your sovereignty is a birthright. Your equanimity – divine. You can trust yourself. Trust in your goodness. Trust in your beautiful self-expression. Trust in your genuineness. Trust that what you know is madness is in fact madness. No two ways about it. And what you do or did to survive that madness was absolute genius and absolutely necessary. An act of sovereignty.

To entertain madness is to drown in it. They were all mad. They are all mad. See how it feels to validate that part of you that always knew. Always felt and was made to doubt herself. Made to doubt all her divine qualities. Her love of beauty, her love of Life. Her devotion to Love. Her call to sanity. Love wins. Love always wins. Love is Real. Love is what calls you out of your slumber. Out of living life as an automaton.

Calls you, called you to something other. Something more. “There must be more to this Life”, it said. It whispered. It burned. It longed. “This can’t be it, this can’t be what this whole magical existence is for”, it prodded.

This call is divine. Your understanding of divinity has been plagued with falsities. False gods. False divinity. False devotion. False goodness. False righteousness. False priorities. False displays. False expressions. All of it corrupt. Rotten to the core. Empty words, empty actions, empty relating, empty promises. Because it doesn’t come from Love.

And Love – what you’ve stood up for without even knowing. Struggled for. Longed for. Called out others for because it’s missing from their empty shell lives. Because without it life is meaningless, void, corrupt, rotten, dead. That Love is divine. Love and truth are one and the same. Love cannot exist without Truth and Truth cannot exist without Love. And these are not abstractions. Love and Truth are not abstract.

Love and Truth are all there is. Truth is power, Love its perfume. That’s why anything the isn’t steeped in this is painful, awful, deadening. It’s no mistake. You haven’t ‘missed’ anything. Coming out of slumber, rising up from the dead is not something to sniff at. You are not forgotten by Life. Quite the opposite precious one.

What if you don’t have to make anything happen…

You can just rot here.

The uncertainty of everything is becoming more apparent.

It’s always been like this.

My relationship, my living situation, money, security, accolades.

Nothing means anything.

What a relief.

I am incapable.

I am at the mercy of Life.