Category: Reflections

 

Photo by me in South Africa

When I was a little girl, I was physically punished/abused many years by my caretakers/nannies.

I was so terrified of the consequences that I never told my parents, or anyone, except for one of my sisters, who is only a year younger than me and suffered the same fate. We were so afraid of telling anyone. That experience has shaped us and brought us so close.

Everyday at night, those ladies used to ask us “what did you do wrong today?” assuming and making us look for something “bad” we had done and then punish us accordingly by hitting us in different ways.

For a very long time I thought I was over this. I thought I didn’t have any traumas, or anything. I thought I was already passed that point. But I guess some memories are coming back to me now for a reason. To heal.

When I was 9 something happened in me and my fear of them turned into rage and I exploded confessing everything to one of my best friends who was older than me, and she took action by telling her mom, my mom, and those nannies were vanished from our house and lives forever.

But the pain from that experience I am sure lives in all of us involved still.

Like my fear. Like my rage. Like my guilt.

I do not know how I have only realised now, when I am almost 32, that this is one of the biggest reasons I am how I am.

This is why I like limits, and laws, and rules of behaviour because it makes me feel safe that if I am “good” and “perfect” inside what is asked of me, I will not be punished.

This is why I am incapable of reacting to things not going the way I want with nothing else but frustration and anger. Because I am terrified. Terrified that if I am not “a good girl” something horrible is going to happen to me or the ones I love. Like my sister. I was supposed to save her, protect her, and I just kept silent.

This is why I have so much guilt and shame. I feel so ashamed I didn’t say anything.

Working with my Shadow has opened up a whole new level of understanding for me. I still don’t know what to do about all this, but I am happy I see it. Even if I am opening the wound a bit, I need to see deeper, I need to know, to feel.

I need to let go. 

Photo of me in South Africa

Road trips always remind me of life itself.

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Maybe it is such a cliche, but still rings true for me. Not knowing where the road will take us each day, but knowing our final destination we keep going forward. Life also has a very distinct ‘destination’ although I only believe that to be a new beginning.

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Death.

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Here it is again.

Always accompanying my thoughts. Always by my side reminding me of the fleeting nature of existence, of reality itself. So why hold on too tightly to any one opinion/idea/dream?

If even the whole time-space-continuum is only an eternal change process?

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A transformation process that exists for us because we can perceive it.

I am still blown away by this fact, even after so much time.

What we perceive is our reality.

Our perspective.

Our point of view.

Our truth.

Our lives.

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How are you observing all this? Do you see it too? How does it make you feel that we cannot hold onto anything as universal truth/beauty/goodness that so many philosophers and sages pinpointed as the essence of man and life?

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For me it is simple to say and understand: the only essence ever is change itself. Without change nothing exists. Without movement the stillness is truly eternal. If the pendulum doesn’t swing, it is dead steady in the centre. I am afraid of this centre sometimes. Afraid of this eternal stillness.

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What I find difficult is gaining relief from this perspective. For now, it gives me anxiety. For now, I still find the need in me to be right, to fight my arguments, to defend my opinions, to defend all of my tiny and stupid life choices. Looking for validation. But from who? Why? We are all in this together. And I am getting so tired of myself trying too hard for something I know deep inside doesn’t fulfil me at all.

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One of my main discoveries in this trip is that ‘being tired’ obscures my ‘being afraid’. Physically, being sleepy in a car or plane makes me forget the fear I feel in these transports. Maybe I can use this info now to transmute my fear of letting go. Maybe being tired is a great first step.

Maybe you will also follow me along this path until we find out…

How can i understand or grasp the immensity of reality or of what is real if i can only experience ‘what is’ through my own limited perspective?
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Even if i knew everything there is and will ever be to be known by any human mind, it will still be a limited perception of the whole.

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How can i understand or be the ultimate/true reality if i am still ‘me’/experiencing it through me?

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Why this urge and need to know? Why all the search if i understand its never ending nature?

Photo by me

I have been thinking a lot lately about the way I give myself automatic answers to avoid saying or doing certain things. One of these messages I constantly repeat to myself is “no, he/she/they won’t understand”. I realise I think this a lot and it stops me from being me and expressing whatever I feel like.
Not only that. The fact that I stopped and gave myself permission to question my own habit has opened up another door… What don’t they understand?
And it hit me… It’s not that what I want to say or do is difficult to understand, it is in fact quite simple most of the times: the relationship between what we think, feel and do and it’s relationship to our own bodies and our lives. It isn’t difficult to get, to understand, to grasp these concepts. What is difficult really is to believe.
Putting it in other words; what is difficult is to be willing to LISTEN first, EXPERIENCE or TRY what is being said and then have an OPINION about it. Not many are willing to put in the work. Most will just answer back with their “opinion” which will be based on nothing more than their conditioned pattern of behaviour and limiting beliefs which they never question.
So I just got tired and started telling myself “they won’t understand”. Now that I have seen this pattern in me, I don’t know what I will do yet, but I am still tired, so I guess I’ll continue to explain things or talk to people who actually want to listen, and leave the rest to try and do whatever they want without judgement.
This path of self-study is truly eternal…

Photo by me

Anger, of all emotions, is my go-to re-action. Frustration and anger are both the greyness that cloud my judgement sometimes.

Something in me is triggered and jumps at the opportunity to be ‘right’, to ‘win’, to be seen, heard, and especially, to be taken seriously.

And I think at last after so many years I just realised why.
Anger has a way of giving us false clarity of mind.

Anger gives us a purpose towards which to direct our internal emotions, gives us a false purpose blinding us instantly to what is truly happening.

Anger gives me a life jacket to which I can hold on when I ‘think’/’imagine’/’see through anger’ that the world is against me. It makes my reaction ‘valuable’ because I am ‘fighting’ for something.

Now that I see it this way, it makes sense it’s the emotion I carry as my shadow. My longing in my heart is all about finding a reason, a purpose for my existence. Why am I here? Again and again, I don’t understand,  I don’t know.

Can’t wait for the next time anger builds up in me so I can observe, experiment and research more. I believe this is an important step towards my own growth, and although I still feel stupid for having my anger reactions for so many years, now I have another way to direct my energy to studying myself again and again.

+++ Reading the book ‘All the Rage’; various authors write about anger and acceptance from Buddhism’s perspective and it has been helping me a lot. I cannot believe I haven’t tackled my anger until now! +++