A Recent Manifestation

One of the things about me is that I do not keep track of time, or days consciously. I put zero mental energy into time. My unconscious keeps me on track. When did this particular story start? I've no freaking clue. Maybe a month ago? Maybe two? Fuck if I know. It apparently doesn't matter. This one isn't going to be easy to tell because as we all know life is complicated. The shit is all blended together as far as I'm concerned. This is one of the issues with living a spiritual life; there is so much going on at any one time that life becomes incommunicable. Here a myth, there a myth, everywhere a myth myth. When it is consciously realized that life is a dream, it becomes a symbol within a symbol. This creates the issue of where to begin this particular story. So much was going on. Still is. It's not over yet either. I crossed a significant threshold though, and I want to share it before it's gone to the next. I have no intention of slowing down.

I'm forty two years old now. Once upon a time I was talking to someone in their mid twenties, whose trauma was, like mine, the definition of their life. The twenties are incredibly dark years when one was systematically abused as a child. If we were forced to compare lives this persons childhood was considerably worse than my own. Way worse actually. She was complaining about still having to deal with it. I laughed a little bit, but wanted to cry. If only she knew. I tried to tell her it was something she was going to deal with for the rest of her life, but she didn't want to hear that. I tried to tell her the brain is still developing all the way into the mid thirties. Life changes when this happens. Real growth takes place. She's duped. The culture tricked her into thinking shes an adult already. She already knows, doesn't this sound familiar? We all think we know what's up in our twenties. What a lie. Like I said, I'm into my forth decade now, and the trauma is still the defining characteristic of my life. It's still in my unconscious, my body, projecting onto the world.

There is a very simple explanation for this, but it's not time for that yet. I'm going to drop that at just the right time. I followed my game plan as best I could. Before even attempting to get into my feels I had to get my mind right. I had to learn how to think. I had to educate myself thoroughly. I had to solidify my ego in the appropriate way. All of these things are well documented. The issue is that they are all processes, and they take a considerable amount of time because each of the steps in each of the different processes require experiences. They require interactions with other human beings. It requires synchronicity. There isn't a straight path either.

This little stretch of my life began when my wife told me to read a book by Louise Hay titled You Can Heal Your Life. Just so happened this book came to me when I was writing in my Metaphysical Monkey blog about the unconscious. That is what this book is about; talking to your own unconscious in a loving way. Reprogramming yourself autonomously. I've read more than a few books about auto-suggestion, self-hypnosis, positive-thinking, and the like studying the unconscious, but this book is the best one I've ever read. She lays it out in the most unbiased loving way. I'm saying that you can feel this woman loving you while you read the book, and that in itself has a healing effect.  It is profound how well she put the thought down.

So the issue, having been traumatized as a child is that I am blocked emotionally from my own body. Emotions are as important as thoughts, because they are the energy. Just like one must learn to think, one must learn to feel emotionally. Another way to say this is that I do not ever actually know how I feel. I'm two people emotionally. Now this is probably confusing, because if you met me you would definitely realize I have feelings, and I express them, and use them, matter of fact I project mine into the room, so if I am in my feels everyone can feel it. The issue is deeper. I'm struggling for a metaphor. These feeling I feel are like make up. I can put them on, and take them off. I have a choice in which make up I'm going to wear. Maybe another way to express it would be, there is the real ME, and there is this facade I use.

Ever since the trauma of my childhood I've had to wear a facade, and after having had to wear this facade for so long, I became the facade. In psychological terms my inner child is complete lost. My identification became solidified with the fake me. When it comes to feelings and emotions I do not know who I am. Still. After over a decade of hard work. Sometimes this makes me quite sad, but again, that is just my facade, who knows it should be sad, but isn't necessarily actually sad. Sad isn't it.

You can see why I wanted to laugh and cry when this friend of mine was complaining about the trauma of her life effecting her still. She hadn't even begun to do the work that must be done to heal it when we were talking. So many times I wonder if I"m chasing a ghost. I've always asked this question, who would I be had I not be abused. So many times I wonder if I should just give it up and be an egomaniac like everyone else. Maybe I should just turn on the TV, dive into another video game, go back to getting stoned all day every day. Pretend to be an authentic human being like everyone else. Numb and repressed.

Fuck that.

That Louise Hay book was so good I literally felt a shift inside. The problem with healing trauma is that it is dark. Extremely dark. It is not rainbows and butterfly's. This is why I completed that list I mentioned earlier before diving into it emotionally. If I had not learned to think, educated myself, thoroughly grounded my ego in the appropriate way, diving into those emotions would kill me; literally. It would make me go insane, hurt someone or myself, tear shit up, who knows. These things actually happen to people. It's a serious issue. If those dangers were not the case, there wouldn't be the divide in my psyche. You understand? If it weren't the case that the emotions of the trauma wouldn't destroy me; they wouldn't be repressed.

This is something that Hay doesn't talk about. Talking about it would scare people off. They would put the book down. In that way her book is a spell. Reading the book casts a spell on the reader. I watched it happen to me. While reading the book I could feel things shifting inside my psyche. Not only was I reading the book, but I was doing the affirmations. The Universe loves me. I love myself. I am worthy of love. I even went to so far as to do the forgiveness affirmations. I repeated many times out loud, I forgive my parents.  All of this put powerful things into the works. This unlocked doors to allow for synchronicity.

Interestingly the dream books are the same way, the psychoanalytic ones. They will talk about patients, and their dreams, but they do not talk about how, before the healing, it actually goes down for the patient. They don't give the details. They have the freedom to do so, name changes, changes in story even, but they don't. They can't afford to scare people off. They can't say, such and such, was dealing with this trauma, had this dream, and then got cheated on, lost everything, learned their lesson, and now lives a more full and complete life.

I know better. I've already been applying the knowledge and process of using current life experiences to engage my emotions. I've already fallen in love with women who I knew were going to cheat on me so that I could re-experience betrayal emotionally because I repressed it when I was younger and didn't deal with it. I already knew what this Louise Hay book was going to manifest.

I continued to write my blogs, and I continued to read books. During the scope of this story, from the Hay book till right now I synchronized six different life changing books. All in succession of need. Back to back to back. It has not been exactly fun. I've not had any fun since that Hay book. I've not had much fun in a long time actually. I've been in near total darkness for something like six months now. I got fed up with a repeating cycle in my life, and forced the issue. Darkness upon darkness.

I wrote a blog about childhood memories. I didn't know it then, but I wasn't going back far enough with the memory. Most of my life I've focused on the abuse that occurred at the hands of my first step parent. I had avoided this Motherless blog for some time because it stirs up so much darkness, but the affirmations unlock doors you see. Unconsciously. I was internalizing the fact that my entire life was a lie lived in fear. It was only my facade that was so brave, if even that. It was my broken half that did all those crazy things in my life. I ended the blog with a Shakespeare quote, "Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." After posting that blog my life went dark. I can't stand living lies. The kind of darkness that would have ruined me if I had not gotten my mind right first. If I had no solidified my ego appropriately realizing my life was a lie to that degree would have ended it all. The kind of dark that makes one feel lost and all alone. What was I going to do...

Just a shell. I've still got to do what I have got to do. One foot in front of the other. Just a shell walking around. Unconscious autopilot. I go to my home away from home, and on a whim check the new book section. Synchronous style, I let my intuition do the looking, I'm just a shell. I wish I could teach people this. Can you see the difference between going to the library thinking, or knowing, "I am going to get this kind of book" versus just walking in having no idea what I will come out with, if I come out with anything at all? My eyes lock on a book. Bearing the Unbearable. The kind of book I would not normally read. It's about dealing with death. I pull it off the shelf and go home. 

Right on time. Holy shit. I cried so much reading that book. It was the validation I needed. I associated the death the spoke of with the little boy in me who died long ago, who I've missed dearly ever since. This book shined some much needed light into the dark. The Universe really does love me. This book confirmed one of the major sources of anger in my life, all my life. Real validation for my feels. I've spent almost my entire life surrounded by insensitive emotionally repressed assholes. The author, Joanne Cacciatore, truly understands the feels. Do you know what she repeatedly says through the book? That people dealing with grief suffer more at the hands of insensitive emotionally repressed people than they do over the grief itself. Maybe that is not the best way to say it, it's probably better to say that the actions of insensitive emotionally repressed people causes more harm to the psyche of someone grieving than the incident that actually caused the grief. Grief doesn't actually harm, it's a natural human phenomenon. The coldness of fellow humans though actually harms one who is grieving. This is exactly how it went in my life. The stories she tells about how others were treated during their grief is exactly how I have been treated.

Hey Ben, Get over it, Move on, Think positive, Get some help, You need medication, Something is wrong with you! I've heard all of these, all my life. All the people who refuse to even acknowledge they were abused telling me how to deal with it. Go figure. Never not one time have I received understanding. Do you know why? Because around here child abuse is socially acceptable, and also because understanding costs about a hundred dollars an hour.

Holy shit this book changed my life. That is two books via synchronicity. Boom boom. And we ain't done.

Up and down, round and round, we go. Darkness, then some light, then right back into the darkness. Why? Because reading a book doesn't undo a life of repression. Why? Because life is a process. An organic experience. Reading a book doesn't heal the wound. It doesn't undo the trauma. Real life experience via interaction with other humans does. The books merely lead the way. They guide and assist. They provide support. Books are obviously particularly important in my life. How could I possibly know what someone who has spent most of their adult life studying grief knows? But right when I needed to know, there it was. Same day. When I first began this journey over a decade ago I considered that type of synchronicity an miracle. In a certain way these books could be viewed as the literal voice of the Universe; my unconscious made manifest.

I study a lot if you can't tell. There is always a pile of books around me. Right now one of my areas of interest is on shamans and dreaming. Shaman is a loose word though. A shaman is not only a person in the jungle. For instance, Carl Jung was a shaman. Terrence McKenna was a shaman. There are urban shamans. Shaman and psychoanalyst are synonyms. A shaman is someone who understands the unconscious and who also goes there. Shamanism is without a doubt the most intense, and complicated professions. I'm a member of some shaman pages on Facebook, which I silently troll for information. Dreams are brought up a lot, so naturally people post books. Interesting right? I love books. I keep a Google doc file for books to read. Someone asks about dreams, someone comments, I chime in, and boom, this guy gets brought up who writes books about dreams who is also a shaman. This guy is still alive. I go to the library. Nada. I go to the reference desk, ask for one in particular. Nada. Some time goes by. Perhaps I needed to read that book about grief first. I don't pretend to know the machinations of my unconscious. Perhaps I needed to get through this other dream book I checked out first.

I end up at the library on the other side of town. I can't remember why. Following my unconscious I end up in a non fiction isle. I'm scanning the shelves with my intuition and boom; there he is, a Robert Moss book. The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventure of a Dream Archaeologist. It is a memoir. Mind blown. You'll have to understand that once one begins conversations with the unconscious everything is synchronous, EVERYTHING. This whole situation is symbolic. The profession of the author, the title, the dreams. Life itself becomes symbolic, and everything is a dream. I feel much less alone. I needed this book. This guy travels all over the world talking to people, giving lectures, guiding people in their dreams. This guy does things that every single person I've ever known in my life would say is bat shit crazy, yet there he is; living the life.

What is that saying? Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes. This quote is attributed to some famous people on the internet, but it's just the tweet of a frustrated woman that went viral. Does it matter? I've for a fact, been surrounded by ignorant insensitive assholes all my life. Even the ones who claimed to love me oh so much were just that; assholes. True enough most of them weren't necessarily doing it on purpose. They, like me, are in a certain sense victims of the culture, but at the end of the day, facts are facts. Assholes.

The shaman book was double edged. Yes, I'm not alone here on earth seeking as I do, but holy fuck do I have a lot to learn still. Reminds me of the phenom big fish little pond. If I walk out my door right now and just randomly start engaging people I'm going to be so learned that they won't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Put me next to this shaman guy and I'm barely in kindergarten. I have indeed been surrounded by the most ignorant of people all my life. This ego inflation business is no joke.

I think in all I requested twelve books on symbols and dreams from the library. Still waiting on a couple, already knocked down several. Two were shit. Several of the books came recommended from a Jungian page on Facebook. One of them turned out to be one of the best books I've ever read in my life. Ego and Archetype by Edward F. Edinger. Same as the previous books; right on time. One of the easiest ways to know a book is synchronous is that I do not have to struggle to read it. Nom nom nom. My mind will just absorb them. I can put down a synchronous book sometimes in a single day. Edinger's book was too deep for all of that though. It took a couple of days to get it into the noggin.  The book is truly amazing. I can't wait to buy my own copy. It tied the whole myth, ego growth, dream, unconscious, life into one process so to speak. It relayed a lot of information I already knew in a new way, and brought it full circle. Matter of fact it showed how the psyche grows in a repeating circle. Up and down, round and round; we go. It explains the cycle in depth. It showed me where I got stuck as a child, and where I am stuck here now. That is priceless information.

I can feel my psyche just churning all of this new information. I asked for it. I initiated the process. This is what I live for.

From the affirmations, to the grief, to the shaman, to the ego. I can feel that I am changing inside. I'm still saying the affirmations every day. The Universe loves me. I love myself. I am worthy of love. The Universe loves me. I love myself. I am worthy of love. I can feel it building up. I am going to do my best to not avoid the pain. I'm not going to avoid it.

Remember I said human interaction. Well, it shouldn't be a surprise that the one person who activates the feels more than any other is going to be the ones we love. This is a real inhibitor of growth in this culture. Everyone wants the perfect relationship without doing any of the work growing up. Well, if one hasn't grown up emotionally a perfect relationship is not ever going to happen. In my life, here now, that is my wife. This is obviously double edged. The one I love, is the one who triggers my pain. I knew this going into the relationship. I already knew how it worked. It is after all a fact of life that it is our relationships that heal us. This is why I educated myself during my years of being single. If you ever take up the idea to heal yourself, you will immediately begin manifesting relationships that are towards that end. If you don't know how to think, that process isn't going to go well. These relationships will not be all peace and love. No one grows when everything is peachy king. Just expecting it to be all peace and love will bring about suffering without even adding in the trauma.

All the while, all this is going on, my shit is being triggered by the one I love. It is a constant state of affairs. Constant. Constant. Constant. It's piling up. It's coming to a head. Up and down, round and round; we go. And what do you know, she synchronizes me a book.

I add it to the pile. I've got several going already. It's not time yet.

Half way through the first chapter my world gets turned upside down. He speaks directly to what was discussed in the Edinger book but from a completely different angle. The book is Coming to Our Senses by Morris Berman. The book is masterful, so I'm not going to be able to do it justice summarizing it here, but it is about how us modern humans are not in touch with our bodies, and why. Who would have guessed? That is the problem I have. He explains how when children are not raised as we were meant to be raised, that is evolutionarily, you know, with it in mind that we are 98% chimp and have been around for millennia, which is something the religion that dominates our current culture does not do even a little bit: Breaks our psyche. The psyche break came about, or I should say the scale tipped, in the 1600s when philosophy and religion decided that humans should not be animals. Think about this, everyone is incultured, thinking the way we do it, is the way to do it. This is a huge problem, because despite what anyone thinks we are monkeys.  We are biologically animals just like all the rest of the animals on the planet. He clearly talks about the split in self that all of us modern monkeys have. What is important to realize is that this is the case for anyone raised in the modern way. The way this culture teaches us to raise children, mindlessly passed down from generation to generation; breaks us from our own bodies psychically. Since our bodies are our unconscious mind, this is a break in the psyche. Bad news. You'll have to read the book.

Many months ago I met a woman on Facebook from Europe on a Jungian page. This person has done a significant amount of homework regarding life. She shares books and information with me from time to time depending on what I'm posting. One topic she has studied thoroughly is genital mutilation. Shouldn't be that hard to imagine for anyone with any kind of sensitivity at all that having ones genitals surgically mutilated at birth is traumatizing, and this topic has been thoroughly studied, so it's not really up for debate. Unless of course you're arguing with an insensitive emotionally repressed ignorant ass. Well, I posted a picture of a page from this book, and shared it online because it basically summed up how and when we are detached from our own bodies during early childhood. She liked the post, and said she had read the essay cited on the page. 

All the while this is going on, I'm being triggered by my love. On top of that I'm in the darkness of my life having read all these things. I wake up in the morning, and this woman on the other side of the world sends me a photo of a newborn baby being held. Something inside snaps. The gate opened up. A door unlocked. I know for a fact they mutilated my genitals. I know for a fact my mother did not take care of me when I was a baby. I know for a fact I was abandoned and neglected. I just can't remember it consciously. Well, my body does.

I end up in the bed. I'm purposefully not thinking about it; just trying to feel. Just feeling my body. I keep thinking I'm not going to fight it. I don't want to block it out. I'm not going to run away. I'm not going to repress it. I'm not going to do anything else; just trying to feel it. I sob and cry. Rocking back and forth. Swaying. Feeling crazy and crazy can feel. I end up laying flat on my back, my arms and legs going stiff and rigid, crying and crying. So much energy. My body is raging. I think to myself I look just like a baby would in a crib. My whole body is hurting. Feeling so crazy. Panicked. I can't bear it anymore. I reached out. Got to find someone who understands. I message the woman who sent the pic. She understands. She was abandoned too. She's done her homework. But then, she doesn't understand. She's giving me advice like I have not done my homework. Everyone always does this to me. They always think because I have yet to experience my feelings firsthand that I don't know what I am doing. Back into the darkness. 

I don't fight it. I turn my mind off Eastern meditation style. Just experiencing. Here now. I just let my body do it's thing. Crying and sobbing. My body starts hurting. My whole body hurts. I feel as if I've been working out like a madman. It builds up again. Too much despair. It's been hours now. It's getting too dark. I reach out to my love this time. I attempt to put my feels to words. She listens.

Spent two days recovering physically. The ride isn't over though.

All I know is, had I attempted that emotional episode earlier in my life it would have broken my psyche. Words cannot describe the craziness of that experience. Do you know how crazy a baby feels left alone in a crib with no idea where it's mother is? Probably not. More than likely this culture got you. More than likely this culture got you so badly, that you're insensitive and emotionally repressed. More than likely you think it is perfectly acceptable to leave a baby crying all alone. You have too, otherwise you'd have to come to terms somatically that it happened to you. Facts are facts.

One of the definitions of a shaman is one who heals their self.  I'm manifesting that. My hope has always been that by telling my story it will empower others to do the same. Most people have Stockholm Syndrome, and this is the greatest barrier our culture faces. Everyone loves their abusers because they've been conditioned from birth that it's okay. It's not.