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I wonder

8/29/2016

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I’m old enough now that I’ve become bored with the person I’ve always been. I’ve used it up. And I no longer need it because I’ve retired from the world of work interactions it’s been such a part of. It’s time, then, to look for a new thing before time runs out.

So I wonder…

If I were to completely, utterly stop myself somehow, then start again from zero, where would I end up? If I were to look for a new beginning, specifically and only for myself, and look for it by myself, what could I find? I mean, If I were to ignore all answers from elsewhere--from religions, mythology, wise people--could I find anything on my own? Because I know now, after all these decades of trying, that I can’t take the beliefs of others seriously enough to wear them myself. I can only seriously believe myself and my own discoveries. They’re the only ones that to me consist of more than just words and abstract ideas.

So I’ll begin here and see where I end. I might at least make a baby step.

First. One thing I know about myself is that I’ve been soaked in good and bad. Since I was a child, it has poured on me like rain. Its clouds have never parted. I have feared punishment of one kind or another, and desired praise of one kind or another, continuously, all my life. Good-and-bad is the person I have always been. Do I exist other than as that shell, perhaps inside it? Or is the shell empty?

I do know that good and bad themselves are illusions, because the eyes of science have let me step out of my wet self to see the rest of the world naked. I know that world exists. Looking back on myself, I know that even I exist without good and bad. There is a dry me, an inner me who might be able to truly see the dry world, not just imagine it. If only I could step in there, wholly. In where there is no evaluating, no judging, only acceptance of everything. If that’s what a dry self is, then my dry self would just exist with everything else. Including that world of fear and reward and punishment. That’s who I would like to be because I would then embody truth.

How different would I be? Is good and bad, reward and punishment, the need to please others, such an overwhelming part of me that without it I would be completely different? Certainly, I would be a lot different from my nearly lifelong self that had been built from shyness, from that world of fear. But would I see reality in a completely different way? Like night and day? I have always felt that my sight was deadened, blocked somehow. Maybe this is the reason why.
But would a change like this actually be possible for me? In reality? I can see that it should be possible. And I know that I could pretend to myself to be that person. And I would certainly like to just exist with everything, including with myself.

It may be possible but very difficult to bring about. Instincts may force me to remain as I always have. And habit. And a long-trained unconscious mind. And if I consist so deeply and fully of good-and-bad, and if all the other people in the society I live in are constructed the same, then to exist outside of it might require me to be a hermit.

But when I think of all our interactions, of what they’re like, it doesn't feel like being a hermit would be absolutely necessary. If it isn’t necessary, then might it be possible that all of us are closer to being this pure person than I suspect. Might it be possible that the pure being of others is always alive in there, and living with their good-and-bad self? That the two, working together, are flexible and more accepting of another pure person than I would expect? And therefore, might it be possible that I am one of those people, always seeing everything through both sets of eyes? In which case, could it be that I wouldn't have to become a completely different person? I don’t know. I’m just wondering.


PS: After posting this, in the comments below it, Aldous Richards astounded me with what must be the answer to my question.

Facebook Likes:...3..Yvonne Maggs, Silvia Palacios and Marina Verdi
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What if...

8/27/2016

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In remembering an incident from your past, the kind that causes acute mental pain, anguish, regret, you remember it as a friend would hear it if you told the story to them. What if YOU could recall it that way? Learn to.

In this sense you could say there are two ways of looking at a bad memory--either through all that hurt it contains once again, or as a human story. The audience can only see it the second way, and maybe learning to see it through the eyes of others is a way out of the overwhelming personal horror of the memory. Maybe. This is reminiscent of the old idea of the writer who writes a perfect description of the most cherished memory of his life, only to find that he can no longer remember it, only his words of descri[tion.

In sum, maybe we need to do the opposite to holding our pain inside, to refusing to pollute others with its negativity. We need to struggle to put the horrific situation and the pain it caused into the best possible description and then tell it to someone, or write it down and post it on Facebook. That way, we have removed it from ourselves, from its secret hiding place inside, from where it continually infests our minds. We've turned it into a sculpture, something that anyone can look at, relate to, and learn from. Including ourselves. It is then just another interesting part of our lives.



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