#exploringinternalizedshame

don’t know how to describe what the character the perceptive field of reality takes around my birthday, but there are many impressions, feelings, and nameless associations that when translated into words attempting to communicate broadly, but crystallize inaccurately, come out like a slug turd slowly sliming its shitty trail from the sphincter of existential crisis in capitalism’s peculiar tendency towards isolation into the ether of existence: I SUCK and EVERYTHING SUCKS. But that’s only like a fleck of dust at the zenith of the glimmering cold Aquarian iceberg. That kind of phrase is kind of desperate. Because what can the myriad of responses to something like that be in response to a desire to not feel the way that “I” do?

No you don’t. You’re great, you’re awesome you’re (insert opposite of I Suck here)

And then if that is the choice of expression I use and that is the response I receive, I then in turn shut it down and then get convinced that that was toxic and attention seeking and pathetic.

This is the first year since I was 21 that on feeling the massive machine of the birthday depression hurtling towards and through and in me in torpid motion that I haven’t been using or scaling up my alcohol usage to deal with it, or also actively engaging going into bed and staying there somewhat helplessly amidst a swarm of critical comments thoughts and weighted adversarial comparisons to come take grip pull under in haze until the energy returns to get out of the bed, and then get to the nearest bar and drink it down until the exhaustion and actual need for sleep come in. And not quite deep restful restorative sleep, but what it may feel like to be a computer with no battery life that must be plugged in in order to run that suddenly gets pulled out of the socket and just turns off--that kind of sleep, not knowing when the plug will go back in and not even knowing when to know when just complete cessation of consciousness and contents therein or lack thereof. Mechanical, cause it’s the brain box part, there’s like bumping electrons or a broken neural highway so the glitches and treaded pathways keep gettin’ Groovier, baby. LOL But on a side tangent, that’s also frequently described as one of the parts of the word/sound/ soundword, sacred speak OM the dreamless sleep state of consciousness too.

There’s a petty part of me that keeps needling needling needle picking to stop talking about not drinking like it’s some narrative device to give meaning to my life. Like stop talking about your recovery, you’re just trying to get attention. that’s what it’s saying, anytime I try to make a peep or talk to someone, or the internet lol or anyone about it, except my therapist. like somehow this fucking voice feels okay and gives full permission to my mouth and the rest of my mind to talk about it on the condition that I’m paying someone else to talk about it. And then the battle ensues, the self enquiry, Am I? Is that what I’m doing? It doesn’t feel like that’s what I’m doing, but never know, maybe I am and just don’t know that I am. Writing from this place, today, right now, for a few minutes, I can laugh about it, as I’ve for this scant moment sublimated the needler, and this, this is one of those minor seeming yet major feelings recent skill.

In being sober, I have realized how relentless and multifaceted this shame-complex is, how fragmented and seemingly intelligent yet monotonously banal in its overall messaging it is, the many forms and voices it has, the guises it takes within. I’ve also taken to trying to tap into the expansive objectivity of dissociative states. Yes, I have them frequently, yes, I dissociate less than when in the midst of ongoing trauma, but have also starting to catch the brief time-warp/doorway/wormhole moment when they come on.

I can describe it something like the lucid dreaming training techniques. Like during the day look at hands and count fingers, turn the light switches on or off during the day with conscious observation to the point it becomes a habit and then the theory, successful for many (including myself) but also not a guarantee for every individual, during a dream hands will appear differently lights wont turn on and YOOO this is a dream! It’s kind of like that. Kind of. In that, for me thanks to therapy and lots of meditation and playing with the feelings and experiences of the passages of time as results, knowing activation stations of my emotional body or etheric body to triggers, can pinpoint when a dissociative wave is about to roll in and waiting for the crest of it before it swallows totally, and riding into it somewhat... lucidly.

There’s also in lucid dreaming sometimes or astral projection that the excitement of the awareness may kick or boot the consciousness out of the dream or awareness state altogether, and I’ve found similar to be correct in dissociations, but it’s not of excitement but of awareness. There’s the awareness of moving into a dissociative state for me that dissipates it altogether, but if I want to enter the state itself and use it as a tool to experience, I have to surrender completely to it with no expectations, and establish the emotional memory of this feeling to invoke it once it’s necessary for this purpose. This to me feels different than being swallowed by it at the full expense of experiencing, but I’ve come to an understanding of naming it of sorts, Like I understand this is a state that was originally installed to protect me (at first, and then later, again once no longer needed, became a bit hindering), and I thank it for its service to that endeavor. Then I ask (it’s not with actual words though, it’s with a feeling) if I have permission to be there to join it in observation. In there is a delightful distance from shame indwelling consciousness creatures, they are able to feast upon an avatar of a self, but are not given the psychic energy with which to continue gathering energy.

I have been able to transform them upon returning from these states. I have recently named them the “shit-eating nibblers” i think of the size of the bites they may be taking from me and then I am filled with some sort of affection at how small their teeth are.Because they’re taking bites, they seem to run away really fast after getting their food, and then come back for more later. They may come with a phrase like “You’re weak-willed and arrogant” and take the form of someone who hurt me before, which is such a shit eating spell-curse that becomes more and more true over time, giving them more and more to feast on the longer I let it drag me into bed or pull me from the world, or pick up a drink, name any of the ways in which I could continue to give that matter, be it brain matter, psychic matter, literal withdrawal of life force (by stopping eating altogether or only eating very very sporadically in voracious states of sheer hunger). To me it’s interesting how the associative dissolution of the boundary translates almost automatically into waking life with the material plane. In not wanting to feed them, I don’t eat. I become malnourished. I end up hurting myself to avoid being hurt by them, which is also either some part of myself that is not integrated, or some external unreal thing that I’ve internalized as my own and don’t know what to do with it. So the solution is there, but it’s applied in an unhealthy way.

So there’s multi-tiered approached to this for me. There’s being with a dissociative state, and then there’s also the experience of a depression,which can also be foretold long before it comes into residence within the body. Depression for me has a similar function to hack into and engage with all of this stuff in a way that’s healing. Say I start to feel the urge to drop into the oblivion of my bed at like 1 p.m. on a day off from work these days. Okay, there’s many ways to deal with it.

1) Don’t yield to the temptation to do so. That works out in its own way, sometimes drinking a glass of water, or going for a run. I have to identify whether it’s a temptation to get pulverized by the mechanical teeth of the shit eaters, maybe time to meditate or process etherc exhaustion from the zillions of inputs passing through at any given moment or

2) Try to understand it as an entryway or point of journeying into seeing what needs the attention and what it’s asking for, or what I’m asking for, or exploring any number of things.

In light of 2, there is a “real world” example

I got a text message saying “The world is passing you by.” I was at first confused by it because I’ve been consumed somewhat joyously enough in the contents of my psychic imagination field, exploring it, and engaging it with the hopes to effectually co-create with the divine experience of life (here emerges like crystalline insect the glorious idealism of my aquarian energies and hopes for the world and everyone in it- that we recognize and be in active relationship with that sacred capacity to love and be and create NOW! TODAY! EVERYDAY! ! HOW Gorgeous! And I’m a complete amateur at it), as opposed to say, huh wow, yeah, be taken in by any number of phantasmagoric meta advertising schemes of the manipulators and oligarchs and internalized messaging at large hellbent on destroying the entire planet. Yes, that world is passing me by but I feel like I’ve given it enough of my time. And for someone who’s been called crazy for their entire life, it’s striking me as odd this year in experiencing the willful engagement with (as opposed to say unconscious experiencer OF the unintegrated run amok aspects of myself) and re-animation of my inner landscape, that I usually let that deter me from knowing myself, and therefore, half-aware and becomin half vulnerable to whatever anyone else would say, living in no place fully at all. Hm.

So, the comment I deflected and asked politely to not say something like that to me (because I’m vulnerable to those kinds of statements or spell casts), but it did pass through. Today I made choice number 2, because that statement manifested internally as basically 5 or 6 shit eaters.

At a gardening center I was looking for biodegradable pots to transplant these artichoke seedlings that sprouted on Imbolc. Artichoke are in the thistle family, and the thistles are associated with the planet Saturn, so I experienced their sprouting as an immense joy and nod to and from Saturn, within and without (I can’t get into Saturn right now, because it will be like... okay so... four years ago and then it will be like 90 pages later and I’m already feeling bad for how long this is...) so I am excited to transplant them. I mean going to all the gardening centers and stores for supplies and talking with people about how to get simple things like soil is in some ways a deep blow to my ego because this kind of stuff would be deemed child’s play, but here I am back at square one, navigating the rigamarole of distributive and oppressive networks trying to siphon off everyone’s connection to the earth unless it’s through $$$$$$ facillitation and I’m feeling like such a failure and the world is passing me by (that’s a shit-eater though!!)

I go to call the agricultural extension because I’m hoping to get a load of compost delivered (because can’t make it here cause the neighbors are scared of raccoons and cats coming to an open air pile, so alas, but maybe I’ll get or build a compost turner or start a worm composter in the spring who knows) and I’m determined to find a way to make this delivery of it free of currency cost because where do all of the leaves go in the fall and I’m anticipating pessimistically that the ag extension is going to be a dead end for this (which is an unhealthy outlook to transfer to them) and hopefully they have a distributive network and if I can get it, I can tell other people about it too so they can also get compost to garden, but the phone lines are only open between 9 and noon everyday and I’m depressed because it must not be that busy if it’s only open for three hours a day and climate change and we’re all gonna die and the world is passing me by (that’s a shit eater though!)

I go to a hardware store and find biodegradable pots of the size I’m looking for and radish seeds that are from 2016 and get to the register and the seeds rings up for 10 dollars and I say but theyre two years old though? Turns out they were actually only 50 cents and suddenly im wondering what happens in this distributive network in place with seeds that are still viable (brassicas are viable up to 8 years in ordinary storage conditions) yet deemed old. Do they go into the garbage which gets mixed up with petroleum products and any number of mismanaged alchemy in this world off its hinges on climate change that goes to a landfill or the ocean and gets wasted. Then I’m like thinking of seeds and ovaries and connections to reproductive cycles and trigger and trigger and dissociate and the form of an infant and all of the children in the world who are hungry and the masses of food that goes to dumpsters because nobody paid enough money for it in time and its so infuriating and i am so useless and ineffectual and sad and the world is passing me by (that’s a shit eater though!)

That’s enough examples.