PepperBlossoms

I think one problem with LITERALLY ALMOST EVERY CAREER is that the moment you sign on to that career, is the moment you sign yourself up for enslavement within the boundary of that specific topic and shut off growth in any other topic. Suddenly everything that is not that seems so much more enticing. We don't want to be bound to one thing. We don't want to shut off exploration. We were shut off as kids and we want to be able to do more. We will find reasons to complain because yes, we are cutting off our ability to explore. The career world we have created is so constraining that we feel like we are cutting off access to new things and it HURTS. But then there is the whole, oh well you are GOD and you are EVERYTHING. When we think we are GOD and are EVERYTHING, then it doesn't hurt as bad because we can still experience other stuff too, just not in this known life... But we want to experience and know everything in this known life, not in the other ones where we have forgotten this one. We want to have them all at the same time, all together, all for us. But the people who venture in one area can become such great MASTERS of that area that they have then had so many more HOURS AND HOURS of observation and experience than anyone else that they have SO MUCH MORE TO SHARE than others and can be of a great resource in that way. Meh, nothing really matters though. Reality is here, or not, and whatever. We are experiencing this, or not. We just want to have fun. We just want to enjoy the ride while we are here and death is going to come, or not.

One of my questions is... How to be authentic??? We can have something that we are trying to work through and not feel shameful about but yet at the same time we still want to be authentic. To be ourselves... well what is me? What am I? What am I usually like? We change all the time and so what I was like yesterday may not be like what I am today. From online: "What is authenticity in a person? Put simply, authenticity means you're true to your own personality, values, and spirit, regardless of the pressure that you're under to act otherwise. You're honest with yourself and with others, and you take responsibility for your mistakes. Your values, ideals, and actions align." Values - ah well honesty, kindness, curiosity, learning, etc. Umm well I am still trying to be kind, present. It is hard though. There is the whole - people can tell when you are fake/inauthentic. This is such a blurry thing though! We try something and if we feel good about it, we keep it. Likewise, if we feel bad about something, we may drop it. Umm, to try to do our best and to keep on trying our best. But then there is the whole- that person is so fake - they are such a people pleaser. But is that fake or is that just their personality? Or their coping mechanism? What is personality anyway? I try to be whatever and sometimes I am not always the same person! Sometimes we want to try new ways of being out. I think I am just having insane shame and I just need to work on that some more. I feel like, oh is the other person judging me? Do they think I am being weird? But how am I to know? How am I to know anything??? We judge ourselves. The inner critic is such a wild battle sometimes.

We find stuff that is intimidating, better than us, threatening, not perfect, selfish, prettier, smarter, more developed, more skilled, etc. and we say, I don't like it. However, there will always be stuff that is better in some ways and worse in others. Plus, nothing stays the same forever and stuff is getting better at the same time that stuff is getting worse. We see that we are worse or that something seems horrible and we feel insecure and think DEATH. I am going to die because I am not as smart/pretty/whatever as XYZ or because this thing is like this and not like that. However, we are still better than that in the areas of ABC and there still is great stuff to discuss in the areas of EFG. BUT, ALL IS FUTILE. Everything dies (in the relative sense.) Embracing the futility of the death and change of everything and how it is futile in trying to be the best or perfect everything... embracing futility can feel calming in a way in terms of letting go of competition and perfection. It is weird because there is so much complexity (kinda) to the systems of life and it can feel so hard to change any of it... but yet we want to try anyway. I guess whatever feels good to you, try that. If it continues to feel good, keep doing it. If it does not, think it over some more.

"Like you said, everything has its shadow side, and the shadow in you is what makes you hate it. If you enjoy hating the system, I don't want to stop you from doing that. It can be fun. If you feel like it's costing you a lot of energy, and you'd rather have peace of mind, you can integrate the shadow. Which is the process of finding and recognizing everything you hate "out there", somewhere in yourself, and then loving that" One of the members posted this and I thought it was pretty good and wanted to think about it some more. What is stuff that I have hated "out there"? People's confidence, brains, looks, arrogance, aggression, insults. Do I have that too? Sometimes I have confidence, sometimes brain, sometimes looks, sometimes arrogant, sometimes aggressive, sometimes insulting. I can be all of these things too. Sometimes it is the context of how we compare this to that where that looks bad to us but yet we don't have the mirror to maybe see that we do it too. Maybe we have not yet fully processed it. I can feel intimidated by those that have more looks, money, skills, info, etc. It feels like, oh they will dominate over me, I cannot compete. But we will never be the best at anything. There will tend to be stuff that is worse than us and stuff that is better than us. All of the things that I mentioned are temporary. Looks, money, skills, etc. - they all come and go. Seeing the futility in stuff coming and going can be helpful. .... The second group meeting that I attended seemed a bit somber. People shared stories of rape, child loss, fentanyl overdose epidemics, sexual abuse, etc. I look at my life and go wow. I have not had that. One woman said that fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death on the west coast for people ages 18-49. She said she used to focus on suicide prevention but fentanyl overdose has exceeded that - people are taking it and don't realize that they are overdosing. I was thinking that the more we interact with, the more we read, the more variety of people we talk to, the more we may step into the world of sad, traumatic things. Spirituality has really helped me to try to be very complex with how I see things. ... I think I was not liking the woman's smile in the meeting. I don't know why. Not many others were smiling. Again I smile too. Sometimes I smile when it is totally unnecessary or inappropriate but that is what I am doing. It is really weird how we decide, oh I do not like this or that. Again, the feeling of feeling lower than others where when one is smiling, they seem strong. We are all going to die though. ... "When you write, you light a bonfire in the spirit world. It is dark there. Lost souls wander alone. Your inner flame flares up. And the lost souls gather near your light and heat. And they see the next artist at work and go there. And they follow the fires until they find their ways home." - Luis Alberto Urrea ... The feeling of insecurity, of not being good enough, of comparing ourselves to others - maybe the stuff we see in others we like about them? We say wow that is their superpower and we admire it? ABSOLUTE SECURITY IS FUTILE. We are not in control of everything and so insecurity will kinda ALWAYS happen. We see someone better and feel insecure and think DEATH. But yet we won't necessarily die. We say, we are weaker than them - look they are stronger and they can outlast me see - look they are better because of XYZ. Well, I am better because of ABC too so it is not apples and apples. .. Regarding fixing things so that we don't make the same mistake next time, umm.. (or switching it out rather than suppressing it) -Choosing to listen rather than suppressing listening. Choosing to see potential rather than suppressing negative thoughts. When something seems useless, we may quit listening and it could be during those times that it would have been useful but yet we quit. chit chat can be helpful for some but a waste of time for the entire group https://cogbtherapy.com/introduction-to-cbt

In my group meeting today, I noticed that one problem is that people do not stay on topic with what they are talking about. And then some don't talk at all. I feel like it would be better if people were better at staying on topic of what the discussion is to be about. When people start wasting time talking about movies/food and it is unrelated, it significantly devalues the meeting. I however am not running the meeting so I am not the one to impact that. I can see leo's perspective where you have a moderator saying the same general message to every single person and it would kind of devalue the forum and is not being complex enough.

When someone is banned from a platform, they may tend to find another platform and there may be others who are upset about the banning and go to the other platform too. This is a tricky situation. I don't think banning is the best idea because then the users can't ever come back aside from making a new profile maybe but I can also see that taking people from one platform to another is dangerous to the survival of the original platform. It is super tricky because having multiple perspectives is super helpful and nice but I can also see that sometimes they don't work together well and there are clashes and sometimes it is just easier to split off for awhile. It was odd how the other platform Leo is talking about looked almost the exact same but I can also see that Leo's was set up really well so yeah it could be to backstab, but one could also think of it as tipping the hat because of how well Leo's was/is set up. I can see that it can take a TON of effort to make this thing happen like others have said and it would be sad to lose the ability to discuss ideas. People should be able to use whatever platform they want and however many platforms they want. It's like telling a left-wing that if they go talk to the right-wing, they can't talk to the left-wing anymore. Every person and platform will have good and bad things about it and we all make mistakes too and sometimes we have miscommunication. Censorship and banning opens a very tricky can of worms and part of me leans of the side of no censorship or banning but I can also see where some structures work much better than others. It is also sad that having people leave to go to the other one will basically make less people on this one and the other one would have less too and it would have been nice if we could have all just stayed on one but I guess also things don't always work that way. I really appreciate all of the insights and conversations that I have gotten to have with people on this platform and maybe sure people could get the same on the other one. I think maybe if the way the original mod thing was handled in a different way, maybe this wouldn't have happened.

@mojsterr This is a good point. Women are often/sometimes encouraged to do the same things as men and it could be that we are not gifted in the same ways and that we are going against the current trying to do the same as them. It is hard to tell what to think. Yes it could be that those that went into the business have more masculine features/aptitudes/interests/capabilities required to excel at that. I think also how men and women are could continue to evolve into a variety of much different things from how they are currently but also may not necessarily. The women doing men's jobs and men doing women's jobs is kinda like a large experiment and we can see how it goes. I tried doing a job common to men and I did not enjoy it or feel proud about it but sure there could be some other women are really great at it and do feel proud and enjoy it. It is nice that society is more open for the genders to try different things rather than being constrained to whatever their gender is "supposed" to do but it also could be that yeah we are just better suited for some things over others based on our chemicals/genes/hormones/aptitudes/interests/whatever. @Preety_IndiaRegarding game, I think also the woman would want to be interested in the man and be going after him too. We kinda both have to be going after each other because times will happen where one wants to back off from the other and it is kinda a team effort to keep the relationship going. (Relationships are like expert level life it seems!) But yeah I totally agree in that if one person is not interested and only wants sex, that most likely doesn't work long term and the person who is not getting liked will resent the other person for not liking them for anything other than their body (unless they really don't care which some may not and maybe they have really low self esteem) and the person wanting sex will resent the other person for being too clingy/needy.

We will have an idea/topic on our mind and when we are met with other ideas/topics, they form a new marriage of something new. We could be going to the same idea we have gone to before but because we have a certain idea/topic on our mind when we enter, the perspective/experience could be different and it could be different every time. ... Sometimes death can be seen as a way to give back to the community. We were feeding off of our surroundings and our death allows our surroundings to feed off of us. When we feel we have nothing left to offer/change with our body, we could feel that we are consuming more so than we are providing. I could look at civil engineering and say, look at all the bugs/animals that had to be killed. We could also look at things in terms of potential and say that humans have more potential to change things than do bugs/animals and so they will justify the killing. The human can plant and grow lots of food whereas the donkey can only eat food. Sometimes one may have to do that. We are in luxury when we can say, I am too moral to kill a bug/animal and have someone else do it for us. Bugs/animals have to kill other bugs/animals to survive. It could be that we can eventually have all food grown in a lab. It will be a problem if food is no longer able to grow and there is not enough and everyone will be killing and stealing from everyone to survive (which is already done among the other bugs/animals but humans could have to do it too.) I was wanting to know more about what mysticism is and it sounds like this mysterious thing. My peer said it is more perspectives. It could be a whole other universe that I have not explored or it could be related to the stuff I have already explored.

One of the things I am thinking about is - when we do stuff, do we do it to get away from other stuff or do we do it because we are choosing to do it, or both? Like okay every pick will be at the opportunity cost of everything else. There could at every moment be a number one thing that we want to be doing in that exact moment but that may not necessarily be what we are doing. One of the things I started thinking about when it comes to negative thoughts is that it is not that they are not necessarily bad. Negative thoughts can identify problems, walls, confusion, questions, etc. and we can use that to create curiosity, growth, change, identify potential, etc. They can also be used for anxiety, depression, hopelessness, suicide, etc. too. Thoughts that disapprove of things will happen all the time and how we choose to use those thoughts can make a mile of a difference. We can find good and bad things in everything and people will have varying degrees of how good they are at this and it will also be based on how much they notice, are aware of, etc.

Everything that we do is like our escape, our coping mechanism, our medication. We do one thing to get away from another sometimes. Well what if we chose to do things not to get away from anything? But is that possible? Every decision is like an opportunity cost to every other decision. We don't know. What if we chose one thing because we wanted to be there, not because we wanted to get away from something else? Like, we are picking to do XYZ, not picking to avoid ABC. Hmm.. I am not sure. I think of all the people working jobs right now and how much of them do it to avoid something else. Where, it would not be their top pick but they are doing it because that is what they usually do but they may have a better top pick.

One of the things I feel conflicted over is that I have received news of a new forum. The forum may have been created because the creator was removed from being a mod on this forum. I feel conflicted. I don't want to pick sides. Both sides will have great benefit. I don't want to hate on one side as I can also see both have faults. I too have faults. We all make mistakes, we all have our own opinions, we all have whatever. We want to grow in a supportive environment. There is not necessarily a right answer. I do not approve of some things and I approve of others. My mouth sometimes says stuff I regret but I have said it already. Um well.. I like the thing Sadhguru said where he does not have any opinions of his friends and treats every new day like a blank slate. I like that in that we are holding anyone's past to them with regards to how today goes. We all make mistakes and have faults and do things we regret and sometimes do selfish things but we also all hope to do loving things.

I think we struggle with shame. We may want to repent and say what we did but we can't because we got shamed every time we did that. So our next idea is, well maybe I need to just work through this myself and forgive myself. Forgiving others can be helpful for them to not have shame and be able to move on. Shaming others when they are trying to apologize for what they did can make it hard for them to think about it and move on. We all have weaknesses and various things we call failures, mistakes, selfishness, etc. When you shame someone, you are hurting them and you. When you forgive someone, you are healing both you and them. Some people may have been shamed so much that they don't know how to forgive. All they can do is shame as well. They shame you and then you learn to not go to that person when you are struggling because the shame didn't help. Shame someone and they may continue to blame them. The shamer may look bad, worse than the person who is trying to apologize/repent. The shamer is too weak. We have to be strong and release our shame ourselves. We can't wait for someone else to do it for us. Someone could say, yes I accept your apology and we may still feel bad regardless of whether they accept it or not. We may keep on blaming ourselves. But we are not totally at fault here. There is an entire environment of factors, much complexity, going on. Some of it is outside of our awareness. There are all of these other things going on and it was not just us. We are just here doing things, thinking things, reacting to things. We may feel like it is easier to let go of shame when someone forgives us but we are not always going to be forgiven. That is a luxury only some can do. We can't leave our happiness on the line of how someone else treats us. We can choose how we treat ourselves. We are trapping ourselves when we tell ourselves that we must feel shame and continue to do so because the other person thinks we must. It doesn't totally matter what they think. They may not be capable of forgiveness. The thing we have the most control over, if we have any, is ourselves and our inner mind. More so the inner mind than the outer body.

I think sometimes it is just reacting, responding, floundering. I think sometimes it is trying to figure things out, trying to bring about change. One of the weird things about weighing priorities is that we don't really know what our priorities are until after we have made a decision and then we change our mind.

One way to go to no thought is to start doing things. Like paint, run, walk, write, make music, listen to music. But is that running away? Are you running away here?

Why do we do what we do when it could have a negative impact for both of us, for me, for you, for everyone involved? Why do we do this? Are we low consciousness? Are we trying to be mean/hurtful/selfish? Are we self-soothing? Like, oh if I do this, I will feel better. We then try it and either we do feel better or we don't. Maybe we feel better in the moment and then start to feel worse and worse. Maybe we feel bad in the moment but then start to feel better and better. Maybe we need to escape. We feel too trapped and doing this thing is our way of rebelling. We felt too tight, too suppressed, everything was too rigid. We needed more wiggle room. We needed to feel like we had control. But why not just find inner peace and be okay with our brain? Why do the thoughts keep on going and going, blaming, criticizing, punishing, shaming? We feel bad for our coping mechanisms and shame ourselves? We feel like we have to repent. We feel like, ah I am so bad. But why? Why say I am so bad? Why not say, well this is how I reacted and this is what happened and I learned from it and now I can try something different next time? Why the self shaming? Maybe we are used to that because we did it as a child because others did it to us. They shamed us and we learned to shame ourselves. Maybe we don't want to deal with thinking about it so we just keep everything the same and keep on doing the same things over and over again. We are thinking of ourselves. Ourselves has chaos. No one can tame the chaos but us. We do what we think will tame our own chaos. We then see, how does this feel? Sometimes the method feels good but then how it impacts others feels bad to them. Sometimes our chaos is so bad that we don't care how it feels for them because we needed to find something that worked for us. So it works and we are okay even if others are not. We can block them out. But then time goes on and it starts to bring up lots of problems and we don't feel so good about it. We start to question, can I keep on using this method? There are other methods out there for me to tame the chaos are there not? Maybe I should try this other method instead? So we try something else and see how it goes. But things are habits and habits can be hard to break - we can do them so much that we don't even have to think or try. So we take the do the thing again because we are responding to the chaos, but we have forgotten the long term impacts. The thing happens and the long term impacts come back and we go, oh shit, why did I do that again? Why wasn't I thinking? How come I haven't learned? Why am I such a slow learner? It has been like what 100 times now and I keep on messing up? But sometimes we are really, really slow to learn things. We say, I will just forget about this and will be different? But we have self doubt. Well what if I can't forget? What if I think about this everyday? What if it is distracting me so much that I can't do anything else? What if it takes over? But why are we taking away our power? Why are we giving in? We then ask ourselves, well do I have control over my own thoughts and mind? Can I tame this beast? Am I the one taming it? Maybe we keep on revisiting it because there is something we are curious about and we just haven't figured that out yet. We haven't come to peace that we have come to a reasonable conclusion yet. We haven't yet backed ourselves into the corner and embraced the futility. Sometimes one has to take an idea all the way to a corner and say, I will never know, and really, really embrace that before they can feel at peace with not knowing and be able to back away and focus on something else. To say, I will never really know, I will never really solve this, I will never really figure it out. I will die not knowing, I will die with it unfinished. Nothing is ever fully known, finished, complete. Everything is in a varying degree of a state of flux. Sometimes when we are told not to do something, it makes us want to do it even more. It is such a weird phenomenon. You could have someone who is punished for killing and then they want to do it even more. Yeah sure they may be aware it is wrong, but they could want even more so. Or someone could be shut out for their idea and then they want to shout their idea even more. If they had just been given the opportunity to explore the idea, maybe they would have phased out of it. But sometimes, you have to tell little kids, no you have to share and they try the sharing thing and it works great and they prefer doing that over taking over the toy. But also no sometimes they may hate sharing even more and even more so want to have the toy to themselves. But the thing may survive and it may not go away and it may get stronger than it was before. It may come up with better defenses, coping mechanisms. Tell someone "you have to.." and they may refuse even more and find even more ways and reasons to not get one. Tell someone "you have to.." and they may refuse and find even more reasons to stay and get it to work. It is weird. Sometimes when we are told we can't do something, we cave in and agree with the person. Sometimes, we do the opposite and prove them wrong. I guess it will depend on our requisite variety of how much potential we see and if we see more potential/walls than the other person. If someone tells us we cannot do something and we were already hesitant about it in the first place and already had lots of walls for why we couldn't do it, then that could be the extra domino to make the entire tower fall down and we give up. If we are already strong and complex with something and feel good about it and someone tells us we can't do it, we may just find that as one more obstacle to work around and have to take into consideration and may make our tower even stronger with that in mind. We could take our joy for food and transform it from eating unhealthy stuff to a joy for the flavor of food but also eating lots of healthy food because we find that feels better. We could take our joy for making things better and transform it from killing to healing. We could take our joy for spreading ideas and transform it from censoring to trying to understand them and them trying to understand you and getting an even broader perspective of things and increasing the perspectives that we surround ourselves with. We could take our joy for porn and sure either keep on doing it or use that energy with our partner or with other creative endeavors. We could take our joy for freedom and use that to push the limits of ideas and creative endeavors. I think that we do some stuff that is hurtful to others because it is helpful in the short term and we just have not become conscious of how hurtful it may be in the long term and it can take a long time to break a habit. Also, there are so many unknowns and we don't know if we are reacting okay or not and we are not sure how to read situations and what is life or death and what is not. We may think there is no hope and something is over when that is not the case and we thought it was so we fell back into our habit that we had told ourselves we were done with. We may then feel bad for falling back into the habit and be like, well shit, why did I do this? But we thought again everything was going to shit and so why not go to my habit as that has made me feel good in the short term and I need to feel good in the short term... but then the short term is over and we feel bad again and it is like shit.. again!! Then we tell ourselves, okay well look at it like this - I reacted. I made myself upset with how I reacted. I chose to be upset. I consciously chose to be upset and I pushed that on everyone else too. I threw up my upset-ness everywhere. I could have not reacted. I could have not let it get to me. I chose to do what I did because that it how my reaction, which was upset, wanted to cope. But the thing is is that I had a habit and my habit was to react in a certain way. So maybe I have to break that habit. Maybe I have to not REACT the moment the thing happens and then the coping mechanism will never be needed. It happens in like a split second so it happens so fast we can't even necessarily keep up. We are upset and then boom it takes a mountain of effort to get the upset-ness to go away so maybe we go to the coping mechanism that has worked over and over again and so we are sure it will work again. But we are so upset we are only thinking short term. We are only thinking about us as well because we are upset. We are the bad manager who is reacting instead of being proactive. We are reactive and our reactiveness doesn't do very good for us but we do it anyway because that is what we are used to doing and that is how we do business around here. But no. We can actively chose to be calm regardless of what happens on the external. We can say - it will be okay. We need to stop giving the thoughts so much of our attention. Turn off the thought tv!!! Go to no thought. It is an escape but we may feel like the thoughts are like daggers and we can't take the daggers for too long or we will get beaten too much. So we go to no thought and accept that we don't know anything. But we don't trust that we can actually get to no thought. We have doubt that that will happen. We think we will just have the shaming doubts.

I put this somewhere else but I thought it was good stuff so I am putting it here too. We tend to want to be free. We tend to want freedom. We tend to want to be able to run and play and when there are walls, we may feel stuck and confined within those walls. The inner critic points out the walls, defines them for us, tells us they are there. Walls are like boundaries, limits; we are trying to push the boundaries/limits all the time as much as we can. When we are at a job, and we may feel stuck with all the codes, rule following, timelines, budgets, norms, etc. (Or if we are doing our own thing, we may feel stuck with not having the right skills, tools, support or fear of not making enough money). We start to push what we can do and see if we can get away with it. If the job is free enough to allow us to run around and do our thing, we are happy. If the job is letting us explore our potential and push the limits, we are happy. If the job tells us no you can't do this or that, we are upset, we get bored/angry/frustrated. The inner critic is a blessing and a curse. By pointing out problems, walls, questions, it allows for potential, growth, change/transformation, new perspectives. There are almost always good things to find in any situation, almost always things to question, almost always things to improve on, almost always some things that are free enough to be turned/shifted despite others seemingly stuck in place and un-moveable. The inner critic's focus may be in a negative way, a skeptical way (you can't do this, that isn't possible, you don't have the skill/personality, this is bad, you don't belong, you shouldn't forgive, are you crazy?, this is going to be bad, you are not cool/smart enough, etc.). I think the inner critic could be trying to accomplish more potential, growth, and curiosity if we use it that way. It could also tend to drown in misery, suffering, sadness, anxiety, regret, guilt, shame, hopelessness, annoyance, blame, etc. if we use it that way. Either way, it is pointing out ideas/information to us and how we react to that can make a difference. In a way, the stronger the inner critic, the more we can notice, the more information/ideas we can work with, the more potential, the more things we may find we need to tweak, the more complex we can become, the more mastery we can achieve. However, also the stronger the inner critic, the more walls/problems we may say are there. If one's main focus is being internally peaceful and taking their own responsibility for their inner peace regardless of what is going on in the "external" and beyond their control, they may have a more peaceful, transformative, healing, hopeful relationship with the inner critic; whereas if one feels like they cannot control their inner feelings and lets whatever happens outside impact their inside, they may not realize the healing and transformative potential/power of the inner critic and just drown in it. I guess one thing is using feedback (whether from others or from ourselves) for growth/curiosity/learning instead of using it as a victim/blame/fight/hide can make a difference. But to use it for growth/curiosity/learning takes lots of patience, calmness, and willingness to engage/interact/understand and sometimes the easy route can be to just react in a negative way (but that is actually the hard route because it may be easy in the immediate but hard for anything beyond the immediate). One's peers, therapist, friends, etc. could all be criticizing a situation but one could realize there is so much more to it (and more potential) and they were just criticizing it because of the limited information one was giving them and because they are just focusing on the walls and not the potential/good. Learning to not judge stuff from what it did in the past and see that stuff is constantly changing all the time.. (but that is tricky though because the past can be a helpful indicator of what is to come; but also not necessarily).... Everything is super tricky... (I think a bunch of this, I was inspired by listening to a podcast from yesterday haha and I was wanting to tie all of it together.) .... But again, so many ways to think about that topic. What's yours trying to accomplish? I guess another one I was thinking of was when we were in school and we had to sit still and weren't allowed to speak or interact with the other kids and were told we had to pay attention to the teacher and do the assignment, sure sometimes we felt engaged and interested and explored that. Sometimes we did not though. So what did we do?? We went to the internal imagination and daydreamed. We left the classroom and were in some other place, engaged and interested and explored that. Or with a website, if one gets censored/shut down, one may find other ways to release their message/perspective. (Again, pushing the limits). But with the inner critic, we either believe, yes the walls are there and we have to comply (yes I have to comply with what my teachers/parents/government says and I will be a good girl/boy and do everything they say... or, no actually I can push the limits and question everything..) Do we believe the walls are there or do we think we can push them - if we believe the walls are there, are we depressed that they are there or are we curious about why they are there.. There is the balance though of walls being helpful versus being limiting...

I attended some free online support groups from a mental health perspective where we were on zoom talking about things at a scheduled meeting time and there were all these different meetings with different topics at different times that you could register for. I was wondering if y'all have any recommendations for free online support groups from a spirituality perspective where again there is a video component where you get to talk to people during the meeting virtually.

I think we go back and forth from being strong and confident and able to be alone to feeling weak and lonely and unable to be alone. I think we go back and forth from taking the blame to blaming others. I think we go back and forth from being on track to being off track. I think we go back and forth from feeling good about stuff to feeling bad about stuff. The highs are great but we have to watch out for being cocky, mean, selfish. The low are hard and we have to watch out for breaking things, hurting others, suicide, anxiety, depression, giving up, ruining certain things, etc. Finding some sort of middle ground or having a method to use for when the pendulum swings too far in one direction can be helpful... such as - when I get low, I seek out people, the therapist, support groups, healthy food, walks, meditation, calm music, motivation, things to push me harder, etc. When I get too high, I seek out humility, gratitude, helping others, etc. I feel like, well both of those could be used at any time and at either end of the spectrum.

I think one common mistake is that we will be trying hard at something and when things stop going our way or they get hard, we blame others and say they are the problem. It can be helpful to blame ourselves in the effect that it gets us to try to change. It can be helpful to blame others with the effect of identifying environments that are not ideal. There is also the notion of blaming nothing and that everything just is but trying to do the best with both ourselves, our peers, and the environment. We can change ourselves, we can change what peers we surround ourselves with, and we can change what our environment looks like. There is almost always stuff that could be better so one could almost always find things about others to complain about.. likewise, one could almost always find things about oneself and one's environment to change.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lWTXOpWvgZQ5PY334iqjNh9BHGRZNrODM

I think sometimes the saying that our partner is not being respectful is a reflection of ourselves not being respectful. This whole thing is super tricky. It can be hard to tell when we are at fault and only want to see it as the other person or when they are at fault but not wanting to see it as such or when it is both. There is also the factor where we got our insecurities from our parents/childhood/environment and are able to identify how/why we became how we did. I guess sometimes toxic relationships just work themselves out where it comes to an end without having to try to end it. I guess also, the more a woman is able to take care of herself, the less needy she would be I would assume; and likewise the same goes with men. Dealing with all of those insecurities like loneliness that I mentioned can be helpful.

I think you're right about the whole not being treated with respect thing. It isn't fun.

I don't want to start a gender war. This is what I had put in my journal yesterday. Just noting the guy/girl difference in terms of what is actually happening here. EDIT: I took a few lines from my quote out. Also, women have started businesses I just didn't look for it specifically but it was interesting how all of the ones I typed in were not started by women.

@Preety_India Thanks for sharing. Yeah I agree with everything being portrayed as my fault (or one's fault) gets old; the excessive blaming/criticism/getting picked on gets old. I think I do still have lots of insecurities and one of the big ones is loneliness. I guess the idea of, oh I can't be alone, I don't want to be alone, I would rather not be alone. Good point on not needing to seek out validation. I realized that with spirituality too - there really isn't anyone to validate if your way of thinking is the best way but yeah sure others can give suggestions and one can take/reject them. If the validating seems to be more putting down, it can be hard to tell, oh is this stuff helpful and I need to change or is this just trying to tear me down? I have seen where yes there is helpful stuff and yes I need to change but there are also healthier ways to do it. I had the epiphany a few years ago how I was assuming I was lower than men with regards to being on the tennis court -but there was also the huge disadvantage because their bodies are better built for it than mine. I think I need more examples of what a healthy relationship is supposed to look like. I think society painted the picture of a whole lot of female submissiveness but also, do females have to be submissive to a degree for the relationship to work??? I was exploring who started companies yesterday and every single one I searched on google was started by a man. I also found that my previous career and one I was considering were both highly male dominated. Our childhood was dominated by learning about men in science and history.... many governments are still dominated by a male leader at the top...

I had on my to-do list to make a vision board. However, I also feel like, well I don't want to think too small. I need to think large. I am still very open to many paths of life right now. The people I was talking with yesterday, I felt like we were similar but yet also still quite different. In the second meeting, there was a social worker, a teacher, a few mental health counselors, and me, the unemployed person. 4/6 people in the meeting were writers. I was like - WOAH! One woman had published several things. Here these people are working and writing and I am not working or doing writing. Umm yeah so that was interesting. But yes I am supposed to keep it confidential and so I am not sure if I am supposed to even share that. But I did not share anyone's name or which meeting it was so there is that.