My Truth

[Meh]

YES, TearTracks, I HAVE thought about this! A lot... This question that you asked.

We are ruminating and worrying, We are NOT meditating. Meditating is very different then worry and rumination.
Actually, Phoenix Rising, explained that well.

In meditation one seeks to not get stuck on any one thought, to notice them but not hook onto the thought.

Reading backwards, it feels like I spent 7 years of involuntary meditation on the injustice of my own childhood abuse.  It seems that many of us here are caught in involuntary meditation and don't know how to move ourselves to what might be a more favorable & rewarding type of meditation.  

  

A concrete key to this phenomenon is explained in the book (WAKING THE TIGER) that I recommend earlier in this long line of posts  I've been putting out there, that is part of the reason why I recommended it but I have a hard time writing every thought I've ever had about this process.

((((JUST READ THIS BOOK)))) It's not just another vague book, it is different. This man who wrote this book is so humane.

Can I be concise: The author has a scientific approach and he combines "shamanistic" approaches also to take a person back to the original trauma experience in the mind. It is not new-age nonsense, it is just "out of the box" medicine.

His explanation for WHY WE RUMINATE SO MUCH. It has to do with the nervous system. Our nervous system gets stuck at one point in a natural cycle. It's part of the fight or flight response. We are animals too, mammals, homosapiens right? So we as humans go through this fight or flight response and if we can not fight or run away and be triumphant our body gets stuck in the process of this natural cycle.
It's a nervous system loop that needs to resolve it's self.

I think that is a big CLUE to the answer. I LOVED this book, it is so smart.

The other part that I think it is, my opinion at least, is that all of life is trying to move towards health in wholeness, like our immune systems are allways working by themselves, we don't have to do anything to make the immune system work, they just are happening behind the scenes like the theater crew building the set and the costumes and doing all the work but we just see the play-performance.

On some deep level I think the rethinking is our attempt to relive the trauma experience and figure out how could we do it differently, how could we triumph.

I personally don't ruminate about every thing, do you? Usually it's just certain things, the more stressful and UNRESOLVED it is the more we ruminate.

We are just attempting to be healthy, whole, stabilized, reach homeostasis.

The thing is it's on that deep level, our minds probably will never figure it out,
It's like the riddle that has no answer. (To our minds)
We have to be emotionally taken back to that place so we can relive it and then conquer the predator.

Or have similar experiences in the current time that are healthy.

Meditation is the antithesis to rumination.

I personally feel that I'm telling my story for a little different reason then ruminating, but it is still an attempt to become complete, and be in the world, and get healed, and be heard, and be known, and be seen, and not be invisible.

There are other aspects of rumination, I find that it can also be related to validation.

This is personally some of what my soul is feeling:
"Please believe me!... Please, it really did happen, I know they said it didn't happen, but it did!!!... I'm not invisible"... I'm real!!"
"My feelings are real"... Please... "Why don't you see that my feelings are real" ....."Does anyone see me"...
Am I here?, I think I'm here, but no one acts like I'm here, maybe I'm not, maybe I'm a ghost.... And then something shuts down
But I go over it and over it because I lacked validation. But also it was very stressful. It's stressful to be invalidated.
I think of it as a type of Psychic trauma/soul trauma.

We are broken records in our minds because the record player needs us to come and fix that spot so the song can finish. Then we can put that song away and play a better one. 

[Meh]

Morrisey Song, I never looked at these lyrics before, gosh, isn't if funny the way a song I've heard many times finally comes strikes a chord with me

I am the son, I am the heir,
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar,
I am the son and heir,
Of nothing in particular,

You shut your mouth
how can you say,
I go about things the wrong way,
I am human and I need to be loved,
just like everybody else does,
I am the son, and the heir,
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar,
I am the son and heir,
Of nothing in particular,

There's a club if you'd like to go,
you could meet some body who really loves you,
so you go and you stand on your own,
and you leave on your own,
and you go home and you cry
and you want to die.

When you say its going to happen "now",
well when exactly do you mean?
see I've already waited too long,
and all my hope is gone,

You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am human and i need to be loved
Just like everybody else does

[Meh]

I'm replying to myself just like I talk to myself.

I might start talking to the fruit flys in my kitchen. Joe, Larry and Harry.

So, the reason for this post is that Gabben commented on the board about "loss of love" and maybe even coming to terms with it and accepting it. I thought that I had come to terms with this before I lost my job.

This got me back to thinking about one of my main issues. I write a lot about all sort of stuff, not all of it bothers me, some of it is just observations but I am very bothered by the loss of love.

It's like someone died and there was no funeral.

I got into picturing something in my mind's eye. If each one of us had a funeral to go along with our grief what would happen at the funeral?

I did not feel grief for years, depression and sadness yes but not grief.

Something happened to me in my 20's and I had a rush of grief come to me all at once.
For the first time I knew what people meant when they said the word grief, I always thought that I knew but I didn't until that point.

[Meh]

I better stop myself from writing, but I won't.

If I had a funeral for the parts of my life that are dead.

I would bury memories that were never made.
I would mourn time itself.
I see a movie reel playing.
I can see little bits and pieces, it's me running around as a little kid through the water of a sprinkler.
I'm laughing and I'm happy.

I do have a type of happiness but it is a happiness that is alone and without warmth or connection.
Deep breath here.
That connects something for me.

[Meh]

I get this feeling, it is related to embarrassment.

Are embarrassment and shame the same thing? I've always been very embarrassed but I never use the word shame.

I can feel something retracting, recoiling, maybe it's fear, It's like my heart just collapses upon itself. I'm surprised I haven't had a heart attack. I'm surprised that the organ of my heart keeps beating. Why? I think hearts are dumb that's why.
I feel like a fish swimming around and around in a shrinking pond. Why doesn't anyone love me.

Maybe I'm afraid of myself, maybe I'm afraid of my truth and my own story. That sounds right, I am.
I'm afraid of my imperfectness. I'm afraid of the story that is a sad story. I'm afraid.
I'm afraid of the part of me that hates myself. I'm so confused.

It happens when I think of the embarrassment of not being loved or being rejected or of being seen as I am. Seeing my flaws.
Of reaching out, wanting connection. I'm afraid of really being known. I'm afraid of someone seeing and knowing my truth.
Because my truth contains so much depression and sadness and lack, loss, dissapointment. Why would anyone want to see my truth.

Lets see, so I am someone who wants to be corporeal but I am afraid of being seen because that would mean my flaws would be obvious and I'm afraid that my flaws are rejectable. My flaws are not the same as other peoples flaws. My flaws hurt and they can't be fixed. OK that last line makes me want to cry.

I'm like a ghost who wants to be in the human world. I'm also afraid of the world.

Maybe depression is the only place for me that is safe.
Maybe I should start calling depression home and stop struggling.
Maybe I should sweep off the floor of my depression-sea and make it homey.
I could do something constructive with my depression, no I don't think so.

What if I really am unlovable, then without love there is no hope. And it will be a hopeless life.

A Hopeless life.

[Meh]

If Depression is depressing down feelings. Then how come when I cry I don't feel better afterwards.

I just cried, watched another Peter Gabriel music video.

You know how when you cry and the snot in your nose turns to a liquefied something, like if you cry a lot the snot is almost just like water. Well anyways. Then afterwards it feels like my nose is packed with cotton. I might as well not even have any nostrils after I've been crying.

I guess if I'm depressed I'm allowed to cry.

Maybe I do just need to cry a lot, a lot. ?

I remember a time when I had room-mates I would cry in the shower that way no one would hear me, It would just come out.

Some part of me just wants to go out on the street and cry like one of those old widows in photographs who's whole family has just died in an earthquake. You know like a totally inconsolable crazy woman.

I want to cry and I want to say "f*ck you" to any person who does not want me to cry.
And if someone does not want me to cry out in the open I will cry harder. Because they are my tears and I own them and they are real.

"My tears are real"
That line is really making me cry more then anything!
Maybe I can come back later and meditate on this.

I can't cry gracefully, I cry as gracefully as a snorting pig.

[Gabben]

(((Helen))),

Thank you for sharing yourself so openly.

After reading the last two pages of your thread a song came to mind by Barbara Streisand:

 
 
Where is It Written?
Prayer
God, our merciful father,
I’m wrapped in a robe of light
Clothed in your glory
That spreads it’s wings over my soul.
May I be worthy.
Amen.

There’s not a morning I begin without
A thousand questions running through my mind,
That I don’t try to find the reason
And the logic in the world that God designed.
The reason why
A bird was given wings,
If not to fly
And praise the sky
With ev’ry song it sings.
What’s right or wrong.
Where I belong
Within the scheme of things.

And why have eyes that see and arms that reach
Unless you’re meant to know there’s something more?
If not to hunger for the meaning of it all.
Then tell me what a soul is for?
Why have the wings unless you’re meant to fly?
And tell me please, why have a mind
If not to questino why?

And tell me where-
Where is it written what it is I’m meant to be,
That I can’t dare
To have the chance to pick the fruit of ev’ry tree,
Or have my share
Of ev’ry sweet-imagined possibility?
Just tell me where, tell me where?

If I were only meant to tend the nest,
Then why does my imagination sail
Across the mountains and the seas,
Beyond the make-believe of ev’ry fairy tale?

Why have the thirst if not to drink the wine?
And what a waste
To have a taste
Of things that can’t be mine?

And tell me where-
Where is it written what it is I’m meant to be,
That I can’t dare-
To find the meanings in the mornings that I see,
Or have my share-
Of ev’ry sweet-imagined possibility?
Just tell me where-
Where is it written?
Tell me where-
Or if it’s written anywhere? 
 

[Ami]

Dear Helen
 I think I have written those same words, asked those same questions, hoped, lost hope, wanted, gave up wanting.
 I think the answer is what we  did not get from our walking dead M's---love and intimacy.
 Even the traditional M.D's say that love is more important to the heart than exercise, vitamins etc.
 How to get it when it seems hopeless?
 That is the hard question.
 Most people cannot give it. That is for sure.
 If you miss it as a child it does feel like you missed the bus.
 I missed the bus and I could look normal but never be normal b/c I had a huge hole in my soul. So, I was resigned to be the walking wounded. I was gonna stay like that until I died .
 Connection and love happened for me as I have said but it was purely a gift. It literally fell down from the sky due to no great qualities in me.
 However, I reached out to God a long time ago. I heard a voice(impression ) over 20 years ago when I was in despair about ever getting over my M.
 A voice (impression in my gut) said,"I will restore what the locusts have eaten". The locusts had eaten everything b/c my M, F and H were virtually locusts .
 I thought *I* was the bad one so I could not get out of the paradigm.
 I think the way out is spiritual.
 Last night I talked to my Aunt. She is very "normal". She has 3 wonderful kids--super successful, sweet, humble. They are all close like a warm family. She was a loving M and she reaped what she sowed. I used to go to her house when I was young and  want to stay there forever b/c she was warm and loving. I had her sister, the witch to go home to.
 Anyway,she was "surprised" that my friend would "put up with me(sobbing etc)
 She backtracked when I asked her about it but I thought that she had a point coming from a "normal" persepctive. Who WOULD want to be bothered with me?
 It HAS to be Divine. That person has to have a divinely inspired heart  for you
 The Bible says that "Every good gift  comes from God above"
 That is how you find your Enlightened Witness. Don't give up before.
        XXOOO  Ami

[Gabben]

I think the way out is spiritual.
 

Ami and Helen:

 A couple of years ago I wrote a poem I call Rescue...

In the womb rescue was found in the darkness.

In infanthood rescue was found in feeding.

In childhood rescue was found in innocence.

In adolescence rescue was found in fleeing.

In young adulthood rescue was found in wounding.

In womanhood rescue was found in seeking.

In seeking rescue was found in truth.

In truth rescue was found in suffering.

In suffering rescue was found in God.

In God love was rescued.

[Ami]

 I wanted to add something. Last night, I realized from my interaction with my Aunt that most people will NOT (or cannot)reach a hand out to help.If they are 'normal", they were already parented and so do not understand the depths of pain and disconnection a person with an NM had. They will say s/thing like" Get over it. It was in the past. Snap out of it. et dressed up, put on make up and get out, Go help s/one else"
 You feel really shamed when that happens.
  The other category is people who were hurt like we were BUT want to stay n denial. They will get really angry if you "whine" or complain b/c they are hiding and defending THEIR same feelings. So, they will push you away more than the "normal" person.
 My Aunt and Ray fall under the first category. I fall in to a shame spiral often when I talk to them but it is good b/c I see my shame. However, IF I had no place to process it like here or with my friend, then I would be hopeless and re-shamed the same as my M did.
 Does this make sense?         Ami

[Ami]

I think the way out is spiritual.
 

Ami and Helen:

 A couple of years ago I wrote a poem I call Rescue...

In the womb rescue was found in the darkness.

In infanthood rescue was found in feeding.

In childhood rescue was found in innocence.

In adolescence rescue was found in fleeing.

In young adulthood rescue was found in wounding.

In womanhood rescue was found in seeking.

In seeking rescue was found in truth.

In truth rescue was found in suffering.

In suffering rescue was found in God.

In God love was rescued.

What a beautiful poem, Lise. So much heart was needed to create it!                   Ami

[Hopalong]

Dear Helen,
I'm glad you're spilling over.

Have you ever read When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chodron?

You can ignore the Buddhist teachings she's trained in, if you don't like nonChristian stuff.

But if you read how she sees how we work, inside...it really might be helpful to you.

I found it a staggering book.

And have a sense it could reach you from a new direction.

Hugs,
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

AH... that's better: I found your thread again! I find myself WANTING to read you, dear... to hear you and your thoughts & stories - your feelings. All of it. However you want to say it. I myself swear like a pirate.

I will be on the road the next 5 days; I will have internet most places I stay - if I don't respond quickly, that is why. And each days' drive will be at least 5 hours. We are here - and one of us will respond - you are NOT alone, OK? And we understand more than maybe we let on...

The characters had these sort of spirit animals that would follow them everywhere. The spirit animals attacked other character's spirit animals. It reminded me of what if feels like to be around a Narcissist. Sometimes it feels so covert, it hurts but they don't even have to do anything to make it hurt, it's just their minds or something that can attack on a different level.

If you have ever had a hard time explaining what covert attack feels like then see this movie.

I've only seen a bit of this movie - and it happened to be one of these scenes. I agree with you on how it represents that feeling of a covert attack. Something so invisible - and unbelieveable - that it's easier to think that oneself is the "crazy" one than that such a thing can be true. There are a couple other movies that hit me deeply... awakening feelings that I thought I'd left behind... maybe you've seen them?

Gran Torino (awoke a need/wish that I'd not really made conscious)
Pan's Labryinth (which I haven't yet been able to watch again; that strong for me)
The House of Flying Daggers (chinese with subtitles; martial arts; love story and beautifully shot; hypnotic... but there is something very, very haunting and significant for me)

and I was a fan of Tolkein back in the 70's - that series of movies also has some interesting themes and was faithful to the books; I'd read the trilogy 12 times and can practically quote dialogue.

Grimm's Fairy Tales - another source of inspiration for untangling these kinds of "knots" and bringing clarity and balance.

Another post of yours, reminded me of a book you might find interesting/helpful: Tibetan Medicine - author is Christopher Hansard. It lives on my desk with a select collection on tai chi/pushhands and recovering from abuse titles. It includes how-to exercises for specific healings... including psychological and emotional wounds.

Be at peace. You know that you are surrounded by beauty even in the tiniest things... that perfection exists everywhere in the imperfections of existential life. We need only open our eyes, minds and hearts to see it. And when that attention is turned toward yourself - you will also see it. Gradually, perhaps, but guaranteed.

[Meh]

Hi, Hops, YES, I have had Pema's book on my shelf for a few years without reading it. I took it traveling with me and didn't open it up. I set it next to my bed and haven't gotten into it but obviously I've intended to. Maybe I will now.

Pema freaked out when her husband left her and then she decided to become a nun! I know that much.
I use to think of that option when I was younger, become a nun. Just so I could get out of the "real world".Actually I had that book with me when I was having surgery, in the waiting room I just read a paragraph over and over again I couldn't concentrate so that one paragraph that was surreal, it was a description of hell, something about flesh burning then I went on to have cauterization done. Sorry that's gross. But I did have that book with me.
I'm so sick and twisted and sarcastic about life scenarios.
"My flesh is burning, maybe I really am in hell, maybe this is what they meant in the bible"

[Meh]

Phoenix Rising,

Thank you for book suggestions, I will check em out.
Tell me more about push hands......

I have not seen Gran Torino yet. I did try to see Pan's Labyrinth, I fast-forwarded through most of it, I could not tolerate it.
I just wanted to see the special effects. I had no idea that it would have that degree of violence.
It scares me that our society likes that stuff. I'm sorry, I don't mean to put your comment down, but I categorize Pan's Labyrinth under Garbage.
Pans's Labyrinth makes Freddy Kruger look like a care bear.
The horror movies I saw when I was younger were almost silly.
Pan's Labyrinth was too realistic in some scenes. I personally don't recommend it to people.
My face is grimicing at my computer screen.
I'm trying to picture how people's mind process something like Pan's Labyrinth, where in their minds do they store that memory? What will they do with that memory? How will it impact their every day decisions?
Nah, I won't watch it again. I don't torture myself that way.
When I think about people seeing the movie Pan's Labyrinth I think about the lack of compassion in the world.

Along the lines of disturbing: Not that I want to talk about every disturbing thing in the world BUT...
In the start of our war, there were a couple of soldiers who were pulled out of their jeep and burned alive and then pieces of their charred bodies were thrown around. I thought about this more then once and I did come to some-conclusions about human behavior. My mind really had to work this out. The reason why my mind had such a problem with it is because, there were photographs of it, on the street there was a mob of males, men and boys and they were grinning, they didn't even look like demented evil villain smiles they were smiles of joy, those boys could have been opening presents on Christmas day. This my mind got confused with and a little freaked out. I have since, made sense of it I think, and don't think about it anymore.
Does love exist, if so what is it, can it really keep us safe? I got into some deep personal thinking about that, it was a long time ago.


The Tibetan books I WILL read!!!