The Sixth, Seventh & Eighth Lies

To make a quick comment about my mental state, sometimes what doesn't kill you can actually make you stronger. Every re-entry seems to usher-in about half of a new life-stage -- so two re-entries means I am in a different stage of my life than at commissioning.
With this growth has come many insights that I have not always spared time to share. This morning's revelation could be that unrequited longing and having fun are not mutually exclusive. Certainly, the past few weeks have revealed that I cannot discipline myself into accepting myself and that accepting myself makes discipline much easier. If that sounds like a catch-22, then an explanation for my difficulties is not far away. At some point, I had to give myself some unearned slack and take a moment to step-back. Not only did I get that from travel but also from writing a very personal article that I think IOW might be willing to post. Since then, I am noticing how I am able to take pressure off myself to perform without slipping into total hedonism, though the mechanisms are still developing. It can be said for certain that the key is replacing negative mechanisms with neutral ones (perhaps I just debunked another lie?): instead of getting angry with myself for unnecessary browsing, I am teaching myself to recognize it and simply "call halas" on myself. Done.

The sixth lie is that I need to react to things in proportion to their atrocity -- a lesson I think I learned before but could not quite internalize -- as if I am obligated to react on behalf of humanity, with my emotions, to how terrible something is. That is a LIE: just because I find the strength to have a poker-face in the moment doesn't mean I don't care. Two things helped me gain this insight. First of all, my latest entry called for poker-face tactics. Any play-acting would be disingenuous and getting upset was a liability. Being tired helped. While I was waiting to get my skimpy (problematic) 3-week visa I decided that it was okay to take the abuse with a straight-face. It was just plain okay. Neutral mechanism. Whether that came from God, tiredness, or drugs (of which I had none), I don't care: if I am naturally calm when I need to be calm, that's a good thing! I don't need to be any more rattled than I am.

The other debunked lie has to do with more personal things but it amounts to acknowledging gaffs with courage and healthy curiosity. If a pattern continues to occur, it cannot simply be thrown under the bus: it needs to see the light of day with the help of people I trust. The problem with the forbidden fruit, I maintain, was the fig-leaf cover-up (and I read that passage allegorically, in a dream-time sense -- which means it never occurred but it's always happening). To gain clarity, I need to risk hearing bad news or perhaps accepting a new paradigm that I previously thought was "wrong". Make mistakes, admit them, be aware of patterns, etc. A life of dichotomies is too draining. Better to stay engaged with life's diametric tensions.

While I am playing catch-up with my lie detector function (and listening to great play-lists, honestly) I might as well throw the eighth lie into cyber-space for your consideration. No one in their right mind would honestly think that a peace & justice intern could keep his comments to the intrapersonal. There are plenty of lies perpetrated by society and I have become all too familiar with them. Yet, I cannot always be projecting them outward. This one has leaked into my consciousness from time to time:

"If someone would just blow them off the face of the Earth, that would fix things."

LIE. Terrible, evil, insidious lie. Lie that hurt people, lie that keeps hurting people, lie that BROUGHT ME HERE. "Shoot the bad guys" "Us versus them" "Preemptive strike" "By any means necessary". LIES LIES LIES

This is not the last time we hear from this lie, here.