Dying itself is not the problem – sort-of-ish

I was reading and commenting on a post of Renovatio06 and went into experiencing the death of my womb brother again. I copied part of my comment to his post here and added some.

I must really improve my phsysical health because at moments like this my heart feels like it is exploding. Pumping like crazy. Can’t breathe, can not inhale actually. Not sure what that means. My lungs are full because I do not exhale. Guess it is part of the experience in the womb. Well, anyway, staying with it did give me an insight which I thought I would share: Dying itself is not the problem, though overwhelmingly BIG as an experience it is within the human spiritual domain. The pain comes with the resistance and the longing.

Which, yeah, everybody tells you that, but telling and knowing is, at least in my life, not the same as realising it at cell level.

Comment to Renovatio06: Not sure if you heard of this, but thought I would drop by and leave a comment. I have not gone through the full text of your link but I am familiar (ish) with Grof’s work op BPM’s, having had several days course on the subject, several holotropic breathing experiences and some ayahuasca trips. The darkest memory I have of prenatal trauma is that of my twin brother dying in the womb. That brought me right into hell. I had no knowledge of vanishing twin syndrome (VTS) or the effects of it at that time in my life. Based on a several second spontaneous experience which I am sure was a re-living of what had happened before I wrote down 10 points which I realised were ‘odd’ about me and had been shaped in that experience. When reading my first book on VTS I found that those 10 were either chapter subjects or otherwise important paragraphs in the text itself. It was like a homecoming – into a hell of enormous loss and sadness that is, but it was.

10 Out of a 100 pregnancies start as a multiple, only 1 out of 100 is born multiple, so 1 out of about 10 people have lost what I call ‘half of myself’ before they were born. A fetus, a baby is no less human than a child which can not bike yet, or a teenager without a drivers license, or an adult without a 50 inch colour TV (Edit: although advertised and understood by many as such: being able to do things, or have things, does NOT make a person more of a person – conciousness already exists within when life kicks in.) A fetus is alive and has consciousness – less developed, not fully expressed, not fully incarnated often, but it is there. Having re-experienced the impact of the death of my twin brother as an adult I can only say that I would assume it to be a ‘good’ base for hellish NDE’s (near death experience). It is my understanding today that dying is part of the human experience which the consciousness understands and is ok with. Logically the biology resists it but it can be integrated when the mind/ego does not interfere too much. Experiencing (not seeing; experiencing, re-living) somebody else die which whom you identify as yourself mixes stuff up big time. Like having Kali over for tea. 😦

Funny idea though, to combine experiences before birth with after death. 🙂 Although, writing about it now I realise the hell was my resistance to him dying. Dying itself is not the problem, though overwhelmingly BIG as an experience it is within the human spiritual domain. The pain comes with the resistance and the longing.

End of comment.

Obviously dying ‘not being the problem’ is something different when haha, experiencing it for real and having the biology kick in. 🙂 Biology on itself does not want to die, it wants to live and procreate. Now the practise for me is to maintain and uphold the status of ‘not clinging’ insight in daily life. Ghegheghe….. guess that will take some practise since we live in a world where clinging, wanting, striving is very much stimulated as a tool to ‘make you happy’. Advertising never tells you that, it actually makes one very unhappy and causes all kinds of spiritual maladies.

I guess that is the same for not drinking and living in itself: it is not the experience of not drinking which ‘hurts’ it is the clinging to what I think I have lost. It is generally not the experience of being real to Life which hurts the worst, it is the clinging to ‘how it should have been’, tryng to have and experience the imagined ideal.

I am grateful that I do not drink alcohol anymore. Experiences like this, however painfull at first bring me insights which, dunno, cool down my system a little? Take out parts of the continous stress my system seems to be in.

I wish you a beautiful sober day / night.

xx, Feeling

The land of no self-hate, episode 2

Still reading ‘There is nothing wrong with you‘ from Cheri Huber. Cheri writes about self-hate and the dynamics of this. As with other books, I read, and at the same time I heighten the awareness of my thoughts and discernible emotions, tension, movement, temperature in and around my body. Good books change stuff at cell level. For me this is a good book. ❤

Not sure if this sounds like hocus pocus but, you know: when you consciously inhale and feel your body expanding and when you exhale it is ‘inpanding’? Motions like that happen unconsciously within my body and in the near surroundings, say ‘aura’ around me. When reading there are big shifts like a lot of tension in my throat, so much I have a throat ache. Or my throat relaxing. But also subtler once like my jaw clenching and unclenching, my breath stopping and releasing, lips tightening, nostrils opening, chest freezing, heart expanding and contracting. It is a wonderful trip of awareness and mindful being which can finally happen. Sometimes there is an awareness of the micro-expressions. I really, really like that because all these e-motions and tension and release inform me of stuff I was formerly not aware off. If my throat tightens, my heart rate speeds up, my chest freezes I know something in me is not liking what I read, experience, remember. And with that, I can practise letting to within, breathe through new thoughts while gently keeping them in my awareness. Does this make any sense?

How this came about? I was in a dark place an a long distance energy healer picked up on that. She somehow helped me accept that I have a right to exist. That closed a backdoor to self-hate, all of a sudden I was standing back against the wall and all the disliking my life and myself suddenly had no way out. It all fell down on me. That caused an enormous crisis in which Ainsobriety came up with the above mentioned book. Teal Swan came with her video on the self-hatred. Things start to fall into place.

It is good. 🙂 I am happy, sometimes. At peace, sometimes and in extacy sometimes. Literally stoned. Guess one would call it bliss if there is no drug involved. Hmmm… 😀 Scared also, sometimes. As other addictions, self-hate is self-destructive behaviour I have because I somehow think it is good for me to hate me. “When I drink, I do not feel what is wrong with me.” and when I hate myself “at least I do something well.”.

Two functions of self-hate I am experiencing currently:

Self-hate gives structure to me. When I sit here, read the book, let go of hate, untangle, unfold, open up, relax, breathe, I become boundless. Sometimes that gives a feeling of extacy. Endless white light flooding through me; connecting with the earth, connecting with the heavens. FINALLY PEACE! And then the clamping happens and sometimes something this something twists and sends me off into what feels as I would imagine a psychoses feels. Dangerous land, not to be threaded lightly.

Also, self-hate keeps me from being responsible. It brings out my poor me, or is brought out by my poor me underdog. 😦 Reading the book, again, sometimes, while working through the process of letting go of thoughts about myself relieves me of the negative energy which holds me down. I also realise that most, 99.999999% of the thoughts I have about me are negative. So, letting go of thoughts, letting go of opinions is the thing. Which reminds me of my first Ayahuasca trip which opened up with a statement from the Ayahuasca spirit saying “All these opinions… all these opinions…. there is no need.”

As always; Ayahuasca can show you the way, it can not do the work for you/me.

Funny side effect: I eat less since reading this book. Things just don’t look and feel as attractive anymore.

So, all in all I switch from heaven into hell and back again and again and again. While slowly learning where, how and when these switches happen. It is a dangerous place to be because I sometimes realise that I am at the brink of insanity and total self-destruction, but also a rewarding place because I now learn to look into the darkness and see that it is me.

Insanity feels like clamping to the darkness while facing the light. Where letting go means confrontation with endlessness, boundless existence. Like watching the stars somewhere far away from nature. That feeling of immensity and smallness combined. And then switching between them several times. That is only do-able for me, when I let go of clamping, hanging onto opinions. Hmmm, guess people might call that ego. If you (i!) don’t let go then it becomes very uncomfortable to feel and exist. And then, when I am there and add fear to that I go into insanity.  Well, there is a need to let go. 🙂

And you know, I am learning all this, and for the first time I notice jealousy. I am willing to admit that I notice jealousy. I read the book and it has EVERYTHING I want (clinging), and then I become jealous because somebody ‘knew it before me and I did not know it’. Jealousy is somebody having something which is of vital importance to one and being afraid to lose it. Yup. Check. 😀

I am also jealous because so many people know what they need to do with their lives. And I only know that I am where I need to be. Somehow I trust that something will come on my path once these issues have worked itself out but still… I want things to be easy. Well, easier. At which point I still hear the Bookstore man saying: “Are you sure?”.

A new thought pops up: maybe my need for drama is a way of expressing the destruction within me. People tend to, try to make the outside world as their inside world.

Enough for today.

I wish you nice sober day. I am happy that I quit. Trying something else now: I am grateful that I quit drinking. Happy is more fleeting and assumes upbeat dopaminelike emotions. Grateful is more serotonin, long-lasting, more quit. And every time I say I am grateful or happy about quitting the reality of not knowing what TF I want or need to do with my life pops up. And then I need to trust again. Or maybe I am dissociating there. We shall see.

Ok, I am grateful that I quit. I hope you are grateful too. Being grateful makes it so much easier to be sober. Also, for those in doubt: it is so much more easy to not drink after one has quit than it is to start all over again.

xx, Feeling

Does drinking alcohol desensitize me to love?

My stat-site of the this WP blog show that somebody found my blog by asking some search engine (not  Google) ‘does drinking alcohol desensitize me to love?

In case you are still around: I think the answer is yes. Alcohol numbs all kinds of true observations and real feelings but it feeds sentiments and the untrue stuff. If you want to find out how it works: quit drinking. 🙂

I need to be in bed in time so no further thoughts on the subject. I would however appreciate it if you would leave a message. 🙂

I am happy that I quit. Life is starting to change. I still have difficulty relaxing after the stressfull time of the last months (boss, no job, tax audit) but I think I’ll get there. I did celebrate my 29 months sober with ordering 3 t-shirts and 4 books. Hey, I saved more than half a year salary the other day with the tax audit so it feels like I am entitled to. I only had 1 t-shirt left without holes anyhow. Now I will have 4! 🙂 You can’t believe how rich I feel. Not having to wash every second day would be nice.

I am happy I quit. A woman who loves herself would eat less chocolate because I feel it disturbing my bloodpressure and heartbeat and it is not nice. Not sure why (tf?) I eat it. It is starting to irritate me even more but I am still walking this strange road. It will sort itself out someday. 🙂 We have a saying; a pitcher goes so often to the well that it comes home broken at last and another one: the shore will change the ship’s direction / will stop the ship. I have currently no influence, need all my energy to perform in my job and stay healthy till halfway april at least because then I have a big work test. After that I can, I don’t know, start to live a little? 

Wishing you a nice sober evening / day and a good week! I am happy that I quit, my life is on the move again, slowly, but it is. 🙂

xx, Feeling

Blocks, blocks, blocks, blocks and some insights from outside.

Well, I’m there where I need to be: experiencing bears on the road and blocks in me everywhere. Life does not stream anymore in me which is becoming very obvious now. I had some ups a few weeks back but now I’m sort of stuck in the same place as before. The problem now is not the lack of energy, it has come down to what has been the issue all of my life: I do not like me and I do not like being here or practical versions of that in experiencing a fear to introduce myself to recruiters/HR.

I have become very sensitive about how I look. I’m guessing that the incident with the book store man has to do with that too. I am starting to experience what it is to have grey hair and to be 45 without kids to look back upon. A friend send some pictures of me playing with her kids outside. I look like a freaking elephant. It would be a running, laughing, smiling, dancing, active elephant with a shitload of beautiful grey hair. And I only see the elephant, the aging elephant who can deal with kids but not with adults. I see the kids I never had, feeling how much it hurts to be not even considered as a relation option by any man of my own age. Only elderly guys looking for a big mama experience. After elderly man number 6 showed up it is not funny anymore. 😦

The bookstore man once said: ‘Feeling, you HAVE to love yourself otherwise you can not BE in a relation.’ He’s right. And I can not. And then I want him to love me because I can not which is where the longing is. And obviously I feel lousy when he does not which…. makes the issue even bigger. I realise now that I have always wanted the other to fix me, to complete me.

Since I have been circling around these internal blocks for a few weeks now the structure of my self destruction becomes more and more clear. Obviously I have to do stuff because of financial reasons.

So when Nick Ortner with tapping on financial issues came along I watched his vids. I think tapping works really well, but only if we are, ok, I am, able to see where I am at. ‘Just’ tapping on positive things will not work. It works wonders for me however when I tap and find the right words; a whole world of attached experiences opens up, like a magician drawing a line of knotted handkerchiefs out of his sleeve. Those attached experiences I find very helpful because they give information on how things came about and about the, eh, size (?) of the field. The scope might be a better word.

I am currently at video 3. It starts with ‘love and accept’ and I just can’t. So I went to look for other tapping scripts online for tapping on love and acceptance and I find I can not use them. I look at the person on the screen and think: I see these flashes of shame on your face while you do this, how can you say you have learned to love yourself? Or other, how am I supposed to believe it when I say ‘I never deserved to feel so guilty and ashamed.’ – while I actually do think I do?

Well, ask me and I will say I do not think so and rationalise the shit out of it but deep down, well, not so deep down, I am struggling with worth, with love, with compassion. So I looked further and found Teal Swan. She is the unruly, spiritual witch version of Brené Brown with a tiny bit of a commercial sauce which took me a bit of getting used to but I like it a lot so; hang in there. And eh, if you, as some might wonder how somebody so beautiful and brainy might not experience self-love -as I did as I was focussing all the the self destruct on appearance now-  …. she also had 13 years of ritual sexual abuse and torture in her young life so….   😦

Hope you enjoy. I specifically liked her practise of asking yourself ‘What would a person who loves herself do in this situation’. Beautiful, started applying it in a lot of things today and it gave great peace.

Part of my search for self love is about The Other and how I hope whatever He can solve my issues. Together, complete, forever, blablabla, well, we all know the fairy tale. So on my outing to the give away store I found ‘The invisible partners’ by J.A. Sanford which describes ghegheghe, the Jungian view of male-female and anima (female part within the man) and animus (male part within the women). How well-timed by the Universe. It’s a good read. Laughing my head of while reading next to the bonfire at the store. It eh, gives insight in how we (I!) project our animus in the man and make him our (my!) hero and to what problems this leads. Very good info, specifically for a person like me who has a rather inflammable heart. And easy to read because he does confirm my assumptions that falling in love is nothing more than a net of projections I cast over the other by which I try to real him in. Yeah, dark.

Then again: if somebody feels like he fits the projections…. :-D. Well, obviously such a relation is not sustainable but I’m not there where he explains how to do it differently. I am reading! Not Netflixing, because a person who loves herself would be reading. 🙂

I am happy that I quit, even though I stumble over every little thing I am working on what I believe are my 2 basic issues: not liking me and not wanting to really be in this world. So: good!

I need: I think I will change this into ‘What would a person who loves herself do?’ (WWAPWLHD?) A person who loves herself would continue to read for another 15 minutes and then go to bed.

I want: well, now I sort of think to know how it works and had the learning experience I feel it is MY RIGHT for things to become easy :-D. Aaaah, still living a dream.

I take: Ayurvedic pills and I notice swelling of my breasts which I am curious about. See where that goes.

On discipline: the WWAPWLHD? works better than berating.

On sugar: the other day I worked out that I did not want sugar, I just felt bad and wanted sugar to fix that. So I changed over to dates. Less poisonous. And with the WWAPWLHD I can keep the intake at 5 and be happy instead of 20 and still be unhappy. Let’s see.

3 Things: the book I found, the video I found, my determination to keep on looking for where I CAN find an answer. I feel I have to blast a trail through this sobriety stuff but well, obviously I seem to like it that way. Or I am doing all that not to do what I should be doing…. Who knows? I think it is both actually.

Hope you are having a good day. 🙂

xx, Feeling

On preaching and singing

What have I been up to? Today I was infected with a preaching streak and I went to singing lesson which was beautiful again.

On the preaching: I had had it with people blowing their own heads off with thinking about drinking or in fact drinking. I could not deal anymore but I had not noticed that. I was concerned and, I should not be lying, I was irritated with the way they ‘fooled themselves and made their sober blog into a platform for addictive thinking along the way’. Yes, arrogant. I know. Sorry 😦 Who am I with my 3,5 months sober to tell others what to do and what not to do or say or write? I don’t know. I just got mad, but in the first reply I did not even know I was mad because my online mad like flame-mad was very tiny in comparison to when I was drinking. It was 1/10th of what I would ‘normally’ feel. That would be ‘drunk normal’.

Years ago I had learned the hard way to recognise an inflammatory preaching mode but I had not had this experience while being sober. So…. Ellie got the full blast. Sorry again :-(. And then I actually repeated it on Empty 12 pack. By that time my cat came to warn me because she could hear by my rattling on the keyboard that I was upset and then she comes to save me. :-). It worked out Empty 12 pack could do with a hiding so pffff…. This is where I got off the hook. More luck than judgment for me.

Preaching, what is it to me? First it is a character trait that pops up easily and I am ashamed of. But the other side of the medal is my ability to teach and I have, with smaller groups, gotten straight A’s for that in questionnaires. So it is part of me, but I do not always apply it correctly. I have put my ‘stop trigger’ on sensing that I apply force. Nudging is ok, students actually appreciate that most of the time, applying force is not good. There is a tiny loophole: applying force is not good….. unless I think I am in the right and other people should be informed for their own good and then, subsequently I think force, specifically from me, is VERY GOOD. Really, the loophole is very tiny. The results are sometimes disastrous. 😦

The hole is in the ‘want to take care’ I guess. Taking care without being asked equals assuming that the other person is stupid and I know it better. I’m walking in circles; problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.  Can anybody tell me, in- or excluding the words ‘arrogance’ and ‘not good’ how and why on the subject of taking care or preaching? I am sorry, I can’t work it out. I guess I preach.

I’m doing other subject here. Can’t work it out. We had singing lesson today. Well, it is not really singing lesson but more ‘free your voice’ with all therapeutically correct assignments and a tiny bit of speaking about the experiences. Today we practised ‘sing your own tune’ but all together in a group. We were scattered over the class room and I always take care to stand as far away as possible. Yes… issues… I know. Again today, but something changed and I wanted to be with the rest, so I actually moved towards the rest of the group and enjoyed that. NEW!!! I know for most of you this is futile. To me it was BIG. 🙂

We continued with an excercise on lamenting. Is that the correct word? Singing with and about sorrow like women from the Middle East do during a funeral. Well, we were not that outspoken or skilled, but everybodies tone and song did carry grief. Imagine that we sit down and ‘lament away’ in a tune that each person makes up in that second. 🙂 That was scary shit. But very good, it is a good group, the group can actually carry this without starting to giggle or feel awkward. Once you let go of the ‘we don’t do that here thank you’ position it worked out to be very special. We all had a few solo lament and it was very powerful, very freeing. Nobody used words but the realisation that the grief could be heard and carried by the group. Very powerful, very connected.

Since I was preaching I might as well brag today too: I sang a solo and it was beautiful. Solo singing is standing in front of the group and singing sounds that pop up or develop in your head at that moment. The teacher then follows and supports with the piano. I guess I sang on the condition humaine but there is also an opposite to that, not sure what it is called, or if it has a name; something like hope, but less single minded. Maybe trust. I mixed them, thinking of my deceased mother, singing for her. And it was a beautiful experience to let that flow, people cried, I cried. Loads and loads of shit going on sobriety. Good stuff. Difficult stuff. Healing stuff. This group of extra-ordinary women can carry so much, very impressive. I felt heard, supported, safe. Happy that I quit.

And then I came home and my yogi tea label said: Awake from the illusion of separateness.

❤ ❤ ❤

Things I want to change

Nakken’s book has gone over to the part on recovery and I still don’t understand it. Have difficulty reading and understanding. Feel blocked. Anxiety. Notice that I’ve come to the parts where I am not proud of who I am, what I did, how I ‘work’. Feeling out of place, stranger to the people in this world. AND DON’T GIVE ME THAT ADDICT SHIT because I have felt like that all my life!!!!!! (sorry, again)

Sooooo. I guess I insist on being weird. I thought I am weird but never thought I had made it into a shield. It is a shield. Hence the question: what is there to gain from living the thought that I am weird? It magically explains away the fact that I have difficulty connecting or any other underdeveloped, hurtful or impractical character issues. It reduces others to being normal which makes them stupid because ‘normal is not good enough’. And of course that makes me more special again. Being special makes me untouchable. And…… back to the not connecting.

I do feel I am different because I have this sensitivity that is ‘not normal’, it is especially developed around diseases and finding cures for funny things. Not sure if it is HSP, don’t know, just want to know how to deal with it.

Trying to feel into the thought of me being normal, not weird. Whoops. If I am normal I am very inadequately normal. Loads of undeveloped area’s. Power issues, connecting issues. Rather unfinished. Loud. Before I quit I wrote down a list of things I want to change about myself.

– Big on number one: power issues, speak and act without being forceful. Not taking notice of myself in a conversation, not checking back how the other (might) react(s), overruling people, not always knowing stuff better, not always trying to ‘teach’ people. And the endless need to digress, to build smokescreens while digressing. Soooo irritating yet it comes soooo natural to me :-D. Which sentence is exhibit 278…. Part of this is also that I feel that my heart is not functioning as an organ, but neither as a spiritual heart, or as a chakra. It is, was, hard, no flexibility, no movement, no air, no room for living.

– Being critical, seeing every mistake, almost compulsively pointing out every mistake, might be a power thing too.

– Always being afraid that ‘everything’ will go wrong. The world is always burning in my perception.

– Magically develop vague illnesses to sidetrack me or avoid experiences.

– Grief as my biggest addiction.

– Having no trust, no hope.

– Continuously seeing traps, bears on the road.

– Fear of administration, fear of dealing with money issues.

Actually, only the seeing traps everywhere is functional in this process. Some people might want to add ‘insecurity’ to the list but I don’t feel insecure, I am actually very sure that I am very incompetent in a lot of areas. Hmmm, this reeks of denial. I guess the feeling shitty after calling me incompetent is insecurity. So insecurity is forbidden territory. Aaah, hint from the past: ‘insecurity is dangerous, the alpha guy feeds on it and will hurt me.’

I’ve had it for today. Still very happy that I quit drinking. Think I am doing very well. I’m finally coming to the point where I want to see people again. I guess that is GOOD. 🙂 Hope I don’t screw it up again, still haven’t found my feet, which is good too, but uneasy.

Good practice in the dirty city

Day 8

Thinking of filling my new found time with a study into dreaming. Looked up some interesting courses and decided to buy a book up front, second hand, just to check out if I like it. This brought me to a house in the centre of the city today. From being all serene-ish at my own place, candles, yoga and incense to the red light district of this touristy city; past bars, past exotic coffee shops, past drunken tourists and finally getting stuck behind a line of smelly garbage trucks, all at rush hour.

10 Days ago I would have hated it, and loved it. Now it was good practise to stay out of the sleazy, dirty undertow. And that’s what it was, good practice. Still marvelling at how deep the addiction runs. It’s in my cells. It is unfortunate and it is up to me to free myself. That is what the ayahuasca spirit told me years ago. I asked her about the future and she said; ‘The only thing you have to do in your life is to get clear.’ Me whining: ‘But what about the rest? Blablabla?’ ‘No, don’t go there. You know what you have to do.’ Me: ‘It is so difficul-hu-u-u-ult’. She: It is not about difficult, it is about doing what you need to do.’ My ayahuasca spirit is a tough bitch :-).

Also, up to now, glad that I did not sign up to some sort of program. Maybe I will in the future but I am, at moments, quite ok with the progress I am making. At the end of the day I’m glad to be going to bed when I want.

Still haven’t paid the bills though. Did meet people and spoke with friends. Yeah, I also tried loving and connecting without being afraid that somebody is not trustworthy, without holding back. It was on the phone, but hey, I’ll just start in a small way. I think it counts. It’s new. It was great. 🙂

Now I can ponder on how truthfull I am with not telling them about my current process and past abuse. But the answer to that will come when it will come.

If anybody is reading this I wish you a good day and night. Here it is time for bed.