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379: I am very saddened by the state of the world

| Aspergers Girls

shaman

I am very saddened by the state of the world. While I can only speak of the nation I occupy, I gather enough from others that similar events are happening globally.

No matter how long I live on this earth, I am continually confused by many people’s behaviors and actions. Manipulations, lies, and false-intentions aside, I am dumbfounded by the angry-hearts and finger-pointing souls.

It seems so obvious to me: don’t judge another until you have entirely looked at your complete self and accepted who you are, learned to love yourself, and made a vow to be the best person you can be.

And hopefully, by the way of nature, having been through that process, the ability to judge simply ceases. Therefore, I find myself in a quandary, as what I feel within borders much on judgment, though I hope it resembles in form more of a heartfelt discernment.

I watch all around, in this place I find myself a part of, and see people acting out of spite and bitterness. To me, this seems as children at play, individuals who have somehow never gained what some of us were naturally born with. So many walking blindly, a victim of their self-created unbridled passion, set upon a path of feeding the darkness more dark.

I am at a crossroad of self, in many ways looking back at where I have been, without harboring much thought or even intention. Neither am I looking forward. I have tossed away the childish ways of dwelling anywhere other than I am, but still the present lingers here and penetrates my being, reminding me of why, in the past, I so often chose the route of escape over living. And I cannot help but think that the gentle souls of the world continue to choose the same, to slip back into a part of self, where the light is pure and the surroundings safe.

My hope lies in the minority. For in them I see this endless river of kindness, acceptance, and genuineness. And there is where I choose to see my own reflection, in the soul inhabiting this lost planet, which continues to shine despite the glaring dark broadcasted by the deceitful and righteous ones.

I am by no means a religious scholar, but I have had my share of studies in theology. What strikes me as evident is that many religions and spiritual paths have the answers; they speak of not judging, not lying, not cheating, not stealing; they speak of detachment, release of the desire for material ways, and unconditional love. Yet, it seems, that still most of society is buzzing all around, hounded by some beasts, corralled in like sleeping sheep, and made to behave in ways that may not be notorious but are as equally damaging.

It seems I am made, as I be, to walk in this world half-blinded to the ways of the majority, left outside of the fenced-in and blinded, and watching from a hilltop wishing for my brothers and sisters to join me and step out of the illusion of hatred. I am made this forever minority, for separation seems the only prize over entrapment of soul.

Today, I do not choose to celebrate tragedy or turn a disaster into a false idol. I will not choose to share grotesque images, nor to splatter hearsay and falsehoods. I see no benefit.

Have we become a united people whom can only feel close when disaster strikes? If so, what then will keep the disaster from repeatedly happening? What if there was silence upon disaster? What if there was just support, love, protection and safety; and the rest, the disastrous aftershock of tragedy, the spawned pods of evil, were left behind—just dropped, just forgotten, or at minimum ignored. What would the dark broadcast then, and what would we hold onto?

There is a part of me that knows I would be better to release this, to let go of this pain, as I do the rest, to detach from the horrors before my eyes—the dark aftermath of disaster. To close my eyes as the wolves circle in tighter and tighter, the false prophets, of modern day, spinning their webs of deceit; our neighbors joining in the game of hatred and rebel, or perhaps shedding their own tears in the spotlight. See me—notice me—love me. Why not just claim you need attention without the façade of displaying a tragedy to bring you forward? And why spread images of hope or horror based on tragedy with your name stamped upon the photo; how obvious that this is a way of profiting from suffering, whether for self-attention or material gains.

I don’t understand how people can be blinded to their own motives and own intentions. How they cannot feel what they are doing. See how they are acting. And if they are aware, how they can continue forward. Who are these people, as I do not belong to them?

And for the ones gently retreating, doing their part to help in silent fashion, without want of recognition, without need to scream, what of their dear, dear hearts? Who are these ones who humbly serve? How I wish to join you in prayer or meditation, and walk in the light at your side.

I do not understand this world or my place in it. Existing here seems like living on a giant stage of fools, with everyone rushing to be seen and be recognized, everyone in this giant game of Monopoly.

I am deeply saddened, today. I am not sad entirely because of the events of the original disaster—I hurt for the families and the loved ones—but at the same time I recognize disasters happen all over the world. People die in horrific ways all the time. People suffer. People are beaten, tortured, enslaved, persecuted, starving, and so on. There is no shock to me when disaster comes—the only shock is when I see what should by now be familiar, the clamoring for attention, resurfacing of the dark feeding upon the dark, ways and means that remind me of how far we’ve yet to come.

I am sad mostly because I live in a society that has been in essence brainwashed, a place where people are bombarded with negativity and bred to believe in lacking, and behave as if in desperate need. If the world were a spinning top, and I were still child, I would halt the toy entirely, and just let the earth breathe, let the people step out of self and watch. How I wish people could see they are love, they are light, and not these false illusions they have claimed.

I sit here very much isolated, unable and unwilling to share in the masses way of being, unable to take part in a celebration of the darkness. It is like being made to sit in the coliseum of ancient Rome, whilst crying, when all about people are cheering. It is like, this agonizing grief, a singular one watching from a singular window, waiting for the world to stop.

374: Moments

| Aspergers Girls

“It is not that I am not present in the here and now; it is that I am so entirely present to the universe that I become intoxicated in possibilities and rapture, and self must retreat back to the echoes of my imagination in order to breathe.” ~ Sam, Everyday Aspergers

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Everyday Aspergers, Samantha Craft

The moment when you know you’ve spoken your complete truth, whether it was a word or thought, and you sift through what you said, wanting to make sure there isn’t a splinter of doubt, that you didn’t indicate anything other than truth. And you feel your stomach twist, because maybe, just maybe, somewhere inside of you, you were wrong.

The moment you speak your truth loudly and clearly, with extreme empathy and knowing, weighing the validity of your words with the interpretation of necessity, while fighting back the voices that analyze and dissect the coming unspoken that is surging its way out through your veins, as you question your need, your want, your intention, wondering if the silence will win out over the pulsating necessity to share.

The moment you risk for the higher good, knowing if you speak your mind that you shall be persecuted, ostracized, and judged, but also knowing, all the greater, that you shall in speaking your light have conquered the darkness, at least a splinter of the darkness that permeates your world.

The moment you lie, only to protect the feelings of another, and you replay the falsehood over and over in your mind; a broken record that hurts your ears and leaves you suffering; not for the sake of another, but for the sake of going against your own self and truth, as you wonder if a better course could have been detected, discovered, and executed; something beyond the distasteful torture of falsehood.

The moment you realize no one has the answers, no book, no preacher, no teacher, no guru. Absolutely no one. And that all of your efforts have led you back to self; only now you are carrying a giant book of something that resembles truth. But in actuality it is a drafted, desperately edited and marked up tablet stack of contrived and siphoned rules, many of which contradict, point fingers, and leave in the ring either victim or prideful one.

The moment you speak your truth and the others leave, except perhaps one that stays for analysis and judgment, or to set you straight. And you listen, trying your best to look like you are interested and are learning, as you bleed all over the sidewalk from the bitter and deceptive words; your heart only wanting love, acknowledgment, and acceptance, not to be told again how you don’t fit in, don’t have it right, or don’t understand.

The moment you realize you understand more about a topic than anyone in the entire room, but to say so would immediately set up barbwire fences of division; thusly, you keep quiet and nod, trying to ignore and not comprehend the analogies that go against the base foundations of truth, justice, and love; with your last hope being that someone, somewhere in the room is like you, sees the light in your eyes, and wishes to not push their belief system upon you, or prove to you their theory, or embrace you in their way of life, but only enters your space to welcome you unconditionally as another being of substance.

The moment you dial up a conversation, and with first word, the person on the other end begins the game, following the rules of conduct and behavior and asking you blank, empty questions, not caring, unattached, unwilling to connect or even listen; the shallowness of the encounter physically hurting your chest and making your heart weep, as you attempt to move through with your life-preservers of nodding and smiling, acting as if you are comfortable, while feeling the energy of the speaker pierce you like daggers: the tone of the voice, the inflection, the pauses, the drawn out non-silence that does not match who they are, what they are, and where they are going. You are merely a dancer in some line of communication, knowing not where to step or when to pause, trying not to step on toes, and staring at a blank empty face, whose only need is to check your name off of her list.

The moment the sun rises, and your breath is taken away, and you are dancing in the rays, your heart free, your child like nature set to the wind, spinning, leaping, abounding in spirit, without moving an inch; and wanting to share this experience, to share the opportunity of hope you see, and in the dawning of a new day, you giddily laugh and celebrate and raise the arms to the magenta skies; only to discover the persons surrounding you can’t sense what you sense; and you think somehow you are made wrong, too attached, too intuitive, too knowing. And so comes the feeling of separation, the sun’s hues shifted, the day begun, with you lost to self, trapped within thought of why your way is not their way, and why your way is left out of the equation.

The moment you kiss another and you wonder what the kiss means, because it has to mean something; and you question how two could connect without connecting, touch without touching, and how the game of romance is only a game, marked with pitfalls and dungeons and war. How you have instinctively set up camp upon another’s territory, and in so doing have been given a safe zone, in which you shall not tread outward; for in stepping out, you risk annihilation, alienation, and doom. You weren’t meant to spread across his land and place flags of declaration about your feelings or experience. You were built for silent torture as you sit spinning in your small space of reason, wanting to scream out the ecstasy and dynamic shift of being, but forced to crease your edges, sew your own self shut and hide out until the coast is clear, or the being you so loved, simply slips away.

The moment you want to be present, but you can’t; and the guilt settles in as friend or child, spouse or son, he looks at you with wide open eyes ready to connect at his level, in a place of happiness and delight, without deep thoughts, without theories and strings of reason, without doubt, without prospect of future circumstances; and how you sit in this passing moment, longing to reach out and be this same way, to stop the clock of the own mind and silence the tick-tick-ticking; and so you pretend; you try; you harbor your very own secrets of misery; a false grin, a false laugh, an intense glance, all means in which you try to give back and let the other know he is loved and needed; even as your brain radiates outward, living in an imaginary land, pulling you back to a place so distant that all connection, all being, is lost in a blink of letting go. To speak and be present, like the other, is to balance on the plank, with the sharks below, knowing without fail, you shall fall with a splash, that your eyes shall dim, your mind blank out, and you shall undoubtedly sink into the dark and murky depths, embracing the emptiness and cold, where once the potentiality for sharing, an open beckoning space with dear one, existed.

The moment you know you are different and you celebrate the uniqueness, recognizing you have a purpose and a bright light and that you will make a change in the world for the betterment; perhaps you feel enlightened, like a teacher or creator of beauty, or . . . but to speak this to the world would be the death of you; for others would claim you are self-centered, grandiose in thought, or egotistical; but you know deep down you are meant for greatness, even as you walk in a world that seemingly does nothing but dilute your own fuel to your own fire. You are passion, you are insight, you are intuition, and you are connected to the grand scheme of life; but to say so leaves you breathless and unsure of yourself, dipped in the pool of humility time and time again. Only to be told you are wrong.

The moment you understand that you are only a perception, a glimmer of what people think of you, and that no matter what you say, or how you get your point across, that no one will see you other than how they choose to see you; that ultimately you are an island onto yourself, with tourists that caravan by and wave, but never set foot onto your sands. And so you stand, unmoving, shining your light, wishing upon the star, that feels more liken to friend than any other being you know, waiting for the day, when a brave one will enter, and join hands to the infinite beauty of you combined.

The moment you realize you are no one, but you are supposed to walk in the world as someone; a someone who acts a certain way, dresses a certain way, expects certain things; but you no longer expect anything and no longer know how to act, and stand on this endless stage watching the ones garbed in their costumes, refinery and fancy ways; and you wonder where you are to stand, how you are to observe, and what you are to take in, if not the bewildered stares of stagehands, whom keep pointing and glaring at your indecent and unpredictable ways. Where to walk. Where to move. Where to be—each become your questions, as the world moves onward to a beat you cannot hear and do not wish to hear.

The moment you realize you do not have a condition or a syndrome or a fault, but understand intensely people are trying to make you believe you do, trying so hard that they convince themselves they are this illusion of normal, and you are this jumbled mess of faults; only you see the truth. Your blinders have been removed. You march in the silence; the one not dictated and orchestrated by the misers controlling the masses. Your eyes have been made open. In essence you have been reprogrammed, the barrier of righteousness, to shine the light on falsehoods and bring out the truth; yet, no one knows this, but the few others that see in truth; and thusly, you move forward half-blinded in lies and half-open to truth, stuck in a place of limbo, with something beyond the beyond, urging you forward through the life that seems not life.

The moment your hands hurt, your feet hurt, your eyes hurt, your heart hurts, but you can’t stop, because there is a force inside of you that burns so deeply that if you do not open the crevice to creativity and let the flames burst out, as dragon releasing delicate-rage, then you shall perish in your own internal war. And so you move, in whatever way called to move; your own self bleeding in the efforts; your own self lost in the time without time, sinking into the separate land where no one can see you move with the freedom of angels, and you cannot see where this world was that you were made to walk in. And here you breathe, inside the escape of freedom, where the others cannot reach in and pull you out, cannot shape you and make you, and tell you lies of whom you be and whom you are not. A place of refuge where you can meet your own maker, whether self, universe, or God, and sit there in your trembling awe.

The moment you can no longer stand being you, as the music never stops, the thoughts never linger, but leap and bound across eternity, bringing up the genius of the world and making you into a spinning top of fury-making; when even the sound of the silence singes your ears and stops your heart, so that you want to scream at the annoyance of the drumming universe; though none around you can hear the pounding. And you cringe and cry and rant and plead, exploding inward as much as outward; for you have been placed in a merry-go-round of havoc with blind-seekers, each dumb and deaf, and wishing you were something other than your own self. And you have no way, no thread, no line of communication in which you can explain how you are the one displaced, removed from where you belong, and brought down to be tortured by the nonsense. How you have all the answers within, but are continually haunted and stopped in your making and doing; when the others, who know you not, shun and persecute your actions. Can they not see you are only trying to be, and that the more they stomp on your being-ness the more they push you back into the dungeon of no recourse but explosion? Why do they force their ways upon you, when they, in their infinite blindness, know not what they do.

The moment you recognize you are not alone, that there is at least one other person like you on the planet, and you recognize their heart, their purity, and their need to make a difference; and in seeing her fully, you fill her with hope, because she knows at last you believe her and you trust her; because, contrary to what she has been told, she is not pretending to be kind, she is not pretending to be generous, nor is she pretending to love. She does love you, with all of her being, with all of her heart. And like your lonely, forlorn and forsaken self, you long to scoop her up and paint her in your compassion and security, to blanket her in your own goodness, and let her know she is this thing called beauty; she is this joyous light.

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346: The Love I Am (A review of emotions, joy, fear, and pain)

| Aspergers Girls

I remember sitting on my bed in my early twenties and realizing with a sudden revelation that I did not know how to feel joy. In fact, in analysis, I concluded then that in the past several years I had not recognized many emotions. Generally I felt anxious, nervous, over-concerned, shy, out-of-place, insecure, depressed, sad, and worried. That was all I could feel. I could not feel anger. I could not feel love. My feelings for my significant other were all wrapped around fear of abandonment. I could feel fear.

I went from extreme emotional highs to extreme lows. I now believe this was not biologically induced. I think I made myself purposely cycle through thought-processes. If I was not extremely high (overly-anxious, overly-obsessed, overly-concerned), I was extremely low (unable to leave the house, fatigued, depressed). There wasn’t a manic high of joy, elation, grandiose thoughts, and magical-viewing of the environment and self. In the high-state there was only this inability to let go of fear, which led me to act out (OCD-like behavior, rituals, non-stop analysis) in order to eliminate thoughts. In the low-state there was the same inability to let go of fear, but my efforts to eliminate the thoughts were displayed through withdrawing, sleeping, and retreat.

I still go through these same states. Though I now know what the middle ground of emotions feels like. I think I “make” myself go through these states in an attempt to feel joy. I used to only feel joy when I was transitioning from one state (low) to the other (high). And even then, only for a fleeting moment.

In the past, and at this moment, I cannot experience this sensation of fleeting joy/happiness without the anxiety tagging along and questioning me, like some annoying tailgating friend I attempted to shake of millions of times before: “Are you sure you’re happy? Is this happiness? Will it last? How do you know it is happiness? Why are you happy? Are you being selfish? Is this self-based?”

My being seems incapable of holding onto this type of joy, and joy alone. This joy has to have companions of suspicion, dread, over-analysis, and such. And I utilize the word “have” because that is how the experience registers for me.

In the same line of thought, my extreme lows which include the inability to move, the discomfort of being me, and the fatigue of simply thinking, comes too with a posse of entities—emotions garbed as “why again,” “what is happening,” “why can’t I control my own self.”

This doesn’t feel like a mood disorder to me, though I see how my behaviors, and possibly thoughts, would present themselves as so. To me, this teeter-tottering is always pinpointed to an exact spot of awakening to the highest step of anxiety or lowest step of deep sorrow. I can find a reason. I can in retrospect see where I was switched from one extreme to the other.

Typically, I feel the mixture of joy and dread when I have 1) Accomplished a goal that I was afraid I would never accomplish; 2) Accomplished a goal in which I was fixated from the start and glad to be done; 3) Completed something I was dreading for days; 4) Received good news after worrying about bad news; 5) Received a compliment about my appearance, as I am insecure about the way I physically look.

In review, each of these supposed “joys” is accompanied by a fear or “negative aspect.” For example, in number one, “I was afraid,” and in number two “I was fixated.”

For a long time, this was the only way I could feel sporadic spurts of mixed joy: by attaching a fear or negative aspect, and then with some stimuli (another person, place, thing, event, words) the negative aspect is momentarily released and that moment of release feels to me akin to joy. For me, when the negative aspect I placed on self is temporarily removed, joy steps in.

In fact, in my mind, and in my scenario of feeling, I cannot feel this type of joy without first attaching an element of “negativity” and/or “fear.”

In contrast, in my moments of fear, in my low state, I have attached hope or the “best case scenario.” I create in my mind the release, the escape, or the rescue and I wait. I set myself in a cage, much akin to a prison, where I’ve locked myself away in darkness, and then wait. What I am waiting for is the removal of deep pain, and I have decided, somewhere deep in my mind or spirit that this removal will only happen in a specific way. For example, in sighting past experiences, this might be, this release of pain through the removal of a stimuli: an illness going away, a person coming and going, a meeting passing, a phone call received.

Here seems to be the tipping point, or the starting point of where my fleeting joy begins. While I sit readily in this cage of misery, I am creating the future of joy I hope to see. Whilst worrying immensely in a non-stoppable way and running through all the possibilities and strings of variable outcomes I can, I am in a direct way preparing to feel release and joy in the near future. This is to me, seemingly like a junkie in need of an adrenaline high. I am making myself increasingly low, so when the event or stimuli arises that apparently lifts me from outside of my self-inflicted prison, I am brought to a state of infinite fleeting freedom. In extreme emotion, I am brought high above myself and able to at last feel beyond suffering. I am creating my own high.

It is only in the in between state, between the middle part of prison and the freedom of elation that I feel the fleeting joy. I quickly rise past the joy to the state of high-anxiety, as the doubts and questioning sets in. This is why, after much processing about a possible scenario that could lead to my demise, failure, rejection or the lot, I will appear momentarily elated with relief when the scenario does not turn out in the thousand terrible ways I thought, but then I will quickly switch of the invented and created false feeling of joy and question my emotion. This will then put me in a state of shutdown, where I am wondering why I worried to the degree of physical and emotional, even spiritual ache, for the gift of fleeting fake joy brought on by a self-invented high.

Is this indeed a process I have created in an attempt to feel human? In an attempt to feel what “I am supposed to feel?” Am I lacking something or some chemical? I don’t think so.

I think this is the way my mind works itself out of confusion, in an attempt to unravel all the thoughts that are bombarding me, including all the stimuli, constant awareness, and confusion. I think this is my mind’s way of putting me into protection. I think in my cell of worry is the only time I feel safe from the world. To me, the fear-state is more liken to protection and safety than the joy state. For joy crashes and fear remains. Fear is predictable and stays with me as I loop and over-think; joy emerges as this falsehood and leaves me abandoned.

Do I like the cell perhaps more than I acknowledge? Is the cell the darkness I need to retreat to in order to renew? Am I, like the caterpillar, in need of continual metamorphoses? And if I am turning into a butterfly from the retreat out of darkness then why do my wings suddenly disappear?

In living, I have gained some recognition of middle emotions, the more subtle emotions of: satisfaction, contentment, serenity, connection, gentle-anticipation; but as these subtle emotions surface and are identified, I analyze where they have come from. I wonder which came first, my own thought, or the emotion; and often conclude my thought brought this emotion; and then I go into a place of deep thinking of when and where this thought came into existence that caused this emotion, and if this is indeed an emotion I welcome; and if this emotion comes from a place of selflessness, ego-release, and love. If the emotion/thought, both spun out together with thought in a slight lead, are not from a place of benefit for me and others, I then review why I have created these non-beneficial thoughts.

Where before for four-decades I was highly unaware of my own thoughts and emotions, and felt numb to the world, unless in a place of extreme anxiety or extreme low, now I am highly-aware of my experience, each moment analyzing and questioning my experience here, in this place I have been told isn’t really here at all. I have fed myself with so much factual data, through various sources and through moments of awakenings, that I cannot help but to try to place my own emotional/thought experience into a category.

My mind categorizes. I was built, I believe to a degree, to sort and categorize, to circumvent my emotional wiring and dig beneath and pull out what is occurring. I am a computer analyzing the computer-self. The mind boggles and I am left, wishing to do nothing but to be simple in the extreme, to wash away the complexity and start again anew and refreshed.

In an attempt to pull myself out of myself, I continually study and analyze, not just words and visual sources, but thoughts and happenings. I analyze the trees, the sky, the movement of all, even the invisible and untouchable. I analyze because I am attempting to take the moment I am set free from prison, to capture that fleeting flicker, and rise with this moment in true form of butterfly.

The dilemma is in finding myself lost in self, and reviewing the past data (Eastern philosophies of escape from mind), and then trying to understand this absence of thought, as I am built to a degree where the past ways of transcending (absence of thought; deep meditation in silence of mind) and completing the process of thought (silence and retreat after reflection) are foreign. I seem incapable of mastering my own mind enough to sit in the stillness of release. My brain appears so high-powered by some high-force that I am suited best for the prison of darkness as my retreat.

But there is hope, always hope.

And this hope is found in one way.

I have been able to at last find rescue from my own self in the act of giving of self. When I come from a place of pure intention to give without recognition or reward, I am set free. This is where the butterfly is meant to fly.

What I have been doing for so long is releasing myself from the cage and giving myself the imagined joy. I have been trying to hold onto a joy for self, and to build up self with joy, as this is what has been demonstrated by society: to make myself happy; to be happy; to find happiness. But this is not right; at least not my right, if right was to be.

I am not put here to make myself happy. I don’t need to be happy. Innately, beneath this façade of thoughts that generates a façade of emotions, I am happy. And I know this. I am not confused by self. I am confused by the thoughts and emotions, because beneath I am a spirit having a human experience. But my suit, my human suit is not adjusted, it is open enough so that the experience of human is confusing, debilitating, and disconcerting; I have spent eons, or what appears eons, trying to master my thoughts and emotions, when the freedom is not found in mastery of the invisible and illusion: mastery is found in the release of this humanness.

There is no direct way to self, as I am already self. There is no direct way to free myself of thoughts and emotions, as they do not even exist. They are not real.

Yes, I feel. Yes, I experience. But ultimately after a lifetime of analyzing my own experience, I see the illusion I have created. And though I stand in a lonely place at times, in reality, in my reality, I am finally able to grasp joy, and this joy is not fleeting. This joy does not bring out invisible scissors that eventually clip and remove my wings. I do not bleed from this joy, nor do I suffer.

I am attuning self enough to know that false joy will not last, and thusly this false, self-created, and self-wanting joy feels poisonous to me. I want to spit the falsehood out, and bring out the reinforcement of armies with swords in hand and slice away at false joy with question. I feel attacked when the questions come, when the illusion of joy is destroyed, but I am not attacking anything but illusion upon illusion. I am not attacking anything but selfish want and selfish joy.

Joy to me is only found in giving. This is my place of joy. This is how I am wired. I have been trying to live like the rest say to live, to fill myself in order to be fulfilled. But I am ultimately fulfilled when another is fulfilled. I am filled when I am able to bring joy to another. I am filled when the love I have for another is received. I am filled when I know in my deepest knowing that I am not wanting for self and self alone. There is no way around this for me. I still take comfort in the fineries of good food, decorative clothes, and good friends; these can bring me happiness. But this is not a happiness that stays. I see this. I recognize this. And thusly, my mind creates a stage of battles, where I am once again made supposed victim as the questions slice away at the supposed joy. But I am no less victim than the tree pecked by the woodpecker. I am made home for the world, for the flying birds, when I am carved out and hollowed. And in this place, when the world slips inside of me for shelter, I am joy.

And so it is my journey begins with intention. If I set out to love the world, to give of myself freely, without motive for self, then I shall receive endless abundance and joy that I can time and time again return to and tap into. This joy might waver with the wavering of my thoughts and emotions, but this joy is there always. This joy is always there. This joy is love of others, and in so loving other, love of self. There is no non-benefit to giving and loving freely. There just isn’t. When I come from a place of love, I am free. When I do not, I am imprisoned. There is no other place for me than from a place of love.

I think now that I was made the way I am to force myself into finding love. Here I have been searching to love myself, to change myself, to change my thoughts and emotions, to change my way of being, when all along the key was so very simple: love.

Here I was searching to understand love, to understand love through ownership and misinterpretation, and needing and wanting, and sometimes constant desiring, but that is not love. Love is not found in the one or in the self. Love is not found through the desire to receive. Love is not fleeting. And so often the love I have thought I have found, though unrecognizable, unidentifiable, and uncomfortable, still did not fit. No matter how hard I tried to make love fit, it did not. That is because I was searching for a suit of love for me, something to wear to soothe and protect the suffering beneath. But garments age; they tear, they break; no matter what we do they disintegrate, they become outdated, they eventually stink. The only love that can complete me must be outside the self and unattached from the self, something so immense and immeasurable that fear escapes in the infinite abundance.

I know now how to be happy.

Happiness is found in the detachment of love from self, so that love may fly freely. For it is not the butterfly I am that needs to find and wear her wings, it is the love I am that needs to soar.

343: How I long to be the sun

| Aspergers Girls

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How I long to be the sun…

I am such a dichotomy of prisms, multi-faceted in a way that confuses me, the observer.

I keep looking into myself and finding only tunnels, web-like hallways leading in all directions. There is such mystery here, and clutter. I am an open book, but not to myself. I am an open book to only that which I let out and that which I allow in. Even as I share so much, I hold eternity inside. I worry, when I have all the reasonings harvested of why not to worry. I fear, when I have all the reasonings set out of why not to fear.

I am this pendulum; this constant pendulum. I know not what moves me, but I am continually moved. At times I feel I become the person you are. At times, so many times, I lose the person I am. I absorb the world, all of the ingredients brought into me; and then I am left, in my loneliness, both awe-inspired and drowning in pain of recognition.

I see too much. I feel too much. I know too much. And there is no remedy.

I am the heap of pain that one carries on his shoulders. I am the sorrow of the mistress. I am the angst and guilt of the destroyer. I am the pillager weeping at the joyful bounty. I am the child in the glee-filled park. I am the mountaineer on highest peak. I am the widow crying at the grave. I am the tie tightened around my very neck, chocking me from the outside, to match the fury of pain within.

I am enveloped in need and then enveloped in release. I am tortured by thoughts and misery, and then let free by understanding and the depth of beauty. I am unstable, yet stable in my instability. I am consistent in my varying degrees of emotions. A spit-fire of desire brought to tender knees by only the touch of your words.

I am affected by all and none. This silence speaks to me. And the loudness hurts. I am the fury in your eyes. I am the heartache in your bosom. I am that raw pain that eats away at you. Time and again I rise, some mercenary to the many; unable to stop my vengeance; my need to take revenge, to beat the rhythms of my own soul down.

I am anger. I am rectification. I am renewal. I am lust. I am all this and more. And they merge and spin inside of me, claiming their take, and taking more than was offered. I eat of myself, devouring the agony.

If only I could find a way to balance the esteem of you with the esteem of my own being. If only I could find a way to stop the pain you feed me. Your naked trembling fear. To unchain the leash that takes me to the dark side of my own moon.

How I long to be the sun, the perfect sun shining overhead; and then with one touch, without consequence, to set free with flame this yearning for rescue.

~ Sam 3/20/13

341: The Mourning

| Aspergers Girls

I haven’t been able to write as of late.

I transitioned through immense amounts last year, especially during the month of November, transitioned through what I hesitate to call “junk,” but that which most certainly felt akin to garbage.

It was rumored, through various channels, that the end of last year would be a period of much availability for release. The key was to freely bring up the past and old aches, to tear open the scars, dig deep, and like magic, much would be healed.

Truth be told, and truth I often tell, this aforementioned rumor was mostly true. In fact, repeatedly I brought up to the surface my unfinished “business,” and repeatedly the thoughts, emotions, body-history, and spiritual “business” rectified itself and was reborn into sudden and freeing understanding, acceptance and forgiveness.

Interestingly, there was little analysis I undertook during this process. In explanation, I offer a contrast: instead of opening a book of an event or events and feeding myself the pages, unlike a reader, or even an observer, in my process of recovery of self, the experience was liken to watching some other part of something open a symbolic window to let the lingering pain in; and within that same instance of the opening, some force beckoned a sweeper, an unexplainable substance, that now entering the space of self, scoured away to dissolve unneeded residue.

A dear friend calls some people “sandpaper” friends. They refine us. They grate on us. In a certain bowing of spirit, we allow them to hurt us. But in the end, we come out better for the experience.

Well with the window open, and the sweeper entering, I felt the sandpaper. I felt the needling rough edges pry open my skin, go asunder, and dig up the muck and guck that had lived and harbored within. I felt the intensity; I felt extreme discomfort. I felt exposed. I felt found, singled-out, even hunted. And then, I gradually felt slaughtered and left to die. Until, in the swirling of sensation, that came rather abruptly and all at once, I was cleansed and left lighter.

Through this all there was no effort on my part. I didn’t try to heal myself. I didn’t even want to heal myself. What I prayed for was love. That and to be a vessel for spirit and light.

This is what I went through most of the winter season. One day after the next of windows opening, and then finding myself in the midst of both trouble and rescue. Until at last, after months on end, I begged for reprieve, for break, and opportunity for rest.

And rest came.

But soon following was a time period of vultures, of name calling, of doubting who I was and my own path. Then with the passing of these trials, after I’d faced more inner frailties and demons, I found a profound inner peace and knowing. I had a clarity and a comfort. I felt blanketed by the divine. I was granted an unbridled passion to create and communicate. And each morning, I experienced intense visions which included powerful visuals, healing words, and much beauty. This too, this rapture of passion coupled with the visions, like the sandpaper and vulture times, became daunting, and I begged too for these to stop. And they did.

Soon the window closed to whatever was entering.

And here I have sat in silence for over a week wondering what my next step is; while all the while I hear a distant whispering of “There is no next step.” A whisper reminding me everything is okay and is occurring in divine timing.

I think I am mourning what I thought I’d found. I think I am mourning this profound peace and understanding I had for several weeks—a traveling period where I saw heart-clouds in the sky and angel shapes everywhere I looked. A time of deep prophetic prose and agonizing, sweet-release through creation. I remember asking for this profoundness to stop, to give me reprieve, but I don’t think I ever thought the experience would truly end.

Yet, as I sit here now, I don’t wish it back; as much as I miss this part of where I have been and the connection I had, I am glad the window has shut. For it is time for me to move along my path further. A time of new mysteries and discoveries, and a time of further refining. I guess what is somewhat discomforting is I know I have made a spiritual vow of learning. I have made this life about growing, despite the personal cost. I have dedicated myself to being the best me I can be. And with this dedication, I understand there is no stagnant place. And there is no final place either. There is just this continued traveling to a new something and new someone.

I think I have been mourning the past selves. The ones who thought they found themselves. The ones who thought they knew so much. I am mourning the possibility of ever knowing again. As there is no knowing, and there is no finding this self I so diligently had searched and longed for. I am here. In all my states, in all my emotions, in all my frailties and fallings, I am here. And this acceptance of self, in all stages and all phases, past, present, and future, is perhaps the most frightening feeling of all. The learning I am enough. I am love. I am light. I am home. Whilst still traveling this road that eventually leads somewhere else.

Sam Craft, March 2013

Beautiful One
I love you. I don’t know why or how. I just do.
You are immeasurably good, immeasurably pure, immeasurably wonderful.
I want to wrap myself in your essence, to bathe in your beauty.
I want to pour my soul into you, my every thought, experience, desire and dream.
I want to harbor my pain there, within your secret chamber.
If only there were a door.
If only I could find a key.
If only you would open.
Instead, I glide past your existence daily; hour upon hour, building my hopes atop the other like a child with wooden blocks, thinking eventually something will tumble, something will crash.
But nothing ever does.
You remain, and I remain.
And I am left dancing around the image that I imagine you to be.
Standing in a threshold, I both created and wished into existence.
And here, in this imagined place outside of you, I have found the enterance to self.
In this endless delight of searching out the possibilities of you, I have found the remarkable possibility of me.
My friend, my entwined beautiful one, in the wanting of your glorious being, I am.
I am. I am.
And I smile from the deepest place of happy soul child.
Smile as I swing upon the healing rainbow of you.
Still searching for the treasure beyond the imaginary door.
Yet, knowing when you are found, when you have at last welcomed me forward, that I will fall in love not with one, not with two, but with the illumination birthed from the reunion of beauty.