Guilt

Guilt is a nasty word, and unfortunately one of the more poignant words in my life. The reasons I, and I suspect many others, experience guilt, aren't the most flattering things to look at in oneself.

What do people feel guilt about? The main situations that come to mind are: upsetting someone, disappointing someone, or disappointing yourself. To feel as though we've failed a loved one, or failed ourselves, brings on a downward spiral. Feeling like a failure leads to feelings of worthlessness, and it only goes down and down once we stumble into that mindset.

I've had failures in my life, but that hasn't hit a breaking point. A cause to push myself too hard sometimes, maybe, but I haven't often felt the feeling of utter worthlessness - I'm thankful for that.  One thing I've noticed about my guilt, however, is how I experience it in my relations with others. I evoke guilt in my life as a result of actual situations, and assumed situations.

I have a hard time accepting that I've upset someone, demoralized them, embarrassed them, or brought to light a difficult insecurity. Therefore, I try to figure out the best way to speak to them, in a positive and encouraging way, which keeps them from the dangers of falling into self-pity. Not only do I choose this way of speaking when I know doing so avoids triggering them, but I also do it when I assume it might trigger them.

Clearly, this is not the path to take if I am actually attempting to help a person. Useless affirmations don't help anyone grow. Also, it says something about my arrogance that I assume I know what the person is feeling and can or cannot handle. Maybe I do know their insecurities and perhaps they will get triggered, but that is not my responsibility to guard. It also shatters a level of trust, if a person you love can't rely on you to tell the truth for some convoluted, 'noble cause' to spare your feelings.

Ah the ironies of life - protecting other peoples' insecurities to defend our own.

Why do we defend our insecurities so intensely? It's infuriating to understand the behavior you are exhibiting, disagree with it, and yet, despite that, still act in the same way. I suppose this all leads to the ego. Ego is a bastard, that's for sure. A dominating, arrogant, judgmental, inhibiting son-of-a-bitch.

That felt good. You should try it. Take a moment to give your ego a piece of your mind. For every time it's decided to overrun your actions, dismember your intentions, and speak with your voice. I don't want to disassociate myself from it because it's as much a necessary part of me as the rest, but I think there's no harm in telling it what's what every once in awhile. Reminding it that even though it may desire ultimate control, his dictator days are limited.

This entry doesn't feel as conclusive as some of my other ones, but I think that's about all I had to say about that tonight.

On another note, check out this crazy-awesome art that I found online: 

Competition

I used to thrive when it came to competition. If there was a challenge where I was competing to be the best at something, I'd jump at the opportunity. It made me excited, and I'd be driven to do the best I possibly could.

But 'the best' became convoluted in my young mind. I was too eager sometimes, acting bossy and pushy.  By doing so, I alienated myself from a lot of friends and made some enemies. At the sensitive age of pre-teen and teen, feeling alienated and having people dislike you can have a more severe effect than if a person was more emotionally developed. These days, I think about being competitive and I cringe. I'm pretty sure it has to do with overshooting the mark in the past with my obsessive compulsive 'need to win'.

At some breaking point, my OCD-competitive nature turtled (yes I made that a verb) and I became overly passive, avoiding competition. My ego made sure I stayed that way too, by inducing physical effects. To this day, the majority of times I get into a competitive situation my anxiety skyrockets. My body assures that I can't physically handle the pressure so I won't partake in competition.

First, I need to stop looking at competition as heart-attack inducing. Healthy competition, that's a phrase, right? Currently it feels about as healthy as eating three Big Macs per day. I know everyone feels a degree of anxiety and stress with competition - I acknowledge that part of the reason for competition is that exact triggering effect to drive a person. But in my case it feels excessive.

The next step would be to engage in competition occasionally, in conjunction with developing personal challenges.  Both are sources from which I can draw inspiration and propel myself towards creative, problem-solving endeavors.

Time to brainstorm low-stress, competitive ideas (oxy-moron?) to whet my lurking appetite for a healthy challenge.

Logically Creative

I'm not a visual artist or a master in Photoshop, but I've made a simple image to express my logical mind in a more creatively-minded way. Thanks to a suggestion to read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, I was inspired to play between the two halves of my brain. So, enjoy my playtime:

Have you played today?

Soul-Searching

As a sort of continuation of my previous post on Science and Spirituality, I've been thinking more about the way the brain functions. Fascination with the idea that people can re-wire their brain just by habitually thinking in a different way led me to look online and see what sort of research is happening in neuroplasticity. And I found something interesting:

At Stanford University, a study was done whereby they intentionally placed two genes of distantly related organisms into the brain of a mouse. They placed them on the neurons which controlled the motor functions of the mouse. These specific genes were triggered by light - yellow turned one off, and blue turned another on. The study was meant to see if the brain could be controlled if the proper 'on-and-off' switches were placed in the brain.

And what do you know?

A wired.com article

So you could theoretically put these genes on any part of the brain and control its functioning. In humans, you could theoretically put these genes on the mood center of the human brain and make someone feel happy when they previously weren't happy before. An interesting consideration...

The consideration of humanity. If you can control the way a person feels, what at that point truly makes them THEM? Maybe it's not a question of whether or not they are still considered human, but are they the same individual if they aren't thinking the way the 'previous' individual thought? 

If the way they think, and therefore their behavior, is not in their complete control, is that the true definition of a person at all? Or is that an automaton, a hybrid-human that is controlled by external manipulation? Good question for Nazi Germany, hey? 

And as for the spiritual component - scientists such as the ones performing this experiment are likely under the impression that the mind exists only in the synapses of the brain, in the electrical impulses of the brain. More spiritual people, with a more dualistic mind-body sentiment, wouldn't agree with these assumptions, but what would be their explanation of this sort of experiment?

I'm conflicted, still. I can't imagine that the body and 'soul' are only a physical entity. Energy is visible in some ways, but also feels intangible in others. So it doesn't seem likely that we are only a physical body and we exist in no fashion other than being a physical corpse when we die. However, it also doesn't seem feasible that we are a completely separate soul and body, and our soul just evacuates our body when the physical self dies, and goes off to another type of existence. 

It definitely seems as though the character traits of the person would remain and be lost with the physical body, since the tangible neurons have created that personality, no matter the wiring or re-wiring. But that isn't to say something doesn't escape the body, in an energetic form. Maybe that's compatible with some people's view of the soul, though there may be a discrepancy on the level of consciousness believed to remain with that energy. 

Science is developing amazing technology more rapidly, specifically in regards to neurological manipulation. I can't wait to see, as technology increases and spirituality becomes less isolated and more integrated, what exactly this world is on the brink of. I wonder, as it becomes more imperative that we define the individual and the human, if this energetic entity called the soul will be 'found' with such clarity that it becomes a major, valid player in defining our Humanity - valid to the spiritual as well as scientific minds. 

A challenge of experience

My challenge to you this week: Re-learn an experience in your life that has become routine.

Tonight I went running along the winding, hilly path that I ride down every day in my car. Normally I don't like to run on pavement and prefer the woods, but it was late and raining and I didn't want to have a nasty, muddy incident.

It's amazing the experience you can have when you are seeing the usual and comfortable from a new point of view. I experienced the shape of the road differently, I learned cracks and bumps in the pavement that I had never walked on before, I saw the architectural diversity in the houses along the road more acutely than I had before.

When routine becomes a habit and you are on auto-pilot, it's beneficial to jump-start the ordinary and experience what already exists in your life in a new way. So this week, I challenge you all to just that. Re-learn the life you are living, and find new things to be inspired by.

Choice

"There is no way my action or omission can avoid affecting other people. My sheer physical presence in the universe affects other people."


I found this quote on the all-knowing Internet and enjoyed it. It definitely expresses what I've been slowly coming to realize. Inaction based in fear seems to be an easy escape - but in reality there is no hiding away or escaping. No matter how hidden we feel, we are always laid bare in the middle of the Universe. 


I then began musing about choice. I started poking around on the Internet about the subject and found a large percentage of choice related articles referring to morality and responsibility. What of the limits of morality? When are we responsible, and when are we not to blame? 


Like a proper new-age thinker, my relieving response is that there is no right or wrong, so you can never be blamed. Limits and 'shoulds' are arbitrary, and vary from culture to culture. Sure, there are morals laid down in every culture, but their ultimate viability is nothing more than leaders maintaining an intentional structure that they've created. It trickles down and sometimes isn't easily seen as a constructed framework of 'shoulds', but it's always there. 


What does this do for us, to consider that there is no right or wrong and we can't be blamed for acting incorrectly? Does it make us feel energized, able to do anything because we have been relived of stresses and guilt related to an incompatibility with what others say we should do, and what actually feels natural? A lot of times, no. A lot of times, it causes more fear. What's more scary than knowing that anything is possible, and you can't be wrong? 


This: regardless of the fact that you can't be wrong, other people will still decide you are wrong and judge you. You will still have regular opportunities to feel as though you are failing, because devoid of outside morality, you create an internal morality from which to judge yourself by. And the subjective becomes more blinding than the objective. So an infinitely free person begins to box themselves in and create a bounded encasement from which they cannot be successful in escaping from. 


And for me, this is why people band together and create 'rules'. Those people who don't want to take on the 'burden' of dictating their own actions want to be told what they should do, and other people like to tell others what they should do - sometimes because they really can help others, and sometimes because their ego decides that telling other people what to do will somehow justify their choices, which they are insecure about. So it can be successful if those people in power are really able to lead others to find their own strength, rather than taking advantage of their fears. 


For those who read my blog regularly, I apologize for any repetitive thoughts I may share. This is all constantly in my mind and sometimes it flows through a few times.


On another note, if you'd like to see an inspiring talk about creativity that I got to see in person, check this out: 

Archetype

Which archetypes are present in you?

There are a lot of different studies/books that refer to archetypes and the different elements of our being that can be defined by those specific, universal characters that everyone has within them to varying degrees. It's a wonderful way to help categorize the self, and to personify those elements of your being which are so dynamic and have so much control over you that they certainly may as well be their own entities. 

I've done a lot of work in the study of archetypes, and I find the notion to be a very important and valid one. But the different explorations of the archetype have resulted in a library of different archetype 'sets' from which we can choose how to parcel out our being in the most clarifying way. Doing so makes the idea of the archetype just as varied as other branches in philosophy. 

When is to be made of this? Are we the Fool, the Poet, the Hero? Are we more elemental, as Anger, Fear, Sorrow, Happiness, Disgust, Surprise? Are we the Trickster, the Maiden, the Child? Mother Nature, the Shaman, Night, Day? In essence we are all of these things and the myriad of other archetypes that have been determined to be the 'fundamental' archetypes. But what use does admitting we have these archetypes within us have, since if we continue to expand and agree that we can relate to every archetype handed to us, up through Spirit, we will come to the recognition that we are a little bit of everything? 

People want to recognize their archetypes within themselves so they can call out recognition when one emerges. Then, analysis of the balance of their archetypes can lead to transformation and a healthier existence that transitions smoothly from archetype to archetype. 

As a student of archetypal studies, I'm simply feeling a little overwhelmed by the excess of possibilities. But it's just like my previous post about sickness - with literature and the internet, we have infinite possibilities of what could be the 'true' answer. And I simply find myself overwhelmed, frequently, by the abundance of possibilities for how we can come to self-understanding and transformation. As someone who already has trouble making decisions, infinite possibilities makes it just a little more challenging. 

But hey, that's the fun of it too. 

www.adhk.org