Time to think

I don't get much time to think as the majority of it is spent painfully torturing myself and going over and over the things I've done wrong, trying to work out how I can get over these shadows of the past and also occasionally suffering from other normal things like a health scare, trying to carry on a so called normal life in the meantime and also desperately searching for some answers.  My anchors were all pulled in and I was adrift for so long, I've looked back at things I believed and set them adrift too.  I'm still not convinced by anything I've heard or been told but I have to admit that either my mind was being read or someone 'up there' knows just how desperately I've been trying not to get, erm desperate again and do something rash.

I feel like I should be in pain and so it's difficult for me not to be as the brain and mind is so powerful.

There's aspects that have improved usually as I learn my way through this process of accepting how badly I fucked up in the past, going round the loop of deciding there's nothing I can do about it now, that there are things I will never know, or may never know (don't want to be too definite as I can't be sure).

I've had the magic and mystery of this place (existence, reality) whatever you want to call it, brought into such sweet highlight and doubted every experience I've ever had in those realms that science and progress denies.  You see as far as science and mysticism are concerned and the failing gap between them, there are still so many unanswered questions.

The stuff I experienced in my head, may have just been that, things up there, not out there coming in, but in there coming out, stuff I was able to convince myself was answers to questions.

I had a relationship going, with a muse, and my thoughts and musings and inspirations were all prepared and used up in the past.  Now there are intimations of that source again only I'm not sure I trust it, trust myself yet, or ever again.

Truth being told, I don't do stupid things, unnecessary things anymore, or haven't in a while.

I don't act on the silly thoughts, that's all they are, they don't scare me, or make me anxious.

They're just thoughts only they seem to be of the nasty nature, the nasty side of my imagination.

The shadow side of my psyche unleashed, released from a jail from whence it was held up until now.

I trapped the darker side of myself there, with all its misdemeanors and memories and now they're out.

They're not always on my mind as I can spend most of the day when I'm not actually doing something painfully going round in circles asking what do I do now?  How do I make ammends for things I'm not certain I did?  How do I make progress in a world I no longer feel like I deserve a place in?

I must have rationalised those things I did before, I must have sent them away to the deepest darkest recesses, I must have banished them and going from the experience of being god for 8 hours to the lowest of the low is fine when you've got nothing to worry about or simple and not too bad things on the back burner, but my shit stinks badly and it's festered there.  However I know that the alternative would have been to have carried on all sweetness and light and to be honest I feel like this is deserved punishment so I'm sucking it up again and making it the new reason for the transformation I wanted to make.  I wanted to make myself a servant of the rest of the world, I wanted to give of myself in service, I wanted to let go of my fears and I'm strangely calm and not so worked up about the crap from the past.

I just have it on my mind whenever I'm not really concentrating on something else.  When I wake up it's there, the memories, the part of me that was a fuck up, face the day, do the stuff you must do, try not to get distracted to the point of having your hand chopped off in an accident, try to be present in the moment and focussed before something awful happens, try for fucks sake to think of other people, put others first, try not to be a self referential, self obsessed, nutjob.  I'm not mental anymore, just looking around there are people farther down the rabbit hole than I am, and as much as that's where I want to be, I don't want to risk the equilibrium I've reached where I can feel the awesome gaping hole beneath me and yet seem ok with it.

I get to sleep ok these days as I focus on meditating for the good of everyone else, focus on the things I did before, the things I might do in the future that are worthy but not of mention, those things I could do that would be in some way achievable without recognition, can I make a difference, can I pay my dues?

I know that along with what I am dealing with now, there may come a time when I will come face to face with these things again, maybe there is such a thing as a life review when you die...

I missed every opportunity going except maybe one or two, I let my fears drive me, I let the notion that I would turn out like someone I knew keep me so called safe but not really, I heard raised voices and shrunk inside in case it was rage, it's a scary thing to fear that constantly for years.

I allowed myself to feel things, think things that weren't true or even verifiable because I journeyed alone.

I've been alone almost all my life, no-one to open up to, no-one close to travel with, no-one I could be honest with, and so I can't complain or blame anyone and so I wont, although I could a little bit.

It's all on me I take it all onboard and hoarding the angst I'll even get ill and possibly already am.

I've asked for some direction, been given some, doubt that, is it just another test to see how royally I can fail?

So I'm working on the assumption that I can only get better from here, I can only keep being conscious, in the moment making choices, guard against making mistakes, watch out for opportunities.

Told I would see patterns on the wall, like the shadows and lights of old, some of my earliest memories.

A wall of eyes, single eyes, signifying the opening of my own third eye.

The reawakening of my psychic powers,

I'm skeptical, all I want to do is heal others and in so doing use myself for the purposes of good, maybe earn myself a lesser sentence, a longer paragraph in the akashic record than just, born, failed, died, came back as an amoeba to start all over again as completely wasted a human life.

All I know is this world is getting more crazy and I don't like to use the words that mean mental, insanity and all of that, cos I see insanity as doing the same things and expecting a different result, not someone who is willing to try to change and be honest about the ways in which they were not sensible in the past, understatement.

I volunteered to go to hell and hopefully back again, in the hope that I could bring some other souls with me, in a vertical, forward escape velocity, into the vortex to another dimension, where I was so close to going before but held back by my navel.  The body stopped me from leaving in spirit.

I'm still there awaiting the chance to search out a chink of light, grasp it with both hands and take it inside, where I hope it burns off the rest of me and leaves a spark of divinity rather than this husk of a thing.

Oh and it seems like I can't get away from unrequited feelings, mine are gone, it's someone else now on me.

I must have given off this little boy lost thing before cos the olduns really dug me, now perhaps I've got a little bastard vibe coming off, which is a shame cos I never felt like one until now.

Light &
Love
Jon
x

Stuff I don't (think I) want - Stuff (I know) I don't need

I don't want holidays, I want journeys to foreign places to meet foreign people and learn new things.  To live where you are working, to build something, a community, to talk to people openly about everything, and not see that as a challenge more of a convenience, not a struggle with egos but an obvious solution to most issues.  To love someone before we're so intimate that it's possible the reason for being so, hasn't already come into play, sex is for making babies first, if it's with someone I don't see myself spending a lot of time with as at least friends first, I can't see myself spending a lot of time with them in the future, no relationship needs to break down in a way that leads to a permanent disconnection.  If it's possible to discuss anything then there's more scope for an agreement to disagree and more areas to meet and create less a compromise, more a way for everyone to get what they need, without all the urgency to have what you want.  Living somewhere attuned to the needs of a healthy human being not an unhealthy human doing the same thing day after day.  I sometimes think it's so hedonistic the way we are living, so selfish, but it's breaking barriers, it's tearing down the frontiers between people. It's creating connections between one and many, between us and them.  Learning how to live the way we enjoy it more and are happier.

The acceptance of anyone, background, lifestyle, whatever...  No picking on someone, no judging, just being.

I've never been as concerned about number one.  I really haven't, I'm usually most happy going along with whatever the majority wants to do, it makes the fact that I'm awful at making decisions so much easier to live with, although I feel like I'm starting to well er 'feel' again what the best thing to do is, rather than having to go on my gut.  I've ripped my heart out and stomped all over it in the last nearly a year, taken myself to the depths of despair and back again, with the help of some special people, but mostly it involved me facing things I would rather have not.  Thinking about mortality, fearing the worst, my wild and vivid imagination released and not tempered by anything, my mind wandering far from the beaten track and into a hinter land of bizarre, self loathing, misery where every day waking up seems like a torture to put yourself through rather than a joy, a gift, something to cherish.  I see dead people, everywhere, they might aswell be, if you're not busy living, you're busy dying...  (I think that's a Bob Dylan lyric).  He's right though.

I did think at times wouldn't it be easier?  Wouldn't this work better, this situation if I wasn't in it?

I still realise and live with many conflicting emotions, taming the psyche, feeling it all settle down finally.

A few things have given me hope for the future so I'm going with that...

Trying desperately to work out what I feel I need from now on.

I'd like to go and work in Nepal, learn massage there and heal.

Teach English too maybe, live a life making a difference.

Come back start something, join something, learn more.

Take things forward for myself for once, I deserve it.

Or I will have earned it, making the right choices.

That's all we do, we consistently choose Yes.

Instead of always uttering No, not right now.

No thankyou, I don't think so, not allowed.

All those excuses we make not to live.

Not me though, not more I hope.

Leaving the tracks, the path.

Back there now with a thought.

Actually less a thought more a memory.

Less a memory, more of a heartfelt experience.

I love the connection, the transcendence of dance.

Hugs from strangers and friends so much love in the air.

Banging tunes, the feeling of togetherness, perhaps it's too much.

Quieter outside, cooler, somewhere inbetween using the spaces well.

So many peoples, everywhere, too dark to see where I'm going though I don't care.

Tired can't struggle on anymore, my legs and everything hurts I need to lie down for a day.

Light &
Love
Jon
x

Anyone experienced in the spiritual arts, crystals, meditation, chanting, singing, mantras, healing, talking about such things, get in touch I want to learn as much as I can and catch up, fill in the gaps in my knowledge, find a new way somewhere else, lots of somewhere else's, lots of trips to far flung climbs and local places ;)

I'm also looking for really ethical work that pays something...  I'd like to live simply and cheaply somewhere (please universe) where I can try out lots of different skills and see if I'm any good at any of them, to take them further, and to make progress step by step.  Make things that are worth the work that went into them.

Barely finding time inside

Blurting out some story ideas and somehow there's some nonfiction in there coming from within...

I just ran right out the door and didn't look back, ok but only once and then afterwards not again.  The street was deserted anyways and for the most part so was everything within me, gone but not forgotten, the moods, the stress, the thoughts and the fears.  All I wanted was to get to somewhere new and see what that held.  Picking fruit and living in a caravan, finding walking sticks in the woods, wandering from market town to market town and writing poems for people on the spot, walking as far as possible on a limited amount of drinking water before falling aghast and starving at the feet of some poor unsuspecting stranger's door.

All of these things crossed my mind as I got to the bus stop and got on the number 22, all those old preoccupations would have to leave, numerology, looking for meaning in things without any instinctual basis, any emotional resonance, was no more.  My mind has played far too important a role lately and has from what I can remember in a hazy year, played that role with impropriety and abandon, since taking over as the understudy when I lost my head, my heart, my body and soul to the desire never to feel anything, never to have to make and stick to the decisions that would take me forward.

You see fear has ruled my every move, from the times when backed into a corner I have made progress, to the occasions many to name but none fondly remembered when I just threw myself into situations without knowing or thinking and won some kind of recognition, you see thinking is my worst enemy, if I have time to think I can worry myself silly and decide beyond a shadow of a doubt that it ain't for me this thing called life.  It's far too scary, the world is just too big, too full of ideas, just too much for me to handle.  Then came the day I was capable of handling the things that scared me, and jumped in with both feet, only to find the water far too deep for such an inexperienced traveller of the shores of possibility.

So I shrink inside, take on all the self loathing of old, reignite the fire of destruction and set it alight to destroy any confidence, any idea of progress forward, I don't deserve it, I'm not good enough, haven't had enough practice, I just don't know what I'm doing, can't take the pressure, fold, crumble, collapse, implode never explode, still resonating, still so easily brought to mind those things of the old, those things I did without thinking, those times I let myself be drawn, hung, quartered until there was just the small matter of a tiny voice outshouted by a louder one that said no-one will ever love you, you're a miserable excuse for a human being, those closest to you know what a shite you are or they'd comfort you, ask how you are feeling and actually listen to the answer.

They'd take you seriously or challenge the times when you sound like you're making things up as you go along.  The sad truth is they don't know you, and you don't know them.  There's no closeness there just the frivolity of surface jokes and passing off pain as witty remarks.  There's the fact that they take the easy way in and out of every situation, would rather not deal with the day to day struggle, and can't cope with the long term issues either so nothing ever gets done.  The attitude coming from them says 'there's no point' so nothing ever happens.  It makes me feel like punching the cunts but that's not me.  My fist might feel like reaching out to them but as always I hold it back from connecting with their fat fucking faces.

I couldn't hit someone with glasses on anyway.

Pain, regret, fear, shame, doubt, burning strong within.

I can't decide the answers and know so many of the questions now that they all roll into one big mess of nothingness, so all I am left with is the human dimension, the people, the places, the times when I could make a difference, the ways in which I can learn to do so, the spaces in which I may be able to learn from my mistakes, learn from others', make up for all the lost time that I've killed with fantastical mind adventures and daft dreams that now seem more like nightmares.

You said about that ultimate transformation and relief of suffering and lest I faint at the thought, joy unbound, the nothingness returning, that quiet calm not fearing, not always there, but at least a background from which to look out on new horizons, somewhere peaceful this time with some planning permission granted.

This story shall continue...

Creating again
Light &
Love
Jon
x

One Fine Day

So today was a day of contrasts... something ending something beginning...

I had an issue, have had lots of them lately, punishing myself since last year, made the decision to lower myself into a boiling vat of oil and burn off so many things, recently had such scary times, feeling mortality around the corner, asking questions that I should have been looking for answers to a long time ago.

You see for me, for a long time, the world was going to end this year, and in a way even though I had moved on and decided that it wasn't afterall, I still wasn't sure if I wanted it to continue.

I wanted not to be here, I've recently over the last few weeks thought of ways to end it all, hung in a tree (while out on a walk in nature), thought about buying lots of paracetamols (while I was doing the shopping), um the constant reminders of the mental imagery I received back in May I think it was, the year has been a blur because my mind has been frazzled, I don't remember things in sequence or from particular months, weeks, days or hours, just the changing of the clocks from winter time to summer time, the changing of the speed of time from racing to so fucking slow it's untrue.  I never actually contemplated killing myself, just the thought was entertained, not the deed itself as I am way too cowardly and nowhere near the mindset of actually carrying it out, not in the state that people get into where they actually aren't thinking of the impact of those close to them, or even those not so close as in my case.

You see I don't have any friends to speak of, or in the better way of explaining this, I don't reach out, don't get in contact with people, haven't been doing so, have just wanted this whole process to continue, wanted to feel this bad, underlying psychological pain has been my constant companion, as the anxiety has taken over my days and nights, from the sweats to the early waking, not being able to go back to sleeping, to the panicking first thing and the racing thoughts, to the idea that I am evil and should die, to the times I've spent wishing I was dead to escape my brain, because it's been making me crazy and thoughts of whether I am insane making me even madder, not angry just resigned.

Our society, our system, our media, our commentators, the people talking about the crowd in the Olympics use these words...  They're going crazy, it's complete madness here, Wow this is insane...

I feel for anyone going through anything even remotely similar or worse...  The words are misued, our language is wrongly spoken, we create this issue for so many.  It makes you even less likely to forget how you are feeling.

So now that it had taken over even in the times when I am busy, now that I am relaxing around the issue, feeling shy again, becoming myself again, having had so little experience of socialising again, being my loner self again, losing patience with certain people, myself included, then slowly regaining it again.

Wonderful evening, got a message through at the Circle of Light (spiritualist church)...

You see I've been having a problem with spirituality, with religion, with the ideas of god and the devil.

I have been capable of so much in the past and gotten to the point of feeling incapable of anything apart from those things like driving, those things I have to do, hard to get out of bed, hard to get off my ass and do chores, hard to get the energy in the moment, hard to move when it's desired, hard to do something that doesn't involve being there or doing something for someone else.  Lost all faith in my beliefs, lost my anchor...


I'd gotten to the point of wondering what was real of the experiences I've had in the past, discounting most of what occurred between september last year and now, and even asking questions about the ones before that.

I'd pushed myself too far over ragged edges, kept moving forwards not looking back, found self confidence that made listening to others advice almost impossible, gone from one position to the exact opposite, the pendulum swinging so hard from one extreme to the other in a way that I wasn't listening to any of my own advice at all.

Lost my writing, lost my way of thinking, lost the ability to be myself without constant questioning of the status quo within.

Attacking myself all the time, unable to forget things that I shouldn't anyway and now have to carry with me into the future...

Still not sure, all I know is that I must keep moving, must find ways to make a difference, must keep on these good habits I've gotten into, knowing that I still feel like I should be asking for a clean bill of health up top.

Knowing and seeing as if for the first time all my weaknesses, all the reasons why I haven't progressed when I thought I had.

I mean, come on!  No relationships for nearly twenty years except for a mini one over 9 days last October...

Why apart from the odd joke about grandchildren has this not come up before?

Because I'm not as close to the people I should have been discussing this sort of thing with and no-one has ever bothered to ask me...

Although this guy did today?  Asked me if I would like some kids...

I'd like to love someone for a while first

Light &
Love
Jon
x

Remember remember the 5th of November

......"The big news is that we've shown how the human brain blocks an unwanted memory, that there is such a mechanism and it has a biological basis," said Stanford psychology Professor John Gabrieli, a co-author of the paper titled "Neural Systems Underlying the Suppression of Unwanted Memories." "It gets you past the possibility that there's nothing in the brain that would suppress a memory – that it was all a misunderstood fiction." The experiment showed that people are capable of repeatedly blocking thoughts of experiences they don't want to remember until they can no longer retrieve the memory, even if they want to, Gabrieli explained.  Michael Anderson, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon and the paper's lead author, conducted the experiment with Gabrieli and other researchers during a sabbatical at Stanford last year." It's amazing to think that we've broken new ground on this … that there is a clear neurobiological basis for motivated forgetting," Anderson said. "Repression has been a vague and controversial construct for over a century, in part because it has been unclear how such a mechanism could be implemented in the brain. The study provides a clear model for how this occurs by grounding it firmly in an essential human ability – the ability to control behavior."

"For the first time we see some mechanism that could play a role in active forgetting," Gabrieli said. "That's where the greatest interest is in terms of practical applications regarding emotionally disturbing and traumatic experiences, and the toxic effect of repressing memory." The Freudian idea is that even though someone is able to block an unpleasant memory, Gabrieli said, "it's lurking in them somewhere, and it has consequences even though they don't know why in terms of their attitudes and relationships."

"People's memory gets worse the more they try to avoid thinking about it," Anderson said. "If you consistently expose people to a reminder of a memory that they don't want to think about, and they try not to think about it, they actually don't remember it as well as memories where they were not presented with any reminders at all." 

Excerpt from

Research reveals brain has biological mechanism to block unwanted memories

So what was I blocking?

Things I've done that I could never remember beyond occasional references made within.

Basically I have now gone through my back catalogue of memories and have a new list which I keep renewing in my memory, it keeps me honest but it also keeps me distressed, it keeps me in pain, it keeps me torturing myself for the things I've done.

Let me be clear, those things that I've done were years ago.

Within myself I know I would never do those things again.

I still believe in love, in not harming others, in dealing with the world in a respectful manner.

One was whilst severely depressed.  One was so long ago I barely know what occurred, why, and what the implications truly were.  One was when I was totally naive.  One was my attempt to resolve a situation.

I can see why I have been so reluctant to progress in many areas of life, even without knowing why.

Just afraid all the time...

I now have all of these in mind whenever they wish to torture me and I can only assume that the consequences have been my own underlying sense of rejection before the effect, in other words the reason why I haven't put myself up for rejection that I assumed would arrive when I was honest about them.

I know now that I can't, won't, daren't expand on them.

I must suffer until I can learn to live with them again.

Only this time without hiding them away continually until they virtually disappear.

It makes my life a living hell, I've gone through a period of months of distressing mental imagery, I've put it all down to anxiety from quitting addictions, leaving me with the underlying issues I had before...

I've been given a chance to remember all those things, gone to the deepest darkest recesses of my subconscious, slowly understanding now that times in the past when I would go through this process, were because of the things that I had tried to forget so many times that they had been repressed.  My past seems to have been unblocked, lots of times I had forgotten, good things mostly, coming back in dribs and drabs.

Basically areas of my life that I had never looked back upon, I never looked back ever hardly, I never think about it, or I never did until recently, now all I can think about is the past, although it revolves around between that and the slowly fading mental imagery issue I had and other things, taking their turns to hurt me.

Asking myself so many questions, looking back and asking was I this fucked up my whole life?

Now I've got songs stuck in my head, the lyrics of which seem to be saying something although I doubt they are, just another symptom of anxiety?  Or is it something more?

Am I with my refusal to block things out anymore, slowly regaining certain faculties, certain aspects of maleness, certain things I'd always denied, I didn't know or want to accept that were all wrapped up together.

Light &
Love
Jon
x