tsuki

Here's another one that came up after I was moved when posting the previous one: It was late evening. We were after a (verbal) fight. I wanted to get back at my parents. They were sitting by the table in the living room, I went to the kitchen and took a long knife. I went back the the corridor and stood with my side facing towards them. I called them and when they turned towards me I pretended to stick the knife through my chest. Of course, it went under my armpit like in a cartoon. My mother disarmed me very quickly. I remember that she cried. This one was particularly difficult to share/shed because I had a lot of shame associated with it. I was a young teenager at the time. Probably 10-13. What's strange is that I actually thought for a very long time that I was blessed with a very good childhood. I think that during the first memory (with the rotary swing), the thing that was born was my ability to power through emotions by disowning them.

Here's another traumatic one featuring women: My grandmother was looking over me during my mother's absence. I had an attitude that day and didn't respect her. I don't remember the particular time when she actually hit me, but I remember telling her that: she has no right to hit me because she's not my mother. I remember that it shocked her (my grandmother was a sassy woman, things just didn't shock her). Later that day she talked to my mother and they both came to me and my mother said: I, as your mother, give the right to hit you to your grandmother. They were both laughing. I brushed that off at the time. Just recently came to me why was my grandmother so shocked. That's because a kid thought that his mother had the right to hit him.

The over-arching themes of my memories are about power, responsibility, denial and hurting innocence. All of them feature women as: a victim, an oppressor and a responsible, but incompetent person. The first memory is about using power for personal gains and hurting innocent people. I wanted to impress my childhood friend and gain her favor and it ended up in a catastrophe. The second memory is about being punished for wanting to play. Being in the company of other people and ignoring warning signs of approaching disaster. The third memory is about taking responsibility for other people. Using power for my own amusement and hurting innocent person that was under somebody else's care. All of these tropes fit very well to my various relationships.

There are two other childhood memories that keep returning to me. I was playing with kids outside. We lived at the 10th floor and my mother called me out of the window. She kept calling me, but I kept ignoring it. We went to play to the school grounds and I didn't hear her anymore. When I came back, she was angry. It was the only time I was hit with a belt. One hit for each call that I ignored. The second memory takes place on the same playground but at a different time. It was a holiday and I remember the weather to be 'golden' like this: I was playing with a swing again, and there was a mother and a child nearby. The child was so young that it was struggling to walk. I was standing beside the swing and swinging it while it was empty. The kid was curious and wanted to see what I was doing. The mother was busy. I saw the kid as it approached and kept swinging the swing. The child did not stop and it wandered straight into its path. Again, it was hit in the back of his head. Guess what I did? I ran away and denied the reality of this situation.

The childhood memory that involves a little girl happened when I was around 10. During holidays I used to leave with my parents to a small town near my home where we would borrow a summer house from my uncle. This town had a lake with a beach and I had a female childhood friend that lived next door. One day, her relative came by and she hanged out with her. She was much younger than both of us - the little girl. I remember that didn't like her that much for some reason. I think that she had an attitude and tried to boss us around. I'm not sure. I remember that she had blonde curly hair and looked very innocently. The three of us went to a playground nearby and played with a rotary swing like this: The little girl sat in one of the seats and I started pushing. I wanted to impress my childhood friend, so I gave my best. The little girl protested, but I didn't listen. I always thought that she fell off, but now that I think of it - she may have wanted to get off on her own. She fell out/got out and the next seat hit her hard in the back of her head. I ran away and left the two on their own. I just denied the realness of what I did. I think that something may have been born that day. I met that girl several years later and she tried to blackmail me into submission. She threatened that would tell my mother what happened if I didn't do what she said. By that time I knew to not negotiate with terrorists, so I just said: go ahead. She went ahead and my mother was very upset. The girl had major health problems because of that accident, but I never inquired into that. Now seems like a good opportunity.

@now is forever No, she definitely slipped through. From my point of view, she definitely knew about me and that the alarm was off. She was just masterfully pretending to be innocent. The key to this dream is the ambiguity of whether she was really the witch or not. It plays into vulnerability that I'm learning recently. A little girl is a symbol of it.

Beautiful sky greeted me today. I also had an important dream, but I don't have enough time to dissect it properly, so I'll just post it. There was a witch masquerading as a little girl. She had seduced me before. I was a watchman in a military base, standing in the middle, atop of a watchtower. I was appointed to look out for danger and I saw her talking to other men. She was sitting on a sunbed by the pool in a two-piece swimsuit and I saw her through a glass ceiling. I raised the alarm, red lights and sirens turned on. The guards did not know how she looked like, so they drew everyone's blood and tested it. I was pointing my finger at her and yelling, but they couldn't hear me. She kept talking to men ignoring the alarm and I knew that she was looking at me with her cold eyes. She let her blood be drawn calmly and the test was negative, so the guards missed her. As the guards were passing by her, she gave me one last mocking* look and the dream ended. Note to self: a strong connection to a traumatic childhood memory. * - I read it as if she mocked me, but she may have simply been looking.

My god, who would have thought that stabbing my heart open would feel this amazing. I woke up with a feeling of immense beauty inside of my chest. I was moved, like when watching a beautiful movie. When I get this feeling, I sometimes cry, but this time it was just it - silent beauty. Later that day I had a fight with a coworker that promised to prepare something for me, but did not do the most important part. At the time, I reacted in such a way because it would put me in an uncomfortable position when I was expected to do my part with a tight deadline. Now, I had to do his work in addition to mine. I inquired into why this person annoys me so much and I ended up with my unfulfilled ambition. It has something to do with my father and I'll have to explore it sometime. The coworker is just a kid that's scared as hell. Later that day we had a conversation and I taught him something. I get annoyed easily when people I teach are slow to learn. It may be resentment because I always had to teach myself everything. After that, I started breathing deeply into my heart and my whole body is filled with bliss. I feel high, but alert. I finished my job without any problems.

Oh, and I still fucking love her.

Chasing shadows out of our home is a grueling work. thankfully, this time we both did it intentionally. The results were very unsettling and I'm not sure whether I should post them here. It sounded similarly to bickering, but I was pressing on with a clear mind without judgement. The truth about jealousy was difficult, but what was even worse is how it fits with my own wounds masquerading as love. The strangest thing is that these things cannot be fixed, undone. The thing that comes the closest is kintsugi. What we call infatuation is just unexplainable familiarity of a stranger. Marriage is the pressure that keeps partners together so that they learn their own shadow and mend their wounds.

So many insights, so little time to write. When it comes to chakras - focusing my awareness on each of them changes my thought patterns and behaviors. Each of them also feels differently. For example, Heart feels like an open wound. Tender, vulnerable. It's similar to the tightness of the chest when I cry, but the body does not tremble. My interpretations change when I'm in heart mode: my face looks differently in the mirror. It reminds me of how I perceived myself during the trip - a squishy potato. It does not even concern me that much, I like it! This vulnerability gets my mind confused because I associate it with crying and it was always something unpleasant. The truth is that it is not unpleasant, but overwhelming. It's like being a small, wounded, animal at the mercy of the world. What's strange is that people seem to pick this up subliminally and they are actually nice to me. It may be why I can see shadows so clearly. Muldahara on the other hand is just raw survival power. The first thing that I thought when red is that I can just shift my chackras to control my behavior. That it's a straight path to turquoise lol. There is still a big gap between the heart and sacral chakra. Having read something I suspect to find the solar plexus chakra there.

@now is forever Shh, no bickering. I didn't read your post carefully enough, my mind hanged up at the part where you called her tougher than me. I needlessly took that as an offence to my masculinity. Thank you and sorry.

@now is forever Nah-ah. You don't get to teach me about protecting love after posting here about orgasms. Not after I said that my wife gets jealous easily. I appreciate the rest of your post though. Hmm, or maybe you do get to teach me after all. I'm so dense.

My wife's dowry was a sizable library of fine books that I never read (except for philosophy). Yesterday I randomly picked Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable lightness of being" during our conversation and it sucked me right in. It made realize a lot of things and the least painful of which was that I want my wife to be all the women I will never have. Me being me, I did not turn away from that thought and I told her. Needless to say, she wasn't pleased, but she knew that it was true. My cousin with his fiancee came later that day and invited us to their wedding. It distracted us for a while, but I couldn't help but notice how badly my wife is fidgeting. I didn't make the connection at the time. Earlier that day I cried out of happiness when I remembered our wedding and the photo session by the fountain. It didn't stop me from mercifully crushing my cousin's unexpressed expectations. Later that night I started inquiring into why she's jealous about other women and why. Why she responds with such passionate anger. My mind scares me. Let's just say that there is a subtle difference between a scalpel and a dagger and it's lost on me. Looking back - I knew the exact sequence of buttons and this time I understood when she lashed out. I caused her pain and she didn't see why. I know that it's because she learned to look away from this place. Unsurprisingly, there are men she finds more attractive than me, but she refuses to acknowledge it. Marital sex can't compete with the freshness of stranger that is mostly constructed by projections. If it is to keep occurring, it has to be about something else that we're still learning. I still remember how it's like to be broken open and being right did not stop the remorse. I had a difficult night. Surprisingly, albeit being hurt, she felt closer. I felt that as well and for the first time, I noticed my heart chakra to be open by itself. As I'm writing this at work I've been breathing into it for the whole day with watery eyes.

@Tony 845 You will not get read of fear by fearing it. It's like trying to escape from escaping.

Yeah, no. Suppressing my anger was a bad idea. I was just sexually frustrated, it's not the mind's fault - it was doing its job. It's strange how sexual drive is wired differently in men and women. When I'm horny and I can't relieve it, I get agitated. If I try to contain it, the shell gets constructed, but the animal is always looking through the cracks. It doesn't matter that I'm doing my best to just be nice. It doesn't matter that I tell myself that I can handle it. I always snap in the end. My wife on the other hand constructs her shell to protect herself from customers at work. She's unaware of her body. I can get her physically aroused quickly, but the mind just won't have it. That is, until the body cracks the shell open and releases all of the emotions at once. Of course, the mind being a mind - it won't acknowledge the fact that it is subject to body, but she slowly starts to get it. Not that it helps the tantrums though. I am not infallible. I get angry. I get sad. Sometimes, I snap. Every blade is double-edged. Being emotionally aware is great - only as long as you're not trying to control your emotions. The body rules the mind. The mind has a bit to say in the matter, but building dams to contain tsunami is not going to work. The mind is a subtle, magnificent tool. It's like a dial indicator. It gives precision, not force. I can't mistake it for a hammer because I will get disappointed that it's not doing its job. Funnily enough - some of my inner dialogs with my manager use this metaphor to teach him delicacy with people. I could use my own advice sometimes.

The mind has been giving me a lot of shit today. It just wont surrender. It's been almost two weeks since my first trip and my old friend anger has been showing up since Tuesday. If I'm mindful, I can extinguish it with energy very rapidly, but it comes back from time to time. It's about my manager. Thankfully, I haven't learned to express my outbursts externally, it would be a lot of hassle to forget them now. I became aware of the fact that the mind is just a glorified echo chamber. Very few thoughts are actually original, especially with idle chatter that goes on when I'm not paying attention. I suspect that body is very similar in this regard - it just repeats patterns that have been formed out of ignorance. I'm struggling now with my sexual drive because I just had a haircut and my imagination is running wild. Relieving myself does not solve the problem because it just reinforces the pattern. I want it gone. I'm working alternative shifts now to better overlap with my wife's schedule and it messes up my commitments. I'm back to drinking coffee in the morning (2x) and I'm overeating when I'm back from work. There are so many things that are critically important to improve that I feel like I'm trying to be perfect. What else is there to do when I'm home alone for the whole day?

When it comes to marketing minimalism itself - look for Matt D'avella on youtube. He has made a movie about minimalists that may inspire you. There seems to be a small market for this stuff, I'm not sure whether it is still picking traction, or is it dying off. You will have to look into it yourself. In a sense - it's a paradoxical market because you are educating people to not need you. It resembles spirituality a lot. If you look for people that are driven by minimalist aesthetics - Steve Jobbs comes to mind. I haven't read his biography, but my wife has and she confirms. I was never too invested in following other people's lives so I can't be of much help here. I don't even know what I'm missing out on in this regard. Good luck!

@NoSelfSelf In order to see your ignorance first-hand, you need to suffer and self-reflect. Don't try to be smarter than yourself, you're not. Accept that you're orange and act like it, even if your pride does not allow it. Like @Michael569 said, there are no shortcuts to growth.

Because unless you actually try to grasp god with language, you are buying into a belief that it's impossible. Some people (me included) are just stupid and need to chase their own tail until they have no strength left.

@Wisebaxter That is right. Can you really know if she exists? Does it really stop you from interacting with her? What does it say about the relationship between your intellect and what happens around you? Is your intellect really in control if you can do something with things you have solid idea about? The sense of separate self is grounded in distinctions that are not grounded in anything. You have learned to associate the extents of your 'physical' existence to your skin, but if you actually study your direct experience, then you will know that your distinctions make reality tangible. If you were raised in the Amazon jungle, would a monitor be a monitor? If you were a ferret, would a monitor be a monitor? What is meant when somebody says that you are all there is, is simply that how you define you is arbitrary. Study it and see how reality changes in response. It's not 'just an illusion'. Illusion is all there is. You are disappointed in it because you're still buying it and expecting to gain anything by gambling your life on it. If you truly get it, then all there is is just enjoying the ride. There is no reason to change and fight it.