Demystifying Inner Experience

I’ve been doing my best to bring awareness to my stray thoughts, to see what it is I need to spend quality time doing. I often seem to go on adventures in my mind. Examples: I might be some sort of agent for a shadow organization gathering intelligence. I’ve been a wanderer in what I think is old Ireland. I’ve been a doctor working in epidemiology and I’ve been patient zero. I live all of these tales, all of these of lives, in my inner world.

There’s something woven deep into every story. Some element of mystery. Usually, I’m undercover or avoiding detection. I always seem to be under the guise of looking for answers. It’s not the answers that I get, but what I learn in pursuit of the truth, which keeps me coming back. I replay different scenarios, play different roles, and I learn by seeing how things unfold. It’s akin to orchestrating a masterpiece and seeing how everything fits together, from each musician’s point of view as well as the conductor’s. Sometimes I am able to sit back and enjoy it as the audience, but generally, I am analyzing—constructing and deconstructing.

To be perfectly clear, this is the area where treatment helps the most. It helps me to focus less on analysis and focus more on the present. I tend to get stuck somewhere between wanting to do things and actually doing them. So I am working on shortening the want phase and hopping directly to the action phase. I have been successful in doing this with school work, trails, drawing, reading, and writing. I do it in small bursts. I get a rebound of doubt and despair. The harder it pushes back, the more I push back and keep doing what I’m doing.

This has resulted in feeling caged. To be fair, the cage is open and I keep coming back. In fact, sometimes I don’t leave the cage at all. I don’t see the point in it. Broken-spirited at times. Now, it’s like I’m pacing back and forth inside my open cage. I feel torn apart by the desire to charge out and never look back, and the feeling of just dying in my cage to be done with suffering. Then the introject kicks in, sounding very reasonable: Life is suffering. Your suffering will follow you everywhere. Just be done with it.

Indeed. Just be done with it. I agree wholeheartedly. At the same time, there’s this enthusiasm that bristles in me when I think of the possibilities. What if I traveled to another country? What if I found a way to get by and maybe even know comfort? What if I was on my own and doing well? I could never know these things if I were to just be done with it. I have felt most alive in environments where I was the odd one out. There’s this excitement to learning in real-time with actual people. It isn’t like learning from a book or a TV program. Assimilating is a bit of a fright and a delight.

So many things could go wrong, but there’s an intuition that most people share. A knowingness that someone means no harm and people react most often with kindness. Sometimes cruelty results, but that is less often the case. By focusing on the potential (all potential), it puts perceived threats into perspective and shows the opportunities.

Heartfelt Letter to Self for Change

To Myself and Any Who Need Apply,

What needs to be said?

Humans are immature.

I don’t mean that in a demeaning way. It is simply an observation.

I take a look at the hot topics in media. The political winds are changing.

There has been a huge focus on the LGBT crowd, which is delightful. Discrimination is being acknowledged and people are standing up for themselves.

I know we need to take small steps. Change scares people and that saddens me. Change is inevitable. Change can be so many things. Why not look at it like an adventure, an exploration of who you are in relation to everyone else?

Why is there inequality in the first place? How are we valuing ourselves and one another? If I value you as a person, you should have the same rights as me.

Let’s take away the legalities of marriage for a moment. If two consenting adults want to share their lives with each other, let them. That’s all there is to it. Either recognize marriage for consenting adults or let’s not grant special rights to some couples and not others. I am sure that by now, in 2015, people can handle the fact that love is love.

Could we now address the issues that actually matter to the survival of our species? Stop ignoring your environment. You need an inhabitable environment in which to live – so do future generations. Let’s start implementing some of the brilliant technologies that are getting buried beneath heaps of political bull shit.

What can one person do? I suppose finding like-minded people is a start. Discussion. Time to find real candidates to lead people into a better state of being. What you have, right now, it keeps you complacent, yes? But are you really okay with the fact that your smart phone was made by someone who earns a few cents a day and literally works themselves to death? Are you okay with some people having rights and others are treated as though they are worthless? It’s okay, you know. A lot of us are guilty of supporting terrible practices, simply by buying some every day item. It’s fascinating to me how much influence we truly have with our dollars, yet how powerless we seem to feel. Which brings me to advertising and information collection.

Aren’t you tired of being bombarded by ads? Ads are everywhere. There is no privacy any more. We willingly tell people every little detail through social media. All it is, is a way to gather your information. Information is more valuable than anything on this earth. You willingly give it away. I do too. It is madness. Don’t get me wrong, sharing information is natural and healthy. It is wrong for us to be exploited for it.

Maybe it’s time to lay off the ‘likes’ and put your money where your heart is. Consumers can turn the table at any time. It is a choice and a commitment to altering your own lifestyle for the wellbeing of everyone, and all you have to do is support small, local business, and be more involved in creating or maintaining a healthier existence. It’s not healthy to be inside all the time, or sedentary, or so isolated from the realities of the world we live in.

Stop shopping at Goliath companies on the internet. It’ll be a difficult adjustment, but humans can adapt. We were built to adapt, and we are relying too much on adapting things to us. Go outside. Feel the sun and the wind on your skin. Go for walks. Pay attention to how the plants and trees change over the seasons. It’s so good for you.

Whew. That felt good to get off my chest. What to do?

I’m contemplating what the best course of action is for me, personally. I refuse to waste my life in the pursuit of acquiring things I don’t need.

The first step is I need to stop objectifying myself. I’m not just a consumer or a client or a patient. I am a human being. People who objectify themselves keep wanting and what they have is not satisfying. It can lead to so many destructive behaviors. It’s bad enough we do it to ourselves, but then we reinforce it in each other too through institutionalization. We are socialized to be a certain way from the time we are born until the day we die.

The suicide rate in young people is outrageously high. So many young people and adults suffer from mood disorders. People know who they are and society pressures them to conform. It makes people miserable either because they deny their truth or they are ostracized.

So maybe it is time for those who feel this way to start living their truths, just to see what would happen. After all, doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is insanity at it’s finest.

I’m afraid of making change, and I’m okay with that. I am not letting the fear stop me from moving forward.

I have eight classes until I complete the master’s degree. Then I will go anywhere and everywhere, just live my life as if I am capable of anything. Ultimately, the attitude we wield will make or break a person.

There is no one fate written in stone. We all write our own fates with the way we choose to live.

All I can do is be my authentic self and live my truth.

Chew on that for a while.