Revisiting the Past

Marijuana can really help bring into focus things you wouldn't usually think. Or perhaps, being stoned makes reality more subjectively significant? Whatever the case, I had an epiphany.

I called this post "revisiting the past" because thats where all my problems started. Last week, my therapist emailed me and suggested that I "think about the adolescent Mike and how unsafe he felt, and using your active imagination and visualization to connect with him and work to make him feel safe?". The insight that I had was already formed 4 or 5 days ago. My last entry really set the tone for this insight. Basically, the crux of my problem is my attitude. What do I mean by attitude? It mean many things. Attitudes are our subjective orientation in life. It creates what is and isn't possible for us. My earlier attitude basically said "I can't do it. I have to try to do it", this was the basic narrative repeated by my subconscious and conformed to consciously. In essence, I have been pretending. When I try to "aim" for a particular sound while I'm speaking, I'm pretending. What kind of preconscious orientation is that? Who thinks this way before they speak - and if they did think that way, wouldn't it be entirely logical for them to feel uncomfortable during the act of speech? To be acutely aware? To reenforce the underlying obsession with voice? I'm basically setting myself up. I create the internal conditions before I actually do it. I am superficializing what it means to be yourself.

The way to undo all this degenerate thinking is to ask the right question. For so long I have been asking "how do I speak"? Now, I am no longer asking. That is the answer to the ultimate "right question": the question posed by every moment that we live; what do I like? What do I find enjoyable? What do I believe in? These are the questions that precede normal emotional development. Everyone goes through it. It begins so early, that we never really notice that we are constantly oriented to life in this way. Emotions come to us, and our minds reply; something catches our awareness, and we engage the reality. There is a type of fishing to this behavior. We are quiet - in a parasympathetic nervous state - until a "fish" or object, catches our awareness. And then we throw out our line and go after that fish. We enter the flow of life. What is the flow of life? It is that endless torrent of emotions which fly in and out of us.

I am revisiting my past, revisiting the point where Mike didn't develop properly. When Mike retreated from the world, and from himself. And I am going to ask him: Why did you retreat? Why were you afraid?

Grown up Mike (i.e Me) will tell 13 year old Mike that feeling yourself feels good! It's ok to feel good emotions. Not just that, but you have as much right as anyone else to feel them - and to not care what anyone else has to think or say about it. 

I remember a time when I enjoyed the element of risk involved in socializing. That if someone didn't like me, I thought to myself, "who cares!" There was an element of rebellion in that. This "rebellion" seems to be at the heart of the developmental process. This is the process of individuation. From feeling comfortable and confident being "you". Feeling what you feel and saying what you want to say without any anxiety. There is a "I will be ME and if you don't like it you can go fuck yourself" quality to it all. It is arrogant, in a way. But it is a necessary arrogance. Or maybe "arrogance" is the wrong word? Or perhaps what I call "arrogance" another person would call "confidence"? It's funny. I used to abhor the way some theologians and philosophers described the usefulness of Satan's rebellion against God. But now I see it is an apposite metaphor referring to our own rebellion against the collective - from being 'subject' to the expectations of others. Perhaps, the evolution of the cosmos - both constitutively and historically - is the archetype for this development. From the universal core - which Kabbalah would call "Ein Sof" - comes Malkuth, the "kingdom", with it's multitudinous forms and differences. And historically, we go from the amorphous glob of the Big Bang, to the myriad worlds that spawned from it. 

Each of us reflects this process in history. Each of us are a segment in this process.

So I feel myself at that point in time, and understand where I went wrong. I will now go back into that self - emotionally - I am there right now - and renew the process of individuation. I need to "feel" myself, to be excited at the prospect of socializing, and to experience myself as not "pretending" but as authentically being the true Michael. Its surprising how powerful a rational assessment of any situation can help reduce feelings of anxiety, and bring you back into an awareness of your self and your emotions.