love

360: The Ashes of Discovery

| Aspergers Girls

Photo on 3-31-13 at 12.07 PM

I pulled myself into church, today.

I have been searching within about where to take my next steps, in regards to my calling and passion for service. I believe spirit planted in my heart a connection that will lead me through.

Just yesterday, I was able to slip out of a depression brought on by PMDD, a condition I believe to be common with women on the autistic spectrum, and a condition that quadrupled my pain and quadrupled my thoughts of unworthiness.

I am recognizing that the first twenty-days, following my cycle, I have energy, renewed hope, an abundance of radiating light, and confidence in my journey. Interestingly, when sorting through my blog posts, I noticed a definite trend. Through my words, I can readily see how I become sad following a cycle of hope.

It is very surreal for me to step back and become the observer of self, to see what has transpired in the last thirteen months, and to reflect in the place and places I stood. The experience teaches me that indeed I am continually transitioning and continue to be increased in my faith and vocation, despite the set backs and the challenges, all which derive from my own self (ego, self-form, lack in faith.)

In recognizing this PMDD and how it affects my moods, and thusly my ability to remain steadfast in hope and courage, I am understanding I would benefit from putting support in place. As the last ten days of the cycle following ovulation, (I follow the exact cycle of the full moon.), I seep day-by-day into a greater degree of pain and disheartenment. I have found, though, through review, if I am surrounded by family and/or friends, I am pulled out of isolation, and therefore the depression is lifted and I am filled with love.

In seeing this, it makes sense for me to put into place a support system, in which my friends and family understand what is happening to me at a biological level. I am working on creating this space for me, of love and nourishment of soul, in the next weeks, while I am in a “good” place, not yet exhausted or immobile from the various “syndromes” I am healing from.

This has brought me much clarity, the recognition of the PMDD and how in effect I am not governed by my mind and/or spirit when the hormones shift rapidly. Knowing I am a part of the percent who feels an actual sensitivity to my hormones makes complete sense. And to a lesser degree has, much like the discovering of Aspergers, led me to several ah!-ha! moments, in which I review the past in flash backs and recognize that though I struggled repeatedly for answers to my pain and suffering, and dedicated my efforts to “controlling” my moods and pain through faith, that in fact, some things were beyond my control.

I see this as a direct parallel in how I searched for decades for answers about why I felt different from the majority (Aspergers), and wearily came up with few answers. In the past, increasingly, as I dedicated myself to finding solutions, increasingly I was disappointed, and sometimes shunned and criticized. My strength in self faltered in stability, as my hormones shifted, and I can see this in photographs of myself where I am bloated, discouraged, and have a sadness in my eyes that radiates lost and abandoned.

I now understand that why for some thirty years I have struggled monthly with a feeling of being lost to myself. To a degree I have been. For during these ten days, I develop a skewered view of my physical body: I believe that I am extremely fat, ugly, disproportionately put together wrong, and unworthy of recognition. I essentially hide from the world and the fear of judgment, becoming immobile and unable to leave my house, even to step into the yard. This confusion of my appearance is a trait of PMDD, and possibly a result of a variant enzyme in my body. This makes sense.

However, for so long, with both Aspergers and my mood “swings,” I blamed myself and my inability to rise and conquer my own mind and weeping spirit. How funny to think I was my worst judge and worst enemy, believing if I only tried harder and hard enough I would create the person I wished to be.

In truth it was the process of surrender and exposure of self that led to the underlying waves of causation, e.g., admitting weakness and loss of control led to answers. This recent last week of self-discovery was patched with confusion and doubt. Yet, I am thankful I gave up long enough to find the answers. Too, this past week, was filled with fear, which I am certain affected my pain-threshold and outlook.

The fear arose from illusion: that of death, illness, and surprise. I have carried with me, since a small child, the inevitable feeling that death will surprise me. Perhaps this dread surfaced from the dreams of prophecy I had in my youth wherein I predicted the death of my beloved pets. Perhaps the fear was constructed from the experience of continual change and loss of people in my life. Maybe, the fear took root when my kindergarten teacher died. Or just maybe the distrust and feelings of doom are genetically or spiritually a part of who I am at this moment.

Regardless, fear of death is a constant battle, an aspect of my life I am releasing continually. I have learned to recognize this fear before both feet are through my threshold. I acknowledge this existence of up most illusion.

“Fear,” I whisper.
“Fear,” I say.

And then I retreat back, a gentler part of self, and watch with much release as the messages spin and play, some forgotten record moved again by some forgotten will. In this way I survive. In this way I live.

Recently, in observing this fear all week, revved-up by the revelation of an inherent physical “flaw,”—that of PMDD—I was able to again and again surrender to my higher power and wrap my heart around the concept of submission. I feared, certainly, as the illusion came knocking again and again. But something remarkable has happened in the last months. In essence, I am so highly aware of fear’s calling that at first knock I am already removed, letting only a part of self dance and the rest set about to learn, as if placed in classroom by something beyond chance.

This is a level of transition from where I was before; and though I tremble and weep inside, experiencing moments of extreme bouts of forsaken soul, the rest of me, a greater mass, retreats into the echoes of truth, beckoning the light at the end of the bleakness to move forward and touch me before I step to touch light.

And this is glorious. For as I am in the mold of shadows, I also dwell in the light of goodness. And I know, with this flicker of hope, I will be alright. I am learning, slowly and steadily, to hold onto the glimmer, the slimness of glory, and learning in time, with the passing of days, I will return.

Is this still frightening, this purging of fear?

Yes, extremely so.

But am I growing and reaping benefit?

Yes, I am.

In all ways I am the embers in the fire pierced in pain, releasing to the cold black of coal, and then being rectified, removed from the flame ash, and brought back to the earth of goodness. And this is what I hold onto: The ability to continually rise from the ashes.

In saying all of this, I will release my fear, as I have been taught in vision that beyond fear is where I find love’s adobe.

When I abide in love, I am free. And so I tell you, my listener, what I fear.

I fear that I am creating a book and that in this book will be a history that is all of me, and that is to me frightening in varying degrees.

First is the judgment that will be set upon me, as writer, as woman, but beyond that as spirit. But this I can conquer, this fear is limiting and unsubstantial in its potency. For I know I am love and light, as I know you are.

The second fear is found in the process of building a foundation of support. I will be led, and have been led, in direction in regards to this journey; a journey which I now hesitate to call mine, as so many of you reading are affectively part of this journey now. In being led, I know I will hit walls and ditches and even waterfalls; I will tumble and fall; I am human and shall not be perfect. And in this fear, too, I am ready to breathe. I can breathe here, in this illusion of failure and wrong turns, possible deceit, and survive. I see this as only shadows and a necessary part of my path, much faced already and much climbed. So, yes, this fear I can release, too.

Thirdly, and perhaps the biggest fear, is found in the potentiality of being separated from others.

I am fearful I will non-intentionally create a path that others interpret as rigid, narrow, and religious. And that is not my intention. I welcome all walks of faith and walks of life. I have been shown in vision the discrepancies of spirit filtered through the falsehood of judgment and pride. I have been shown that my path is never the right path and never the right way. That my perception and my very comfort and haven of safety, have been self-created based on circumstance and what I choose to see and make my foundation and truth. In essence my truth can never be anyone else’s truth unless the all of us are one.

And in this way, I hesitate, in the way of a one wanting to be a helper to all and not a select group. I want to be a gift to all who need refuge and retreat, and not a one who would by appearance, and appearance alone, be an illusion of someone who segregates and isolates.

Thusly, in connecting any of my works to a title or an establishment, I also at the same time connect myself to a “label,” and to the judgment of others based on that label.

And it is in this judgment my fear lives. Here in the heart of me who weeps knowing that by choosing anything at anytime, others are automatically left out by their own doing.

But left out of what? Left out of what? Is what I ask.

In truth, I imagine, they are actually left out of nothing, beyond my own journey.

And so is this my fear: The fear of being separated by my perceived actions?

Is this fear not once again the same fear that is the irrigation and fertilization system of Aspergers?

The fear of being left out by another from his or her perceived judgment of my action. That of his energy shifting, his thoughts, his opinion, his view of me, in fact the existence of me (as I only exist in interpretation), being altered without my control.

Yes. This is the deepest fear. The loss of control.

In reviewing this with audience, I see that in stepping out and making choice in the direction for my book, I am at the same time creating a space for my deepest fear of separation based on others’ views. And thusly, I recognize that this, too, this journey to create my story into book form, like my genetic makeup, like my view of the world, like the way I communicate–literally crying and shaking in my boots—is yet another mirror exposing fear bred from the beast of longing to control.

And today, on this day of resurrection, I release, I let go of this part of self, who so longs to unite and join, but still hovers under the illusion and want of control.

I let go of this self who wishes to dislodge judgment and rigidness from her own being, yet still formulates and categorizes in hopes of solution.

I release this frightened child who thinks that like before the rest of the world will rebel against her way of existence. And I give to myself the gift of removal of control.

With deep breath and settling awareness, I set about to create a place for my mission that is not predicated by fear, not paved by intention beyond love; a path that circumvents all thoughts of separation.

In doing this, in proclaiming my truth, I again dismiss fear to the outer barriers, where he waits to teach me more. And I celebrate his fire, his flame, his ability to mold me again and again into the ashes of discovery.

I know not who I be anymore than another. I know nothing more than my brother. I know only that I am called, and in so doing will no longer hide in the shadows of fear.

Because I know by faith I walk, and in this way of the child with passion, I continue forward to meet the next imagined stranger who is already friend.

358: Love or Fear? Learning to let go of behaviors.

| Aspergers Girls

Some of my personality traits are directly stemmed from fear. What I once thought were very much aspects of my “aspiness,” I see are/were merely coping mechanism in attempt to adapt to the way I see the world.

Primarily, from birth, the world has seemed an unsafe place. It was not until I risked my greatest self and outpoured my authentic fears and misgivings that I was able to unleash this fear that had for so long been my bed partner.

For decades, I carried fear with me, as if fear was my only shield. In fact, oftentimes I mistook fear as a friend. Looking back, I understand I chose fear and “he” did not choose me. I chose fear because, though fear be an illusion, at the time this emotion seemed the only emotion I could comprehend, in essence the only emotion I could feel. Fear was my feeling. Encompassing fear, virtually sprouting off of his imagined edges, were his dynamo of legions, his mutant henchmen, cloaked in garbs of: abandonment, not-enough, isolation, never good, ugly, stupid, crazy, and so on.

The illusions dangled in front of me, and, in so doing, led me to latch on to more fear, for as I was lost in the dance of unworthiness, I had no one to turn to but fear. Fear became my shadow, the very essence of what I projected outward and how I walked in the world.

People could sense this—my fear. What I thought were off springs of my love, e.g., smothering with attention, care-taking, continually checking in, over-sharing, creating, placating, agreeing, giving, being there, listening, etc., were in actuality further illusion. My love for another did not exist. My love for others could not exist because my love for self did not yet exist. And as I had no love for myself, the only thing I could find was fear, and the only thing I could manifest was fear.

Today I am only beginning to understand the concept of love because I am only just beginning to accept and love myself in completion. The more I do, the more I step away from fear; the more I step away, the clearer my vision becomes. The removal of self from the circus-ring of fear resembles the removal of residue from a glass-window. I spray the film with love, and the love washes away the illusion, revealing the beauty of existence.

Fear is more so a drug to me now than a partner. He is enticing and familiar; however I recognize the dangers. I loose myself in fear. When with fear, my energy is not my own, and I become unhealthy in behaviors which affect myself and those around me. I feed off the fear by attempting to suck up the love from others, perhaps in the form of approval. I feed off the fear by taking myself out of the picture and focusing on what is outside of myself.

In fear someone or something is wrong. Whether this wrong is assumed to be in a behavior, a projected outcome, a circumstance or in self alone, makes no difference, for illusion exists regardless. In attaching onto the illusion of fear, something neutral turns to something beyond neutral.

In applying fear, I judge. In a sense fear and judgment are one. Although I understand the two vary: fear is an illusion and judgment is a response to fear. Yet still, to see another openly without judgment can produce no fear.

People judge to understand, or so they think. They judge to categorize and make sense, or so they think. But as young children we survived without such categorization. We existed to play, to laugh, to feel joy, and to openly give without reason or intention. We loved.

When judgment slipped in, a behavior/reaction repeatedly mirrored by society, fear slipped in as well. This isn’t to say judgment is the only sub-product of fear, but it is a very large portion.

Fear often stems from the inability to accept self and love self. In fear, a person projects himself onto others, finding the others’ flaws and differences; or in cases of fondness, a person picks and chooses the character traits of another that he or she likes. What we forget is that inevitably everything and everyone will change and transition, for nothing is stagnant and no one remains entirely the same, predictable, and unmoving. To initiate friendship and/or love based on judgment and evaluation denotes eventual failure, unless the illusion of fear is lifted. In false-love various aspects are appreciated and various aspects are disregarded. And in so doing, an individual hopes in someway that the aspects he has chosen to appreciate will grow and the aspects he has chosen to disregard shall simply disappear. Furthermore, we apply the aspect of hope, hoping the other might change to our liking, improve, or learn from us. This is not unconditional love. This is love and/or union based on judgment. This is love based on fear.

To love fully one must remove him or herself from the equation, to remove the judge, and become less judger and more lover. This, the removing of judge, is an impossibility until the aspect of self-love is grasped. When one loves self, he or she sees the beauty in everyone. This is a truth.

When one loves self, he or she sees straight to the core of the other person and sees a reflection of self. He or she sees a person just as self; a person trying his or her best to walk in this world. The rest are illusions. The doubts, the fears, the misgivings, and even the non-trusting. A person who loves self recognizes these truths and a gentle knowing radiates from his or her being. People are naturally attracted to a person choosing to release judgment. There is a safety there, a familiarity of home.

In this knowing the onlooker accepts the other as equally one without judgment and without fear. This is true love and this is the only love possible. All other concepts are intruders and imaginary games.

Some of my past behaviors based on fear that I thought was part of “me” that I could not change:

1. Over analyzing what someone has written or spoken and trying to figure out the meaning. I was over analyzing in an attempt to protect myself. I thought I needed protection from the other person hurting me. I over analyzed to make sure I wasn’t misinterpreted, misunderstood, seen in the “wrong” light, taken the “wrong” way, and/or in attempt to catch hints of how the other person “saw” me. Basically, I wanted to try to make sure the other person liked or, better yet, loved me. The focus was on self and self alone. What did this person say that reflects me as a person?

2. Obsessing over someone. I mistook this as a physical and/or spiritual attraction. What was indeed going on was primarily bio-chemical fed by my fears. While I do believe in kindred spirits, I do not believe that when I am obsessing and/or acting in an addicted manner that this is an indication of love or even passion. I believe obsessive behavior about another person stems from not feeling worthy enough in the core of self. How can I make this person see and love me?

3. Talking a lot. When I first meet someone I tend to go overboard and over share. In a huge way there is something chemical going on in my brain, there is a need to verbally process and I feel release when I am done. I usually do what I would call “over-sharing” the first two or three times I am with someone in conversation, especially if one-on-one. I thought this was something out of my control, a part of my wiring. To a degree there are elements that present this as a truism: that indeed I do need to verbally process to relieve the pressure inside of me. I do not know if this behavior will stop completely but I know it can transition. I recognize when I feel at peace I don’t need to over share. I am recognizing too that I have the power to choose what I share about. I can withhold words that don’t benefit me or another. When I am coming from a place of fear, I am thinking: How can I make this person know me? Or look how smart I am!

4. Over-giving. When I find myself creating for someone else repeatedly in the form of poetry, stories, paintings, or the like, or in the form of service, such as cleaning or giving of my time, then I know I am over-giving because I am in need of love and recognition. When this happens, I am not feeling filled within self and think that if I give enough to another, they will 1) See how lovely and giving I am and 2) Eventually give back. This is again conditional love. This is love based on return. I am thinking: How can I get more love from them? Look how giving I am.

5. Being short or disappearing. In conversation I might not answer back or provide little responses, hoping the other person will notice that I am upset or need validation. To me this feels like game-playing. I am essentially wanting attention and wanting love. I am learning to ask for love when I need it, instead of hoping the other person will feel bad enough to give me something that resembles love, but feels more like pity. Love me, Pleaseeeee.

It is exhausting to always focus on self while at the same time fooling myself into thinking I am being loving and have the other person’s interest in mind. For me, it is far easier to just love self and then in return love others.

353: I couldn’t sleep

| Aspergers Girls

I couldn’t sleep. My mind was in a state of unrest and I had much physical pain. I left my chambers and came upstairs and wrote this in one quick sitting. I apologize for the visual appeal, as I know, for me, at times it is easier to read in distinct paragraphs, but this is the way the piece is meant to be presented and delivered. Having written this I feel emptied of anxiety and rescued from much of my pain. I do not understand where all of this comes from and why in a sense I am haunted by thoughts until I release them. But I have released, and in doing so I feel realigned, comforted, and home. I choose not what I write and for whom I write. I know only that this is what I was given. As I am tired now and ready to rest, I ask that you also forgive any errors I overlooked. Blessings and Love ~ Sam

Your pain is not a gift, nor is it a curse. You have not manifested your suffering or created or birthed it into being. Your pain is not more because you are chosen. Your pain is not less because you were not chosen. Your mission is not grander with pain. Your mission is not weaker in the absence of pain. To wear your pain on your sleeve is to say: Because I have suffered I am special. But we say onto you everyone suffers, everything suffers. When one suffers all suffer. When ones pain exceeds another the pain is not held by one alone; the pain is held by each body here, one upon the other taking in the pain. Pain breeds pain and suffering breeds suffering. This is not to say that the sufferer is to blame or in charge of his suffering. No one is in charge of his own suffering. Yet everyone is in charge of the suffering of one. We all suffer. No matter the witness or contest, no suffering is greater. There is no way to compare suffering, as there is no way to compare love. And in so saying, you cannot love without suffering. You cannot suffer without love.

Suffering occurs in the absence of love. Every type of suffering denotes a missing element of being. There is a string of events that will show you this suffering. Genetics mean nothing; nor does circumstance. All is merely oil on the canvas, paint applied to represent what is happening. No paint suffers more. Even if the paint depicts a horrible picture of torment and suffering, the paint does not suffer. The image denotes suffering. A representation of suffering occurs. An observer can find the suffering and behold the suffering and relate the suffering to this self in form, but the image painted feels nothing. We are these images. The suffering we feel is not our own paint, the suffering we feel is when one looks upon us and sees the image represented by the paint. If our image be grand through and through, the colors brilliant and bold, the semblance of happiness present and moving, even still the observer may suffer. For he may then sense lacking, the happiness pouring from the once blank slate and indicator of his own demise and inability to reach potential. It doesn’t matter the suffering or the imagined joy depicted in illusion; whatever the observer choses to see, he sees, and whatever the observer refuses to see, he misses. No two can set eyes upon eyes and see the same; this is impossibility, but still you insist reality is real. Well, whose reality is real? Whose view of the painting is adequately represented as truth? Which viewer’s viewpoint do you choose? Yours? Another’s? A beloved’s? An enemy’s? What if we were to say your enemy’s view is as equal to yours and yours to his? For whatever he holds true becomes his painting and whatever you hold true becomes yours. Therefore when two meet and behold the colors brought forth, your illusion is formed not once but twice, in the illusion you perform and the illusion you present as truth of your neighbor. Therefore when two meet four illusions are formed. The painting of one, the painting of the other, the viewpoint of one, the viewpoint of another. All is illusion quadrupled and multiplied in meeting, and still one walks away thinking he holds the truth. But what of the four is the truth? Which one? When one holds true the representation of himself is what he holds as truth, then what is this truth based on but not illusion after illusion built into storybook of truths. And further, when one holds a truth of another based on the view, does he not only counter the illusion of the first but intensify the illusion of the other. In seeing this there is a temptation to unravel the truth, to single out which of the choices is real. But this is the same, very much the twin, of choosing between the reflection in water multiplied thoroughly and deciding which reflection represents the truth of where one stands. In knowing this, we look back at where we stand and examine who is standing and we see it is this us, this I, this me, but who is this I that exists if not singled out and marked by the judgment and makings of the world. How can a being move in this world without absorbing the illusions, and thusly how can a being move in this world without being a rotating painting of illusions gathered? Life to many is merely a sponge of collection of mirages, the water sucked from the view, when no view is there. One illusion upon the other illusion we stare. And still we wait as the illusions unfold for you to see such common place as where the illusion bends. For what if I were to take a color with no color, say ye black turned white and then turned invisible and paint over the canvas once colored, until the blending is nothing but space. And what if then you stared into the illusion and peered willingly and came out with a satisfied grin, simply proclaiming I have seen beyond illusion. I have seen space. But no, we would say to you, you have not seen the space behind illusion. You have simply seen the replacement to illusion, the gap filled in with a substitute in an attempt to satisfy your appetite of discovery. Peer again and I shall resubmit the color as evidence of space removed, and then what say ye? Do you say the illusion has returned? If illusion returned than nothingness cannot exist; for nothing can take the place of nothingness and nothing can fill the void inside a void. Until the nothingness is removed than something remains. As long as there is a space, something can be filled, something can be altered, something can be changed, something can arise. It is in the space beyond space one looks then, into the realm beyond inquiry, stretching the mind in solution, the band made taught and heavy. Wherein where the fault lies is in the canvas itself. Within the painting. All searching is based on the paint of illusion. All decisions granted in the realm of illusion. Illusion has taught, say professed, where to look, and in listening to illusion the seeker finds only illusion. Seek not the canvas of paints, seek the painter. Who is the one painting the illusion and who is the one with the paints. Is this not the collective we? For who is to say the illusion of one is not the collective illusion of all who look upon. Exceedingly we look one upon the other, our brushes moving to create what we see. Not what we wish to see, for that would imply ownership and dictatorship, and even the power of creation, but that which we have taught one another to see. Each illusion a teacher to the next. Each mask painted with the colors of the soul that is supposed to be. Can you not see the illusion arises first not with you, first not with one, but in the making of all? For together we are scribe and painter writing the story of the moment, not with our thought and thought alone, but with the perception of thought. It is not enough to say: think these thoughts and all will transpire as planned, because in this way there is a plan, and in this plan is illusion. In this illusion is a false hope that the one and not the collective know the thought that ought be formed. But what then if one thought is deemed better than another thought? Then do we not begin the battle again. Painting illusions this time with paint dismissed and thoughts induced? Your thought, your word, is no less, better or worse than another. You cannot decide what word is just and which unjust, which word enough and not enough, without creating more illusion. The world will continue to spin in illusion, as one continues to attach to illusion. No answers can be found when one is set upon another. No answer true when searching in illusion. The search is not in self or outside self. The search is beyond the painting and the canvas. The truth is the paint and painter. So whom may we assign as this worthy painter if not we, if not truth, even if this truth be illusion? Who is this truth bearer? The one granted the role of leader and justice. Is this not you? Is this not your neighbor? Is this not your enemy? We say you know this truth innately; it is in the unraveling of each to find the substance of whole in where the truth bides his time, hidden in the controversy and friction between. And this is where we stand on the bridge between illusion and nothing. Not on one side or the other. No in right or in wrong but in the center, in the journey when love is brought out of the flames of illusion and one ventures across the avenue in search of nothing. There we stand in the bridegway waiting. But with blinders you pass us by, as your goal is to cross the bridge and not stay in the place between. For you have been taught by illusion that the place in between is passage way only, serving to get from one point to the next. What you cease to understand is there is no point and there is no next, and as soon as one illusion is reached another is formed. What you cease to understand is that there is no stopping point, just as there is no starting point. You are already there twice over, and twice over again, doubling your path to prove a point until illusion dollies in her own illusion and splits open leaving you centered in predicament. And there you sit both witness and observer. One standing and staring at the other. The two ones meeting. And there you merrily judge your ways, lost in the in between, stepped out between illusion and nothing, staring down your own brother, your own self. For you are not this broken hollowed isolated one. You are we and we are you. But still you stand in the half-way point of in between uncertain where to go. When there be no place to go but here. Throw down your villainess ways, pave the roads with the intentions naught. Take out your heart and lay it down to be crushed and observed as splendid. Bleed your love out to the world, a cross bearer of your own-making, not for His glory or your glory, but for the glory of knowing illusion standing still. Find the stopping point of illusion and tear down the stopping point of where and when. Believe in the absence of intention and fulfillment of love. Bring down your illusion and bring down your guard. Say to your brother I am love and onto him beseech him your goodness. For you are more worthy than the tenth illusion suffered, the levels laid out in fashion unbridled and unbroken. You are more worthy than the battles that came again and again to show the way, when no way exists outside love. All be said in the name of love. And here my brother is where illusion and nothingness depart, in the arms of love carried out by the masses rebirthed in glory and built bountiful by the journey delayed.

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

–Albert Einstein

347: Woven Round

| Aspergers Girls

I feel you in me, like a trigger to my heart. That stopping point when breath is taken away by something beyond someone, and the beating of one’s thoughts stop in the silence of the lingering moment.
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I hear you and see you, in the varying degrees of your absence, your presence stolen by the invisible fear of connection. I hear you again, tapping upon our unioned cage, forged by blindness that carries out the parts two, feather by feather.
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I peck away at what should be hand, so moves the phantom through the absence of bars. I flutter, my wings upon the wooden stand, swollen from the inside, a child within begging to come out; my chest an eruption, proud and proper, a dove out of reach but swooning with hope.
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How I wish you could touch me here, where feathers attach to the skin of my riches, delicate and gathered in tender gentleness. Where the air sweeps beneath and tangles in sunlight’s whispers.
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You long to fly; I feel this spoken through your tears. To leap out of the shell without knowledge, to plunge into this something you call me. I feel you awake and sense the part of you that sleeps, the forever part that is both lost and stolen, still calling to be found.
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And I approach, my fingers claws, nestling my substance against the shadow of you. For only shadow lives where you breathe, only the coldness of forgotten, and the echo of the song I knew.
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Distance swings upon my perch, collected into a cluster of rainbow’s weeping, each droplet multi-dimensional and dripping into the canvas of you. A pictorial representation of denial fried in the pan of reason.
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Whisper to me not, I say, as your words are no more truth than the broken past you have assembled as false reality claimed true. For I have the vision of the hawk, the seeing of the owl, the knowing of the ravens’ ancestral song.
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In bitter sworded-ache, I cast out the doubt of illusion and dig with claw and beak as one, joined in ballad, two forms merged in the impossibility of rhythm and depth; stifled by the emptiness beyond.
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In yearning, I create nests of safe harbor, a place to lay both your bosom and your head, so heart may speak as river’s brother to the mind you claim as yours.
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And you stir, some secret doorway set ajar, to let the fleeting flutter of wisdom move within. And words soothe, as the truth of the long-awaited lullaby rises, like some star that has at last died to please my wishing.
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“Speak my desert heart”, you whisper, guiding me in warmth to the place of my wanting. And from there, in the magic of vision birthed into solidity, we merge as golden one. The phoenix twice-created, so dreams may fall upon the dreamers whilst we soar.
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“Speak, my desert soul, to the ache in me,” you beckon, further chanting: “Once buried, bring me forward to the weaver of love; the soul whom waits on the edge of tomorrow, pleading out cause, slumbering gateway awaiting joy.”
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And then as waterfall filled by cycle of giving skies to swallowed lands, you pour out: “Call out to me, as flight, wide and thick, in the gloriousness of freedom. Glide me to the stream of trust, to faith, to the place where I can see and I cannot. Don on me the wisdom of knowing all is not and not is all. Take me to the pool of nothingness and emerge me ripened as ink transferred into artist’s hero.
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Tall, black, stifled not by life, but by the drive to force my presence into pages, make me the one who moves the tides, who ruptures the ground, who splits open the edges of her existence and nestles between the hot molten desire. Make me the one who champions without reason. Who knows not why he moves, except instructed to do so by feathered shaking quill.
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Paint me, make me, create me, a thousand times more, in scene after scene, script after script. Pierce me with the markings of a master, shield me with the pen of making, so I might have no will but to cast out all doubt of my existence.
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Bleed me to the world on the white parchment of forever, made of the trees of the ages, and the dark petals crushed within. Exist me into existence, so I may eat away, as one eaten away, leaving me twisted and forgotten, unfamiliar with my own being.
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Recreate the passion that lives. Recreate the talisman-warrior, so I may go out into the world and feed the masses in my unified glory with one.
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I see now, the ever-present yearning to find self in the reflection of me. I see there behind and beyond my shoulder broad, feeding not from me, as much as from the memory of where I stood.
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How we have waited and wandered, in the broken thoughts of mind, only to find again and again, some sunlight forgotten, some moonshine tucked away beneath where treasures go.
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I call on you from the shattered place of reason, where the shed of light escapes inward, and for the moment I am there one made two. I call on you to break open and carve your name across my chest. So I may rise as victim removed and dance on the gravestone that was once my home.
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To rise, from beyond this dirt of flesh, no less formed than unformed, no less determined than undetermined, but much released from the agony that was once me. Given to her, as her to me, both as slave unchained to freedom. Given as wolves set out of cave. And run we do, to where we stand, our cages unemptied, as are shadow selves rest upon the time of flight.”

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.