I'm A Work In Progress

i just had a light bulb moment: i am a survivor, somehow thriving within the parenthetical framework of a victim mentality. how do you like them apples!

i was pondering the victim/survivor mentality, and thinking about how i consider myself to be in survivor mode. several years back, i had made the realization that i was definitely seeing myself as the victim of my past, and i made a determination from that point on that i would start to walk and talk like a survivor. no more victimization mentality for me, so siree bobtail stinkeroo!

now here comes the hard part: i actually did do that. i began to act 'as if', and there's the rub. "ACT" 'as if'.

while i realize that acting 'as if' has had a valuable place in my actual recovery path, and has really advanced me out of the bondage [as i interpreted bondage] of the past, now i am seeing, with a wider periscope, that my acting 'as if' arose in the framework of a victim mentality! it's almost as if my abuse experiences caused this parenthetical framing of my life, and leaving me blind to the fact, unable to see it objectively, since i myself was the subject.

the clincher for me is in the realization that by saying i'm a survivor merely REINFORCES the label of 'victim' that i had come to place on myself in my mind, by verifying in my own head that there was something to survive in the first place. declaring "IM NOW FREE" only reinforces the notion of victimhood!

this post is an attempt to put the sequence of coming to label myself 'victim' into context.

>>>> [ I'M A VICTIM Early Life ]<<<<

what happened: major life chapters/influences in this period:

+ grade school: having strong palpable experiences of god's
presence in my life; stress of being 'different' than other males;
liking to be with, and preferring girls as playmates.
+ high school: abuse taking place; parents stressed out and
emotionally, psychologically and physically unavailable and
abusive; sexual abuse by my older brother occuring
+ stress of realizing my 'difference' as being homosexual, and
fearing being discovered by other males in the peer culture.
+ blossoming as a musician, developing musical tastes and identity as a musician.

in my early life i 'felt' myself to a victim of my economic
social status, my parents physical
and emotional violence. later my brother's sexual abuse,
and later the rapes i endured in the service. i was starved
emotionally, and desperate to find 'love' and acceptance.
this became the foundation for all my choices and actions:
the desperate need to have my emotional and psychological
needs met. to be loved, and to get it in the only way i
had known up to that point in my life: by using my body, and
projecting an image of worthiness. i began to cultivate a life
that would serve these purposes, and my entire life's trajectory
would be propelled toward resolution in this ultimate purpose:
to apologize for not being good enough!

>>>> [ I'M A VICTIM/SURVIVOR Pre-Recovery Life ] <<<<

feeling bad...need to escape it: major life chapters/influences in this period:

+ joining the navy, and began to label myself 'gay/bi', and
embraced my essential self, tho not accepted by my family.
+ being raped on at least 4 occasions, once by a civilian
at knife point.
+ out of the navy
+ i turn 21 and start hanging out in bars
+ perp rejects sexual relationship and dies
+ i disclose to family his abuse of 4 of us
+ realizing their fury at me for outing him, i
desperately try to get back into their good
graces, by rejecting my gay nature, hoping to win
their approval:
+ i marry my ex-wife, the lead singer in our band
[incidentally, the 'attraction' was the bond we
shared thru her mom's relationship to my mom as her
hairdresser; also she was the former one time girlfriend
of my secret heart throb buddy growing up]
+ i spend several years developing my career in church
music, while drowning in drugs, alcohol, shame and
making babies.
+ life is miserable, and my 'marriage' goes south.
+ i discovery AA, leave my marriage of 7 years, and begin
my recovery journey at age 31.

prior to recovery and having developed recovery language,
i did not 'know' myself and in my own head to be 'a victim'
and so had not labeled myself as such at the time
at least consciously. it seemed to be
what i needed to do in order to cope with the
unnamed pain i was feeling at the time, which led
me to seek 'recovery' solutions: such as would lead
to freedom from entrenched and imprisoning behaviors.
in recovery, i came to see myself as victim of my past experiences, and ultimately the choices that i exercised as a
result of those, which ultimately became regulating
patterns in my life. addictions abounded and
became the pain management tactic, eventually
culminating in the form of negative bonding with
substances and processes such as oral fixations
with smoking, eating, drinking and other processes
that sought to sate my need for closeness, ie,
relationships, obsession with weight and body
issues to become more worthy, engaging in religious
practices bartering with god, trying to fix myself
so as to be more acceptable to others.

>>>> [ I'M A VICTIM/THRIVER Phase II Recovery ] <<<<

ok now! let's fix all this stuff!: major life chapters/influences in this period:

did all the things i thought i needed to DO in order to BE ok.

i had come to see my life as a big bunch of knots that needed to be untied, unlinking sequelae one by one until i got to the genesis of the thought seeds that germinated entire pathologies, which could then be surplanted with new trains of thought rooted in reality.

i conquered many addictions, achieved success in my career, increased my education beyond that of any of my family members ..... see how OK i am now?????? all arising out of the framework of the victim mentality. i am broken and i need to be fixed in order to be more acceptable to myself and everyone else. what a trap! all that as if to pass judgment on anyone as being 'less than' who did not share in what i perceived to be 'worthwhile' endeavors. as if personal value could be quantified and qualified by some standard of weights and measures.

living life now outside the parenthesis of 'victim' modality

>>>> [ I'M A SUVIVOR/THRIVER Phase III Recovery ] <<<<

realizing i was victimized [and that there were surely consequences of that] is NOT the same thing as perceiving myself as a victim! victimzation happened. there is no denying that. but the labeling myself as such became a self-fulfilling prison, because every time i pointed to one of my bonds, investing in the narrative of myself i reinforced the notion that i was imbounded, increasing that belief about myself. i came to see myself as eternally trapped.

BUT

now i realize that seeing myself as trapped, and labeling myself as such, WAS NEVER THE CASE. i was only a victim of my own perceptions. if i was a victim of anything, it was my own inability to
relieve the stresses brought on by the dissonant states that had become part of my previously fractured self.

when i began to author this self-referential narrative of me as victim, then all other possibilities in my life came to be ruled out as the aperature of my mind's eye slowly narrowed by the labeling of
myself as victim.

how could i truly be a survivor, when the underpining belief upon which i would build the foundation survivor/label was the sand of victim/label?

the only way i could really get back on track to being the 'potential ron' was to disinvest in the idea that i was ever trapped to begin with, that i was ever REALLY a victim. i had to burn this book
and begin to author a new one. i had to debunk the ideas that i had come to believe about my own systemic grooming stop blaming the past as if to apologize for something [investment in victim mentality] and just move on to other options, and stop looking back at past, lest i turn into the proverbial  pillar of salt.

too bad i wasted 20 years trying to figure all this out, thinking i was trapped all along, not realizing that the bars were of my own mind and that i could have walked thru the bars at any given moment.

oh well, better late than never....... maybe someone can skip a couple chapters in their own life by reading this.

Matter Over Mind

from an earlier posting, but one i want to conjoin as part of my recovery narrative:

mind over [brain] matter, or [brain] matter over mind? a sense of psychological vertigo leaves me feeling as if i am standing on the edge of a precipice peering into the impenetrable darkness looking for an answer. always acting on the thought that the answers lie in following and unpacking the pathology of some mental process which led to a current fixated state of thinking.

but since i have fallen in love with the study of neurobiology, i have taken it out of the realm of mental and begun to understand it as a function of the ingrained neural wiring patterns of the brain. and they are not really playing tricks on us. they are just firing synapses according to the way thought and feeling perceptions compute and form their circuitry which we reinforce every moment until we do something to change their regular paths of behavior.

i liken it to this old joke about the dog who will not be house trained. the master comes home every day from work to find that the dog has soiled the carpet. angry, the master opens the window, picks up the dog by the scruff of the neck, and tosses it out the window [don't worry it's a first floor window.....]. this happens repeated day after day. then one day the master comes home from work, sees the same thing, begins to go through his regular process, but on seeing his approach, the dog runs to the window, opens it, and proceeds to jump out.

that's what happens in our brains. eventually the neural transmitter take over, and since the power of decision is no longer necessary, it is removed from the process, which ultimately become involuntary.

in terms of the social connection, i did the same thing. my brain never fully developed that social connectivity, because it was never imparted originally by my primary caregiver, and thus no paths were in place to expand upon, to generate greater potentiality. as a result the dysfunctional patterns of attachment that were wired in me as a result of a lack of contingent relational interactivity, left me in such a state as to interpret all new situations i encountered throughout my life as being strange, and therefore a threat to my sense of well-being and security. without having developed a palette of flexible responses in relation to strange situations i encountered, i was left to, like the dog who throws himself out the window after soiling the carpet, to fall back on the old regular and now involuntary reactions that had been reinforced though out my life.

understanding this as the primary shaping criteria for many of my actions, reactions and seemingly selective behaviors helps me to take an active part in restructuring my old automatic choices.

in terms of social anxiety, what i have come to realize, is that because i never developed the initial pathways that would lead to expanded social connections, and because these were further impeded by the experience of sexual abuse which interrupted my mental capacity to engage in relations that did not fit the model established by my abusers, i would be destined to keep repeating what was already a pattern established in my brain, that being withdrawal.

patterns of withdrawal provided the solution for a security that could not be found in my attempts at connecting with others. sure, i used my mind to trick myself into developing the talents of my own natural resources, but i always lived my life hiding behind my puny powers as a shield to protect me from participating in the larger culture. as long as i felt strong and powerful in my vocational role, then i didn't need anything else.

until, that is, i began to sense a gnawing unidentified anxiety that told me i was missing something. adn the something i was missing was my connection to larger causes than those in my own narrow world.

it was realizing that that turned on the switch for me. in my own tiny safe world, i had climbed many mountains. i chose the ones i knew were conquerable. i learned how to avoid withdrawal in my own small circles.

but now i am being beckoned to greater causes than my own safe one. and this is where i must begin to deny the tendency to withdraw from the new strange situations that present themselves daily, and challenge myself to muster up the courage to approach new situations without the accompanying fear and trepidation that precipitates a sense of dreaded rejection.

as i realize that i begin to create new wiring, giving myself the smallest goals each day: see a stranger as a potential friend, see a new situation as an opportunity for expanding my limitations. and all of a sudden old depressions subside, and spring arises in the brain as it blossoms once again in new realm of possibility, where hope and creativity nest unimpeded.

patterns of withdrawal can be eliminated when replaced by the new approach practices. it is scary, and challenging, and yes, it takes a loooong time, but at some point i have to become the champion in the conquest and triumph over all that the experience of sexual assault and abuse has levied in my life. as you say, we must do it ourselves. but i submit that we not change our minds, but our brains, and the mind will follow.

Hometown Blahs

I think it has a lot to do with the psychic cooties that linger, acting like brain rats in the associations to certain people, places and things in a given location, that happened in approximation to my victimization experience.

I moved away from my hometown pittsburgh back in 1999, and I was never so glad to leave a town. Pittsburgh was the place that bore and bred me. It became the place I was physically and sexually abused, psychologically traumatized and emotionally aborted by my own family. I had moved to Minneapolis and created a new life, one that had no connections, no semiotic referential points in regards to the external signifiers which represented victimization, self-loathing, shame and defeat. In Minneapolis my life and self esteem flourished under a banner a freedom that could not be attained as long as I remained bound in chains of ensconced subliminal associations to persons places and things of my hometown. I needed a fresh outlook, a clean slate. But I needed also to face and resolve the unrecognized schemas and seculae that connected me from one moment to the next, triggering reactivity, keeping me blind to the objectivity I so desperately needed, were I to truly know freedom from the tethering past.

Part of my process led me to return to my hometown Pittsburgh, and now that I am back, I want to throw up; all I see is dead people. I see so clearly why I left in the first place, and without my children here, except my son Chris, there is really no purpose for me to be here. I had romanticized my reasoning for returning to my hometown, like an elephant seeking its graveyard, a resting place to make peace with ghosts of the past.

But, now, here all I find is that I have arrived prematurely. That I am not ready to die, but rather, I feel the potential for giving up far too soon to be a very real possibility; an inner urgency makes me wonder if it's time to leave again, to seek and seed a new perspective.

I had always thought that at some point age would force me to return 'home', but from where I stand there is no 'home'. There is only negotiating compromise. I have been back here for almost 2 years, and have very little to show for the experience. Yes, I have unraveled huge mental/emotional knots, and I have started to make a few new connections, and perhaps I have not given them a fair enough shake yet; and while I am thrilled that my life is intersecting on a musical level with that of my son, as I am a member of his band, still, I feel that I have one more attempt at flight to make before I yield to the inevitable call to put down my life's burden once and for all.

For today, I want to leave this nesting town, this place that has such great significance for others; its breathtaking landscape, with its hills, trees and rivers, flowers. But for me, it seems its fresh meaning will always elude me, because of the reasons mentioned above, the potential of its culture to further form and shape my ideals and hopes and dreams will be forever tarnished. I can never wipe clean the slate as long as I live in Pittsburgh, and I am torn between two quests: should I stay and simply face my demons, risking allowing them to devour me, as I challenge myself to live beyond their tendrils that keep me inexorably linked to the past, or should I turn my face toward a new Jerusalem.... a new set of questions, challenges, crucifixions, deaths and resurrections.

Transitioning to Resolution

since this i somewhat of a journal for me, i wanted to post what for me is a turning point in my recovery from the effects of incest/sexual abuse. this writing deals mainly with the incest from my brother, and not so much from the other rapes that took place outside the family. the pain that grew over the years was from never having any emotional support to help me get over the pain. the family in which i experienced the abuse could not deal with its own grave sense of shame.

at any rate, as i looked at isolation 1 , and isolation 2, as a big factor contributing to my increased tendency to avoid others, and after posting about it, i immediately found respite from that which i've wrestled with all these many years. so i made this post in response:

friends, thank you all for your input in the topic. i found seeing the points of intersection in this concept to be an immense help in moving quickly beyond the pain that precipitated raising the question in the first place.

it was almost as if after years of gesticulating inside me, the moment i articulated the words of my post, the emotions that were behind them were born.

but my pain leading up to the birth of that isolation post was relieved once it was born. articulating the dilemma in words spelled it out in such away that gave me the closure i needed. i had spent days crying deep heaves of acceptance over the death-loss of my childhood dream-need for mother love. i wanted so desperately all these years to get back the wholesome family that was lost in disclosure of what my older brother did to 4 of his siblings so long ago.......and finally, though much trial and tribulation, the realization dawned on me, that my disclosure of his behavior years ago broke all ties/bonds with that family, and from then on, we would only be tied to each other through denial and deceit, and yes blood. but i had not realized that all these long years, and went on secretly loving /needing them, hoping, driven by a misguided need to mend the breach in the torn garment of a family system, by making up for it as i strove to prove myself worthy.

yes, it's over, and i am in the place where i am modulating back and forth, shifting in and out of anger and sadness, and i can finally feel the rallentando of the shift as this chapter finds its repose.

what a relief to know that in both my head and in my heart. what a relief to know that the rest of my life does not have to be lived in counterpoint to the experience of being born into a family in which circumstances arose to make me its lifelong victim. what a relief to not have to give a crap about them anymore. and what a relief to be able to remove the stumbling block that has stood in the way of making freer, wiser, and more honest choices for the way in which i will continue to spend the precious currency of ron in future chapters.

what i have come to understand from this, is that i may never find the true bonding i seek, but that if i ever give up on that my life will be over. it is the one thing that drives the forward trajectory of all life: the hope of bonding. seeing that resolves what was for me, for so many years a dilemma that was lived out in metaphorical relationships to false replacement matrices.

all the work i have done over the last year in participating in my mcc church group has not been for nothing. it has been the practicum for this great life's lesson, and has given me the strength to reach down inside and find the power i needed to take the risks of being vulnerable, to face the potential for rejection, and yes alternatively to open myself up to the possibility of acceptance and unconditional love, such as i would never have from my family of origin.

without that support, i could not have reached the conclusions and resolutions i have found for myself for today, and i just want to thank each and everyone of you for being part of the story; for helping me by sharing the best of your heart and soul, your love and wisdom, which is more precious as gold to me as it was born out of the crucibles of such deep pain and suffering from your own experiences with sexual abuse and assault.

Attachment Part II

the last couple weeks have been a transitional time for me. as you may know, i have been scarfing up the brain food in bonnies book, 'brainwise therapist' and it has been so seminal for me. i have gone thru it twice already and the margins of nearly every page are lined with penciled in notes and comments which stirred ideas about how her statements relate to my life. the subject of attachment as brought up by her in her book, has led me to the next level of understanding of how this unmet need has contributed to my own lifelong social phobia and dysfunction. the understanding i have been pondering is how my frustrated relationship to my matrix/mother/primary care provider never got resolved, caused me to avoid new/strange situations thoughout my life, and left me in such a fearful and anxious state, that i never felt comfortable or confident enough to risk the rejection that would inevitably become a part of approaching strangers for social connection. so i withdrew essentially, and spent all my energies only involving myself in controlled situations where i could interact with people safely in terms of my relationship to them through my musical talents.

seeing this now, and realizing what a big hole this left in my life, is making me rethink my entire approach to life and people. now, i understand how important it is to risk seeing and being myself as not surrounded by the protective wall of my safely cultivated characteristics, and begin to develop the willingness to branch out of that comfort zone. not as scary as i thought it might be, but really just don't know where to begin to allow new experiences to create new wirings to overwrite the old patterns in my brain. ah well, this i will allow time and space to work itself out.

but this past week, severely wounded by the deeper realizations of the incapacity of my family of origin to meet any of my deep needs for true intimacy safety validation and comfort, i have been suffering in grief of understanding the effects of such abandonment of the essential me. yes, they brought me into this world, then aborted me from their systemic circle after i disclosed my brothers perpetrator behaviors after his death in 1975, and have been the outcast ever since. it dawns on me recently how i have spent all these years blind to that, yet lived solely to invest all my energies in reestablishing myself in their good graces. and now i am done.

my mother, who last year after recovering from two knee surgeries went to live with my brother and his family in san diego, the other day came back to pittsburgh to stay for the summer. i was never informed about her plan. i heard about it when i randomly ran into one of my cousins last week who made mention of it. it seems that there is a very closed circle in my family who has the inside skinny on what's going on, and i am not part of the circle. only the sibs who are in the inner sanctum exchanging and sharing pain meds amongst each other are included. i was severly disturbed and deeply troubled for a few days as it dawned on me, and i made the connection as to why my mother doesn't respond to my emails, return phone messages, and when she does, she is always just going out the door, or carrying on a conversation at the same time with someone else in the room on her end of the line. i think her behavior is a way for her to manage avoiding talking with me about anything significant......such as abuse in our family.

so now, i have actually laid to rest the final notion of my mother as ever being a capable true source of nurture, and turned to the new matrices that i have been cultivating in my life, such as the metropolitan community church family, AND also, just recently joined the pittsburgh primetimers, an over 50 gay mens social group.

so i am feeling a lot better this week. trunking off bonnie's book, i picked up a copy of daniel seigal's 'mindful brain' and have been consuming more of the same concepts bonnie extrapolated in her book, but his focus is more on the mindfulness aspect of brain grooming.

so there is ron's inner life in a nutshell over the past couple of weeks. feel like i just had a psychic birth, and the poor offspring was stillborn. BUT, in this death there is a seed of hope for a new chapter to begin, unhindered by secret schemas implicit in the regions of subjectivity of my own thought.

hejira is such an apt theme for my life right now......leaving normal....

change the brain, the mind will follow

i spent most of my life post abuse feeling like i was standing on the edge of a precipice peering into the impenetrable darkness looking for answers. always acting on the thought that the answers lie in following and unpacking the pathology of some mental process which led to a current fixated state of thinking.

but since i have fallen in love with the study of neurobiology, i have taken it out of the realm of mental and begun to understand it as a function of the ingrained neural wiring patterns of the brain. and they are not really playing tricks on us. they are just firing synapses according to the way thought and feeling perceptions compute and form their circuitry which we reinforce every moment until we do something to change their regular paths of behavior.

i liken it to this old joke about the dog who will not be house trained. the master comes home every day from work to find that the dog has soiled the carpet. angry, the master opens the window, picks up the dog by the scruff of the neck, and tosses it out the window [don't worry it's a first floor window.....]. this happens repeated day after day. then one day the master comes home from work, sees the same thing, begins to go through his regular process, but on seeing his approach, the dog runs to the window, opens it, and proceeds to jump out.

that's what happens in our brains. eventually the neural transmitter take over, and since the power of decision is no longer necessary, it is removed from the process, which ultimately become involuntary.

in terms of the social connection, i did the same thing. my brain never fully developed that social connectivity, because it was never imparted originally by my primary caregiver, and thus no paths were in place to expand upon, to generate greater potentiality. as a result the dysfunctional patterns of attachment that were wired in me as a result of a lack of contingent relational interactivity, left me in such a state as to interpret all new situations i encountered throughout my life as being strange, and therefore a threat to my sense of well-being and security. without having developed a palette of flexible responses in relation to strange situations i encountered, i was left to, like the dog who throws himself out the window after soiling the carpet, to fall back on the old regular and now involuntary reactions that had been reinforced though out my life.

understanding this as the primary shaping criteria for many of my actions, reactions and seemingly selective behaviors helps me to take an active part in restructuring my old automatic choices.

in terms of social anxiety, what i have come to realize, is that because i never developed the initial pathways that would lead to expanded social connections, and because these were further impeded by the experience of sexual abuse which interrupted my mental capacity to engage in relations that did not fit the model established by my abusers, i would be destined to keep repeating what was already a pattern established in my brain, that being withdrawal.

patterns of withdrawal provided the solution for a security that could not be found in my attempts at connecting with others. sure, i used my mind to trick myself into developing the talents of my own natural resources, but i always lived my life hiding behind my puny powers as a shield to protect me from participating in the larger culture. as long as i felt strong and powerful in my vocational role, then i didn't need anything else.

until, that is, i began to sense a gnawing unidentified anxiety that told me i was missing something. adn the something i was missing was my connection to larger causes than those in my own narrow world.

it was realizing that that turned on the switch for me. in my own tiny safe world, i had climbed many mountains. i chose the ones i knew were conquerable. i learned how to avoid withdrawl in my own small circles.

but now i am being beckoned to greater causes than my own safe one. and this is where i must begin to deny the tendency to withdraw from the new strange situations that present themselves daily, and challenge myself to muster up the courage to approach new situations without the accompanying fear and trepidation that precipitates a sense of dreaded rejection.

as i realize that i begin to create new wiring, giving myself the smallest goals each day: see a stranger as a potential friend, see a new situation as an opportunity for expanding my limitations. and all of a sudden old depressions subside, and spring arises in the brain as it blossoms once again in new realm of possibility, where hope and creativity nest unimpeded.

patterns of withdrawal can be eliminated when replaced by the new approach practices. it is scary, and challenging, and yes, it takes a loooong time, but at some point i have to become the champion in the conquest and triumph over all that the experience of sexual assault and abuse has levied in my life. as you say, we must do it ourselves. but i submit that we not change our minds, but our brains, and the mind will follow.

Trust Issues

i am brutally honest with myself, which has its good points and its not so good points.

brutal honesty cases me to have too high expectations for both myself and others, which causes me to keep arms length away from them. i have no problem feeling compassion and empathy for others who are suffering, but when i see them living in a state of denial, lying to themselves and others with whom they 'should' be forthright, i avoid intimacy because, frankly, i don't see the point of investing time in a relationship that for all intents and purposes is going to remain shallow.

i avoid sticking my neck out when i don't see any tangible rewards for getting involved. the result of anything i invest in has got to be concrete and in my mind worthwhile.

and today, seeing that, i feel diminished for confessing my vulnerability.

is this 'selfish' stupid, or wise? come to think of it, this type of behavior could be a 'whistling in the dark' kind of isolation. i am involved in my spiritual community, and that is the only place where i take risks. they are the only people that i feel comfortable testing my own boundaries, and that i think is primarily because they are the only people who have shown them selves not to judge me on some level, whether morally, physically, spiritually, etc.

these people are very good people, they'd never hurt a fly, and some of them are incredibly broken people; dying from aids, mental health challenged, depressed. they are the marginalized, the cast-off from the larger social network, but they are so alive in the beauty of such an affirming community. they smile and they laugh, and they hug and they love. their life is a dance.

why is it so easy to love from a position of power? why is it so difficult to love from a position of vulnerability?

is it because my brain never got that lesson in my family of origin? is it because all the people who had ever been in power over me never loved me, but only wanted to rule me, and therefore reactively i vowed myself to construct myself in such a way as to be the mirror opposite of them? i spent so much of my life constructing it in counterpoint to many of the earlier shaping factor of my life.

i feel that my doing so is disingenuous, and that this induced character trait is not pure, and therefore is a lie.

see what i mean, i just did it again.

oh, the onion of self........does it ever get smaller????

i,i,i,i,i,...... i need a break from my 'i',

HeeeeeeEEEEELLPP!

================================
appendix: the disappointing liars in my life:

+ my mother, who had an affair with her boss when i was in the throes of a sexually abusive relationship with my older brother
+ the ex-partners who rejected me after i poured my heart and soul out to them in disclosure, naively hoping they would not hold it against me, which they did
+ my older brother [same one] who eventually rejected our relationship after deciding that 'it was all just kids playin around'

More on Attachment

i have been reading and thinking about attachment issues a lot these days, so of course everything for me is all about attachment issues. crazy it is what i am currently using to resolve some of the the questions that have arisen for me lately. but it makes sense to me at least that some of my deepest pain is activated when my matriarchal connections are felt to be under attack.

what is my matrix? it is the breast that i suckle for providing my fundamental nourishment. take that breast away from me and yes i begin to question my safety. attack my belief systems and you attack my foundation, which is firmly rooted in my relationship to my matrix. take away my matrix and i revert to an earlier stage of existence, back to the womb where i hide in a cloistered world where no one can touch me.

i think that no matter what stage of life i find myself in, i am eternally bound to live out of the patterns that shaped the paradigm of my earliest matriarchal relationship. that is until and unless i do something to recreate a better model. my own relationship with my birth mother did not provide a good pattern foundation. but all my life i was cursed to keep replicating them in every relationship that i encountered. it never dawned on me before recently that my unrequited relationship with my mother was the root of a major defect in terms of how i failed to connect with others, including myself. she was emotionally and physically unavailable, and the earliest attachment imprints never got wired, leaving a deep hole in me, which got filled when my older brother started using me as his sexual outlet. and in doing so he became my surrogate mother, loving and affirming my entire psychic and physical being.

when he later rejected the relationship i was devastated because it was as if my own mother had disowned me. so after that breast was denied me i was destined to find another matrix to take his place. so, i got married. it wasn't as if i wanted to get married, but, implicitly i knew that since i could not have neither my birth mother nor my surrogate brother/mother it was an easy life to chose because my ex-wife was someone i had known all my life and since we were both single at the time and both 'available' we latched on to each other. in this relationship i would attempt to connect to that larger matriarchal paradigm that society holds out as the relationship par excellence: marriage.

well that was not going to work, those years of 'marriage' were like trying to kick start a motorcycle without spark plugs. after we split up my new matriarch became recovery, and that kept me going even though i still did not understand what deep hole i was expecting it to fill. the other larger matriarchal forms of my life became my 20 year educational journey, my nearly 35 year career in church music, and in both of those things i can see that what i was merely trying to do, was to win the approval and engage a connection to that original person who carried me for those first 9 months of my existence.

so for today, i have two mothers: male survivor, and my spiritual community, mcc. and they are the most nurturing matriarchal forms ever encountered in my entire life. my relationship with both of these is very easeful and natural, and in them, i do not have to earn the love and acceptance. it is built in to the relationship. it is causing new wiring to happen for me, helping me to shuck off previous desperate and dysfunctional attempts at inducing nurturing connections.

New Depth of Understanding

get ready for a book!

possibly conjecture? i doubt it, because it 'feels' so right for me in the head, the heart, and the belly.

since exploring the topic of attachment in depth recently from greater heights of understanding, i am noticing an incredible new sense of resolution resulting in a magnitude of balance and overall expansiveness becoming apparent inside of 'me'.

One of the sources of my recent enlightenment comes from a new publication titled: "Being a Brain-wise Therapist: A Practical Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology" by Bonnie Badenoch , forward by Daniel J. Siegel.

Here is an excerpt from Bonnie's book, published by Norton, pg. 106 - 108:

Primed for Shame
In the earliest burst of attachment in the first few months of life, we are genetically hard-wired to seek closeness and security with our caregivers. The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, which acts like an accelerator in a car, fuels this outward reaching. Whether we are met with disregard, anger, or anxiety, or have the opposite experience, our limbic regions encode the energy (arousal) and information (representations) offered by our caregivers in amygdala-centered, implicit-only memory where meaning is also initially formed. With enough consistent experience, this region encodes a mental model, a generalized anticipation, about whether relationships are trustworthy or no, already creating the inner community that embodies these expectations. These mental models stay in place below the level of consciousness as we mature, continually influencing our perceptions, kept alive by the painful interactions between the parent and child that continue internally without end [ron comment: she refers to this earlier in the text as dyadic pairs, which function as a modulatory mechanism that serves to restore balance by regulatory movement between the two opposing states, until synchronicity is achieved, dissolving the disambiguity between the state of the internal parent and that of the internal child], We can see then how consistent anger or rejection by parents can engrain a fear of relationships in this primary meaning-making center even before the mind has enough developmental maturity to experience shame.

At just about the time a little one learns to walk, with great excitement into his new-found freedom, his brain begins to function at a level of complexity that allows the experience of shame to emerge. The necessary ingredients include a developing parasympathetic branch of the automatic nervous system, functioning as the arousal brakes, and a maturing orbitofrontal cortex in the prefrontal region, which allows this boy to represent himself in his mind. Both a braking system and a capacity for self-consciousness are necessary for shame. The outcome of integration is to move the mind toward greater complexity and attendant well-being, so it is not surprising that shame potentially has a positive function for this toddler.

As a child becomes mobile, with a sympathetic system capable of hurtling him toward danger, the parasympathetic system can be activated by the parental "No", causing a necessary modulation of arousal. While the child experiences this no as a missed opportunity for synchrony, an empathetic parent will immediately rejoin this toddler, bringing the sympathetic and parasympathetic into balance by acknowledging the child's wish to do the forbidden, and providing redirection toward a different joy. Over time, through this interpersonal modulating dance between outward-reaching and indrawn states, between rupture and repair, self-regulation is deeply patterned in the developing child, from nervous system to cortex. As a result, a wide window of tolerance for feelings emerges at both ends of the spectrum [ron: of dyadic pairs]

However, at the sad end of the scale, the child who is already primed for shame is probably living with the same parents who engrained a mental model of fear in relationship. So when "No" comes, it is unlikely that repair will follow immediately, if at all. So now the parasympathetic system slams into action while the parents' anger continues to accelerate the sympathetic system-a situation kin to pushing the accelerator and brakes to the floor at the same moment. Or the unmodulated parasympathetic system pulls the child into painful and isolating stillness as the parents turn away. This young one is simply left. Inwardly, the terrifying picture of an enraged and denigrating parent grows larger, while the shamed inner child cringes in the shadows. [ron sez: hence authority figure issues]

If this dynamic is repeated often enough, the synaptic strength of the neural nets comprising the state of shame increases to the point that it becomes a trait, and accepted and expected part of this person's self-perceived identity. These neural nets are also so strong and so isolated from integration with the rest of the brain (because the empathetic interpersonal relationships needed to foster further integration have not been available) that this person is a sitting duck for any perceived slight or criticism, literally at the mercy of engrained implicit mental models.

Father Hunger?

i just finished reading a thought provoking post dan made [thanks dan!] in response to another thread, and rather than hijack that thread to comment on dan's i thought i would present the topic here for discussion.

what is your take on the whole 'father hunger' thing'?

i confess that anytime i have come across this idea, i have always felt that i somehow missed something, because father hunger is something i have never 'felt' applies to my world of feeling.

my father experience was always one of fear and domination, unapproachability, lacking in either warmth or welcome. as father figures go, regarding church, police, institutions and other authoritarian institutions, they all seem to me to align to the same dynamic exhibited by my own father. this goes as far back as i remember. it is notable that i mention my place in a pack of 6 brothers, none of whom got any more preferential treatment than any of the others. my father did try to become involved in our lives peripherally signing us up for baseball teams, boy scouts, but other than going on a few canoe and camping trips, there was no real exchange of emotion, other than punitive measures taken when any of us got 'out of line'. beyond the perfunctory kiss on the check he applied to mother upon arriving home for dinner, there was no other indication that he had any emotional depth beyond his anger responses.

he himself only had one brother, and his parents began to succumb to alcoholic patterns as they advanced in age, and became increasingly verbally and physically abusive toward each other, which was very apparent when i would be left in their care occasionally, for a summer visit.

i never felt a lack of anything. maybe i just adjusted? but at any rate my brain never became wired for for any connection to him, and i just don't feel as if i am missing anything because of that. i am not sure what it is exactly that guys who claim 'father hunger' are talking about.

i can certainly understand and appreciate the idea of the archetype of 'fatherliness' per se, and i feel that my relationship with the god of my understanding far surpasses the fulfillment of any need a human figure could ever come close to. also, my relationships to educational institutions have mentored and parented in far more complete and effective ways than any mere human model could. maybe the disconnect has happened in his failure to communicate his humanity to me. but then again, as a father myself, i never impressed upon my son the idea that there existed a chasm of any sort between us, and beyond his formative years, i have striven to relate with him as much as possible in a peer to peer dynamic, so as not to give him any kind of indication that i am any more or less than he, a person in need of a guide. i never wanted nor needed to make myself an idol for him to emulate. and while today he admires me for certain qualities that define me as unique, he exhibits no need for anything beyond the healthful exchange of mutual love and respect.

how have you learned to eclipse the idea of father need? do you even think it possible? have i failed to romanticize my father?

are there some axiomatic truths behind all this, or is relative to each person's unique system and situation?

sexual initiation and bodies cells

thinking about my life, my feelings and my thoughts as they relate to what havoc sexual abuse wreaks on my body at the cellular level.

my remembered abuse began at the time of my adolescence. i can't imagine how being abused at such an early age might affect one, though my little sis was also abused beginning at at age 5, and i've watched her particular struggle and confusion as she's grown.

all i know is that self-loathing seems to be a common thread running through the lives of many survivors, no matter what age the abuse occurred, even prior to issues around sexual identification.

for me that has been the toilet tissue that has stuck to my heel through all these many years of recovery and healing. i just can't seem to get the idea out of my head that ' i am my body'. i am not. this body is merely a vehicle, but someone made it an object, before i was powerful enough to resist and to object.

as a sensual being responding strongly to kinesthetic data i learned from an early age to define and construct myself in relation to the impact of those experiences and to identify with the stimulii. i became trapped by them.

later, in grad studies i studied the alexander technique which caused me to come across the topic proprioception, which, as an instrumental teacher, i find it really helpful in expressing an understanding of what happens as the body exists in the periphery of the time/space continuum.

nerves and muscles react to stimulii and in effect become a 'feedback' mechanism, that kicks into play whenever the factors affecting the physical components are brought into play.

so much of our reactions become automatic responses to a stimulus that acted upon us at a previous time. much of our reactions live in muscle and nerve memory.

my personal understanding is that the particular propensity for a certain orientation is built into one's personal dna imprint, and it cannot be changed---it is gifted. however, confusion can arise when these experiences happen to us and teach our muscles and nerves to respond in a manner contrary to the imprint, and when shame and fear enter the mixture, arising from the dissonance between who we are, and who we think we are supposed to be, then we find our selves in a cul de sac of looping behaviors that seem to ricochet between a set of motivators [learned muscle and nerve] and and undesirable effects [acting out behaviors] and fear and cultural shame attached to those behaviors.

for me, part of the path to release from such behaviors was recognizing that i had misplaced the focus on the undesirable result, rather than on the underlying issue, which in my case was shame.

i was ashamed of my body, and i hated it because i thought it had betrayed me. my abuse taught me at a very early age that the thing that made me 'special' and gave me any value whatsoever, was my flesh. and so i developed a life around the belief that if i made myself as fetching as possible, then everyone would want a piece of me.

i had bought so deeply into the notion of beauty = worth that i invested all my hopes into becoming 'beautiful'.

it is easy to look at 'the beautiful'. they are shoved in our faces everywhere we go, in all media. and the media plays on the notion that we are all so deeply disenfranchised from deepest and truest selves, that if they hold up a sign screaming 'be beautiful, like so and so....use this product....go to this gym.....take these courses.....eat this food....blah blah blah', then maybe we will invest in the sad reality they hold out for us as hope for a brighter tomorrow, a better 'me'. more palatable, more valuable, more worthy, more loved.

ok, so i went the long again......LOL, the point i am trying to make is that at some point along in my life, my abuse began to defined me in my ignorance, before i was even aware that it was happening. and by the time the mind caught on, schemas had already become enshrined within, which began to direct my life choices in such a manner as to live to sate this need for being loved and accepted.

i was caught in the quagmire of my own unrecognized self-belief. but through recovery and healing, i was able to eventually put all this in perspective and begin to live a life that i decide to live, rather than just be the servant of a belief system that seemed to automatically live out its own mechanism using me, as its host.

Crossroads

i have much to be grateful for. in many respects, life has been long and difficult, and the struggles have been rewarding. and i know many people are dealing with the unraveling of their lives, while at the same time others are celebrating new beginnings. there will always be others who are more advantaged than i, and others more disadvantaged. there will always be this incongruity.

last year, i gained new perspective on the past, unencumbered by all of the things that formerly preoccupied my attention: raising kids, reducing debt line, worrying about whether i was getting ahead or sinking behind in life and in my healing and .....

now, being at the age in life where there are no guideposts to success, i feel thankful to have maintained a strong sense of relatedness to the creator, because in retrospect, that is the one main thread, the one thing that has sustained me all these years of struggle. when i was working against myself, and when all the world seemed to rail against me, something kept the parted waters from caving in around me.

at 55+, kids on their own, no mountains of self-actualization to climb, having processed much of the baggage i carried along the way from the effects of family/cultural systemic abuse, i find myself at a crossroads.

where is the book on 'how to enter and survive the later years'? who can show the way to live when there are no more hoops to jump through? on the other side of all this, there was always an invisible parent living in the shadows of the mind, always watching, guiding, from the wings suggesting the next move, who, what, where, when and how to be a person. cueing the next passage.

in the younger years, there was always the next big challenge:

• 16 yo: get to drive a car
• 18 yo: graduate from high school, enter college, get to vote, get to move out on my own
• 21 yo: can't wait to get my lcb card!
• 22 and beyond, the sky's the limit, just imagine all the things you were told you could be/do. education, career etc.
• get married have a family, and let that determine the specter of you life choices

and now, all that behind me, i reflect on what's next.
i ask myself, what new drama can i concoct for my life that will fuel the ambition for my succeeding daily endeavors?

previously, my life was lived from the center of 'me'. it had to be that way, because i had to succeed in bringing to resolution all that i initiated in my early years. i had to honor all the choices that i made, and in turn, honor all of the effects of those choices. i didn't have to think much about my life plan, because those choices pretty much dictated them for me.

now i am only held back by the limitations of my own resources.

as i count my blessing from last year, the ground gained, i see once again the hand of the creator gently guiding as in days gone by. i was brought to a church community, and my involvement in it has been the medicine i needed to shift from self focus to a life of service.

previously, i took all the truths i read from the scriptures of various disciplines, and tried to apply them as best i could, but i always felt i was merely performing service by rote.

it was almost as if in the early period of my life, i was being prepared, unbeknownst to me, for a fiat much greater than the limited scope of my own understanding. the theory of loving god and neighbor was a just that, an attempt to apply a set of principles. but now, with time on my hands, and a new group of people to love, and no excuse not to give myself totally to them, i have no choice to enter the phase of practicuum.

if i fail to accept this next challenge, then i have not really listened to all the things i have been reporting back to myself. i must walk my talk. and i must do for no other reason, than simply this: it's all that is left to live for. to help fulfill the lives of others with the same amount of effort that i served myself all these past years.

that others become my main interest. that all my resources be invested in the well being and care of those who need it most.

knowing what i know now about the deep need for love and connection that we humans so desperately seek, i am feeling compelled to respond with what little resources i have to offer: my hands, my heart and my spirit of gratitude.

no other agenda, no other desire but to help fill the cups of those who are lacking.

maybe this seems obvious to many other people, and as i said earlier, i tried to live this way through out my life, but i never felt the connection before now, with a community of people who will receive the gift of myself in the spirit intended.

i guess if i am to be honest with myself, i do expect a reward: the simple joy of seeing fear and tension dissolve in a person who feels safe for the time being, who feels loved for a moment, and who will savor that nectar and not waste a drop.

i attribute this post to my mcc brother, brian, who lives this way, and has given me the inspiration to know whom i am being called to be in this next leg of my time here on earth.

hoping for peace and joy for all in the new year 2009,

ron

what i believe

my beliefs are a synthesis of all religious/spiritual ideologies encountered through the course of my life.


i was born into a roman catholic family, and raised on christian principles; these shaped and guided my morals until i became independent and left home to become part of the larger cultural family.


drug and alcohol use became part of my life in my mid teens, and i attribute this to a variety of factors, one of which is the obvious, being made the sex partner of an older brother. [i had already been using before i was raped several times while in the navy, once by a stranger a knifepoint off base.] alcohol and drug use became a staple in my life, but love was the elusive drug that i could never get enough of. during this time, i began to explore eastern philosophies, but felt tremendous guilt over it, because in my christian upbringing, those who engaged in such practices were considered heathens.


after the service, i found a semblance of that love i sought in the context of the evangelical charismatic community that i became involved in. it made sense to segue into this type of faith expression, since roman catholic experience did not connect me with the experience of the living god.


i tried to live according to 'the bible' but my shame and struggles with the influences of the past just increased.


my dependence on substances escalated, and eventually disenfranchised myself from that evangelical community, since, even though i had made the tragic mistake of getting married, i was gay, and at the time thought biblical ideologies as enforced by straight heterosexual men would 'fix' me if i only tried hard enough.


as the bottom fell out of the marriage, i entered aa and died to the image of god i had come to believe in, and embraced the concept of a higher power, someone beyond myself who would shape and form me in the manner in which i was intended to be.


after that, i continued to include my practices and studies of eastern traditions, yet still maintain the christ principle as the foundation of my belief. i have learned to embrace my own spirit and those of other sentient beings as loved and valued for the fact that they have been created and brought forth into being. my belief does not include a punitive god, nor does it exclude anyone from the ranks of the 'saved'. all are loved by virtue of their being.


my current practice is non-dualism with a christian foundation. however, while i believe that all religions have valuable contributions to make, none of them contains 'the truth' to the exclusion of others. i don't believe i need to be 'saved' except from anything other than my self, but rather, enlightened, which has been for me a process of becoming dispossessed of the attachments of self, and its tendency to self-contract as it develops in the context of its evolution in time and space.


the world in my view IS the appearance of god arising in the form of creation and all ideas generated by people cannot possibly articulate the non-conceptual being that god is prior to language and thought.


today i see myself merely as being being being. and to the extent that i invest in dualist notions of separation and division, i will suffer. i cannot escape suffering, and the way to deal with suffering has been modeled by christ, who, in my understanding, embraced it as the path to freedom from the attachment to dualistic notions, such as those that i constructed throughout my lifetime. in the sense that i have died to those, i have taken up my cross, and been born again into a new relationship with the living being who is ever present as my life. his presence manifest among us says to us:


'why stand staring at what has gone before? don't get lost in things of the past. i, says he will begin something new, it's beginning already....haven't you heard?'


my practice is simple: in every encounter of every thought and every feeling that arises, i ask: who am i? who is the person behind the senses translating its experience into thought and feeling identification? how am i continuing to regenerate the invested notion of 'me' from moment to moment? how is the 'me' who i have come to believe myself to be, living in such a manner as to build bridges that transcend the human tendency to divide up the infinite whole into parts.


when i live from that perspective, i remain in the moment, and, as close as is humanly possible, to being all i am created to be.


that's 'me' in a nutshell!

Chronically Disgruntled: Legacy of Abuse

seems another aspect of this dis-ease has revealed itself in my process of recovery.

i like many survivors have had my share obsessive compulsive behaviors:
food
drugs
alcohol
nicotine
caffeine
relationships [no i didn't forget to mention sex, that's never been an issue for me, but rather the need to be validated, however that has played out on the stage of my sexuality]
workaholism
shame
anger
*[__________________]* fill in the blank
just to name a few of the more obvious ones. i am grateful that i have addressed each one of these and have put them to bed.

last january after 23 years of recovery from drug and alcohol abuse i made a decision to reintroduce it back into my life. this decision was not made in the context of any type of turmoil or tension emotionally, psychologically or otherwise. the decision was made in a challenge to unlock that door. so much energy was being poured into keeping that door shut locked, bolted, nailed etc. i felt in order to truly move beyond the 'ism' of OCD in the realm of alcohol that i needed to look deep into its eyes as a stronger and better equipped person. there was initially a period where i wrestled with the best way to include it back into my life in terms of quantity, but nearly a year later i am gratified that this formerly OC behavior is a thing of the past. how do i know this is true? because these things have ceased to become issues, and my relationship to them has returned to what it was prior to them becoming issues, as if they did not exist. the stressors that created conditions for their apprearance have dissolved

now, all those things listed above are the topside expression, the visible manifestation, of the deeper infestation.

did the disease OCB just go away? no way baby!

what i have come face to face with is the recognition of the disease at its factory level deep in the far reaches of the labyrinth of egoity.

as i look at my own self-history past the apparency of the visible manifestations of the disease, glaring at me now are the other faces of this disease:
self as chronic point of reference
chronic dissatisfaction
chronic search for affirmation

i could not have recognized the fact that i had been living my life, making all my decisions within the context of these, had i not addressed the most recent one, shame. yes, in a shame cycle these would have merely further indicted me, and caused me to keep focusing on, and dancing with the disease in its physical manifestations.

a lot of times there is a sense that what i say here lacks resonance of the community at large, but i realize too that this is another form of 'me-ism' that has kept me inside my own bubble all these years. we are all in different places and stages in life, and i fully get that i am outside the middle track of survivors who are at this point trying to reconcile the warring forces that need to be reconciled in the early stages of life. i myself am currently dealing with fundamental questions that one wold most likely not deal with in life stages where the ego is still fascinated by life's potentials and alternatives.

at any rate, here i find myself, confronted as the result of a self-history shaped and formed by an ongoing, lived and carried moment to moment, self-idea compulsively hunting for verification and validation; caught in rituals of self-contraction which loop back and forth between reactivity to rejection and retaliation.

there is my fundamental OCD:

the ritual of rejection and retaliation. an obsessive compulsive thought principle dominating my life and formerly manifesting itself in physical behaviors. and the sorriest saddest part of this legacy is the ultimate surrender that is inherent in the notion that his ritual/dance has so dominated my life all these many years, that i have forgotten who to be and how to live outside of its tether.

like my abuser, i cannot say no to it, because that would presume that other options were available, and in truth, for me, there were none then.

and the biggest knock on the noggin is that there existed a 'me' PRIOR TO the aforementioned one who arose to use these defense mechanisms for surviving. the never ending onion.

..........hmmmmm, back to pondering my freedom

habitual thoughts - groundhog day

habitual thoughts eventually translate into habitual behavior.

one of the topics that came up on a cyber forum i frequent raised the question concerning a member's tendency to see days as being 'good' or 'bad', and lamenting the fact that invariable, there appeared to be a pattern of one following the other in a sort of repetitive cycle.

here follows my response:

perhaps you may want to consider how the mind has a tendency to carry thoughts forward.

for instance, there was a time, when you did not have this recurring idea that

'I seem to inevitably have a bad day after a good one'

when did that idea being to take shape?

'I've noticed happening for a long time'

it seems that at some point, most likely without really making a decision to do so, that your mind established a reasoning process that resulted in this conclusion, that a history of good day/bad day was becoming apparent as a pattern in you life.

once this was established as a condition, it eventually became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as you began to live out of the presumption of it being the case.

you are now invested in this belief that your emotional life has an 'on/off' cycle and so you begin to live as if this were true. in doing so, you disempower yourself to change the way you react, and actually have created an script which cues you to react in such manner automatically.

once the pesky mind confirms a perceived pattern, determining it to be the case, there is no longer a need to continue to gather evidence to make this case. since it has already been decided, it will now not need any further active involvement from you, and you become a mere pawn on the stage of your own mind.

how return to the state prior to your investment in this self-thought? from my experience, the key is to inhibit the cycle, rather than reinforce it; keep in mind this conclusion is not proven fact, and it is merely an assumption you have made about the situation.

so once inhibited, then you must be willing to stand in the feelings that arose which caused you to want to escape into a rationalization of them.

there are no good days or bad days, there are just days and we label them favorably or not, according to how they advance or impede us in a self-determined goal.

december 5th of the year you were three years old, do you recall having either a good day or a bad day? i would say no, not because you don't remember, but really because you had not yet developed a system for assigning value to the criteria that would contribute to determining a positive or negative assessment of the quality of your day.

so here we find ourself situated in today's december 5th of the year 2008, after spending years of making decisions and reinforcing them in terms of what is 'good' [chocolate, days without dark clouds] or 'bad' [tripe, days with dark clouds]

the key is to not despair and take heart that you still have the ability to change what seems to have become a life principle.

like many other survivors, i have done the scrupulosity dance most my life, and truthfully, i don't know if that is in effect a result of the cause of having been sexually abused or not; the fact remains that i have a tendency to do this, and if i want my life to be as efficacious as possible, i have to learn how to detach from those emotional gut reactions that arise in the course of my interactions with the events of the day. otherwise the feelings go to my head, and take on a life of their own, at which point, i am but living the script written by me, and portraying the character that i cast myself to play.

the god question....

someone on a forum i frequent was asking about the 'feeling' of closeness to god, and that just caused some thoughts to rise:

if i had to label myself spiritually, i would say i am a christian non-dualist. however, i don't subscribe to the traditional western ideas about jesus as moral teacher, but rather as one who came into being to preach against the dualisms of the culture at the time, as they contributed to forming the values reflected in hebrew [moral code, ie right and wrong, do's and don'ts] and greek culture [early philosophers ideas about ethics and phenomenon of opposites].

then as christianity developed its ideas out of the current philosophies and theologies of the day, christ's intended teaching missed it's mark. but that's ok, because that's the way it was 'supposed to be'. nothing has gone wrong in any way. some people think that christology has been defamed, but it has not, rather it is continuing to develop as the universe unfolds. BUT not in the way that churches believe it 'should'.

on the other hand, that which grows out my experience of eastern philosophy and theology, the non-dual aspect of my understanding, has more to do with the idea that beyond and prior to the concept of god, there exists formless presence of awareness that essentially cannot change. the world appears in all of its dualistic phenomena, but we have mistaken that for 'the real', and that is where suffering begins.

from a very early age, one is taught to identify with, to assign labels and meaning inherited through the social dna of the family [ and by extension cultural] system. as the 'i' continues to develop and emerge, it tries to make sense with what it notices is appearing through its perception scope on the front of the face, in the tactile, in the vibrations of air waves against eardrums, and so forth. its ongoing growth process involves synthesizing all of the data consumed by the senses from moment to moment, and inculcating into the functionality of the human mechanism.

now religion comes along and makes rules by which the mechanism must abide, and politics creates laws for protection, and philosophy tells it how to think about itself, but there lies the rub. humans rarely take time to self-reflect, simply because the western culture is a culture that encourages the fulfillment and elevation of self as its supreme acquisitive characteristic. if we were taught to reflect more frequently on the efficacy of self development then gaining wealth, popularity, titles would lose their value and thus their hold on us to form us into the misshapen subjects that we tend to become over time.

so we go along believing, steeled from youth for the battle to acquiesce, that we will someday achieve all that we have been trained to hope for and to desire, forgetting along the way to identify our deepest needs, in favor of our wants.

it's no wonder the further along this path that we trod, that we become more and more disenfranchised from the sense of 'the real'. we have buried ourselves in our acquisitions, material and sensual, and placed those as a wall between us and god.

and god is one, without a 2nd, but we live primarily identifying with ourselves, our egoity, as though we are separate, but we are not. and all the things we desire come to possess us in the sense that we cannot live without them.

yes, we cannot live without god either, but if we take our cues from the cultural matrix, then all we need do is make god into a picture in our heads and nod to it every now and again, making that the primary relationship with god, replacing it with the true joy and bliss that could be known if we would learn to dispossess ourselves of the stranglehold of egoity.

in summary, thoughts and feelings are all products of an ego that has entrenched notions which have spawned want and desire. to the extent that those are not fulfilled there will be frustration and grief.

but a very smart man said this about the god question:

'As long as there is enthusiasm for seeking amid life's alternatives, these questions remain superficial. But when death becomes real, or when deep disillusionment with the possibilities of experience overtakes the being, then one can no longer avoid the confrontation with fundamental questions. At such moments, the heart is open, inconsolable by ordinary means. Then there is a ripeness, an urgency for Truth, Reality, and Real God.'

in other words, until nothing else is of prime importance, not even one's own physical life, then the things that have come to possess us will continue to deter-mine the arc of life's choices.

the beauty of it all, is that all through life, god is always there, as god is now for you in this questioning, beckoning us to, calling us deeper and deeper into relationship.

to the extent that we yield, incrementally, such as you are seeking to do now, life becomes a series of moments unfolding to reveal the truth of our true nature, that being that we are not separate now, nor have we ever truly been, no will we ever be.

someone else said that the purest prayer is to ask the question: 'who am i?'.

in closing i share another prayer that arose in me during my time in the monastery. this prayer is based on the deepest human needs; desire, hunger, and thirst, the three things needed to 'live'.

god alone

may my only desire be for god
my only hunger for christ
my only thirst for the spirit
of god alone

pesky retirement

i am just beginning to taste the drudgery of excessive leisure time. chances are any of us who make it to the point of 'retirement from', must needs have a plan for 'retirement to' to take its place.

even tho i am not fully retired, my job only requires about 15-20 hours each week of physical presence on the job. now, to be sure, i invest more as i am so inclined in developing creative aspects of it, but my input beyond the required time is self-determined. if i am feeling creative on a particular day, i may decide to spend time expanding on my usual investment. it pretty much goes with what i am in the mood for. i kinda like that. it does not have me rolling in dough, but i made a decision when i relocated back to my hometown pittsburgh, that would not get involved in work that would put my life in overdrive. if i wanted to, i could build up a clientele of private students which would completely diminish the level of flex time i currently have, eliminating the pleasure and leisure for reflecting on the role of the sexual abuse in my life, and how it had led me to construct myself ostensibly.

i think that having all this headspace is what many people will have to deal with in retirement.

what is retirement? most of my life i had thought of it as a time where i would just cruise around the world sipping martini's and gazing into grand canyons. but then as i got older and the reality of economic issues came to the fore, i soon realized that retirement would more or less be a pretty vacant lot.

and in my current semi-retired state, as i choose not to be overly preoccupied with activity that would distract and further disenfranchise me from my coming to terms with my inner world, i am getting hit real hard with the brickbat of the past, and being forced to disengage from obsessive compulsive behaviors and processes which kept me from developing greater knowledge of my own life motivations.

often times, that means resisting the the tendency to flee the indicting oracle of the moment, and allow myself to just bask in the glory of the untainted blistering here and now.

often times, i have to impede the fear of the future as it casts its shadow over everything. then i simply return to the knowledge that there will come a time, if i am kept alive, that my physical and mental disintegration will bring me to a moment when i will no choice but to face all the truths i wish to flee from today.

so, i ask, if not now, when?

and in the meantime, i am looking for things to do that will work in harmony with my desire to stay connected to the eternal vacancy of now. engage in a craft. reinforce my self-discipline as i advance thru the degrees of karate. try to balance eating well with treating myself to not so healthy delectables. commit some of my free time to the work of an organization that gives service to others.

retirement will be a chapter i hope to be ready for. and i hope others who enter this domain continue to share their experiences and show the rest of us how ease-fully it can be done.

excessive apology

in light of the conjoining in my brain of the two recently emerging topics of both excessive apologizing and shame, i felt a sudden attraction to this thread.


so taking a little desk chair excursion i visited a couple of cyber lands.


first stop, etymology dictionary which gives this info about the word 'sorry':


O.E. sarig "distressed, full of sorrow," from W.Gmc. *sairig-, from *sairaz "pain" (physical and mental); related to sar (see sore). Meaning "wretched, worthless, poor" first recorded c.1250. Spelling shift from -a- to -o- by influence of sorrow. Apologetic sense (short for I'm sorry) is attested from 1834; phrase sorry about that popularized 1960s by U.S. TV show "Get Smart."


second stop, to the definition of 'sorry' itself:


1. Feeling or expressing sympathy, pity, or regret: I'm sorry I'm late.
2. Worthless or inferior; paltry: a sorry excuse.
3. Causing sorrow, grief, or misfortune; grievous: a sorry development.


then it was suggested: 'see sore', so i saw 'sore':


1. Painful to the touch; tender.
2. Feeling physical pain; hurting: sore all over.
3. Causing misery, sorrow, or distress; grievous: in sore need. 4. Causing embarrassment or irritation: a sore subject.
5. Full of distress; sorrowful.
6. Informal Angry; offended.


what i realized is that when we speak about 'sorry' the reference is more to the 'is-ness' than the 'does-ness' of apology, or rather, perhaps appall-ogy.


appall:


1. To depress or discourage with fear; to impress with fear in such a manner that the mind shrinks, or loses its firmness; to overcome with sudden terror or horror; to dismay; as, the sight appalled the stoutest heart.


i think the 'appall' part comes from toxic shame [as opposed to healthy shame]. the state of being that living breathing apology [n] for daring to present myself in public in the first place. then, at times when my presence collides or intersects with that of another in a moment or place in temporal space, all of my toxic shame buttons get pushed by the 'man behind the curtain' who works tirelessly to ensure that no one be harmed by the leperous 'me'. like in younger times when the social practice was that lepers had to call out to warn people of their approach.


'i am coming, look out, don't get 'me' on you! run for your life, your 'chi'. don't be sullied by my presence!'


yes for me, obsessive appall-ogy underscores the subconscious notion that i am worthless and don't deserve to cause any type of feeling mechanism to activate in you. you should not have to react to me. you should not have to be impeded in your line of travel by the vehicle of 'me'. your right to occupy that physical space, to breath that air, is so much greater than mine. in fact all of your rights come first. mine are secondary, because mine don't count. i should remain the silent invisible nothingness that i was groomed to be in a family system that used me as a scapegoat for it's own toxic shame. its own sense of restraint for ever causing offence to anyone.


toxic shame assumes all people are unequivocally offensible, and that i am unworthy of any type of loving consideration. that i am not a man among equals.


i bury myself in moral platitudes and create a belief system that if i follow all of those things that would keep me from winning the disapproval of other, then i will be safe.


you see, it's so important to avoid the disapproval of other, and that is the 'sorry' truth of the toxic shame bound person, is that we don't merely seek others' approval, but rather must avoid their disapproval at all costs, because deep down, we sense that we would never be worthy of it, and so the solution of course then is to hide, to isolate from the very possibility of affronting someone with my useless self. to create a life where one would never have to engage in any type of personal relationship, because we are not worthy of it! every breath taken, and every move made becomes a strategic investment in the cause for avoiding offense of others' sensibilities.


in that sense life becomes a silent apology that no one ever hears.


i must stop for a bit and process these feelings that have come up before they turn themselves into thoughts and file and galvanize themselves in the steel trap of my mind.


thanks for the platform.


have a day, good peeple, see you in the next thread.....


ron


ps. the tendency to grandiosity is overcompensation, an attempt to prove and hide from myself the sad fear that all of the above is not true, and is merely the flip side of the toxic shame coin; i know because i have lived there, too. peace...