how to throw stuff out - and being kind to myself - vomiting clothes

Morocco 2006, Fez

I posted the message on facebook:......Vomiting clothes....

I just tossed out a huge pile of old clothes and it seems to have made no diff to the total stuff in my wardrobe... sorting it out brings back lots of memories.... time to let it all go... new life... new chapter....

A friend wrote: Don't stop there. Ditch the lot :-)

My response: 

What run round in the nude ... ?
I used to do this to myself (not the nude bit, the ditching  the LOT bit) I'd force myself to be radical with myself and I felt bad for months... I'd miss the stuff I forced myself to toss out .......

So now I don't do that, I just toss out what I feel comfortable tossing out...  I'm nicer to myself ( a little bit at least ) :-)

BUT one trick I do have: I mentally mark a large pile of stuff as "You are next" and I label another pile as "In a pinch this too will go" ... that helps me get ready for the next spasm of vomiting out old crap....

Economics too helps: I found out yesterday that even a small space of commercial storage 2meters by 2 meters or so, costs a minimum of $100  / month. That's $1200 per year. So at some point in time the value of my stuff in storage will be worth less than the cost of storage.

As a result I realized: I won't get commercial storage, I'll toss out more, and I'll ask my parents to take a little more of the stuff.
So that is what triggered the clothes vomit episode this morning....
:-)

The connection didn't hit me as clearly until I just wrote about it here. 


Comments: 

---

C says:

Unlike there, we have an event here organised by students - The Swapping Day - where you can exchage old clothes for others' - nice, isn't it?
M says: You only miss it once you toss it out. As long as you hang on, it stays forgotten :) Better to toss and miss than keep and forget! 55 - 
M says: Sykes! I had a storage locker at $1200+ per year for 20 years - actually for the first 10 years I had 2 lockers! In 2008 I finally took possession of my apartment again and moved all the stuff out of the locker and back home. Guess what? 90% was useless crap which I ended up tossing! I think there's a lesson there somewhere.
H says: OMG, that's painful.... I reckon even in 2 years the value of my crap is going to be less than the storage... the only thing is documents, but hey even those, who cares.

you are right: it only hurts when you let go, when you hold it you never know you even have it and you don't miss is and you don't USE it either. 

i am not my mind - my mind thinks it is all I am

Siam, Nhong Khai, 2004

Something surprising hit me the other day:

I realized that the REAL ME is something ...something .... which I can't describe.

But of one thing I was sure: it is NOT my mind.

I never saw it so clearly before.
I am  not not my mind.
I AM more than a mind.
I AM more than my thoughts or even my feelings.

There is an " i " which has thoughts and feelings, but those thoughts and feelings are not the core of what I call " i " or " myself ".
I never really understood that part until now.

I always knew it intellectually but I didn't 'get it' until that day.

I have found that in my life, I can not simply do whatever my mind thinks of -  because I AM more than my mind.

I can try, and I will pay the price on a non mind level.
A price of pain: pain is not only a mental thing, pain transcends all levels, just as joy does.
Mind is a tool, a nice tool, but a tool IS not ME.

Taking this a few steps further:
My body IS not ME, it is a tool.
So who is ME ?
Whoever  I AM in the end: I'm not physical, even though I have dressed in a physical body.
I am not mind, even though a mind is part of the package I need to survive in this world.
Who AM i really ?
Well by definition: I can't give a purely an intellectual answer, because that is just a mind answer and as I said above: I AM not just my mind.
So what kind of answer can I give myself ?
Simple: FEEL experience.
BE.
The answer whatever it is has to be felt, experienced,  tasted, seen, I have to BE the answer.

When I think  about (using my mind), how can the answer be anything other than that ?
The answer cannot only be something that is not truly ME. The answer can be partly mental, but not ONLY and not exclusively mental.

The answer can be feeling but not ONLY feeling.
You have to BE the answer, in other words: you ARE the answer to your own question of who am I ?
Makes no logical sense ?
Of course not, it goes way beyond mind.
Mind likes to think it is EVERYTHING - but it isn't. It sits on top of feeling and that in turn is only a part of the real ME.
I wrote all this as I experienced it, now it is fading.
I have yet to BE and FEEL. 
I have yet to experience BEing who I am.
"But How ?" (mind asks)
Answer: "You intend by intending
You Be by BEing."

---(o)---

How did all this stuff about not being my mind come to me ?
It came like this: All my life I've used my mind to do things I thought would be 'good' by mind's standards. Mentally there was nothing wrong with those things, they were morally ok. They were even socially approved.
But to my surprise I kept running into something else. 
I kept running into myself, those bits that were not just my mind.
I would set up my perfect lifestyle as my mind had painted it. I found it, I was able to create it.
And surprise, surprise: I hated it.
But I should not, I had everything I could wish for, (so I told myself).
Well my mental picture had left out things.
My mental picture had ignored the fact that I am NOT a mind on legs, I am not a brain on legs.
I know, I know, mentally I always knew that. But I had not EXPERIENCED it.
THAT was the key. 

The experience.

What does a good mental geeek and engineer do in response to all this ?
He thinks harder.
A bit like the old colonial maxim: if the natives don't understand English, you have to just shout louder.
I did the same to myself: I thought harder, I looked harder with the mind. I analyzed and thought and argued, and came to the conclusion that I ought not to feel what I felt and that I ought to be deliriously happy and ecstatically happy. 
I had realized my dreams.
So if I was not happy, that meant there was something wrong with me. 
Logic told me I ought to be happy.
I spent a number of years going in circles like this.
The mind is great at rationalizing (actually it is not the mind that does that, the mind is just the tool, it is the intent that drives the mind which does the rationalizing).

In the end the answer was much much simpler. There was nothing wrong with me.
I had simply ignored the fact that I was not just a mind.
There were other parts of me. Non mental parts. 
Non-mind parts. 
In fact the mind is just a small part of the whole.

---(o)---

The world thinks that people without external rules are lawless and would do anything... therefore we need more rules to control them and keep things from disintegrating and uttter chaos.
Actually people would not do just any wild thing at all.
People are more than minds, and the parts of all of us that are non-mind are the parts that KNOW what we truly are and want in life. It is only mind that that thinks it is free and unfettered.

I have used my mind and I have tried to live as though I was just a mind. It does now work, it cannot work. I understand that now.
 
I only understood this because I see that even though I have freedom to do whatever I want on the mental level, in reality I have to live with myself, in reality I am NOT just my mind, I am something more than a mind.  
 

It is the external rules of power and control that separate people from their true selves (their Temples of Self) And it is separated from themselves people who DO do anything wild & crazy they can think of, because they are separated from themselves ...that is why they can (to a degree). But it is the fear of chaos and the imposition of too many rules that creates  separated-from-self people in the first place. These people then provide the evidence for why those rules were necessary in the first place. It becomes a vicious self-sustaining circle.


Note1: Everyone is more or less separated-from-self.
Note2: not all rules are primarily for power and control, many rules are simply for convenience e.g. do your toilet business in the toilet not anywhere else. Rules like that are primarily practical, they are really commonsense. Those are not the rules I talk about. - more on this in another blog... 

---(o)---

do I want to be in this world ? rings of learning.... like rings on a tree....

Dear Grasshoppper,  

my natural home is the world of spirit.
So I meditate, I write stories, I reconnect to the world of my home that way.
Then I move into the world of the physical, I feel lost, alone, small tiny and have no idea what the hell I'm doing here.

That move from the spirit to the physical feels similar to when we have a nice dream: all is clear, we KNOW and understand, then when we wake up it fades and we lose it. The reality of it leaves us.

Or it is like: a great insight and understanding that fades gradually.

In the world of spirit there is no need for words, no need for complex arguments, for written rules.
There is just KNOWING, obvious, clear, intuitive. You just KNOW, what is right for you, what is not, you know what your level of honour requires and you live by it naturally like breathing. 
There is no need to look up a book of rules or 'HOW to's'
In the world of spirit the key is 'connection'


In the world of the physical there IS a need for words, clarity, rules, agreements. There is uncertainty and most of  all there is something that does not really exist in spirit: FEAR. Fear based on a feeling of separation, fear based on 'either this or that'. For me the key to the physical is 'separation'.

I want to look at the feelings as I move from the world of spirit to the world of physical:

Moving from the world of spirit to the world of the physical feels very strange for me because I still have a memory of the spirit world.  For me moving to the physical creates feelings of
- lostness,
- vulnerability, naked and defenceless,
- imprisoned,
- feelings of being stuck in a bog, stuck in quicksand
and most of all FEAR.

Fear paralyses, fixes in place, nails me to one spot so I'm afraid to move. It is like a vine that weaves itself around me and immobilizes me. No motion, no movement.

To break out of that feeling I often use anger, the power of movement and fire and explosion. I raise the dragon and spew forth fire and smoke (words, criticism, judgement).

Fear, Anger, frustration has been my normal response to the physical.
I've wanted to get OUT of the physical.
Well not entirely, there are some nice things on the physical, but as a whole, the physical world seemed dangerous, tricky, violent, fearsome and unpleasant (yukkie, irksome).

But if i had no lessons on the physical I would not be here in a human body.
I've spent time running from the physical, avoiding the lessons etc...

Only recently have I started to understand the things which I've written here.
I've understood that much of my reactions to life have been reactions to a change of environment. 
That move from spirit to physical.

I can understand my own reactions more when I think of a move  from a country where i am happy and at peace, where i have friends and family.  In that place I know where everything is and how to do things. Then I am forced to move  into a new country where I don't know the language. People do things differently, they don't behave the way I am used to, they have strange customs I find disgusting and primitive and revolting (as well as some really nice ones).
They still do things in the new country that we have left behind for a thousand years in my own country. I hate it, I dislike it. It sucks.

And that hate and dislike is reflected back at me.
I hate it more.
I get more of my own hate energy back at myself.

My feelings of disgust, and revulsion come back at me.

I've met people who immigrated to a new country and yet they keep longing for and talking about the old country. Everything in the old country is wonderful and everything in the new country is bad, they can't see any good. They are having trouble adjusting to the new place. They recreate a mini version of the old country in the new one. Their children gradually move into the new country.

I have been very much like that.

For a long time I did not accept my new country, i.e. the physical world. Or I would only accept it on my terms, or only bits of it. I've accepted it more, but  I'm not sure I've accepted it totally.
I still rave about how nice the old country is, and I pour shit on how bad the physical world is, how we had it sooooo muuuuuch better in the world of spirit etc... blah blah ... I think you get the idea. I have looked down on the physical world (because I'm so superior, i.e. spiritual - how ironic, it proves the opposite :-). 

I've talked about moving from the world of spirit to the world of the physical.
Birth is the biggest move to the physical world of matter. Death is the biggest move back home. It is the birth back into the world of spirit.... laden with a shopping bag of experiences and wisdom....

But once I'm born then what ? is there still any moving between countries?
Yes.

An immigrant to a new country has to buy a plane ticket to go 'home' to the old country.

But for me to go 'home' I can simply visit the old country of spirit any time. All it takes is intent and awareness. The methods differ for different people, for me the way 'home' is, solitude, quietness, space, a good cup of tea, meditation, writing (things like this on my computer.... ) ....

So for me moving from one world to the other is not a physical thing anymore, it is a thing of intent and perception. Well not entirely, travelling in the physical helps a lot and lends it a real power.
But even then,  it is still a thing of awareness.


So HOW does one do that 'awareness' thing ?
I can only reply in the words of Juan Matus (Carlos Castaneda) "One intends by intending." and I would add:  "One sees by seeing.
One wants by wanting."
The way for each person is unique and different.


There are physical ways to go 'home' as well. Alcohol, drugs, danger, etc... can be used as pathways get a glimpse of 'home'. The glimpse is genuine, the price for the trip is very high.
In the old days, when the world of spirit and physical were closer, and even overlapping everyone would naturally go 'home' to spirit to rest by simply shifting their awareness. Nowadays we have lost that ability.

We rely a lot on physical things. I believe that going home for a rest, and for a look and a visit is our birthright. We do it in sleep at the very least. It is not the going that it problem is the method and the price of going that can be difficult.

Figure1: The spirit and physical worlds only barely touch in our times.

Figure2: The spirit and physical worlds overlapped in ancient times. They will do so again one day... .


All this might sound a little abstract.

So far I've only set the scene to what I want to talk about.

Let me get personal: Deep inside myself I have always resented being in this country of the physical, it was rough, scary, barbarian and uncouth. It was not how I did things back 'home' (yes, this can be one of the blessings and curses of remembering 'home' too well. :-P )
I dimly remember having tried all sorts of other escapes from this country of the physical in other lives, including a self induced exit, and the usual methods of alcohol etc....
I was born with the clear memory that those methods don't work.
But still I was pissed off at being "...here AGAIN dammit !".
I was NOT impressed, scared and obstinate. 

I would let no one FORCE me to LIKE it here.
No one would be able to MAKE me LIKE it here.

I missed my 'HOME' !
What the hell was I doing here anyway ?

I got into a power struggle with life.
I sulked.
I would not cooperate,
I would do the absolute minimum and that was all.

Passive protest.
Passive aggression.
And add to that a good dose of fear.

Oh sure, I did what I HAD to do. To an outsider it looked like I did the right things. I tried hard etc.... well yes sort of but not really.

And I remembered vaguely a few things that from the last time I had visited the country to the physical. Old battle wounds itched and hurt.
What the f**** was I doing here once again ?


One of the  things that persuaded me to change was a very simple and powerful realization:


- 'if that is what you want, ok you can have it!'

(That was the realization)

My response was:
Huh? what ?

- you heard me, if you want a half lived life of resentment and fighting life, go for it. It's your's.
What, you won't force me ?


- We've never forced you.
Yes you did !


- No, we never did.
Then why the hell am I here ?

- you chose this.
I didn't not really.

- .........silence ...............
Ok I guess on some level I did.

- Yes on 'some level' you did.
But not all of me.

- no, not all of you.
So what am I doing here ?

- to make it ALL of you.
Really ?

- really.
what if i don't.

-  then you don't :-)
oh.

- ...........................
I can't imagine ever getting to the point where I really LIKE it here.

- it's not a matter of liking, its a matter of resentment.
oh.
And once I don't resent it, I'll like it I guess.

- find out. he he he
why ?

- why not ?
hey !

- Ok, ok. Without that lesson well learned inside you, you would not be ready for the greater dose of joy and light that waits after that.
huh? greater joy ?
since when does it take strength to have joy ?

- since always. It always has.
hm.... that's a new one.

- Everything is in a tension of opposites. Peace and harmony too take strength, they are not the absence of war or conflict but they are the power to hold and weave warring energies that would otherwise cause destruction. Weaving them together to create peace and harmony is the task of the warrior.

The writing above was triggered by a experience I had at work once:

I had a flu on a Sunday, painful, my hair hurt, every move hurt.
The next few days at work I overworked then had to take it really gently.
I felt delicate and fragile by the middle of the week.
I simply had no energy to do anything but the basics and just what I had to do. I did it.
I had to enter data from a laboratory, answer emails, deal with people who asked lots of complicated questions, silly questions etc....
     Then something different happened.

     I didn't worry about what else I COULD be doing, or perhaps SHOULD be doing. I just decided that right now this thing I was doing was the right and best thing to do at this moment.
I no longer had the feeling of resentment at the thing I was doing.
I no longer distracted myself from what I had to do, or ran away into other tasks to avoid the ones I didn't want to face. I just did it.
I felt no annoyance.

Then I realized: that most of my life I had done things that I didn't really WANT to do. 
When I had to enter the laboratory data I'd usually resent the menialness of the job. I thought:
" What was I doing such boring work for ? 
It was below me.
I should be doing much more "important" things. " and I would try to get it done as fast as possible to make it disappear as fast as I could.

This was the attitude to many things in my life. I was always trying to make things dissappear to get to the nice bits... and I didn't really ever get there... .

But it took computer work to really show it to me.
Ever since I started working with computers in the 1990's I've found them hard to sit in front of for too long. Pain  irritation, etc....
It wasn't till a friend suggested they might be reflecting back my own energies that the penny dropped....ahhh I see !

So when I simply accepted those menial tasks, I found: no problem from computer work. I didn't even feel irritated or annoyed. I could do more hours and still feel fine after wards.
The only thing I had changed was my resentment.

Chapter 1: Circles of growth

Drawings on my experience of working with energy: 


What I send out comes back to me, quite literally, - my reaction is reflected back at me. If I then react the same way then this too is reflected back to  me and so on.
That way the energy grows quite fast and very strong.
Examples of this are:
- computer work
- writing
- family,
in short: anything that I pour my energy into intensely will send that energy back at me.
Energy sent back at me gives me a choice:
I can see it as energy separate from myself and fight with it. I can perceive it as 'other and alien' and push against it.
Or
I can look deeper and see that the source of that energy is truly from myself.
It has MY unique character imprinted into it.
All I am doing is seeing myself.
Life becomes a mirror.
I can fight within myself or I can accept.

If I accept then what was once an impenetrable mirror wall of silver becomes an open doorway.
(see George MacDonald's Fairy Tales for the idea of the silver reflecting bubble within which a person is enclosed. It describes the psychic reality of this very well.

Above figure: The white ring is the area the person can easily deal with.

The orange middle ring is the ring of current issues to deal with. The area of transition and change and growth

The faint ring on the outside is the next level of growth waiting to be dealt with.

Above figure: Energy is reflected back at the person sending it.

Above figure: Growth process, only a little of  the energy used in  growth is reflected back at the orange ring level.  The orange middle ring is the ring of current issues to deal with. The area of transition and change and growth

More on how energy given out can reflect back on the person sending it here:  http://heikorudolph.com/opinions/computerhumaninteractions.htm
It's a discussion about how computers can reflect back the energies at the person who sends it.

The same principle holds for anything into which a person pours a lot of their energy.

From the master's memoirs and letters: 15May10

what is happening behind the words ? when I feel bad about myself ?

I asked myself the question: when I feel bad about myself, when I beat myself up and regret things, what is really happening ?

I came up with the following thoughts.

Words are just words.

They are symbols on a screen, on paper.

Or they are sounds.

The symbols on paper or the sounds by themselves have no real power.

Once the symbols or the sounds become meaning then they affect me, which is what I call "having power".

What the meaning is depends on the context.

The words "I love you" read on a bumper sticker on the car in front of me in heavy traffic will mean nothing compared to hearing them from a Lady I have admired from afar for years. ;-)

Whatever it is that words as sounds or symbols do to a person they do it on a NON verbal, no word level. They do it on the level of meaning, of feelings.  In the end, the words themselves are just sounds and symbols.

If you speak more than one language you will understand this even more easily: much the same meaning can be told to you in different languages, the languages is just the wrapping for the meaning.

Like chocolates in a box, the box and the wrapping may differ, but the real essence is the chocolate, regardless of the wrapping. Unless you like eating the wrapping of course. :-P

Back to my original question:

"when I feel bad about myself, when I beat myself up and regret things, what is really happening ?"

I don't have a final answer but I have some further thoughts:

When I beat myself up, - I am feeling things. bad feelings. Unpleasant feelings.

Those bad feelings eat away my confidence like acid eating away metal.

 More than that alone, I have a bad intent at myself. ....

 Hmmmm............

this is as far as I have got.....

I wonder: what happens when I worry ? I must be putting 'bad energy' into myself ?

What is 'bad energy' really ? bad feelings ? Yes, but what is it really ? 

I don't know, this is as far as I have got....

Hopefully I can update this one day.... .



I have only looked at words an their effect from the mind perspective, i.e. words that were processed consciously, by the mind of the listener.


There is another way that words work, without going through the mind. That way is pure energy which is aimed at the feeling center of the person. 
Have you ever met someone who uses nice sweet words but really has a totally different intent ?
In that case the nice words are wrapping for an energy that has nothing to do with the meaning of the words. The meaning distracts the listener, it goes to the mind.
"I love you", said with the intent and feeling of 'I hate you' will confuse the listener.
Modern people will listen with the mind and take in the meaning of 'I love you'.
They will not notice immediately that the feeling BEHIND the words is totally different.
Intuitive people will feel and see the intent behind the words and see the reality.
An intuitive person will have trouble explaining to a person who uses only their mind that the intent and the meaning are different.

courage and weight - "you can do anything you like, as long as you pay the price" really ???

I read the phrase "...it takes a lot of courage to hold that weight..."

suddenly  I understood: courage is what is required to hold the weight of responsibility in life. I never really saw that before.

Now I understand why the weight of things to deal with, things to do, things to face, things to accept require courage.

I used to believe that weight was a bad thing and a sign of something being wrong.

I wonder can this be expanded further to include this idea:

"Wrong' as such is a GREAT heavy weight. It is a weight that might crush us. Hence not doing 'wrong' is not for some arbitrary reason, but it is another way of saying: if you do this thing it will be so so so heavy on you, that it may crush you. Therefore we call this thing 'wrong' because it is wrong for you, wrong for the other.

hm.... that is a new perspective indeed.

I used to say to myself and others: "you can do anything you like, as long as you pay the price". Now I see that there are things that we can 'do' that we can never pay the price for, they would crush us.  No, they would not physicallly crush us, but spiritually, psychologically...and I guess that will come to a physical end eventually.

What are those things ?  The big ones are obvious.

But it is the subtle ones that matter most.

The things that i can feel intuitively as "this will cost you dearly" - they may not be 'wrong' in the big obvious sense, but they are 'wrong' for me, in the sense that their price, cost, weight would be VERY heavy.

hm....

I like this perspective. It brings it home to a meaningful yardstick, instead of some arbitrary bureaucratic rule, thought out by someone behind a desk trying to cover his a*** .

---(O)---

There is another part to this of course: the weight I break off from life to carry is the thing I bring with me as my 'learning' and as my 'contribution' to life. It is what I contribute to the leaning-ness of mankind, and my own knowledge. Knowledge not of the mind but the knowledge of experience and wisdom.

If I never carry any weight I do not bring 'home' anything.

The art is to break off the right amount of weight, not too much, not too little.

Sure, it is possible to break off a HUGE chunck and get buried by it for lifetimes.

Or it is possible to break off tiny tiny nibbles and take forever to fill a meaningful amount of wisdom and learning.

Somewhere there is a middle path. I guess I'm best off if I  carry what I can carry  with a bit of effort in a good backpack. Any more and I slow down too much, any less and I waste my 'trip' i.e. my trip into physical life. ...

I've always thought that since weight in great doses is crushing and 'wrong' then ALL weight is bad.  So in my life I avoided the weight of responsibility.

But the truth is that it is like medicine: a little cures, a lot kills. This is true of most medicines, esp heart medicines used by modern doctors.

It is the quantity that decides if something is a poison or a cure, it is the quantity that decides if something is a learning for wisdom or a rock that crushes....

---(O)---

Since we are all connected, we can break off weights for self, but also for others.

And what if we break off too much weight ? this is bound to happen sooner or later. We are here to learn, how  will we learn if we don't go too far ? or too little ?

We are not alone.

Help is there, but I need to ask... (I tend to forget that part)...

And then there is group learning.... another topic... 

Gitta Malasz in the book "talking with Angels" writes how the angels see weight as a positive thing. It is the raw material that we transform and bring to the table of life .... something like that anyway....

So the art lies in getting the 'amount' right... :-) hm....

hmm.... this is my understanding at THIS time of the mystery of being alive on this planet....