Transcript from the sometime in the future. Location unknown. Names redacted.
Q.
Q.
A. Seriously, think about that for a second. How many bad guys think they are bad guys? So they live their lives thinking they are good. Right?
Q.
A. My point is this. I woke up one morning and I realized . . .
Q.
A. I had no idea who I was. That everything I thought to be true about myself was not true. Now I know this sounds trite and the words are. Write them down. Say them. Try to do it with a straight face. You can't. Now, live them. Wake up in that realization where you are not saying the words but the words are saying you. They don't express some intellectual idea, some contrivance of an overactive imagination; they express you, your state.
Q.
A. Well, then you gotta ask yourself, if you have totally frailed your own idea of yourself, have you totally frailed your view of everything else too. I mean, what can you believe anymore? But I want to go back to what I said earlier. What if everything you did caused pain and you thought just the opposite? Try and imagine that.
Q.
A. Frail. If it were easy, would I be here? Okay, let me put it this way. You've picked flowers, right? Put them in a vase, maybe given them as a gift. Made the home nice and all the rest. Okay, now imagine you've been picking flowers for years, making everyone happy, the world beautiful and so forth. You with me? Good. Now imagine, one day, when you are picking those flowers you hear a scream and you realize, after looking for that scream, it is the flower in your hand and the dirt on the root starts to run, red, blood red and the screams get louder and louder and you see what you've never seen before, that all your life, when you thought you were doing good, you were actually leaving a trail of murder.
Q.
A. So you look at the world and the world is empty. The world is nothing. Nothing.
Q.
A. Nothing as in an empty vessel. Everything you see is empty. Everyone you meet, empty. And then it dawns on you. You are the water. You pour yourself into the world, into the empty vessel. You with me? So nothing is as it seems.
Q.
A. Okay, now imagine these two thoughts hit you at the same time like a one-two punch. You are evil and everything you see is nothing but you, your projection and so you see evil in everything, everywhere.
Q.
A. Now, you try and live like this.
Q.
A. Hard to say. There is an anger inside, I don't even know when it began and I certainly didn't recognize it initially. Odd aberrations, situation specific I remember thinking, not some alien entity growing inside of me, feeding off my own thoughts, extending its tentacles with every episode, each outburst harder and harder to rationalize or justify and I began to understand how normal looking people, like neighbors you see every day, could, seemingly out of the blue, do some of the most heinous things. I could picture them in court, long after the temporary insanity, knowing that in this moment, as normal as they looked again, that alien root structure was there, as clear as the veins on their hands, waiting, silently.
Q.
A. Imagine standing outside on a beautiful day. Inside, your head, your chest, a storm is raging, raging with a ferocity that takes every ounce of your energy to keep from tearing you apart, apart from the inside out. So you just stand there, looking into the clear blue sky, feeling the perfect breeze, listening to the most gorgeous songbird, the air fragrant the ways bees know the world and yet, inside, you feel shattered, pieces, one by one, falling away, until there is nothing left but an odd hollowness, a sense that if you looked into a mirror, there would be nothing there or at least nothing you could recognize as you. And all you want to do is curse the hand that put you, whatever you is, in motion, whatever sick magical force took nothing and made something, something they labeled with your name and then kicked you out into the void, cold, alone, naked into the thorns.
Q.
A. You feel invisible, not as in no one can see you but rather as in no one will look at you, no one will acknowledge you. You speak, but no one turns their head, stops what they are doing. There is a sense of utter repudiation of your existence as if you could be voted out of significance, of meaning, of value and the implicit suggestion is, you are nothing.
Q.
A. It's only harsh to those who have not walked in my shoes. There is a reason soldiers do not talk to non-soldiers about the things they have seen, have experienced. The experience of war, of most things, creates a unique language, a language of sights and sounds and smells and tastes but also a unique language of mood, emotion, anger, fear, contempt, horror and I could go on and on but the language is known not by words. You see, words only point and when one with the experience is talking to one without, then it quickly becomes known one is pointing at ghosts, pointing at nothing for the words mean nothing. Do you understand? The words don't mean nothing. The words are code. The words point. And if you don't have the code, if you don't have the language embedded in your own experiences, well, . . .
Q.
A. Let's say you are your experiences. Forget that. Let's say you love music. You play, you listen, it gives depth and joy to your life. Let's say nothing else makes you as happy. Now, let's say you wake up one day and no one you know wants to talk about music, won't let you talk about it either. Nor will they let you play it. They hold music in utter contempt and I mean stark raving utter frailing contempt, the kind of contempt so contemptible it cannot even be spoken of, acknowledged. No discussion. None. Imagine that world. Go ahead. Take some time. Try and imagine living in that world.
Q.
A. Got it? Okay, now, let's say you wake up one day, and you sneak off to enjoy music, someplace alone, which is the only way you can get your fix and you need your fix like a plant needs sun. And what you hear, the music, is insipid, but more than insipid, more like rancid. As if every tone was slightly adjusted to a cacophony of disharmony. Imagine the shock of seeing a song, hearing a song, knowing that it was being played correctly, knowing how it was suppose to sound and yet, somehow, your ear, your brain could no longer process it but instead, distorted it, bastardized it. I would say it is the same as watching a parent suffer Alzheimer's. The body is there, but the mind is gone. And you realize that what you have lost cannot be found for it is right before your eyes, empty as a shell.
Q.
A. So what do you do? You say farewell and good night. Farewell. Good night.
Q.
A. Lighten up. I would never telegraph such a thing. But then again, the question is this. What is me and what is this thing inside of me, which at the moment I am crudely describing as anger, a label, just for the record, is a placeholder for something beyond my comprehension to understand its nature and depth. All I know is that I don't know, I don't know what is in the shadows, I just know something is there and that it is not a good thing.
Q.
A. Here is what I do know. There is me and there is this 'anger' inside of me and the two feel as separate as the flower and the bee. That is a poor analogy, for the bee can just fly away. I have nowhere to run from this thing inside of me nor, it seems, can I get my hands around it, shape it, control it, manage it or know when and where it moves. Still, I sense it grows, like weeds, finding nourishment within me in places I know not. Think about that. Something inside of you, taking root, growing, consuming you, feeding off of you and you don't even know how; you don't know upon what it feeds, you are not privy to this information. You see, you know it only from the shadows and all you really know is two things. It is there. It is growing. And, I suppose, you could say, day by day, as it grows, it is becoming more you than you. The bee is becoming the flower and the flower feels helpless to stop it, rooted as it is, petals open to the wind, exposed and, pardon my language, raped at will, its pollen taken, time and time again. See, I can't explain it. My analogies and metaphors are confusing, which is only a reflection of my internal confusion about what is happening. All I can say is this. I feel consumed. I feel taken over. I feel as if something else is driving me and I have been thrown in the backseat and I'm watching this entity drive, recklessly and I know where it is headed, to the cliff and as in a dream, even though I know this, I am helpless to stop it; I feel as if I am being forced to watch my own destruction, my own murder. Yet, if you were to ask me by who's hand, I would be at a loss to say.
Q.
A. I wake up with circles under my eyes. Some would say bags. And I'm not the only one who has noticed. In those first moments I feel as two. There is me, the old me, the me that I think I am. And then, and I want you to listen very closely to this, and then there is this other thing and it is waking too and I feel its strength, as if, in the night, it has grown and I feel it stirring, flexing itself and in that moment--is fear. I fear losing myself and the image occurs in my mind's eye of me seeing myself, as if there are two of me. No words are exchanged. Just hands outstretched, one reaching out to the other and the look. The look haunts me. I see the look of a child, confused, lost, reaching out and I can't grab the hand. So that is the image. Two arms reaching, as one might imagine someone thrown overboard in a storm reaching for the hand from the deck and both parties know that all is lost but in that moment, the moment of realization, the moment before all that is lost is completely lost, the moment of no return but prior to grief, that moment, where time stands in a circle giving pause, hands behind back, respectful, for a moment. That is how I wake. And the circles under my eyes, day by day, grow. I'm witnessing my own destruction, days like pages, and day by day, I get closer to the end. I'm on, in, the last chapter, the book is almost . . .
Q.
A. Actions occur that I cannot control. Struggle. Between the two selves, who I was and who I am becoming. My old self wants a mercy killing or, at the very least, solitary confinement, to limit the damage to others. The other self, the self that is growing, feeds off the pain, sardonic to the end. And this is my life, a civil war, and as a soldier, I sleep not, eat what I can, but I look like shiott, feel like shiott, and, as that soldier, know no one who shares my language, who can understand, who I can talk to. So I talk to you. And I watch your face. Your frailing professional face. And I know. I know as I talk. You have no frailing idea what I'm talking about. And in that space is a loneliness, an isolation that is cold and silent. A place where my other self sits upon a rock and smiles, waiting for me to return.
26 comments:
You sir are a*mazing.
I wish my comp could find my printer so that I could take this with me for the train ride and this night. Big sigh. The first chance upon my return, I am going to give myself the luxury and great pleasure of staying a while with your post and comment box.
You Ma'am, are very kind and loyal and when I am all alone and the kids have all gone to play elsewhere, I always know you will come around and play with me when no one else will. For that, you have my eternal gratitude and love.
Tree!! I love when you write these!!
They must be really cool to come up with too--the question-less answers.
It's leaving the part of the imagining to us and it's such a fresh concept. I enjoy them each and every time. :)
--snow
Thanks Snow. Glad you enjoy this one. :-)
These are answers to unknown questions! Interesting. It's a bit like reverse engineering, isn't it?
Saffy, I suppose one could do that but then I'd think they'd miss the point. ;-)
Your EE chapters have been some of your best. In their way. Just as the Kyra and Papa chapters have been. The Trev and Em. The Yul and Rog. And so on and so forth. I do not think that it would be an exaggeration to say that the vast majority of your chapters, let's say (unintentional use of expression used within :-D) 99% or above. What is perhaps more obvious in these than with some others is the way in which they are read, these are not mere words that tumble forth like waves one after another and disappear into the mass of ocean once more, but more the ocean itself, all of it at once, calm and raging, cold and dark, warm and blue. The is no slipping of what came before and so when there is a chapter with so many impressions all vying for complete attention, one wonders, or I do, where the beginning is.
The very first question/answer is a novel in itself. The question firstly of what evil is, how it exists, whether there is such a thing as purity when it comes to evilness, whether a person, Hynerian, Kulmykian can be entirely evil, which then leads on to queries of if there is evil from whence did it come, is there a path that travels back, a trail of bread crumbs so to speak through history that would/could explain how such a thing came to be, or is it in fact possible that such a thing can exist without cause, without reason, just simply, a part of the make-up decided long before birth, and do evil-doers view their actions as evil, or is the claim something like that we hear when someone begins to question their sanity and the tried and tested method of answering would be to say that if the question is still there, then the answer follows without reason to doubt. Jumping ahead a little to incorporate the surprisingly shocking imagery of the bleeding roots, red blood among the earth and the mentions of war and being a soldier that come later, the battle between self and so forth and all I wanted to say really at this point about that is that the thought-process within is so wonderfully tight and neat or rather patterned and connected. In any case, if the thought is there of evil-doing, is it mere conscience and consciousness of the very many nuances of pain that can be caused, how easy it is to do wrong without realizing, to cause pain, grief unintentionally as well as intentionally and like the question of sanity, the answer may be just as simple, and as complex at the same time. Doing wrong after all and especially with awareness come only after would not be marked as evil. And this is just the words, on their own as they stand, without thought of from whom they are uttered, to whom, why, with what thought behind, with what misplaced weighing up of self and based upon what, without history or reason or fact of any kind, not taken into account anyway, therein lies the ocean even in just the very first sentence.
I'm stuck already for the very question of thinking that one is good and realizing that one is not what one thought one was...it is one thing to silence something, to partially, behind closed doors be aware that the image one projects to others is not the true essence of oneself..trying to think of something simple, harsh thoughts, judgemental thoughts about other people would perhaps be the best example, since I am sure for the most part most have thoughts about others that they do not share and that they perhaps even reprimand themselves for, attempt to improve and to change those harsh judgements, but to sincerely believe that one is one thing only to realize that one is actually something else, that such a realization could come about from one day to the next and not have been subtly or directly reflected in the reaction of others or even occurred to self at some point along the way, in short to have, as those who have questioned whether dream could be reality and reality dream, lived completely within the 'dream' and never known it was such, would be entirely possible not personal knowledge but imagination tells me, and in addition the thought strikes shared observance of others that the person in question seemed in total ignorance of and the acceptance that if, based thereupon, it is possible in others then surely also of ourselves, those windows fly open like the release of helium balloons into the sky and suddenly even the basest of facts becomes questionable. Once one ventures into the realm of what if anything do we really know for sure, where is the secure ground upon which one can stand, then one might say there is real clarity with the clarity being that nothing is clear. Scary stuff. Deliciously excruciating, wonderfully confusing, never-ending circle of hmmm.
The EE chapters are really in a class by themselves and are written from a very different place. These chapters, more so than any of the others, stand off to the side. These chapters, and I almost feel guilty saying this, are less fiction, whatever that means, than any of the others. There is a rawness here that is, perhaps, less guarded than in other chapters.
The heart of the opening salvo, question, statement, inquiry is 'awareness.' To what extent do each of us sleepwalk through life, through the day as well as the hour. To what extent do we know ourselves and know the path we ply through the sea of life. To what extent do we know what we leave in our wake. Imagine the shock of thinking one is sailing to Asia and instead runs smack into America and still, in our own ignorance, fail to acknowledge reality all the while hanging tightly to our own beliefs, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
I studied European histroy in grad school with an emphasis on Germany. I've read more books about Hitler than I care to admit and I've read the primary documents in German. Hitler did not see himself the way history sees him today. Hitler never imagined himself as evil incarnate but actually as just the opposite. So I find the case study fascinating--the disconnect, if one wants to call it that.
The question, then, with a small 'q,' is this: To what extent to we delude ourselves, deceive ourselves. To what extent do we live a fantasy in our own mind. And, more to the point, to what extent do we cause pain without ever knowing the pain we cause.
So we come back to step one--awareness. With awareness, of course, we move to step two, which some would argue falls into place with true awareness, but still, the question is there, with awareness, what do we do? What do we do? With these hands, what do we do? With this heart, what do we do? With our mind, what do we do?
I wonder if the fact that we are ever changing could make the awareness of whom we are like the carrot in front of the donkey, something chased but never caught, something that has moved on before we could ever hope to catch up, like the tomorrow that never arrives but changes simply into today. Of course subtlety is not what is being spoken of here, but an elemental, essential part or whole of self that all the while was off-kilter, that was not where it was thought to be, but somewhere else entirely. Evil. Good. Basic. Large. Opposite ends. Opposing factors. Arguable perhaps is that last one. Still, despite the above, that an inescapable fact could have been so overlooked, the concept clutches in the very eye of fear so to speak refusing kicking and screaming to let go as reason reasons, tries to subdue what cannot be subdued as two such opposites become acceptable theoretically of being confused, mistaken for the other. The thought here of course is the belief of doing good, to please without knowing what damage that pleasing was doing somewhere else. Partially more and partially less scary than seeing one where the other is. I had no idea who I was. Again, as written above here, perhaps here is the only real and true conscious state that one can be in, the not knowing, the being unsure and uncertain, unwilling to believe what is seen for like shifting patterns within a kaleidoscope mood or experience or knowledge or reaction will change what is seen, let alone letting oneself begin to think about what one could be capable of in a given situation or how something might alter us. It isn't an unheard of statement, not being able to recognize oneself, but nonetheless scary for it's being felt by the individual. And I cannot help wondering, as I sit with your post, whether it is the kind of truths that we may have heard many times before coming to the conclusion ourselves and even more frequent thereafter for hearing them louder, with the ring of personal belief, the type that if time were endless for each of us and not compartmentalized into the span of a life, we might all come to that same point one day, the type that when one finally realizes it is as if it were always there just waiting to be remembered, whether it is so for sense of self also, that though sight comes from within it is just one and there will always be blindspots and the like where something might creep up that to all intents and purposes was not there before. It seems to me when reading these, the very most delicious part about them is the wavering on the verge, like a chance taken that the masses would back away from, of staring, looking dead on, facing fear, against instinct, allowing the fall, the opening into endlessness which may be the most frightening concept ever named, of voicing, putting words to something which is otherwise fleeting and incapable of being captured, the impossible in other words is what I think of when I read these, that you have in the delving managed to do something spectacularly difficult, explore the lengths to which everything is questionable, the lengths to which we know everything is questionable, that nothing is secure and if there is one thing that the vast majority would prefer it would be that there are things that are and that cannot be changed, and this is why when reading, when I read, so much seems for lack of a better word recognizable, like that truth that always was, the collective, the known, and I am not explaining myself well, but since what is being explained, the questions that are being asked, the imaginings that have been requested be undertaken seem logical, real, truthful, despite being frightening and opening and at times like the proverbial rug being pulled out from underneath one, stepping out, away from sure footing, free fall through possibility, consider this, imagine this, all possible, all conceivable, not desired, but nonetheless both of those, I wonder if you are writing it and I am reading it, two entirely separate people, allowing myself the luxury of course of presumption, the presumption that what I think as I read is indeed correct and that those recognitions and beliefs and ideas are true, then, then I wonder whether the next person who reads it sees this too, understands without having to be able to know where from or how or why, but that the falling, the pieces, the looking and not being able to find, the sudden realizations, the beliefs true and not, suspected also, feared too, the questioning, base, unspoken...so look forward to hearing Mona's thoughts on this post, and Jen's and Strumpets and the others to see if there is in fact a pattern (design not behaviour so to speak) within.
The one passage in the first half of this post that made the greatest impression, visually, for it's starkness, for it's...how I wish I like actors could say 'line' and someone would remind me of the perfected dialogue, but the word is lost, and so to say instead that the analogy used has those two perfectly balanced yet previously largely suspected as un-fusable elements namely simplicity and complexity. The idea in itself, of using a flower that has been cut, a taking of something living to put upon a table in a room to be admired for a shorter spell than otherwise for the ease of close quarters, bring to rather than going to, to wither, to die, it was there as something to be plucked, something to be thought of, ie not an idea without a map, but I simply must use the word poetic, the words sensitive, receptive, open, but most of all poetic when commenting upon the imagery that you established around the idea. From the words as written, the images that were formed, a hundred more stood behind, silent and waiting and just as vivid. Not only was the point made in direct and perfect fashion as is one of the many traits of your writing, but as was the other, the one that has occurred so many times before of there being a journey, many journeys to undertake within a single sentence, that single is only appropriate in the sense of what can be seen without reading, a number of words between a capitol letter and a punctuation but that more so than any other writer that I can recall write in volcanic sentences. Erupting.
Your images and story is amazing! I love what you're doing here!
Thanks Karina. Welcome to The Story. Hope to see you again. :-)
Your words on emptiness which though are not pertaining to such reminded me of how very few connections that we make with people do more than float upon the surface, distance is held, words spoken but of little or no consequence and questions, the kind of questions that require more than a robotic answer, are never asked. Emptiness like infinity, well, empty is like the infinite, untouchable, unreachable, vast and as enclosing and claustrophobic as it is the direct opposite. I absolutely love the way that you wrote this passage, of being the water that is poured into the empty vessel. It made me think of of all things a scene from a Barbie movie, beautiful where beauty is not the subject here, a fairy that travelled across the lands, across the forests and meadows and hills and sky and with her she brought colour where before there was none, not only where she was but where she had been. As though until her presence, it did not exist, not really, but was merely waiting for her to come alive, to be real. What do we know but what we see.
Two very thought-provoking passages in the one that speaks of understanding how seemingly 'normal' people could have committed some horrific act and the next as it continues along the lines of there not necessarily being clues or outward signs to emotional upheaval within, nor to thoughts.
Gone for a time, I lost my train, but two things. Firstly, much written here and not so much directly about the writing, but within it is for were the writing not of the elite quality that it is, were it not as thought-provoking as it is, there would be no such desire, the desire to write of some of those provoked thoughts. Secondly, as one such, this passage made me think of times, times such as we all have had, where we have had to move in a crowd, a crowd from one to any number, at work, down the street, within a room, where one has been so torn up inside, one can only wonder at the fact that not only does not everyone know this immediately but that nobody might notice, and there are two sides to that, the very personal this-thing-has-happened-to-me and yet the world goes on by, goes on about its business none the wiser, and not only none the wiser but seemingly uncaring and the more outward realization that each of us is an entire individual and that any given someone we pass on the street has stories to tell, and also, as said, how really for the most part there are little or no outward signs to what may be going on inside. A wonderful, real passage that begins with the imagining of standing outside on a beautiful day and the description of struggling to keep whole, to feel that shattering, pieces falling away and a gaping whole where once was, to take up once again your magic touch with language, shattered is one such word that speaks volumes, not just in meaning, but in sound and especially in connotation, shattered is so final, so irreparable, the implication of many pieces, of something no longer being recognizable as the thing that it once was, so much so it seems to have become something other and only a memory is left if even that, more than broken. Further along on the subject of language there is a sentence such as the one at the end of this passage that reads: something they labelled with your name and then kicked you out into the void, cold, alone, naked into the thorns. Come again such a vivid depiction painted, especially three nay four words side by side separated only by comma, void, cold, alone, naked, the one-two punch spoken of earlier, a similar effect created here, bam, bam, bam, bam, no escape, no turning away from the reality, of that feeling and there is a sense of everything being said, there it is, totality.
Not to continue in this manner hopefully, the simple merits of one by one, but it must be said that the next passage is so stark and honest and matter-of-fact within it becomes one best remembered as the end is reached. No drama, simple fact and all the more for it.
Sunshine, we are water, we are the river and as the saying goes, one never steps into the same river twice. The more I age, the more I see myself change, some of it good change, some of it not so good change. So, if we are always changing, imagine the challenge of staying on top of who we are at any given time. It helps to have a sense of humor, especially as it pertains to oneself. :-D
Lots of coffee helps too. :-D
If I were to ask someone, most anyone, when was the last time someone took a deep and sincere and unconditional interest in you, an interest outside the bounds and binds of time, of circumstance, of obligation, of self-interest, I believe, as I have been told many times, the answer would be--I don't remember, not, I don't remember when but more so, I don't remember if, if I can recall having that kind of experience. This is the gift, the gift that can be given freely, yet, we hoard ourselves like a beggar hoards a coin. But here is the thing. None of us take time to think if we are that beggar. We can't begin to think that we might be for who among us would admit we are barren inside, that we hoard and protect our own interest, that the ideas of our self we hold could possibly be false. And so what happens? We, as you say, pass each other with platitudes, ships in the night, trite cliches, exchanging pleasantries as if they actually meant something.
When I was in San Antonio, I stopped in a bookstore near my hotel. As I walked by the current events section, I spied all kinds of books on the politicians currently running for office and for some reason, like staring at a word we know until it looks alien, the thought popped into my head (insert whoever you like here) that I don't know any of these people running, yet, I have made a choice on who I like and who I don't like. Then, it occurred to me that what I like or don't like probably has very little to do with the person in question and everything to do with me, with me pouring myself into the empty vessel of the person I had never met, that I filled that person up with me, with my ideas and hopes and dreams and thoughts and that that person had become what I wanted them to be, what I wanted to see. In short, I had fallen in love not with the candidate but with 'my' idea of the candidate. They were, for all intents and purposes, an empty vessel, a shell, and I had filled them up with me. :-D
A little backstory. No charge. ;-)
...Then, it occurred to me that what I like or don't like probably has very little to do with the person in question and everything to do with me, with me pouring myself into the empty vessel of the person I had never met, that I filled that person up with me, with my ideas and hopes and dreams and thoughts and that that person had become what I wanted them to be, what I wanted to see...
Ah, something we all do (IMHO anyway). The key is realization; the awareness. When one can attain that, I believe doors open.
More questions arise, but that's a good thing.
"A. You feel invisible, not as in no one can see you but rather as in no one will look at you, no one will acknowledge you. You speak, but no one turns their head, stops what they are doing. There is a sense of utter repudiation of your existence as if you could be voted out of significance, of meaning, of value and the implicit suggestion is, you are nothing."
Um. Have you been reading my mind?
Emotions, anger, they are not wring. I say anger is energy, pure energy, beautiful energy. When anger arises, be aware of it and see the miracle happen. On watching it carefully anger disappears, it becomes transformed, it becomes compassion, forgiveness and love.It is only in repressing anger that you become burdened with poison.
So watch and witness everything till you come to a state of no-mind. Once a person is in a state of no mind, nothing contradicts him from his being. There is no power greater than the power of no mind. No harm can be done to such a person.No attachment, no greed, no anger can arise in him.
There is an intrinsic law: thoughts don't have their own life. They are parasites, they live on your identifying with them. When you say 'I am angry' you are pouring life energy into anger, because you are getting identified with anger.
But when you say, " I am watching anger flashing on the screen of mind within me", you are no longer giving it any life, any juice, any energy. When you are not identified with anger, it becomes impotent, it has no impact on you, does not effect you. It is absolutely hollow & dead & pass on leaving a clear sky of the mind. Slowly you will start getting out of your thoughts, standing aloof from them.
If your thoughts are too close to you, you cannot watch, you become impressed and colored by them. Anger makes you angry, greed makes you greedy, lust makes you lustful.Create a distance between you & your thoughts. The more you watch them the greater the distance gets between you & them. the more the distance, the less energy your thoughts get from you. and once they start losing the source of energy ( which is you) they start dying, disappearing.
Deb, thanks for reading. I'll be in Tucson in January. Perhaps we can have that cup of coffee we missed a few years ago.
Meleah, just my own. ;-)
Mona, I'd like to sit at your feet and listen to you talk all day long. Just don't wear a skirt. :-D
I am going to have to stop. This is my bookmark! I will be back to read this chapter as well as others soon.
We have family staying with us this weekend. My children are thrilled! Thank you for your well wishes for my Tide! You know we are going to be pulling against each other soon.
Friends first though, right?
Have a great weekend.
Jen
Friends always. Go have fun. :-)
I wish that I were able leave a lengthy comment about this post. It deserves it. I however, am almost overwhelmed by this chapter. There is a depth of emotion that steals my words.
Just yesterday, I was talking to someone about their childhood. They had been SO mean to a boy in their class. There was REAL regret there and the question "How could I have treated another person like that?" He didn't understand how THAT could have been in him - that he could be capable of that. I asked could there have been a child within treating others like that because they needed something emotionally that they weren't getting?
I didn't like the answer.
As for realizing that I am not what I thought I was? Not anger, but other things... yes. I have felt that.
You have a way of making me think.
I like thinking, most of the time. But, then, there are times when thinking is over-rated, where thinking only gets in the way. I like those times too. Thanks for reading Jen. Thanks for being my friend. :-)
Post a Comment