Don’t Hate - Integrate
... Sometimes these wisdoms just come randomly sparkling out of me. The other Day. I didn't even notice before she repeats my phrase. So true. We have all these little things, patterns, behaviors, habits, shadows, sides of us we wish we didn't have or that we could change or transform. But instead of understanding that each and every feature also has a super power, some magic behind it we tend to condemn it, want to get rid of it or hide it.
We're sitting in his room like so many times before. He says he hates it. He is talking about how his mind works. My spontaneous answer don't hate it, integrate it. Without even noticing how much truth it holds. A mirror of how deeply I have already integrated my own 'flaws', 'inadequacies', parts I didn't want to acknowledge, whatever we wish to name them. The little things in us we would not like to see or have as part of our personality, let alone identity. Only when she repeats what I just said because she also has been going down the path. The only one who doesn't react much to it, is obviously the one who I conveyed it too as he is too much caught in his own illusion of who he is than to notice. A mirror how he is far away from having integrated anything he is not ready to face himself with but much rather defending his premature communication 'skills' and self created identity that tells him over the top how smart and reflected he is which is far away from reality.
And so it's happening again one last time just a few days before I'm leaving, as it's been happening before that these sides come out. Lost in translation as in communication. It's another Friday night just like the week before, the same situation escalating in the exact same way as it has before. Him and his friends walking away from me without a word as if I didn't exist. Not the first time, not the second time... His usual behavior. Totally implemented in his personality and completely accepted by himself as a respectful method of ignoring people, walking away from them. Nothing left I have to say to this. One of the culture's vastly common attitudes that seems to go unnoticed by fellow peers and yet is such a disconnected premature action that anyone I knows is left astonished of how people could treat others in such a way. I've been trying so hard to share my learnings, my views from the outside world that he has no understanding about with him, generously as I do for people, to expand his mind and understandings, opening up, mirroring him, conveying endless messages but the choice always remains at the side of the recipient. And the message obviously wasn't received by the addressee. The choice of the addressee was to stay numb, ignorant and in his illusionary self identity as most recipient's choice is that of the cowards. Of staying comfortably in the dark.
Feel your emotions. I'm in a workshop about the nervous system, hormones, where emotions come from, how to regulate them without suppressing them. These kind of topics that shall be important form him to learn but while I involve myself deeply into my own evolution he's coexisting in the space that has so much knowledge to offer every day. People who want to share their knowledge. He's consistent in resisting. We start with fear. I've not always been able to feel my emotions and still am not always capable of locating them in my body. But this one is coming to me vividly. Directly. It doesn't even take a second to bring me back to Georgia last September when I see myself sliding down the mountain, holding on to the tent that was supposed to be solid. Stable. Grounded for years; in the thunderstorm, the hail washing me down the slope in the roaring natural catastrophe while the huge wooden shower house is flying down the mountain in a whole. The fourth time in four years in the mountains. My life on edge. My existence at severe danger. My heart beating. My mind trying to survive, my fingers digging into the mud, pulling myself back up the hill, trying to protect myself from the hail storm, crawling back into the house, sobbing, drenched, soaked, my heart pounding from fear with no understanding if this would be a safe place for me to survive. (As if I've called it, the same night a huge threatening thunders storm returns just before my last night as the first, reliving my shock trauma that has accompanied me for many weeks later, sitting in my bones, my entire body hurting, my mind disconnected, fragile and anxious).
I'm sitting in the room here now, instantaneously tears rising up my eyes. Fear. Yes I know this existential life threatening fear well now for four years. Not only once I've had to be frightened for my life in the Georgian and Nepali mountains. It's beyond what I wish for anyone to experience ever and yet I had to live through it for numerous times. 'Seems like the Georgian mountains are trying to kill you..' I hear from people. Or... Like the Universe is very much fond of me to let me survive multiple times is what I see. Memories arise in me easily. Any of the emotions we are supposed to feel, arising in me with such real force. Because I've experienced them in many different forms and shapes. For better or worse. I've started not only recognizing my emotions but allowing them to be, embracing them, welcoming them, getting to know them. As they are an essential part of who I am. And I want to know myself. I want to know who I am, my fears, my pains, my shadows to not take them out on other people in defense.
In this moment that I'm so shaken up again, I'm wondering how many people think about fictional fear which it is not fictional but maybe created only in our minds. An illusory idea that scares us. How many people are thinking of this spider that they've encountered in their bathroom. This big hairy spider with the long black legs, crawling out of their underwear when they were putting in on after showering, right there on the stomach. Yes because that also happened to me just a week earlier... And it was scary and disgusting and yet... I've had worse. Things that caused me fear for my life. Threatening my physical existence.
Not in my mind, not as a fiction or an illusion. Not because I have anxiety or old trauma but because I've experienced them in my own life and body throughout the years over and over again. Harshly. Unmercifully. Coming at me. Because I've been living life. I am living life. Fully and consciously. And nobody is rewarding me for it. Only my own self evolution. Only myself learning, evolving, dealing, regulating what there is to regulate. Dealing with what is, who I am and what life is throwing at me. Because that is the only way I know how to live life. I want to live life. Truly and fully without hiding away. Not from myself or life itself. I wanna face it. I wanna make it beautiful. I want to grow, expand and share for us to unite and understand each other. I want the world to become one, to dive deep, to embrace, to accept, to thrive.
Standing together we can do anything… Then and only then…
Oh God India sounds awful despite the food and maybe yoga. Oh yeah I would have been pissed. I mean almost anyone would have been pissed with such behavior. [...] Talking to my friends I do not even need to explain what the situation or the communication. Automatically there's a deep sympathy and understanding, making people wonder, question how this culture, this way of disconnection has been affecting me. How I have even been dealing with it over all these years. It's been endless same same stories that in depth all go to the same point and are not worth wasting energy or time. Only the respective people themselves stay in the dark and don't get a clue of what's inhumane, disrespectful and premature about their way of dealing with things. The way of only focusing on themselves and not caring what that means for the outside world, let alone the feelings of the people involved. (Writing this I now realize how many of my close circle are even certified psychologists and social workers studying these subjects compared to little Indian pot heads - that may have to do with the capacity and will of understanding. Hahaha.)
'I felt this. I felt that. I felt ashamed, I felt helpless.' That's his answer to the situation as if feeling helpless makes him a good human being still having no idea what words like accountability, maturity, care, connection, empathy or or or even mean. Absolutely in the blind that his words have no meaning at all. That the meaning comes from how we act, how we deal with situations, how we take responsibility, accountability in situations. That makes us who we are.
Oneness is what the Baba in the Satsang at the Kirtan just started talking about. Whereas the room is mainly filled with foreigners while the young Indian boys are somewhere out getting stoned day in day out, only concerned about the next big thing. Isn't it kind of ironic, how we are coming into this country from all over the world to evolve, connect, heal, find ourselves whilst the people inside the country the most disconnected and unhealed in the world??? They are staying in their bubble that they perceive as the world which is the tiniest little fraction of this planet that they manage to make their whole universe and so come with it all the limitations, becoming utterly blind for all that exists. Inside as well as outside them.
There is no mercy. No understanding, no compensation or reparation for what has been done to our souls by the ones who don't want to see, who choose to stay bold, who choose their own world, disregarding that we are all one and that what we do is directly connected to how someone else feels. It doesn't matter that me being here for over a month again, I have not a single time received personal attention, seen any form of initiative towards me from this boy whilst he claims to be a friend. At no point he would have stepped out of his own way, his own ideas, plans or routine to do something that had exclusively to do with me. Which is the whole point. It has nothing to do with me. And my choice of investing in people who are lost and not willing to invest anything into me and my being, will always be a bit of a disappointment, frustrating and hurtful and yet I am not ready to give up on humanity and trying to show them light. To a point where I'll make sure to step back to not abandon myself in all the ways I used to only to be there for others, left behind drained and exhausted like a flower being refused the water she needs to survive, to blossom and bloom.
Watching over weeks and months how far away people are absorbed in their own being, frustrating me deeply, not getting the grip of how one cannot even observe in the outside world how loving communication works. How building a bond, a connection, trust and friendship is established. How one is going deaf and blind into every day when there are examples out there everywhere that we can learn from. I keep wondering how self centered and self absorbed human beings can be to not catch the tiniest hints of what it means to have a loving relationship with one another.
The little things like when my neighbor and me exchange little gifts and attentiveness to each other in return, asking each other how we feel or how our day was, how she is inviting me for a last meal together, asking me when I'm leaving, how I am feeling about it. Showing the bare minimum of basic human interest in a person you spent time with. For him it all goes unseen. For a person who is so much fixated on themselves, absorbed in their own narrative of being such a great person, so attentive and aware of human nature, when reality is opposite; it is absolutely impossible to turn the attention from themselves, their self centered idea of who they are, their narrative of their ideal self, their identity to the outside world and see the mirror of who we truly are. To observe and absorb the actual reality of our character, behavior, our patterns, our way of communication. They are usually not the ones checking in with the outside world to get a clearer picture of what the true reality of their nature is. To see if their picture of themselves is aligned with the actual reality or is only what they would like to understand about themselves to live comfortably with themselves, undisturbed by what others think.
They are usually not the ones who seek mirrors to see who they truly are or go to therapy to work through and figure out what it is that they've buried so deep inside themselves that they cannot see it. As they say... usually people go to therapy to deal with the people who don't go to therapy. Story of my life. Facing these people who live in denial, who don't care what their behavior and their protection mechanisms cause to other people as they rather stay comfortably in their own imagination of themselves since it is so much easier, since they just don't have the courage to look into the mirror like I have for over twenty years. It's scary, it's overwhelming and ugly. It can be hurtful, full of shame, grief, anger, blame, sadness, frustration and so on ... And yet I would never go back to the version that didn't know. That wasn't aware of the different qualities inside herself. The version who stayed in denial of the parts she didn't like to integrate into her being. I'm this and that but we all are everything. Don't Hate - Integrate.
It seems in so many ways people here are missing the big picture, the complexity of life. Just asking themselves the simple question is it worth it how I am acting? In the big picture what does this mean? There is this girl and she's leaving soon and it must be emotionally already unbearable for her, what can I do to support her? Make her last days here worthwhile? Help her? Hold space? Show her that she matters as a human being? Maybe even as someone who is appreciated? Simple very fundamental human notions I would automatically have for anyone even if I didn't know them.
Just like the owner of the little Indian cafe asking me how I'm feeling about all of it, telling me I look tired. My movement teacher hugging me, asking me how I'm dealing with the situation, finding sympathy. People I've met for five minutes finding the natural understanding of what I must be going through but then... The person living next to me claiming to have such a great personality and a deep understanding of people literally understanding nothing about human nature, love, connection, friendship, empathy, care, compassion. Anything we need to bring even for the most superficial bond on the lowest level of human interaction.
It's sad and it's hurtful but it is what I've learned in this country for three years. That despite very few exceptions this country even this generation is stuck in baby shoes when it comes to communication and any sort of connection as they are (almost) all disconnected themselves and refuse to face it. It's hard to see. And the toughest part is that the self identity that each and everyone is building for themselves is quite the opposite which is law by nature. It's the only way to make yourself believe a different reality, going unnoticed for what's truth. Blinding yourself with a fake confidence, turning into arrogance. A protection mechanism to not reflect on one's own deficiencies. The greatness. The greatness that they all carry in themselves, behaving like the know it alls, the Gods, the masters. Talking, talking talking when they have nothing interesting to say ever. It's all old outdated superficial talk about nothing specifically important, perspectives from a million years ago that the rest of the planet has already worked through and they think they just found a new understanding; feeling entitled to speak their 'opinion' about things they know absolutely nothing about. It's plain astonishing. It's like living in the middle age of primitive men, whilst they think they've just discovered a new planet.
Forming opinions as they go about things they have no idea about. Whenever opening their mouth having an agree or disagree or possible on their tongue as if it was their time or place to judge everything when they know nothing. No skill of listening other than to talk themselves and give their oh so invaluable perspective.
Frustration moving through my system. A lost case. Many lost cases. Hundreds and thousands and millions that I've experienced myself through my own system and it won't end. Only I'm ending it. Not without pain but with no other choice but to give in to the ones who believe they know. They know. And it makes them blind and stupid, staying in their own tiny limited universe with no idea what the world is about, arguing their case never understanding that's about arguing someone else's case. Being there for others to support them. See them. Be a cheerleader for them. Understanding them through ourselves or reverse.
Darkness. I tried to shine my light where I could and yet as so many times before it didn't reach much of the stoner cave of ignorance. And yet... I'm still here. I'm breathing. Breathing and ready to go back to a place where people love me so deeply that sometimes I cannot breathe out of love for them and their love for me. Going to places where people open their arms to embrace me because they've missed me, because they care for me because we wouldn't leave each other in the dark. Unheard or unseen. Because we would do whatever it takes to hold each other, to see each other, to touch each other, to listen to each other and to carry each other through life. Fully and wholly as we come.
As we are human beings. Beautifully complex and multilayered. Each and every fiber of our being sacred. Each feeling, emotion and notion to be held by each other instead of being judged, suppressed, disregarded or not acknowledged at all. Shut down. Welcome the beautiful world of all that we are. Don't Hate. Integrate.
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