SELF vs. self: emotional pain in suburbia & beyond

I realize that all of those moments growing toward adulthood.. adulthood is a horrible word to describe the ideal of fully formed, fully evolved beings.. all of those moments of becoming where I had some access to something I truly wanted, or some sexual feeling that I knew I would love to explore and yet one that wasn't a part of what I did yet.. all of these feelings and moments that passed by, all being thrown into the same category when I experienced them.. the category of unfulfilled desire and self-fulfillment.. recognizing things apathetically as part of a world not mine.. when I wasn't even myself. I had not become myself. I had not yet been allowed to be myself in the context of anything that I could be; free range of motion, full choice coming from a series of options or attempts.. The external world of options starts to expand almost after the teenage years are survived.. That emerging identity is formed before it has the agency to test the waters. Though it wasn't always like this.

I realize that the physical feelings that I felt consistently in my body (now referred to as posture) prevented me from thinking that I could chase these desires, like other teenagers did, like other sexual beings.. these feelings in my mind-body are what have remained even since I've thrown myself at the hordes.. feeling small.. literally.. a feeling of coming in on oneself that makes it feel impossible to go out of a comfortable range of actions or even thoughts associated with self-identity.. and yet feeling uncomfortable nonetheless. I was mistaken all of that time. My beliefs and even my circumstances as I saw them at the time were simply a product of the limitation of that physical visceral feeling of self. That flow of energy through the entire system. A psychological misnomer that I was everything somehow contained within my own skin and limitations.

I now understand that I am simply a shell, allowing myself to be oxygen or not, within each 'moment'; time objectified or delineated within the mind in order to understand.. cerebral thought; the flow of time & being cut off furthest from the source and closest to the brain. Cut off at whatever interval allows for a kind of understanding that might be useful at the time. But useful for what? survival? emotional survival? survival of one's identity? self-development? but that would refer to self as ego or construction rather than self as experience. allowing myself to be water (emotion) or not, to be fire or to be the earth between my feet and between myself and another one of us. I realize now that limiting posture is manufactured through psychological constructions of self identity (basically meaning limitation). this seems to be the consequence of an attempt to protect from the experience of emotional pain - by cutting off all feeling to that part of the mind-body/brain-nerve self.

Identity; Self limitation. Not simply I cannot or I would not or might not do or be, but to the point where the actual experience of my role within existence was completely raped of its true form.. of its ability not to be questioned. The experience of self in its truest form just is. It should not be defined within a metaphysical or psychological self-examination of constructions and contradictions with it's own environment.. I believe that these sophistications are simply stages to be deconstructed in order to discover again the curiously simple nature of what seems at every moment to be an eternal existence. A truth that we fight against, cover up and use each other to forget. Self-hood vs. desire. Distractions. Sex. What is sex? Other than its biological-evolutionary function.. how do we create a map of desire? Why do we need to fulfill it as such an important part of our self and of our happiness?

I thought I could escape this facet of self-hood as I was becoming an adult. I was growing up in an alien environment wherein I knew concretely of no other homosexuals. Unconsciously I felt alone during this development. I understand now how this created a self that would continue to develop alone for years after this. It would not even assume that it could or should develop in the ways of those around it. It ceased to even value shared experience. Desire still existed, but I guess I mapped other enterprises onto it. I did this in order to persist within my mind in the alien environment I felt I lived in. I attempted to follow the desire of my sexual energy as creative energy and have not stopped since. The piano became my object of intimacy and absorbed my feelings of sadness and joy, while at the same time allowing for a mini-psychological theater that I became the creator of, as well as the audience for. There was no harsh criticism here. In fact, it was a safe place and space that opened up out of necessity to avoid the shame of social judgment and alienation. In this box I evolved a forum for my desire and emotional fulfillment for years. It is the object of all of my investment and only through convincing my more external, conscious self of the need to grow have I succeeded in becoming more healthy in a larger world and context.

I have practically learned to brainwash myself in order to help myself. My unconscious mind has been from here to eternity but hosts a child mind-body moving laboriously through infantile stages of self-development in order to make better choices and respond to reality itself rather than a complex of self or other-identities. I moved into dance in order to open my body physically. This may sound strange but what I mean is in terms of sensation. I have opened the connections between parts of my body that I could not feel, and which would physically sink or act as if they did not exist when I could not feel them. Obviously to feel pleasure one needs to feel a place itself in the first place.. so I had numb parts of my mind-body that were not allowed to grow in terms of whole-body connection, alignment. A lack of physical feelings of pleasure that are psychological requirements to allow for confidence.. comfort within any range of situations. Not even confidence.. just feeling ok. Why is it difficult to feel ok in so many situations at first?

Does our culture simply shut down easily as a reflex response, in terms of not being willing to feel the simple sensations of our bodies in different circumstances? Is it so unconscious and ingrained that we are only doing it any longer because we copy each other as social beings? Are there historical/cultural roots to this simple response? There must be whole categories of demons that prevent the evolution of a being who consistently feels every part of themselves and their physical body throughout the boiling period of development. Would it be possible to create a methodology for describing these states of being so specifically that people experiencing them even unconsciously might be able to go into their mind-body connections and allow for change and growth? I suppose this is EmotionalFreedomTechnique (which involves tapping meridians) – but is there a more internal remedy that people could use all of the time or as tools for just being and maintaining sensation through awareness? I feel like this is such a Canadian issue. I suppose one could call it British as well. Half of the bad patterns seem to develop in social situations.. where one doesn't want others to feel less healthy or less happy than one, oneself. This instinct to imitate the wounds of others, even though they are psychological and potentially unreal.. never to seem too confident, or arrogant. Never to make someone who is sick or hurt feel envious of one's freedom. Ayn Rand would love it.

I think in my case, I learned at about the age of 10 never to show off my personal fulfillment of physical or creative desires in front of those who didn't have that kind of direct relationship with their senses.. I had been & was attempting to continue to experience this expansive experience of self during that time, while other kids were developing & constructing limited self-identities to 'survive' socially. I survived, but tended towards expansive, creative exploits.. this lands me to the present moment, waiting for knee surgery, finally understanding why I haven't had a career. Pain-free, identity-exempt, whole-body sensing, Artist. looking for work, or life. After the recovery.

to write

logging this? Do I let this register or do I write it down in order to put it away somewhere, to create a measure of distance from it by introducing it to a medium from which I have read countless fiction. I have read and believed and bought into things in written form because they have seemed closer to life than itself. Now, I turn the tables. I put all of this fate down. I treat it as nothing more than a story that doesn't have a reader in mind. I choose not to take any of it personally anymore. It's almost something I wouldn't bother to read normally, just stumbled upon. And yet where do I invest my true interest in this world? What place is safe for me to believe in without question? Will I ever find a place where the stories I would like to read and write are happening before my eyes or will my true self be left only to the dreamworld?

Impersonal revealings

The tendency to hide what one is doing, thinking, developing, investing their time and life force into.. does it come from a desire to be nothing more or less than humble? Is it simply within this rather impersonal cultural experience that we choose not to burden or excite each other with our sincere feelings of being? Does it take extenuating circumstances to bring about mutual uncensored communications? how could it be so hard to validate the expressions of those around us? We can judge individuals and art with the weight of every age now but often fail to empathize with human reactions to this very present time. Is it because of our latent relationship with our own expression? I percieve that we spend so much of our time failing to reveal ourselves to each other.. at the same time resenting the burden of a personal experience unwitnessed.. trying to justify the pain that we hold onto by sharing our experiences in the hopes that something has been processed that will be allowed to lay to rest.. to be let go of.. not simply in the singular, for a brief moment of personal relief, or for the shadow of a ghost, but in the largest sense imaginable. to give meaning to our carrying and holding being as one lonely disconnected soul among so many experiences in time and space. cultural catharsis giving birth to change. opposing forces eventually coming to rest in the integration of multiple necessary truths.. one moving picture relying on different frames that cannot know each other at once, to bring about the next full feature. belief without the full knowledge of why and why not, waiting for us to bring ourselves to a more accurate or authentic place, through and hopefully with the movements of time. an intuition followed by the gap between what has been and could be. it is not yet the age of aquarius.

If as individuals within this culture we choose to ignore others in order to fully explore our own personal truths.. then we must at least (at least!) allow for a manifold and 3 dimensional experience of ourselves. turning a blind eye upon others while failing to see ourselves will cause us to disappear as an entire collective experience/expression of meaning. do we not sometimes feel as if we may have forgotten ourselves? left behind at some juncture where it couldn't seem to fit through the crack in the cubicle? do we believe in our experiences of others or feel as if ghosts among the dead? are people bearing pieces of ourselves for us that we couldn't contain within the complex of our personal identities but that we somehow know intrinsically and deeply within us as potential for our spirit? do we look away or continue to stare and see nothing..? I feel like the awareness of these questions should be fairly constant throughout our experiences and yet I find myself waking up just every once and a while only through the help of memories and objects containing history..

Pisces is the most inward of all characters. Creating massive worlds within itself that play simultaneously alongside its actual outward experiences, which come into conjunction with its dreamlike awareness at regular and sometimes surprising intervals. it can be as if the events and meanings that are coming from outside are so different from how the inner world has formed, that the authenticity of how that person has been and will be relating comes into question. This can seem threatening, but what's worse than an unconscious killer? Murdering truth without even knowing it? Someone inflicting pain and reflecting inauthenticity without acknowledging the effects.. meanwhile putting everyone else and their truth into question (or out of validation as real/authentic) simply by the mere unrelated or disconnected nature of their being. Usually I would choose to ignore a person like this, but if we are within the movement of Pisces is this affect and tendency within us all now? Does this kind of phenomenon (breaks in communication and processing) stop the movement of truth through time and history? Is it like a forest fire in the collective unconscious that will eventually relieve us of our 'post-post-modern predicament'? Or will we remain in this seemingly vacuous space in history? Does this Piscean trait not relate to the age and culture that we inhabit right now? This gap must be a space for reflection. Otherwise I cannot seem to justify the time.

The other main trait of Pisces is a tendency to completely emotionally absorb or fully become part of things that most of us usually consider to be outside of the self. (thus seperating us from them) This zen-like attribute is the only way to retrieve and feel those inner states of being that in previous times were informed through the senses of natural experiences - and passed down through living culture; mythology; storytelling; historical objects; art. Half of that cultural/being-related information having been stored in the objects of cultural learning that can inspire those states (storytellers, actors, teachers, architecture, books, paintings etc.) and half in the simple fact that on the recieving end people were actually absorbing what was still left to pass down. That window in time is always closing and history moves (or begins to stagnate) when the window closes before anyone has absorbed the gift and the power to give it. I believe that this talent has generally been and is being lost. Perhaps within the Piscean element one can take on the dynamic of an entire history and simply validate its having been through pure experience. Sometimes this allows things to pass and opens up room for change, which is the possibility for potentials. But that clearing demands that we consider the serious weight of the freedom that it gives. This includes the ability to draw upon an entire legacy of being, which Is accessible. The question is how to deal with all of the abstract seperation that our time in history has brought us to. What are the modus operandi for dealing with all of the shit that seperates us from life? How can we see it and talk about it so that it doesn't interfere with our journey but rather helps us in each moment to reconnect and reinvent?

R