Do not cast harsh judgment on yourself for the circumstances you are in. It is so. It is meant to be so. You are choice-less in this. You cannot forgive what your heart is not ready for forgive. You cannot will relationships into existence when they are dying. You can only acknowledge that bare bones of reality within yourself of what’s here and what’s true for you.
Relationships that are dying or have been dead for a long time need be left alone to decompose. It is not ‘your’ doing. Your heart breaks at the fact that you are and will be misunderstood. And that you’ll stand alone in this. But the reality is you are alone. You are alone in everything. You cannot will yourself out of your aloneness because it’s the fact. The only fact.
Relationships that are dying or have been dead for a long time need be left alone to decompose.
The trouble comes when the illusion of the togetherness of others creates sadness in you. It highlights the feeling of alienation which has always been there as long as you can remember. You cannot overcome this feeling of alienation on the surface level of life by trying to resuscitate dead relationships. Just as you cannot resuscitate a corpse. It doesn’t work. It’s empty. You know and feel it to be so.
Lean into your aloneness even in all its seemingly barren landscape. Lean into the desolateness, the alienation, the pain of feeling misunderstood and the hopelessness of ever being understood. That’s the path – downward and inward not outward. It’s not a mistake. But it is hard to believe that when the desolateness and emptiness hits you in their coldness and deep sorrow.
You cannot overcome this feeling of alienation on the surface level of life by trying to resuscitate dead relationships. Just as you cannot resuscitate a corpse. It doesn’t work.
It is only in meeting these things in yourself or allowing them to be because they are – that you come to see that true intimacy is the ability to be in solitude and accept the solitude of others. True intimacy is the ability to let space and solitude take over the idea of relationship with another. True intimacy comes when you can be comfortable in your aloneness without the agitation of having to relate or take another into consideration mentally. True intimacy is when the other is no longer a burden to your own solitude.
It’s okay not to worry. Not to have justifications for your actions or lack thereof. It’s okay to be winging it. It’s okay to go off script. To not know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. To just go with what’s happening. I feel like once you admit that, then you do know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Not from a place of justifying your behavior but from a place of just being clear about this is what feels right for now. This is what’s available and this is what I want right now.
You’re not going against the will of “whatever” – the universe, the divine, your own heart. Your actions or decisions are coming from what’s happening, what’s available, what’s revealing itself to you and your actions are supported in that they are happening. What’s not supportive is the endless thought processes about where everything is going or why you’re doing what you’re doing. The justifications, the measurements of your behavior in accordance with taking others’ impressions of your behavior into consideration.
The thought processes of trying to figure out why you don’t vibe with certain things anymore and trying to understand and justify to yourself in that. Maybe you don’t have to understand. Maybe you don’t have to justify things anymore. Maybe it’s okay to be winging it and not living from a place of fear and trepidation. Fear and trepidation are the thought processes, are the endless “trying to understand” so that you feel somehow in control. So that you don’t make a mistake. So that you’re not punished for your recklessness.
But what if you’re not being reckless? How do you know what being reckless is or how being responsible is if you’ve never tried being responsible. Being responsible doesn’t mean never making big decisions, never taking a risk, always being careful. That’s not being responsible. Even in those you’ve watched living in extreme trepidation, they have taken risks, they have made big decisions. They’ve just tried to deny you that privilege. To make you doubt yourself because your risks, your decisions take you away from them. And so it’s not in their best interest to support your decision-making, trusting-yourself ability. Because in their mind, it’s a threat to them.
The harshness of judgment within yourself comes from fearing life, fearing yourself. Fearing your ability make a call; to go this way or that way – to make a choice and see where it goes. This kind of doubt defeats the purpose of life. It’s a stunting doubt. It’s a deer in headlights. “Don’t do anything”, “don’t make any sudden movements” – out of fear. Fear of ‘not enough’, fear of not being supported, fear of messing up, fear of getting it wrong, fear or fucking up, fear of being scolded, being held responsible for a mistake. And who will do that to you? No one other than yourself. Even if someone else comes to scold you, if you don’t believe it, it won’t have any effect on you. You’ll find it silly and unnecessary. You won’t buy into it.
So you need to be clear with yourself first and foremost. No one else needs to sign off on anything. You sign off. You make the call. Not in rebelliousness but in trust and love of yourself. In knowing that you are trustworthy, you are trying your best, you are responsible. You’re not trying to do any harm or cause a ruckus, you’re just trying to follow your heart for God’s sake.
To follow what’s opening your heart. To follow the wisdom of that, the scent of that, in accordance with your circumstances. In accordance to what’s available to you, in accordance to what’s opening up in you, in accordance with your sovereignty. In accordance with your humility also, but not debilitating humility. Not the kind of humility that pretends to be humility but is really fear.
Breathe into that and learn to trust yourself even in the midst of winging it and going off script. That’s what you’re all about. It’s all there ever was for you, going off script. You just have been fought on it so hard, the trepidation in you is an intelligence warning you that ‘we’ve done this before and shit’s hit the fan’. But you can take it easy with the trepidation itself. With the heart feeling closed and heavy, with the clutching fear in the gut. You can take it easy with those things.
Acknowledge these things, recognize them, don’t immediately jump to conclusions that you’ve messed up or are in the process of messing up. Don’t buy into the complete self-doubt. Complete stuntedness. Those things can be there but you don’t have to buy into them or feed them. You can choose to take it easy even with the fear, the trepidation, the stuntedness, and crippling doubt. You can always take it easy, that is within your control even when you feel out of control.
Give space and let things settle. Everything needs time to settle, to dissolve, to unwind. Don’t overwhelm yourself with too much. Let there be spaces in your “schedule”. Not everything needs to be filled up, filled out.
Release yourself from the grip of conceptualizing others, worrying about them, keeping others in your head. Forget about everyone and everything including spirituality and your “path”.
Forget about relationships and where things stand. Forget about making ends meet and “managing” everything, trying to make everything fit into the idea of what you want to do. Leave things open, unattended, open-ended, undefined.
Leave things open, unattended, open-ended, undefined.
Let things come to you, instead of chasing them. Let change take care of change without your interference. Acknowledge the rawness of where you are and bow down to it with love and reverence. Don’t think it a mistake or make it wrong.
This unraveling is no small thing. It may not look like that for others, but you only know what you’re experiencing. Trust that you’re doing your best.
You are choosing to be here. In this place, in this living situation, in this building, in this spiritual community. You are making your choices everyday. You’re also not. Both are true. But recognizing that you are choosing is important. You are not a victim to the circumstances.
When you step outside of victimhood, you can start making choices. By simply asking yourself, how is it that I would like to spend my time? What is it that is most aligned for me right now – outside of any relational construct and without taking anyone else into consideration?
When you feel like you have no choice, you’re stuck, you’re bound, you’re imprisoned, you start behaving out of a role you feel as though is imposed on you. And that’s what feels like self-betrayal. Acting from obligation, imposition, no-choice. Feeling bound to, bound by, imposed upon, victim to. There are limitations but within those limitations, you’re also choosing. You can choose.
How is it that I would like to spend my time? What is it that is most aligned for me right now – outside of any relational construct and without taking anyone else into consideration?
You are choosing not to speak to your family right now, you are choosing not to be in a relationship but to continue living together, you are choosing that you don’t want to travel right now. You are choosing that you would like to be more selective with your spiritual communities and the support that you get.
You are choosing not to work right now. You are choosing to live in this apartment right now. You are choosing not to have a car right now. You are choosing that you don’t want to live in a bubble of a spiritual community which does not take into account the reality of your daily experience. You are choosing not to be constrained by the construct of marriage.
You chose not to go visit your father in the last year before he died. You chose not to be a part of your extended family’s life. You chose to break ties with your mother, brother and sister. You chose to start living with your partner 6 years ago. You chose all of that.
Once you take ownership of your choices, you no longer need to blame anyone or any situation or circumstance for them. You can own your choices and feel free in that.
The only obstacle in the way of that is your own self-doubt and self-judgement in regards to your choices – not trusting yourself. Not trusting that you are doing your best with what you’ve been given. And comparing yourself to others who are not in your situation and are not living your choices, just like you’re not living theirs.
There are choices, preferences within the construct of limitation. Once you can see that you can own your choices, trust yourself, trust you’re doing your best then there’s no need to give yourself away to others – to betray yourself by denying your own primary-ness in your own life.
You are choosing to buy the things you buy, to try the things you try, to not do what you don’t want to do, to eat what you eat etc. Distortion comes in when you, yourself are not clear about what actually feels true for you. And this unclear-ness comes from identifying with a role given to you. Doing the chores because you’re the one who does the chores. Doing for others what you think you have to do.
This “have to” is fear.
Fear of being seen as selfish, fear of being punished for not doing what “you’re supposed to do”, fear of others also acting or reacting without taking you into consideration. So you compromise. You bow down to the unspoken agreement. I’ll do this for you, because you do this for me.
Fear of survival comes in and you’re negotiating what feels true for you because you don’t want to rock the boat. You don’t want to ‘upset’ anyone because you’re scared of the repercussions of that upset. This is a very tangible thing that goes into the smallest decision, the tiniest gesture and the fear is the driving force behind this whole construct.
Acknowledge this fear, recognize it, recognize the behavioral-machine it puts into action, recognize the feel of it, the taste of it. It may feel like a sudden brain fog, or a descending heaviness, a feeling of suffocation. It may look like being hurried, trying to get all the things done – overwhelming yourself with more than you can handle in the moment. It may express itself as victimhood; being victim to the circumstances, to another person, to the action or behavior.
Victimhood often plays small, you start to feel small compared to another, compared to the world, compared to the tasks at hand. It may feel like trying to appease, keep the peace, “check in” with another to make sure they’re not upset. It may feel like guilt and a sense of burden towards another as though you’re causing more suffering to them by acting in accordance to your own truth.
The general telltale signs of this type of dynamic is a sense of self-betrayal, a lack of space or boundaries between you and another, a lack of space or boundaries around your own time. A feeling like things can’t wait, not allowing things to settle in you, in your own time. A feeling or urgency, powerlessness and an inability to steer the course of the day.
As well as, a sense of being burdened by another, a sense of dread, hopelessness, despair, disillusionment. A sense of obligation to another from a fear of abandoning them to themselves, to their experience and vice versa. A fear of being abandoned by the other in your own experience.
These dynamics play out unconsciously, in the darkness when there’s no light shed on them. But once you can see these things playing out in you, you do have a choice:
Don’t buy into any self judgement or condemnation for the fact that these dynamics are playing out or resurfacing in you.
Give yourself space in all that you feel and all that you do.
Disentangle from any relational tentacles and be attuned to your own body and your own experience with gentleness and devotion.
Realize that there is no reason at all to overwhelm yourself. If a conversation or a a task is overwhelming to you and you have the ability to remove yourself from said task or conversation, then do so.
Recognize that there’s actually no problem. That given space, time and understanding, everything resolves itself by itself.
Identify any sense of urgency in you; the sense of urgency is an illusion and does not serve or support anything other than reinforcing fear.
You can choose how you spend your time, you can choose the boundaries you set with others in your environment, you can choose to be kind to yourself.
Validate your choices and realize that you are making choices all the time.
In a place where no one speaks the language of Love, Love’s trying to find me, and I, it. In this corner of the world, darkness prevails and to speak of Love, to follow Love, to yearn for Love, to stand for Love is unheard of – it’s completely foreign. Almost like Love hasn’t touched this place. Almost like, the entire universe and everything that encompasses truth is somehow outside this land, outside its people. It feels as though Love doesn’t exist here. It’s unfathomable here.
Even though the same trees grow, the same wind blows, the same sky, the same moon, the same sun – the same everything which is everywhere is here too. Yet, the feeling of being so far removed from the rest of the world although illusory feels utterly and terribly real to the one who feels stuck here. Cornered here.
My body is filled with the fear those in love with darkness have instilled in it. The more I move towards Love, the angrier it seems to make them. The more fear rises in me. The closer Love moves towards me, the stronger they seem to get in their resistance to any any sprout of Love trying to blossom within me. Like a flower growing in the crack of the pavement being stomped on by an unconscious passerby. So it is, with Love and me in this place.
Don’t praise and don’t condemn. Try to stay in neutrality as much as you possibly can. Not in a contrived way, but really aim to not jump to or arrive at any conclusions. Be conclusion-free.
Praise comes with expectation. Condemnation comes with grievance. Praise is uplifting someone – raising them above the rest. Putting them on a pedestal where they’re bound to fall.
Condemnation is pushing them down. Concluding their wrong-ness is eternal. Both are limitations, caging others in either with perfection or utter malice – no middle ground. Both limiting – to yourself and limiting to the other.
Condemnation is a non-acceptance at its root, a rejection of the other. It comes with a sense of dullness and monotony – endless time. The preciousness and never-to-be-repeated nature of things becomes hidden when you start living from a place of condemning others and judging them.
Both praise and condemnation carry a judgment. And judgment limits your ability to let things filter through you. Where you can find hidden gems in what you had previously condemned and unexpected surprises in that which you had previously praised.
There is something inherently scary about the dense masculine conditioning in its destructiveness, abuse of power and blind arrogance. The unpredictable, compulsive, impulsive, repulsive way in which the false masculine behaves and on which patriarchy is founded scares women to their core.
There’s a deep female wound which feels betrayed by the false masculine. Betrayed by his unreliability and his antagonism toward her. She is furious at his abuse of his given freedoms. Feeling as though she has to rely on keeping his madness at bay; she resents him for it.
She tries to control his actions and behavior out of fear for her own safety. Because of the imbalance of power, rights and cultural, as well as, social inequality between them, she is in a bind. She feels as though her freedom depends on him; the father, the son, the husband, the brother – but that he is utterly unreliable.
A codependent relationship is born out of a fear of him ‘losing his shit’ where she develops a strategy to control his behavior by either manipulating or appeasing him. This is most apparent in the marriage culture where women are encouraged to exercise their ‘wisdom’ when it comes to dealing with their husbands. This ‘wisdom’ is nothing but a strategy born out of fear- the fear of men.
Admit to this fear. Don’t try to act unafraid or force your ‘independence’. Don’t berate or judge yourself for all the ways this fear leaks into your words, actions and behavior.
It’s understandable why you’re afraid. Why you’re wary. Why you’re traumatized into silence. Into not even bothering. It’s understandable why you don’t trust why you feel like he doesn’t have your back. It’s understandable why you live as though you need to justify your existence to him. As though you don’t own your time, your space or even yourself. It’s understandable. And if there’s shame there; shame for being in this place of terror – include that too.
Stop fighting what things actually are. In you, in your surroundings, in those closest to you, in those who have an effect on your life. Not wanting to be affected is a rejection of the reality of being affected. Not wanting to be ‘involved’ is a rejection of the reality of being involved. Trying to help others change so that you are no longer affected, bothered, squeezed, scared is an agenda. Softly embrace things as they are. Exactly as they are. Without trying to find a way out.
Speak your truth and be squeezed. There is nothing to be done, to be figured out. You’re not ‘failing’ for being affected. That’s an extra pressure that you put on yourself. A standard of untouchability because you hate being affected by those people. You hate their influence in your lives, not just that, but their existence in your lives. And that’s understandable. But they are. No matter how much you try, they seem to weasel their way in. And you’re powerless in their weaseling, in their influence.
Something in you is imagining a life outside of this. But that in itself causes suffering in you. It’s a denial of things as they are. This does not mean to conform and cave in to victim-powerlessness. But there’s something to not fighting force with force. Something to accepting the squeeze and softening to the point where there’s no longer anything to squeeze. Not opposing, not saying no internally. You can say no externally but inside you’re saying yes.
Don’t hate yourself for this experience, for this challenge. You haven’t failed and as a result, you’re here. You haven’t betrayed yourself for being here. You’re in the process of un-betraying yourself. But softly. Without violence and pressure. Without the veneer of ‘this shouldn’t be so’. It is so. And there’s relief in just admitting that without hate, without resentment. Just saying yes to the fact of it, you are here.
What makes you want to reject this experience is this idea that your dignity is hurt in this. You need to get out of this situation so that you can not be on the receiving end of such bullying. There’s pride in there. This pride is actually a protection, a defense from being hurt. It’s a wall. A no. But this ‘no’ alienates you. Not in the sense that you’re trying to fit in, but it alienates you by limiting you. Your ‘no’ becomes a prison that you have to live in to prove a point.
Your ‘no’ becomes a prison that you have to live in to prove a point.
We’re taught that to say ‘yes’ to hurt is to be defeated. Is to be weak. Is to lose. But that is erroneous. Saying yes in this way is a yes to what is. Not to the person or behavior but to what is. It’s a deep acceptance of things as they are, people as they are, without deeming it wrong, shouldn’t be.
When you have the capacity or are the capacity to say yes in this way, then the squeeze is no longer a squeeze. It’s no longer meeting an opposition in you, it’s moving through you. The rub of it falls away. Everything can be exactly the same on the circumstance-level but it’s effect can be completely different. And that’s the freedom. The freedom is not changing things outside, that can happen, it can help, but it’s not freedom because things are outside your control. The freedom is inside, it’s a breaking down of all the walls, all the places in you that cave from bombardment, that try to ward it off.
That’s not to say that you should stand in the face of abuse and take it, no. You’re free to move or not move as you please. You’re free to say yes or no… all of it. But you’re inwardly not bound by any stance, any opposition, any protection . Your untouchability comes from seeing how touched you actually are and admitting to it. Not denying it. Not protecting from it. Because the fact is you’re touched, any protection comes after the fact. So in a way it’s not effective because the harm has already happened. If anything it can solidify the harm even more, make it stuck.
Your untouchability comes from seeing how touched you actually are and admitting to it.
But you yourself need not doubt your sincerity, your willingness to see, your ability to take right action when action is needed. That’s not what’s in question here. This is prior to all that, it’s acknowledging what’s here, what’s already the case before anything needs to happen. And this acceptance is all inclusive, it’s whole. It doesn’t leave anything out and say, ‘all this is ok but this little bit right here needs to change’, no. It’s accepting all of it, with you, and everything in it exactly as it is, exactly as you are.
And this is what it means to surrender. The word surrender itself has a negative connotation to the mind. The pride in you won’t want to surrender, thinking itself to be more powerful than surrender. But surrender is the most powerful thing, deep surrender. In there is rest, relief, peace, humility, tenderness, acceptance, belonging, heartbreak, love and paradoxically untouchability- all in bowing to what’s actually here.
The power of letting things go. There’s a freedom, a power in lettings things go. Not as an agenda but a real willingness. When you compromise yourself, your integrity – you feel it. You feel it in the inauthenticity of your words. When the words coming out of your mouth don’t match the reality of your feeling.
Letting things go is letting go of need. The need for something, someone. When you feel yourself twisting for the sake of an agenda, an outcome – that’s a telltale sign. A sign that something in you in compromising, being inauthentic – out of fear.
Letting things go is also letting go of self-imposed limitations. When endless possibilities become only one possibility. When open-ended-ness becomes a very small world. Your world becomes small when your attention is honed in on one person, one thing, one possibility and suddenly there are no options available outside that.
Letting things go means letting go of codependency. Needing someone to be something for your own well-being. Needing something for you to be ok. It means letting others be as they are without needing them to change and without their behavior or beliefs meaning anything about you.
Granting them complete freedom unto themselves and in turn complete freedom unto yourself. But this can’t be faked. It can’t be mentally believed.
It means being completely sovereign. Sovereign in your total knowing that nothing and nobody can affect you without your consent. Nothing can have a pull on you unless you give it that pull. On a practical level, that means being really aware of boundaries. Understanding what your boundaries actually are.
Boundaries include protecting your space, your field from someone else’s drama, negativity, spiraling, behavior, choices. It means not needing to jump in to ‘save’ anybody or needing to protect them from themselves.
There’s a freedom in that, in letting others be completely unto themselves. And knowing that you have a choice in your involvement and in being ‘company’ to someone else’s misery. You have the choice to stay out of it. Stay clean. You have the choice to stay true to yourself.
Feeling trapped and owned by – family, partner, husband, society, culture, religion, country – is something to see in yourself as a woman. It plays itself out very subtly but powerfully. In feeling trapped or owned by, you’re not your own, you don’t belong to yourself. You’re someone else’s prior to belonging to yourself. And this feels suffocating for its a limitation that had long ago been imposed on your own sovereignty, your own potentiality and possibility.
When you’re born into this world as a girl, you are treated differently from the start. The family, the parents have a different flavor of ownership over you compared to that of a boy. That ownership is beyond just a parent – child dynamic, it’s a parent/ society/ culture / religion – girl dynamic. There’s a sense of property to it. A sense of we own you. Your movements, your potential is determined by us. You’re within our constraints.
Whereas a boy in being male has inherently more open-ended potentiality. It’s encouraged in him that he can be all that he wants to be. Comparatively. There’s no sense of being constrained or tamed the same way a girl is. Perhaps in other ways, this freedom is not fully true but there’s a world of a difference between the parent-boy and parent-girl dynamic.
This is something to see and acknowledge for yourself as a woman. That this feeling of life being just outside you, just beyond your grasp, is a symptom of this being owned by dynamic. And some women are happy to stay in the confines of that. They like it actually. There’s a ‘safety’ in that for them. “Being the girl.”
But other women have wildness in their blood. They can’t stomach this type of thing. And the feeling sense of that wildness is an intolerance to this kind of entrapment – a sensitivity to it. Like being lactose intolerant, it’s almost like an allergic reaction. Feeling suffocated is one of the symptoms of this allergic reaction. Suffocated by any sense or feel of this limitation no matter how subtle.
The playing out of this happened while growing up to solidify that this is in fact ‘your reality as a girl‘. The limitations imposed on you in your childhood and adolescence where you couldn’t really have a life outside of the family. Unless in secret or in hiding or as an act of complete rebellion which was seen as intolerable for the family.
Not having any sense of agency to make something happen for yourself outside the confines of family was a very real limitation that was felt and imbibed in your system. Friends were replaceable, your own interests and hobbies were negligible; child’s play – not serious, not real. Your feelings about what you wanted to study or pursue were unimportant, completely neglected as kind of a luxury type of thinking. Your life was not your own and the idea of it being your own was considered frivolous thinking.
This outside treatment of you was then internalized. You started neglecting your needs, your wants, you didn’t even know what you want because it didn’t matter. Your focus became on others, their lives being the primary lives, yours secondary to their lives. And you became a kind of burden in that way. Somebody the primary folk had to take care of begrudgingly. And so this is what is playing out in you right now.
And any possibility that presented an opportunity just for you on your terms became out of the question. Not just for them but for you. This is where self destructive behavior comes in. When you yourself actively and unconsciously sabotage your own potential. Because it hurts too much. It goes against so much in you. That the sabotage is a kind of ointment to that hurt. ‘It’s not possible anyway, so I might as well stop trying’. Things will always be just beyond my reach. It’s for others, who come from first world countries and have parents who understand and support them. But me, no.
The opposite of which is complete rebellion. Trying to prove something to them. To the family, to the husband, to society. See? I am worth something… But there is violence in this kind of rebellion. Because it tries to overpower by denying what’s there. The fear, the hurt, the worthlessness. It tries to gain a sense of agency by annihilating the powerlessness and limitation that is felt and imbibed in the system. From years of your own conditioning maybe even ancestral or collective.
So no wonder you want to escape, you want to grasp at something beyond this imprisonment, beyond this self-neglect, beyond living as a secondary character in your own life.
Accept that this is so in you. Stop trying to fix it or change it. Bring kindness towards it. Bring kindness towards the fearful one in you who had no choice in all this. This is the environment she was brought up in. This is the reality of what’s playing out in you. Don’t deny it, don’t try to overpower it by being ‘strong’ or overcoming it. Be gentle and kind towards it, be willing to suffer it, in other words, be open to it – don’t reject it.
