LOL. Truth. There’s the pure manipulator portion who are just liars and are counting with your response. And lots of them are in politics and other positions of power.

Leap, I didnt consider that but yeah. Self blame. No matter what the frame is, you can put the onus on yourself. Great when the feelings are positive, nulling and self defeating when they are not. Blind and awesome prey for manipulators.

The way I learned to interact with this is what got me hooked up in that drama the other day, and the same that kept me at HUS for so long. Now I know better. Or at least I can see it better -> I´ll be able to decide my own destiny.

Man, I need to take the time to read more Shari at gettinbetter. I remember really liking her stuff and saying I need to read more of her and The Rawness, to the point where I need to heavily look at whether I might be the second form of bipolar disorder she describes, but I keep forgetting about both of their websites and articles. Like, consistently forgetting. I feel like it’s my brain’s way of avoiding the issues.

Just like right now I’m unable to get any momentum for draftings I need to get done in four hours (they’ll probably only take two), but am here instead, thinking about my personal issues and how I can solve them rather than just doing the things that need doing. Ugh.

Truth.

I’ve found intermittent fasting over the last 3 months to be particularly useful in identifying how much feelings get conflated with intention et al.

By constricting my eating window to the same times each day plus having a ridiculously repetitive pattern of wake, commute, work, commute, eat, it became pretty damn simple to spot the ebb and flow of energy, blood sugar levels and subsequently emotions as I edged towards the end of the 20-24 hour fast.

After experiencing it for 2-3 months day in day out, I can now separate “I’m just tired, hungry, [insert unmet physical need]” and therefore more susceptible to [insert negative emotion here] as opposed to projecting said emotion onto whatever unsuspecting victim happened to be around.

Knowing this now, I can think back to how different my life would’ve been had I known this a decade or two earlier.

The solution is always, get physical need met and negative emotion is erased.

Simple.

I’ve thought about projection for years. I see it all the time. In the past (even today) it was called scapegoating. It’s the first defense everyone engages in – “It’s not my fault; it’s yours!”

Wow! The keys to blowing up psychological projection AND discussion of the mental benefits of intermittent fasting (which I heartily endorse also) –all in the same comment thread. It’s a twofer!

Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: “I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper.” Once this habit dinner will be and she flies into a temper.” Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken.

very, very deep.

impressive man.

Yohami,

I just posted a conversation Deti and I had at Dalrock’s and if I remember correctly I have seen you comment on this topic before, as well. I am trying to understand where respect comes from for women toward their husbands. I would love to hear your point of view if you have some time. If not, I hope this finds you well and that you not being around the ‘sphere lately is because you’re terribly busy being incredibly successful with everything you are working towards.

You have no idea how much this rings a bell with me.

I grew up with a narcissistic, emotional vampire mother and a very immature, weak father.
The one thing my father instilled in me call it unrelenting pressure or a strict training was that I was expected to do well at school and there was no other way about that. Consequently, I always got the top grades in my class.
The good side of this was that it gave me a certain kind of confidence- I “knew” that it was possible to learn about a certain topic, whatever that might be and learn it so well that no matter how I am tested on it, I will pass.

I would look at other students who had a hard time in fifth grade, and think, dude this is not that difficult, you are making it more difficult than it has to be. Just focus on the stuff and let go of all the junk you insist on carrying in your mind.

The rest of my social/personal life was so so, and especially at home things were always crazy. I would look at a lot of the things that my mom would do and realize how pointless they were. But since I had no choice, I learned to placate her and let her violate my boundaries and somehow manage to have just enough sanity that I could survive and as long as I did well at school, I would have enough clout to earn some time to myself.
My mother would often say demeaning things about my father, such as how he was failing the family by not earning enough money, how his brothers and sisters were making a fool of him.
As for me, she had comments like
” What good does all this studying do anyway?”
“You are just impossible, I am your mother and even I say this to you I wonder how anyone else would put up with you”
“All your friends seem like nice good guys, it’s just you…”

Home was always chaos and I never figured out the underlying pattern to it. I learnt enough to survive, but I never mastered it, probably because I had no idea of how much better things could actually be.

I left my home/country for college and came to the US- that was nine years ago and I got into self improvement about two years ago.

I still get hooked on many bad patterns of behaviors/ emotions and often get stuck there. I have managed to have stretches of a few months where I maintain a fully zen-like state with complete presence all throughout the day- fully scheduled with positive, improving activities and the soundest sleep. But then I saw that I kept getting derailed by things that kept coming up.

The simple analogy I have for this is :
Our brains are computers. They run whatever programs have been loaded. Programs that have survival value survive, ones that do not, get erased. However, there can be viruses/ malicious pieces of code that just run and the replicate themselves. There is no other purpose to them than to live on a healthy enough system and take up CPU time. If these are too serious, they kill the host and get killed off themselves, if not then they keep loading the system down.
I noticed that a lot of my derailments came after I interacted with certain people. Just talking to my mom for half an hour on the phone would put me in a less than easy state that I would have to go through days of meditation to get over.
First, I’d just run her program.
I’d feel bad about that.
Decide to let go of that program.
Feel angry that I let it run in the first place.
Decide that the anger is still an unnecessary process.
Try to let go of that.
Feel angry at my mother for giving it to me.
Decide that is pointless.
Truly let go, and get myself to focus on something productive.
However, my own mother insists on taking up my time and then making me feel bad, when I would like a little bit of love/caring, something nice. It is disappointing.
When I get into meditation and get in a state of pure consciousness with no desires/ attachments etc, I am fine. However, we are social animals and feel good when we interact with others. And our friends/family are supposed to be on our side/ help us out. How come they are our worst enemies?
I try to look at it this way: they are that way because they are in a certain environment that shaped them to be the way they are. Somehow, they didn’t have enough awareness to get over their conditioning. Yes, there are other, lucky people who had a life full of positive, constructive experiences.
I should be thankful for at least having enough consciousness to see this for what it is. This is still difficult for me, because I still have the voice in me that says, “but this is bullshit, I shouldn’t have to put up with this garbage”
Either that or I can have pity on my mother and try to bring her up too, which I tried to do for almost a year. It was just a waste of words and time and often derailed me because I would get frustrated.
So, that was the trap of attachment.
Now, I have reached a point where I can see that, in the end suffering is just a certain program running on the head-maching. Peace is another. Love is another. Enlightenment is when nothing is running except the input-devices, maybe some output as well.
It struck me as amazing that Buddha, after he was enlightened, decided to go around preaching to and educating people. Why would he take on such a frustrating/ thankless job? What was his attachment to it? What was he looking for? Glory? Instead of just living in his own bubble of peace if he truly was enlightened ?
That is when the idea of unattached compassion made sense to me. His state of enlightened bliss came with a compassion which really didn’t cost him anything, it didn’t hurt him- as it happens that was a program his enlightenment was bundled with. I’m sure there have been other enlightened beings whose enlightenment was pure and unbundled with the urge/calling/co-program of teaching/sharing. But then we would not know about them.
Having spent a lot of my life in academia and having spent a lot of time learning (which means being taught, either from books, or from teachers), I seem to also have a strong tendency to want to share my own insights/knowledge. But having come from a place where I had to hide my knowledge often just to save myself from the tyranny of some illogical code-snippets that happened to run in my parent’s brain, I have a rather uneasy relationship with this whole teaching/learning, helping/being helped and talking/being listened to.
Which you really nailed with your post-
If you only listened to me you’d see that I’m making sense. Why won’t you?
I can’t believe you insist on your madness instead of what I’m trying to give you. Are you evil?
I can’t believe you are evil toward me, and you are my mother. I have given you enough ideas/suggestions, but that’s just been wasted time at best and my undoing at other times. So, I will just go no contact with you. If you really break down because I let go of you, maybe I will feel obligated to fix you then, and maybe it might even be possible. At the moment, you have your own tune, which you expect me to dance to- with good reason too because you have seen it work that way for so long.
And I have a new tune which I want to keep playing, so I don’t want to get distracted by listening to yours again.
I’m sure there was a reason the wise men in the past all went off to the mountains to live in solitude.

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