This is going to be the start of a series of what I've been learning lately. It'll be the easiest to split up into parts. I warn all of you, that some of the material will be very controversial. I have decided to open up about all the thoughts and opinions which have been inside my head. What more could I use a blog for than to share real thoughts? My entire life has swapped around, and I can't pretend that things are still the same by writing about the things that I use to.
The way I'm going to enter into the first of the series is by posting something that I wrote a long time ago. Possibly a year.
Loneliness, worthlessness, a sense of vulnerability, lack of laughter, abundance of pain... these are the feelings that you get on the wall. The wall provides a sense of security for those who are only meaning to survive. The wall provides for them what no one else can provide, a haven, a comfortable amount of hurt that will keep you surviving. However, the wall will keep you from really living. This wall has amazing tactics to keep you there. The wall only has a platform underneath to support it. Past the platform is a tightrope. Beyond the tightrope is the most beautiful view you've ever seen. The wall wants to keep you there. It needs your place so that you can provide a place for spiders to reside. Cobwebs will grow on your state of worthlessness. Spiders can feed off of your sense of vulnerability. The wall knows that you'll stay there. It needs your fear. As long as you're there, the wall has power. A power that it can't gain in any other way. A wall is a wall. However, a wall with a human... that's another story. It laughs at it's success. How easily the human mind is tricked. To push the cobwebs away and just to step onto the tightrope would really be easy. All the human would have to do is decide. Friends on the tight-rope have called out to the people on the wall. They say "Look at how happy we are!" The happiness that they feel only generates misery within that person on the wall. But now something happiness which the wall doesn't expect... that person is starting to feel hope. They are starting to see a better way of life. One where the wall no longer has to be a piece of their survival. As small as that hope is, it's there. The wall screams out in agony. He can't lose another victim to the tightrope! He makes a plan... a genius plan.. He tells one of the friends on the wall to befriend you. He tells the 'friend' how vulnerable that you are, and that it might be a fun game to make them believe that you care. The 'friend' will be rewarded for their work by being a 'favourited' member of the wall. The 'friend' goes over to you, and starts talking. you being to feel a sense of awakening because you are no longer alone. A smile crosses your face and you feel equal with this person. They are on the wall, just as you are. There is no competition. One is not superior to another. If you fall, you fall together, because you're both at the very bottom anyway. You know that this person has fear within them, otherwise they wouldn't be there. But what you're not realizing is that this person is not as vulnerable as you are. This person doesn't need friendship! What this person is looking for is power. He has just figured out a way to become powerful at the bottom. He doesn't seek after anything more than to be at the highest power at the lowest rank. The wall brings so much comfort... why would he seek after anything else? You don't realize that any of this is running through their heads. Slowly, the voices of your friends on the tightrope fade. They're yelling and screaming at you to get on the tightrope, but you no longer care. You have a friend. That's all that matters. You know that you're not worthy of their friendship. You know that you're lower. You do feel empowered by their presence, though. Life is complete as long as there's love, right? Then one day you overhear a conversation between your friend and the wall. "The cobwebs on her are numerous! I think we got her forever now. Very good work. You are now my most favourited wall dweller." The friend looked pleased. "You're right, sir, it wasn't hard at all. She just needed to feel like she was loved. Easiest task you've ever given me." Your head is racing with thoughts. Didn't this person care about you? They had never directly said it... no... you had only talked of how you cared for them. Then you start getting mad at yourself. "How could I have been so blind? I didn't care that the spiders were biting or that the cobwebs were getting thicker, just as long as I had a friend." You bang your first against the wall, and shriek with pain. Your friend and the wall are simply laughing. You're alone again. You have nothing left. You knew you should've listened to your friends on the tightropes long ago. Now their voices were so distant... they knew you were gone long before you did. Tears and thoughts are now your only friends. You realize that you can't excuse your actions forever, but you fear that you've gone too far. The damage that was done to you feels irreversible. This feeling is as though you're drowning. Every other 'friend' that comes your way you know is going to do the same thing to you. You let them do it anyway, because "It's better to have loved than lost, than never to have loved at all." Or so they say. The loneliness starts with minutes. Minutes turn to hours. Hours turn to days. Days turn to years. You were past the point of progression on the wall long ago. All you can see is a series of patterns in yourself that you don't like, but you don't want to take the leap to change them. You forget that your destiny is within you. You still see the tightrope walkers as they play, smile, and enjoy their lives. That dream seems so distant that you feel that you can never get to where they are. They had tried so hard to convince you that their way of life was better. That it wasn't as had as it seemed, and that you could do it if you really tried. But none of them could pry you off the wall. You had to decide to do that yourself. However, you know that you chose to take the 'easier way'. The way that was familiar to you. The only way that you knew. You never thought that you would feel regret. You never thought that you would feel this pain. Worse to know that you could've prevented it. After all the years of blaming, you knew that the only person you could blame was yourself. Now you hit a crossroads. You realize that the path you're on, is a path to nowhere. But the leap you'd need to take is huge. Before you can even think of stepping onto that tightrope, you'll need to clear off the spiders and the cobwebs which have inhabited your entire system! This was going to be a long process if you decided to do that, but you're still full of fear. There is no way that you can ignore the full-pledged consequences of your actions, now, though. You know that you put yourself where you are. You are no longer naive to your actions. Awareness has created more misery than good but you know that if you pay attention to this that maybe someday... you can dance on the tightrope just like your friends did. The trouble now was forgetting the laughter from both ends. The trouble is forgetting everyone who ever told you that you couldn't do it, or that you weren't good enough. You had to prove it to yourself. One by one you pluck the spiders off. Once you start taking them off, they become easier to separate from yourself. The cobwebs can be moved with the clearing of a hand! The more cobwebs you clear, the bigger you smile. Spider after spider, cobweb after cobweb, you start to laugh! You laugh so hard that you cry. There has never been quite a feeling like this before.. you feel freedom. But once they're clear, you don't know where to step. Never before have you left the comfort of the wall. The wall is screaming at you, telling you to pin yourself back to it. In rebellion you remove one hand. You flex your hand a couple of times because it was in that position for so long. Then you set the other hand free for good, free from the overwhelming power of the wall! The wall is now crying in agony shouting "How dare you! How dare you be smarter than my trap!" You're more motivated now more than ever... you take one step, and then an other step. On the third step is the drop-off to the tightrope. All of a sudden all the fear you once had came back to you. You remember why you stayed on the wall for so long. This was the part that you knew there would be no coming back to. As much as you know that the wall was bad for you, you know you're going to miss it. You're going to miss the comfort and security. Then you see it. The reason why your friends were able to playfully dance on the tightrope without worry. There was an invisible safety net that someone had just shot back up to. This invisible safety net was scary to trust. If you hadn't seen it with your own eyes, repelling someone back up to the rope, you wouldn't believe it yourself. Finally, you muster up the confidence to take the first step. This was one of the most exhilarating feelings you've ever had! You take another step, and another. You feel your balance falter a little bit, but then you get back up again. You start to pick a pace.. but then you discover that you're going too fast. You fall of the tightrope and into the arms of the invisible safety net, who springs you back up to the rope. You're a little bit behind where you were last time, but at least you didn't have to start over! Never before have you felt freedom like this. Never before have you felt more confidence. People start to notice the new person on the tightrope, but turn their heads away. You're going to prove to them that you can do this. You have to! You didn't come this far just to fail! Soon, you're looking over the prettiest view you've ever seen. "I can't believe that this was what I was missing out on." Occasionally you think of the wall, and that's when you falter and have to re-catch your balance. This was way better than being over there. "I never want to go back." But sometimes, your feet hurt, and when they did, you wanted the comfort of the wall once again. However, when this happened, you would remind yourself of the life you had before. You were now at a point where life was worth living! You had a view, instead of spiders crawling over you, and you were almost halfway through! This process was the longest you'd ever seen, but you didn't come this far, no, not at all, just to fail. The invisible safety net was there, and as long as it was there, you could walk the tightrope with ease. The safety net loves to see you accomplishing your dream. There's a sense of accomplishment even if you haven't fully accomplished it yet! You'd come farther than you ever dreamed possible. When times grew hard, it seemed almost like you could give up the satisfaction at the end just to know that you had really lived at least for a little while. ...and you press on. Your dreams are flowing faster and faster. It's getting to the point that you can dance and sing on the rope. More people are starting to take notice of your act! The more real it becomes, the more they're entertained! You have people coming up to you daily asking you about how you do your routines. There are many more tears of happiness than sorrow now. You love dancing along the ropes of life! You like singing and dancing! Sometimes, you can hear the wall crying because it lost one of it's weakest members, who turned out to be the tightropes greatest strength. You were the key to the tightrope. You had it within you the whole time. But you had to take the plunge.. no one else could do it for you... as much as they would've liked to pull you onto the rope, you had to get there yourself. At first you couldn't see what they loved about the dangers of a tightrope, and now you could imagine no greater thrill. This is the life you've always wanted to live. Guess what? You're living it... you're really living it!
I find that this piece most accurately describes my entire life. Whenever people fail to see eye to eye with me on things, I have to pull out the ideas behind this. Let's take a look at another example:
What do you see in this photo? When I first saw it all I saw was the woman and the vanity. If you look closely you will also see a skull.
Isn't this the way life usually works? Our perceptions can only see one thing, but if we concentrate hard enough we might be able to see another. It's when we can see another that I believe that we can grow. If we stay viewing the vanity forever, we will remain stagnant. In this case I shall relate the woman in the vanity as beauty and the skull as deception. Everybody has a piece of both in them, it is when we find both of them that we can truly love people.
Sometimes it is easier to see just a skull in the person. There is no woman in the vanity, there is no beauty. This can cause people to fail as well. If all we ever see is the bad in a person, then what kind of people are we?
The problem with being people is that it's ego/pride that gets in the way of us being able to see things in a way that's real. We see what we allow ourselves to see and nothing more. It pushes our limits to be able to look at a new perspective.
Misery IS an illusion. Humans were not meant to be in a state of misery, but in a state of happiness. Free, or have little amounts of suppression. Misery is usually a state we put ourselves in to feel pity, to put ourselves in pride, or to remain stagnant. Misery is an excuse not to chance. Misery, I think, can be linked to a fear of the unknown.
Everybody has fear that there are going to be questions which we can't answer. Answers for the future, answers in a spiritual perspective, just answers. Sometimes we just have to accept that we don't know the answers to everything. Our minds automatically want to figure things out. This is where the fear of the unknown begins. We are creatures created to attain knowledge in every form. We are meant to figure things out. There are some things which, if we can't become present to, we shall never know, however.
Here is my introduction. This is very minor comparative to what is to come.
